Anyone have no good memories from their childhood with their family?

[Anonymous]

No good memories or any traditions passed down?

Now that I’m a mom and working so hard to create memories for my young children, I have started to think back on my own childhood with my abusive widowed mother and how we just don’t have any happy or positive memories! Not sure if this is normal if you didn’t have great parents. Surely a single recipe or something would be passed down but she was such a mean and unhappy person all special occasions were ruined. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something differently with my own kids and trying not to look back into the past too much.

[Anonymous]

You can't co-opt other people's memories and traditions. You have to create your own.

[Anonymous]

I’m so sorry. This sounds very hard. It’s wonderful that you are breaking the abusive cycle. Feel proud and grateful for what you are gifting your children and perhaps future grandchildren.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't co-opt other people's memories and traditions. You have to create your own.

NP. What does this mean? OP didn't ask for other people's memories and traditions. She literally said she's working on doing something different but that it's hard because she has not traditions to pull from.

But in any case, you are actually wrong. You can "co-opt" other people's traditions. As someone with a similar background to OP, many of our family traditions are borrowed from other people and adopted by us. If they stick, they become part of our family practice and will hopefully become traditions that get passed down. If they don't stick, no harm no foul. But when you don't have good family traditions to draw from, it's totally okay to find inspiration in things that have worked for other families.

Also, if you marry someone with strong family traditions, and you continue them, you are co-opting them because they aren't yours but you are adopting them.

Like something I have done as a parent is make music part of our family practice and tradition, because I spent time around other families for whom this was true and it really spoke to me and made me feel good. My family rarely played music at home when I was a kid, and when we did, it was very restrictive and imposed on us. My DH has more musical tradition in his family, and we have taken this further -- music is a part of our daily lives, everyone takes turns selecting music to listen to or to play or sing, it is an important part of all our holiday traditions as well. I was not raised with it, it's not my tradition, but I have happily co-opted it from other families and now my kids will have those memories when they grow up.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry. I don't have any good memories from holidays either. My mother was a disaster, my father MIA, the grandparents who were close by not interested, and the eventual stepfather drunk and abusive.

At holidays I always remember how one of my mother's favorite things to do at holiday time was buy someone a gift that was on the face of it exactly what they asked for, but to make sure it was a version of it that they wouldn't like at all. And then lie in wait to erupt into raging crying victimhood if they showed any sign of not liking it. It was just a weird, nasty, manipulative thing she did. Every single year. To multiple people.

[Anonymous]

Very very few.

[Anonymous]

Yes. So, yes, I try to create good memories for my children. We have silly traditions, but they like it. They are teens now.

[Anonymous]

You need to stop focusing on what you don't have from the past, and focus on what you DO have in the present and the future - the ability to stop abusive or neglectful cycles, to start building good memories and traditions.

I was hit a lot as a kid, and it REALLY negatively affected me. I swore I wouldn't make my children afraid of me and wouldn't ever hit them. And you know, the youngest is about to turn 21, and I never have. My mother had good intentions but bad follow through. I made sure I followed through.

[Anonymous]

Mine was an unhappy childhood as well but there are some things I did like—some dishes my mom would make, some family trips. The rare times my mom would buy something like Pop Tarts was nice.

Some things I didn’t like at the time—my mom's extreme frugality for example—but I appreciate it now.

Though we were pretty much neglected, I did like all the free time I had. Maybe if you dig deep, you can find some nice little moments too? Or maybe not.