How did it feel when a parent died that you cut contact with?
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Anonymous
| I am about to cut contact with a severely abusive parent that is not getting any better. She’s taken care of and living in an assisted living home. How did it feel when the parent passed away? Did you cry or mourn them? Did you have regrets? |
Anonymous
| I mean....maybe you should still send a birthday card and Christmas card and call her a few times a year. You might feel better doing that. |
Anonymous
Spoken like someone who has never experienced the level of abuse OP has probably had to deal with. OP, my mother stopped talking to her parents many years before their deaths and I don’t think she has any regrets. I think most of the grieving already happened. I found out my grandmother died only when I mindlessly googled her name during a conference call. I used to do that about every year or two when I’d think of her (I never met her). Therefore, I was the one to break the news to my mom that her mother had passed away. She sounded mildly sad about it, but definitely didn’t seem like she had regrets. Much harder for my mother was dealing with the lifetime of after effects caused by her severely abusive childhood. I wish your peace, OP. It will be okay. It is okay to let her go. |
Anonymous
You know, I’m really tried but this is just someone who can’t be let in. I had two siblings overdose and she blamed me for it b/c I “couldn’t be there for them” on top of everything else. This is a full blown narcissistic person who has screamed curse words at me everyday since I was 3 years old. At what point can I take my own life back and not deal with someone so sick? I’ve been through enough. And she was my only parent so I didn’t have any support growing up. I have a happy life now and a great family and I want to close this chapter of abuse. |
Anonymous
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I was estranged from my mother for 12 years before she died. Yes it hurt very much, and I very much regretted the estrangement, but it was a requirement of me avoiding suicide.
My parents had made it clear in words and actions that the conditions of a continued relationship with them were that I would continue to be subject to and respectfully tolerate the same kind of mental and verbal abuse that I had respectfully tolerated for 30 years, all the while it was crushing my soul. They had zero insight and zero motivation to change anything about their deeply toxic emotionally immature parenting. So, the pain and the regret you will feel when your estranged parent dies is for the permanent closing of the door on the cherished fantasy you hold that someday, somehow they will see you and accept you and truly love you for who you are - and be able to express that love. There is grief in becoming an orphan, whatever the status of your relationship with the parent - it’s just different kinds of grief. I wish you as much peace in your heart as you are able to find, whatever you decide. |
Anonymous
I wasnot trying to be flippant. I was just saying you sound like you are worried you might feel guilty. Maybe cut off the phone calls but send cards a few times a year. But if you need to cut off contact to save yourself, I think that is fine. |
Anonymous
How did you find out? Obituary? Thanks for chiming in. Sounds like a similar situation and I’m sure your mom protected you from it. |
Anonymous
I hope you know in your heart that those siblings OD’d because of her, not you. |
Anonymous
That sounds so hard. Thank you. I also find myself suicidal in moments when I’m in contact with her. It is so triggering and might be hard for people to understand how painful this kind of relationship is with a hateful and cruel parent. |
Anonymous
| Did not bother me at all |
Anonymous
Yes. parent and siblings.. I think I was the “strong” one of the family who got out. I was always the black sheep so I didn’t/ don’t have any kind of bond with her whereas my siblings were mentally really messed up from our upbringing even though they were devoted. Ironic that I can see being the golden child can actually turn into a very horrible situation if you’re constantly seeking approval from someone like this. I was so lucky to be on the outside. I raised myself and how happily married with children.. I am lucky not to pass this down to my own family. |
Anonymous
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It is very hard for the people who grew up with emotionally mature, nurturing parents to understand what we have experienced. Some of them can be incredibly judgmental because they just don’t get it. Many people don’t grasp that child abuse isn’t just bruises broken bones or molestation or serious physical neglect. They might see that you grew up with material comforts and maybe weren’t ever even physically assaulted and think you aren’t really a victim of child abuse.
But mental cruelty inflicted by a parent is incredibly destructive - it undermines your sense of self, your ability to develop a healthy way of being in this world and in all the relationships you will ever have your whole life through. If you have managed to forge a healthy marriage or other committed relationship and to have children and be raising them using healthy parenting strategies, you are a super hero and you have all my respect and love. And if the very sound of your mother’s voice brings up all that pain and toxicity and causes you to struggle with the healthy life you’ve managed to create, then you don’t need to hear that voice anymore. You’ve done your duty as an obedient child long enough. You didn’t ask to be born. You didn’t ask to be abused. You owe her nothing. |
Anonymous
Yes, I found the obituary. I think that was exactly what it was. My mother had a few visits with her mother when I was less than 6 months old, but I think they ended when my mother realized that her mother was never going to change. I think she was really afraid of her mother -- who was a master manipulator, in addition to being quite abusive -- getting in between my mother and me. The other thing that helped my mom make the break was my father. My father was on no level afraid of my mother's parents and he wasn't interested in their crap. My maternal grandfather was a cop, but so was my father. My father always carried his weapon and he was not afraid of his ILs one bit, facts that he made that quite clear to both of them. Looking back on it, I think my father's attitude towards my mother's parents was a lot of what drew my mother to my father. |
Anonymous
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My father wasn’t abusive, but rather completely absent and negligent when I was growing up. Then, when I became a young adult, he felt the phone only worked one way and that it was the child’s duty to call the parent. I just stopped calling one day and basically didn’t talk to him the 20 years before he died. And when he did die a few years ago, I felt...nothing.
Maybe if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand, but I cry more when someone I know peripherally in my community dies than I did for my own father. You reap what you sow. |
Anonymous
+1 I am the PP who shared her mom's story. Yes!! All of this!! It sounds like you've broken the cycle, OP. Claim the victory and do not fear letting this woman go, if that is what you choose to do. |