Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
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Hopalong:
((((Tupp)))),
I have always been amazed at the depth and honesty of your introspection, and the maturity of your conclusions.
I remain amazed. There's something so enormously truthful (non-denial, accountability, active response to insight, etc) about your processing of your own life, personality, needs, strengths and weaknesses.
I believe your mother has been a dank, oppressive and suppressive force in your life for long enough, and as you look back, I feel as though you have cut many many cords to her. What once looked like a rope that could secure a tugboat has frayed down to threads. Nature will rot those away in its own pace, but you're free.
Looking back, that's an extraordinary process of will to thrive, love for Son, and refusal to let her drag you like an anchor again. You have become your own anchor, to raise or set as you see fit. Wow.
Being poor sucks. And you have your own good mind, a Son who loves you (quit singing baby songs to him!), and perceptiveness. Astonishing perceptiveness.
Bravo, you.
hugs
Hops
Twoapenny:
Thanks, Hops. It's odd how things feel very confused and stuck for a long time, and then they seem to shift free again.
Now here's another odd thing, and I wanted to ask you guys what you think, just as an observation thing, not with a view to doing anything about it.
I kept thinking about all these times my mum has contacted professionals making claims about me abusing my son. What I can't get my head around is why she did it in the way that she did. It happened each time she and I fell out. I've always presumed that to be her response to losing control over me, and I'd always had it in my head that what she was trying to do was to get custody of my son, or some sort of enforced input in his life. But reading through all this paperwork again, there's no mention in there, at any time, of her trying to get him or suggesting he should be taken from me. What she did each time is contact someone claiming that my son's problems were down to my parenting of him; my mental health problems making me a bad parent. When I was in hospital during a breakdown she isolated me by telling friends I wasn't allowed visitors (I didn't find out until many years later). She told docs at the hospital that she was happy to have me stay with her and then as soon as I got in the car she told me I couldn't stay more than two nights. She called docs telling them I was out of control and my behaviour was so bad they couldn't have me in the house; I'd done nothing and didn't know about that until a long time after, either. She at no time during the period I was ill raised any concerns with social workers or any other members of staff about my treatment of my son; there's not even any redacted information during that period which would indicate she told them something she didn't want them to know about (in fact there's very little interaction between her and the social worker other than brief notes about childcare arrangements and emergency phone numbers).
So we've gone through the actual period of me being ill with her exaggerating and/or making up things about me, with no mention of me mistreating or neglecting my son (from her, or anyone else). We went through about a year or more of early interaction between me and the health visitor, doctor, speech therapist and paediatrician without any input from my mum to any of those people (again, no redacted information, no weird or out of place comments). We moved to a different area that summer (different team of docs, social workers etc) but she didn't contact anybody for about four months after that, and that was when she claimed I'd caused all his problems through my treatment of him when I was ill. I'm kind of baffled as to how they all accepted that. He was very young; for me to have done that I'd have had to have severely neglected him from birth really, it would be odd for him to have remained in my care if that were the case? And even more odd that we'd be able to move from one county to another without any information being passed between professional teams. Added to which we weren't in hiding; he was in nursery, registered with a doc, attending groups and so on. So them accepting what she said without anything to back it up is really weird but it's also only just dawning on me that what she really seemed to doing in all this is exaggerating my health problems and trying to convince people they were severe enough to damage my son in that way.
Could she be suffering from that fabricated illness thing, do you think? I'm not sure what they call it now, it used to be munchausen's, I've heard it called fictitious disorder as well. The fake cancer thing has played on my mind through the day and now I'm starting to wonder if this whole thing has actually been about her pretending I had health problems I didn't have. I've got a report where she claimed I had schizophrenia and could switch personalities without warning which would have been funny if it hadn't been so serious, but she put together an almost cartoon like description of how she claimed I was to someone at one time. All of it completely made up.
I'm just thinking out loud really, but for some reason re-reading some of that paperwork over the weekend, I've seen some things in a different light and I'm starting to wonder if my interpretation of this has been wrong. I've always thought she was trying to get my boy but now I'm starting to wonder if it was all about attention being paid to her?
sKePTiKal:
Hi Tupp. Speculating on the why of your mom's behavior now, probably won't turn up any specific, accurate answers. But the new vantage point you're in right now has certainly offered a new perspective on it! Noticing the lack of stated threat to control/manage your son IS a big deal. I'd see that, as meaning you were the target all along for her harassment. Why, is kinda impossible to know and likely she doesn't know at this point in time either. Stuff like that gets lost in the filmstrips of the past, the older we get.
Maybe it was all about her wanting attention; maybe she was intuitively conscious she was pushing you & son away and didn't want to lose her favorite "I'll pick on her and feel strong again" ego coping mechanism. Maybe she's just always been this way, and there was nothing you were; nothing you said; nothing you did that created this situation between you two. I do still kinda believe that sometimes daughters are born to mismatched moms for whatever "life challenge lessons" there are to derive from it. I see it a lot in the difference in my two daughters; my silly relationship with my mom that caused me so much difficulty in life, for awhile.
It'll be interesting to see what you discover, or think about this after you've pondered it some.
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: sKePTiKal on May 07, 2024, 07:20:23 AM ---Hi Tupp. Speculating on the why of your mom's behavior now, probably won't turn up any specific, accurate answers. But the new vantage point you're in right now has certainly offered a new perspective on it! Noticing the lack of stated threat to control/manage your son IS a big deal. I'd see that, as meaning you were the target all along for her harassment. Why, is kinda impossible to know and likely she doesn't know at this point in time either. Stuff like that gets lost in the filmstrips of the past, the older we get.
Maybe it was all about her wanting attention; maybe she was intuitively conscious she was pushing you & son away and didn't want to lose her favorite "I'll pick on her and feel strong again" ego coping mechanism. Maybe she's just always been this way, and there was nothing you were; nothing you said; nothing you did that created this situation between you two. I do still kinda believe that sometimes daughters are born to mismatched moms for whatever "life challenge lessons" there are to derive from it. I see it a lot in the difference in my two daughters; my silly relationship with my mom that caused me so much difficulty in life, for awhile.
It'll be interesting to see what you discover, or think about this after you've pondered it some.
--- End quote ---
Thanks, Skep. I think you're right about the different perspective being helpful, and about the mothers and daughters thing. I spoke to my sister about it all this morning. Two interesting things came up from that - one is the way the different pieces of information we each have form a completely different picture, for both of us. The other is how well my sister and I communicate when we talk about this really deep messed up stuff. When we have light and airy, chit chat conversations we both annoy one another immensely and end up getting snippy.
It has already meant my anxiety about my son has dropped considerably. I'd always felt I needed to protect him from her but that's just evaporated. I don't think it was ever about him now. It sounds silly but I've always had a nagging fear that some of what she said about me was true, and that her attempts to intervene were some sort of misguided effort to help, albeit from a place of not really understanding the situation. But now - I honestly think all of it was about getting attention for herself and we were just the unfortunate vehicle for that. It means a lot of the 'what was so wrong with me' thinking has vanished as well.
She has called my sister to say there was more cancer than was first thought, and that she needs more surgery. We don't know if this is true, or if she's increased the story because she didn't get the response she wanted to the first one. It does seem that she had some sort of hospital procedure (this has come via the village grapevine). True or not, whilst I don't want her to suffer, we are all keeping well away. I feel kind of detached from it all. She's done so much damage but has flown under the radar with it all. Very, very dangerous.
Twoapenny:
Well lovelies, I am logging on this morning to tell you all that I am feeling very proud of myself :) And genuinely so, not in some vain attempt to bolster myself up.
I have sorted through another big box of paperwork. Fewer revelations about my mum this time, but it's become clear to me that the amount of paperwork that actually relates to myself or my son is fairly small - think a couple of box files worth. Things we currently need can easily be stored in a drawer or a single ring binder. Almost all of this colossal weight of paper that I have lugged from house to house over so many moves is my mum. Literally. I didn't have her in my life any more, so she made sure she was represented in some other way, and she's done it by generating paperwork for me to deal with. Even when I got to the point of telling her I wasn't going to deal with her problems any more, she's just created other problems that I had no choice but to manage. Stupid, pointless, ridiculous woman.
What I am proud of, as I work my way through these paperwork mountains and the many allegations, communications, complaints and follow ups over the years, is the way I've handled it. At the same time as providing 24 hour support for my son (and doing it well) I have dealt with all of these situations in the correct way - on paper, in accordance with the procedures, correcting inaccuracies, requesting information, getting to a point in each case where staff have had to admit that either the procedure was not adhered to and/or that the information they were using was inaccurate. Polite, calm, measured, coherent, cohesive paperwork, all of which, over the years, has been filed, stored and kept available in case it was needed again. It's a twenty year documented history of abuse, and it's an interesting read. I have behaved better than most of the professionals involved (there have been a few that did a good job and it was nice to remind myself of them) and I've behaved a thousand times better than my mum. I have done a bloody good job and I am genuinely feeling proud of myself for being a decent human, and a good mum. Albeit one with an achy hip lol xx
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