Hi David,
I feel your anger. After reading your posts about Forgiveness and Confrontation and the replies you got, I debated whether I should write you. I've decided to go ahead and try what one poster told me when I first joined this board. S/he said "just share your journey." That's what I'd like to do. I'll try to be as brief as possible.
I come from a large family. Our mother left when I was around ten. Much of my childhood was spent playing the surrogate mother to my siblings. Things transpired during this period that negatively affected us children. Suffice to say, we had a very painful childhood. Much of this pain was pushed deep inside, and I didn't even know it was there. Many of my siblings didn't either.
Being the eldest daughter, I was the first to realize that I was angrier than hell about what happened to us and me in particular, and I was angry about the person I had became as a result of this upbringing. Most if not all that anger was directed at my mother.
During the initial stages of my anger, I distanced myself from my mother and family. They had no idea what was going on with me. They couldn't understand and just wrote me off as "having issues."
Being isolated from my family didn't ease the pain really, despite the fact that I had a wonderful husband, beautiful children and a "good" life. The anger still was eating me up inside. I wanted someone to be accountable for what happened to me and for the subsequent pain.
David, when I read your posts and hear your anger, I know that you and I would have been formidable opponents. You're registering an 8 on the anger richter scale and that's just about where I was too. I can totally understand how that could be.
The funny thing about the anger though was that it seemed to show up in all areas of my life, not just when dealing with family issues. My work was affected, my social life was affected and eventually my own nuclear family was affected. Years passed like this before I realized that I needed help out of this black hole, and I went for therapy.
I figuretively vomitted at every meeting with my therapist. I lashed out about my selfish N mother and related every wrong that had been done to me, particularly those where my mom was responsible. My therapist was wonderful. She listened and never caused me to feel self conscious or embarrassed or evil for having expressed some REALLY ugly thoughts. Instead, she affirmed me and helped me believe that I wasn't really this evil, anger consumed person that hated her family. On some unconscious level I think I believed that was who I was. Once I gave up that notion and went looking for myself, I found her. She WAS the inner child and I embraced her. She was empathetic, resilient, courageous, and more than I could have imagined. All this was hidden behind the anger and hurt. This realization is what started me on my recovery and as I have said before, FORGIVENESS came effortlessly after that.
I am reconciled with my mother now. We have had numerous conversations about our past and each one has brought us closer as I've come to understand her and she has come to learn about the suffering that I endured.
Some of my other siblings have since come to realize that they have hurt and anger issues as well. My sister, who I have written about on this board has distanced herself from my mom while she works on her recovery. I have one other sibling who was and still is very angry with my mother, but his approach was very different from mine. His approach was similar to the one you are contemplating. He chose to unload on my mother in a confrontation. My mother had no idea what he was talking about and retreated. They have had little to no contact since then My siblings responses were to think my brother was off his rocker. From what I know, nothing has really changed. Periodically he shoots off a really angry e-mail to my mom, sometimes ccing everyone in the family and this has only served as further evidence that he's troubled and has issues.
How long my brother will remain stuck in this venting/confrontation stage I don't know but from what I can tell, it hasn't helped him or our mother. She is no closer to understanding what his grievances are. Once the grievances were presented in the confrontation, mom's system shut down and she went in to defensive mode. My own hope is that he will find another way. I recognize better than anyone in our family that he needs to deal with this in order to achieve true peace and happiness.
That's my story. I don't know if this is of any help to you. but I wanted to share the journey for what it's worth.
CeeMee
