hi guys,
It is my nature to be honest..and I hope no one with non-abusive parents takes this wrong, as this is about me not you k?
Since learning about N I'm having a difficult time imagining ANY non-abusive families really exist. I mean, lots of people around me claim their families were great, but I can see (or imagine) problems. It's like I'm having trouble admitting that what people say, might be their reality, and that things were OK.
Like many other people here I grew up believing that my home environment was normal, and that it was pretty much the same for everyone else as it was for me and my two brothers.
In 1997 I had my first meeting with my first counsellor, and he exploded this myth for me, by asking, did I really think that what I was describing to him was actually normal. It did not take long to realise that, actually, it was barking mad. I would sooner cut of my right hand than do to my daughter what my parents did to me and my brothers.
Since that time it has been a very slow, very difficult journey of learning about what my family is, and how deep the abuses go. It is like investigating a family tree - the further back you go the more you find, and you never reach the beginning. Because of this, I have learned not to blame anyone, because nobody actually chose to start this, or to become abusive. But I have also learned, and this is the hardest of all, to make a stand and not allow anything to continue if I have the power to stop it.
In relation to other families, it would be easy now to assume, as you say, that every family is abusive. But I do not think this is true. There are no perfect families out there, and God knows, my own small family of self and daughter is far from perfect. But the difference between abusive families and those without abuse is, I think, not perfection but respect. My d knows that even though I get ratty, and shout, and nag, and complain, at heart I respect her, and her opinion. Once I stop the nagging, I will listen to what she says, and I will very often act on it, and allow her view to prevail. Not because she is necessarily right, but because her voice is important, and sometimes it is right for me to act as she wishes, in order to demonstrate that.
So if we are looking for the perfect non-abusive family, then no, there are none. None where everyone is perfectly respectful, perfectly loving, and perfectly harmonious at all times. But if we are looking for families without secrets, without lies, without blind abuse of one another, then yes, there are some. And it is people such as you and I who will build them, bit by bit.
This is now our new normal.
