Thank you all so much for the validation, and the suggestions, comments & stuff! You have no idea how much that means to me (perhaps you do
).
I felt so vulnerable after posting that last night, that I didn't sleep well at all. That's the worst correspondence I've ever had from her, and although it was about a year ago now, reading it again to post it here did upset me again. I think the idea of a ceremonial burning is great!! (Pity I can't add the sister to the fire, too
)
Although this is a bit 'back to front', I have found the letter that I sent to Alf turning down his 'offer' to mediate (I destroyed his original one - sorry!), so that you can assess the tone of what I sent, and what my NSister was responding to :
>>>>>>
Dear Alfred,
I emailed you on Tuesday 29th August, but I haven’t had an automated reply notification, so I am posting you the text, so that I cannot be accused of not responding:
I received your letter today, which I found very upsetting, as I thought that I had made it clear to my relatives and their partners (not including my Dad) that no communication is to be sent to my home address by them.
It is clear from the content of the letter that you have no real knowledge of what took place for years between me and Joan. Do you think that I would have taken the decision to cut off all contact with her lightly? I tried for years to establish a proper relationship with her, but all I got back was abuse, controlling behaviour and interference. Eventually, after eight family therapy sessions (which she told me to get – and pay for – so that I would learn how to ‘fit in’ with the family better, which is NOT what family therapy is!), it was quite clear that the safest thing for me to do, to protect my health, was to withdraw from her for good. I told her this, but she still carried on. Even when I got married, she was threatening not to come unless I was ‘nice’ to her in the run-up to the wedding, and on the day itself, the only thing she said to me all day was, ‘Doesn’t Kay look nice?’. Not really the behaviour of a caring mother.
Your letter refers to ‘misunderstandings’ between me and her in the past – I have to correct you there, as they never were ‘misunderstandings’ – they were areas where we differed, and the problems arose when she would not admit that I had a right to hold a different opinion from her. Sometimes these could be quite trivial, as all relationships tend to have, but sometimes they were very serious, and I bet she hasn’t told you about those. I do wonder if you have the right to know exactly what some of those are, as I shouldn’t have to justify myself, but you are never going to get the full story from her, are you? For instance, she had an affair (probably not the only one), from when I was 12 to when I was 29, and she involved me in keeping it a secret from my dad, which I hated doing. The stress led me to develop anorexia, which I had for 10 years, till I got away from her at the age of 22 and got some freedom. Colluding with her, however unwillingly, seriously affected the relationship I had with my dad, as he, obviously, thought I was doing it by choice. Even now, my relationship with him is quite distant, but better now than it’s ever been. Since he has been with Christine, I have seen an affectionate side of him I never thought he had – when he was with Joan he was ignored for years.
I would have liked to have a normal, caring mother, but I haven’t got that. When I used to tell her not to say I was ugly, for instance, she’d say, ‘Oh, all mothers tell their daughters that.’! When I’ve told other women this, it has made some of them cry.
I decided to stop having any contact with her after a great deal of soul-searching, and I see absolutely no reason to alter my decision, as she has not changed. She has never acknowledged that her behaviour was hurtful – she has always demanded that I change to accommodate her. You say in your letter that you want to make her happy – in that case, you will have to work at getting her to understand that she caused me years of unhappiness, and that I am not going to deal with her, ever. My husband wants to make me happy, too, but if he kept contacting her, telling her to apologise for all the things she said and did, she wouldn’t like it, would she?
Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband in Chris, and two lovely step-children. My life is great now, and I am not constantly stressed out by having to defend myself from Joan’s sarcasm and criticism all the time. It took years to get over what she did to me, and I am not prepared to start going over it all again, just because someone who knows very little of how our dysfunctional family operated wants to ‘make things better’. I’m afraid it just isn’t as simple as that. I object to being told that ‘it is time to put the past behind you’ – I’ll be the judge of that, thank you. The idea that me and Joan might be ‘brought together’ by you, quite frankly, makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I appreciate what you are trying to do, but it won’t work. She is too damaged, and I have moved on.
Regards,
Janet
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Reading it again, now, it still sounds fair, to me. I do think that Alf might have been 'pressured' by my NMum to send his original letter, as some of the phrases he used sounded more like thay way she'd have said things (in fact, EXACTLY like the way she'd have said things!), so I don't know how much he's to blame for initiating his letter, really. After I'd sent the letter I've copied above, and after I'd got my sisiter's response, I did get a second letter from him, very brief, washing his hands of me because of my 'lies and distortions' which he said he'd discussed with 'friends and family'. He said he had 'no wish' to correspond again.
Then, six months later, he wrote again, enclosing photos of when I was little, to 'remind me of happier times'.
AARRGGHHH!!!
Janet
