Today’s guest post is from Patricia Singleton author of the blog Spiritual Journey of a lightworker.
Thank you Patricia for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. I appreciate your honesty very much 
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“Forgiveness – Letting God Handle It
Long before I ever started healing from incest, I was told that I should “forgive those who trespassed against me.” I was told by two different ministers that I should just forgive my dad and get on with my life. Neither man could tell me exactly how I should do that. Neither really knew how to help me and left me feeling worse, not better. I didn’t tell either minister my story other than to tell them that I was sexually abused by my dad when I was a child.
I wanted to forgive my dad but I didn’t know how. The ministers told me that I needed to forgive my dad so that God could forgive me. I cried because of the pain that I was in. I left the church feeling much worse than when I had entered it.
Years later, when I got into 12-Step meetings because my dad was also a raging alcoholic and my mother was very codependent, I started hearing the comment, “Well, your parents did the best they could.” Sometimes someone would add the words, “with the tools they had.” I was numb and in shock the first time that I heard those words. I hadn’t started feeling yet.
After I started feeling, I became very angry when someone would make those statements. I didn’t see how either of my parents could possibly have done the best that they could during the six years that I remember being sexually abused by my dad. I was never allowed to be a child. I was always given the responsibilities of an adult.
A few years later, a new mentor came into my life. She told me, “Your parents did the best they could with the tools that they had and it wasn’t good enough.” Finally someone was saying what I needed to hear, “It wasn’t good enough.” With those words, I could finally start to validate my hurt and anger at my parents. My mentor told me that I didn’t have to ever forgive my parents if I didn’t want to. I could heal without it. She also told me that if I could forgive my parents, it didn’t mean that what they did was okay. Their actions were wrong. That would never change.
At that time in my life, I didn’t think that I would ever forgive my parents for the incest and the emotional abuse that was a big part of it. I hurt too much to even think about forgiveness. I was too angry with my parents to forgive them. I didn’t even want to forgive them then.
The only person that I could forgive was myself. For many years, I had abandoned my inner child – the little girl me that was sexually abused, the little girl who couldn’t protect herself from the demands of her parents. I blamed that little girl and I had to forgive her for being a helpless child. I had to forgive the adult me for abandoning that little girl. Those I could work on and do the forgiveness.
At 17, when I was emotionally stronger and more mature than my dad, I said no to the incest. I had reached the point of not caring if everyone knew about the incest. I was in so much pain that I could tell if he didn’t leave me alone, I was close to an emotional breakdown of some kind. I knew it. I could feel it. I was barely hanging on to my sanity. My dad never physically touched me again. The emotional abuse and intimidation never stopped until I left home at 19 after finishing my second year of college.
After I said no and my dad left me alone, then I felt guilty that I didn’t say no earlier. I did say no many times and each time, except the last, I was coerced into giving in. I was so tired physically and emotionally. I had to forgive myself for blaming the 17 year old for not being strong sooner. I came to finally believe that I didn’t cause the incest and I wasn’t to blame for it. Being raped by my dad was not my fault. Even at 17, I was still a child who had no control over my own life. I could forgive the child and the adult me but I still couldn’t forgive my parents.
By listening to my inner voice and having conversations with God, who I had reconnected with as my Higher Power through 12-Step meetings, I was able to tell God that I just couldn’t deal with the forgiveness of my parents. I asked God to handle the forgiveness thing for me until I could do it for myself. I didn’t think that I would ever forgive my parents for the incest.
Forgiveness didn’t happen for me for many years. After putting it into God’s hands, I let go of it and concentrated on working on healing myself. I didn’t know that forgiveness could come as a result of the process of working on my issues. I didn’t know that as I healed my views of forgiveness would also change. Forgiveness, to me, meant letting go of the pain, anger, hurt, sadness. I was no longer controlled by my dad or my reactions to the incest.
On my blog Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker ( http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com ) you will find a large number of posts on forgiveness and the process that I went through to get there. What I want to leave you with here is that forgiveness is an individual choice as to when and if you ever do it. Don’t do like I did for years and beat yourself up if you can’t forgive. You are not a bad person if you choose not to forgive. Forgiveness is for you, not for your abusers. You don’t even have to tell your abusers that you have forgivenen them, if you do. God is who I told when I finally realized that I was ready to forgive.”
Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts here about forgiveness. I always learn from what I share in a guess blog article. Guess articles give me a slightly different way to look at something than if I had written the same thing for my own blog.
I appreciate the opportunity to share with you and your readers. You are helping other surivors with your own sharing of your blog. Thank you for sharing your own story of struggle and healing.
You are welcome! It is a pleasure ~ well of course not always as the nature of the subject suggests but I have learned so much while writing here and listening to all of you and reading your blogs that it is as much a help for me as the other way round. That is the great opportunity of the Internet and I am glad that we all use it
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Patricia
I struggled with forgiveness until Jer 17: 9-10 spoke to me. I was only looking at the surface behavior of my predators and God sees the entire pix. I want Him to judge me with the same mercy He judges them. We can never know the heart of another or the cause of their actions. God does!
Dear Tom, yes God does but God also understands very well that we have to be ready God does not push us
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Hi Patricia,
One thing I remember and hold onto is that forgiveness isn’t cheap. It is hard to come by. In my experience, when people told me to forgive what my parents did to me, they were really asking me to let it slide, cheap forgiveness and easy to come by. I couldn’t do that because it was no small thing that my parents or the men who sexually abused me did to me. I couldn’t let it all slide and ever get better but I tried for decades. I had to go back and name the offenses outloud, to myself, my family, my family of origin, and to the world, even. They weren’t offenses too great to be forgiven but they were offenses to great to let slide. Once they’d been named and everyone knew, including me, exactly what needed to be forgiven, I began to feel true feelings of actual forgiveness, even though my family of origin still refuses to acknowledge the crimes committed against me. Forgiving them doesn’t mean I have a relationship with them. It’s true that my forgiveness has to power to heal our relationship but they have to do their part and acknowledge what they need to be forgiven for. Forgiveness is a process more than a destination. It’s important but it can’t be forced too soon or manufactured upon demand.
Thanks again for a really good post and for making me feel less alone.
Pam
I like that thought that those who have done things to us have to do their part as well. Unfortunately they are not always ready for it and then we have to find different ways. Sometimes it is the right thing to go different ways to avoid hurting each other more and more.
Tom and Pam, thanks for your comments. I appreciate you sharing your experiences with healing.
Tom, the fact that God sees the whole picture is why I could let go of forgiveness and just let God handle it until I could do it myself. We only see our very small part in our lives.
Pam, Forgiveness definitely isn’t what some people seem to think it is. It isn’t worthless words that mean nothing to me. The simple words, “I forgive you.” without the work of healing behind them means nothing for major abuses like incest or any form of child abuse. Until I did the healing of myself, those words meant nothing to me because I was still hurting from the abuse. My form of forgiveness required nothing from my abusers. They never changed. What changed was that the abuse and my abusers lost their power to control me when I became centered through the healing work that I did. That doesn’t mean they got off scott free. They still lived with their own guilt and shame because they never stopped abusing others. My dad was not allowed to be in my life or the lives of my children for the last 10 years of his life because he never admitted that he did anything wrong and he never stopped trying to abuse and control othes. Forgiving doesn’t mean continuing to accept abuse. It means having healthy boundaries that the abuser is not allowed to cross ever again. It meant letting go of the hope that he would ever stop abusing others. He didn’t. He died a mean, totally alone, alcoholic living in a school bus on the side of a county road in southern Arkansas. It took 3 days for the police to find me to contact me of his death. I can’t paint any lonlier picture of a man than that ending in my mind.
Pat, When I think of incest and someone saying that your dad did the best he could, I just don’t buy it and I don’t understand how someone can even say such a thing. A man raping his little girl is the worst he could do, as a father. I don’t want to make excuses for that kind of behavior and I don’t buy that they can’t help it. I know it must be hard to think of your dad dying that way but that is what he chose for himself. Consequences are nasty things to endure but the bring down justice often, when the law doesn’t.
My family of origin has never expressed any sorrow over my sexual abuse. They tell me I should forgive them and make excuses for them. Their response is every bit as degrading as the sexual abuse. I don’t know if I forgive those men because forgiveness implies some kind of normal relationship to be mended. I want no mending with them. I don’t want to ever see them again. I don’t feel a lot of hatred either. I just feel cold. I’m not sure that everything is to be forgiven, in the cosmic scope of things. I think maybe, I’ve objectified them in my thinking as much as they objectified me.
It’s good to have an honest discussion on this topic.
Pam
Dear Pam, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. Well I guess the point at “forgiveness” is not to make excuses for them or to make out it was not so bad. The point is to let go of the anger, rage, fear and other feelings and behaviour that is not helpful for us any more and when we are ready. Forgiving does not make right what they did but forgiving gives us the freedom to live the life we deserve and we want to.
Hi Pam,
I believe “unforgiveness” was one of the things that was holding me back from a full life. I don’t believe one can nurture rage and vengeance on one side of the brain and love, peace and joy on the other. Unfortunately, I believe the rotten apple ALWAYS damages the rest. My rage indicated to me that they still controlled my feelings, my mind and my thoughts. Having had 9 different predators, you can appreciate how consuming this could be. Today, I simply refuse to give them that control, I refuse to allow them to occupy my thoughts for even a millisecond, I have dealt with tons of “triggers” and very few things send me back to the little boy being abused. I don’t deny any of it, it does not control me. It doesn’t mean they are not accountable for their behavior, it certainly doesn’t mean we will be friends or socialize
any time soon and it definitely does not free them of the label of child predator. If I had the physical evidence, I would have them arrested in a heartbeat.
Patricia, your journey in forgiveness is so beautifully written. I too found that my perspective regarding forgiveness changed after a few years of therapy and recovery. The 12-Step program also helped me to reconnect with God.
I am so thankful that we are on this enlightening journey together.
Pam, I heard that line about my parents doing the best they could a lot in 12-Step meetings. I do believe that forgiveness is an individual choice and I don’t think anyone absolutely “has” to forgive. I never said the words to my dad. I said them in my mind to his Higher Power. I did not do it to change anything in him. I did it for me in order to let go of any power that he might have still had over my emotions or my actions. It was the final “letting go” of my rage, fears and hatred. I still hate what he did to me. I agree with you that there is not much that I can think of that is worse than the betrayal of a child by their parent when they sexually abuse that child. The letting go was so gradual for me that I can’t give you a time or day that it happened. I can tell you it took years of hard work on my part. It didn’t change my relationship with my dad. He was never allowed back in my life.
Celeste, thank you. I, too, am grateful that we are all on this healing journey together.
This is so dead on real. This is what I say when I hear something about forgiveness, “However, most believe that somehow believe that once we say those magic words, “I forgive you,” all pain and hurt just disappear. But it doesn’t always work that way. Often we must go through a process before we can completely heal from the hurt and forgive our loved one for the hurt he or she caused. You must first start with yourself and truely forgive an accept yourself and feel the pain that has been caused. People often overlook this part. Then, it is accepting not only yourself, but accepting the other person for who they are. Forgiveness is often a long painful process. It takes time…however long that it is for you. Be patient with yourself and the process and don’t judge yourself for not being able to do it.Remember that Jesus felt our pain as he forgave.” (The short version)
ClinicallyClueless, I, too, believe in the importance of self-forgiveness. You make some great points. Thank you for adding your words to my post.
Tom, bravo. Well said. I whole heartedly agree with everything you said in response to Pam’s comment. I used to think that forgiveness was a way for the abusers to get away with what they did to me. It took me years to realize that was not true. The abusers are always accountable for their horrible behavior. Forgiveness also didn’t mean that they were allowed back into my life. With my healthy boundaries, I protected my adult self in ways that I couldn’t when I was a child. I appreciate your feedback, Tom.
Everyone, I don’t know if I forgive the men who sexually abused me or not. I have a hard time defining how I feel. I blamed myself and kept it secret for so long, decades…when I tried to talk to my family about it and they had no empathy or any kind of sympathetic response to what happened to me but told me I needed to forgive them well, I’ve never felt so degraded. The other problem I have with forgiving them is that they aren’t really even human beings in my thinking. Certainly, not persons worthy of any regard from me. I think that is because they never had any regard for me and I doubt if they care if I forgive them or not. They don’t control me though. They are no longer haunting me. Maybe there will be a day when they are forgiven but right now, all I can say is that I wish them no harm or even that they burn in hell for what they’ve done to me. I just want no part of them. I want to forget them as if they never existed. I know I can’t force forgiveness and in my experience, it is more an expression of healing that has taken place rather then something I need to do to heal. I’ve also, believed that I had forgiven when another layer of damage surfaced and I had to work through the process again.
Thanks for letting me talk.
Pam
Dear Pam you are very welcome! That is what we are here for in this online community of survivors and thrivers to find a place to express what we can not express anywhere else. I feel honoured you share your thoughts and feelings with us.
I think it is a question of how to define “forgiveness”. One reason why I started this series is that I had no idea how it could look like and that I do not want my abusers to have any part of my life any more. But I also felt that I have to let something go that haunted me and took precious energy from me.
The more I read about “forgiving” the more it becomes a very private individual process for me. Sometimes it means just to forgive myself and keep the abuser out of the life, sometimes it means being able to still have a relationship of sorts with the person, sometimes it means a bit of everything but it always is a process and it always has to be natural and our own way.
You might be closer to “forgiving” than you are aware of.
Pam, I wish we could just forgive one time and never have to do it again but as new issues come up, we have to decide to forgive or not, give it over to God or not, work through the anger and hurt that comes up and whatever else that we need to do for ourselves in order to heal.
Forgiveness, for me, has absolutely nothing to do with my abusers. You don’t have to say the words, “I forgive you.” Words didn’t mean much in my family. Promises were meant to be broken. I did my best to disconnect from my body and to not feel any emotions for many years. I couldn’t tell you what I was feeling if you asked me. Today that still happens but not as often. Forgiveness was so gradual that I can’t tell you when it actually happened. In my opinion, nobody has the right to tell you that you “should” forgive. It is an individual decision. I don’t have any answers for anybody else. I can only share from my own experiences.
I like what A Spirit of Healing said about forgiveness. Forgiveness is an individual process for each of us who choose to heal. How we do it, if we do it or not is up to us, not anybody else.
Dear Patricia, reading the guest-posts all of you have shared so freely have taught me that we all have our own experiences, our own difficulties with it as well as our own solutions and taking that power back that we can do it as it is right for us ~ that is a great part of healing. Thanks for being part in this empowering discussion.
Thanks so much Patricia for sharing this, and to Pam and others for sharing as well. I have many issues with the concept of forgiving my abusers, and beyond just not being ready to, I have been handed the same degrading attitudes that imply that I “have to” forgive. This attitude tends to only strengthen my hostility to the idea. It is so helpful to hear that I do not “have to” forgive, unless I feel a genuine “want to” someday. It also helps to hear (for the first time) that I can work on my healing without forgiving the people who brutalized me and tried to ruin my life from birth to age 19 when I escaped. The comment of a minister saying “You have to forgive them so that God can forgive you” absolutely horrifies me. Why would the child victim need God to forgive them? Insanity, and a very damaging thing for person of authority to tell a victim of incest. For me, the concept of God further muddies the water, rather than being the key and comfort the idea is for others. My father was likely quite mentally ill; he believed he was a god, and he taught me he was, made me worship and obey him, including submitting to abuse by him and the men he rented me to. As an adult survivor, and a bisexual man, most people love to tell me that their God condemns me for loving a man. How can they expect me to turn for comfort to a God whom they say hates me and will send me to hell? Very damaging and dangerous stuff for LGBT survivors of rape, incest, and child sex abuse. I’m content with being bisexual, not looking to change that, so it gets quite tiresome being told I can have God’s help if I “stop being gay”. The worship of a god is actually a trigger to me, so much abuse having been done because it was “God’s will”, even though that “god” was my father. So many people link healing from abuse with help from God and forgiving abusers, I have felt very confused and alone. I also have felt that attitude of some that to forgive the abusers excuses them or let’s them get away with it. I respect the idea that to forgive is to release anger and vindictive rage within myself, not to benefit my abusers in any way, but I am simply unable to forgive them at this time. Being told I “have to” has been so horribly damaging to me. Thank you for saying I don’t have to; that I can heal without it. You are all amazing people. Thank you for providing these safe places to discuss these issues.
Dear W.R.R. thanks for stopping by and I am glad our posts and comments could help you a bit.
I have similar problems with the expression “God” even though I often use it. My father did not call himself a god but he acted the same way you describe yours. My stepmother once said that my father just needed to have a look at my brother and me and we knew what we had to do. There were no words necessary. That is how much power he held over us. At that time I found a home in a very conservative protestant church and community. My grandparents on mother’s side were active there before I was born but not alive then any more. The Christian believe gave me security and stability but I always questioned non-logic parts of it.
For me spirituality is a very important part of my healing and my base is this Christian believe I survived with. But I just took the freedom to think for myself and I have come to believe that Spirit is much bigger than one image of God can contain. There are many many expressions of Spirit and I believe we have the freedom to find the one that suits our needs. It does not need to be the Christian God even though even the Christian God has many many different varieties if you only have a look at the differences between the image Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians believe in.
I also believe that God loves us no matter what. As Lady Gaga said in “I was born this way”: “… “There is nothing wrong with loving who you are” she said “cause he made you perfect babe! So hold your head up girl and you’ll go far! Listen to me when I say: I’m beautiful in my way ‘cause GOD makes no mistakes! I’m on the right track baby I was born this way!”
What ever image of Spirit will offer itself to you that will fulfil your need it will accept you exactly the way you are and will not ask anything of you that you are not ready to do. I strongly believe in this and I guess that is one of my strongest powers of healing.
“Forgiving” in whatever form it is important for you will come naturally. It won’t be easy and it will take time as it is a process but it will be there for you when the time is right.
Thanks, Patricia. When I th.ink about the men who sexually abused me, I mostly, feel nothing. I dream about them sometimes and my dreams have changed lately. I dreamed I was in bed with one of them and I told him he didn’t belong there and I wanted my husband. It was important in my dream because I was a grown woman, it was my choice, and I made him leave. I hope someday, they are completely out of my thoughts and my dreams. If forgiving them means that then I hope I find my way to forgiving them. For now, I’m just not sure what I feel.
Pam
Pam, I did some of my healing through dreams like yours where I was the one in control and was able to decide for myself what was going to happen. In those dreams, for the first time, I took back my personal power.
A Spirit of Healing, I look forward to hearing your comments on my blog. Sometimes Blogger gets glitches.
I know I always have problems with posting on blogger. I usually can do it when I just use my name and link but event hat did not work. Will come back though
Dear Pam I think your dream shows how far you have come on your journey to healing. Our dreams often show us where we are and as Patricia said: You are taking your power back
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A Spirit of Healing, you are very welcome. This is the kind of discussion that I hoped my article would cause. There is so much confusion and unease around the topic of forgiveness.
That is so true ~ I actually started this series out of very selfish reasons: I had to get my ideas, feelings and thoughts about the topic clear. But it seems to hit a point for many and I am glad that selfishness sometimes leads to something good
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W. R. R., you are very welcome. It makes me so angry when some people abuse in the name of God. Nobody knows what God thinks or wants from us. Their abuse adds spiritual abuse to the sexual abuse that you already suffered. I feel sad that you have experienced that in your life. My God sees the whole picture and loves me rather than punishes me for not being able to forgive. If Hell exists, I believe there will be a special place in it for those that use God’s name to abuse others. I read somewhere a few years ago that we all see God as the same as we see our fathers. That is probably true when we are children. As an adult, I have my own opinion of God as Love, not as a punishing God. I know that gets me in trouble with some people. I really don’t care. They don’t have any better idea of what God is than I do. I am sorry that you were abused by those people.
My dad was a dictator. I guess another way to look at him would be that he thought he was God. I haven’t really looked at it that way. He made all of the decisions for our family. We depended upon him for our very existence. He was also a raging alcoholic who thought he was always right and knew better than anybody else. An older brother was the only person that my dad would listen to. Even without the incest, my childhood was not very good.
I am very glad that we have created a safe place for you to talk. Feeling safe allows you to use your voice which as a survivor helps you to start healing. Again, thank you to A Spirit of Healing for providing this safe place for this conversation.
A Spirit of Healing, I completely agree with your last comments about God and healing. You said what I feel and believe about God very well. Thank you.
You are welcome it was actually the first time I ever expressed my believe so clearly. Thanks for advertising for my blog on yours. I tried to comment but blogger does not like my wordpress identity and I lost the whole comment. As I was really exhausted from yesterdays work I had to leave it at that. I try again later.
Pat, W.R.R., I think people who go around telling others that they are going to hell need to work on their own spiritual life. No one can know the destiny of another. There are many difference concepts in the Bible that the theological word “hell” is used in place of. I find that interesting since the word means “to conceal” people in King James time kept their potatoes in “hell”. Fear is the manipulative tool of Satan, not God. The God I love disciplines me for my good and takes no pleasure in causing torment for eternity. I can find no Biblical proof of eternal torment. I believe that religious leaders made it up to get people into chruch. It is very much something human beings would dream up but totally illogical for God who is love.
Anyway, my two cents on something that people do that bugs me a lot.lol!
Thanks Pam, I agree that Hell (with a capital H) was invented by humans to control other humans. One of my friends who helps me stay sane on my healing journey found Soulforce.org for me to read about what the Bible actually says about homosexuality. I was not surprised that it simply doesn’t say what the anti-LGBT religious people who hate continue to claim it says. Anybody working to help survivors of rape and CSA who either can’t approve of or outright condemns to Hell LGBT survivors solely because of their orientation, are doing immeasurable damage to those survivors. I’m so tired of either being hated for what I am or tolerated in the hope that I’ll change my “evil ways”, all in the name of a religious concept of hate and exclusion, and condemnation, that simply doesn’t exist in the Bible. There are typos in there, and mistakes in translation; there are also deliberate re-interpretations in newer versions. People often twist or interpret things to support their views and then past those twisted views on as fact. I wish anybody working to help survivors who hates or disapproves of me because I’m bisexual would learn to put their personal religious opinions in their pocket and just help others with an open compassionate mind and heart. Condemnation for religious opinions can make a survivor despair. I have been told I’m going to Hell for being bisexual often, and what those people have mainly achieved is making me wary and uncomfortable when others talk about “God loves me”. I respect people who have this faith and don’t spout hate on others. But the few who do condemn are also seen as representing God to a survivor who wants to heal and not be driven to despair. There are LGBT kids who are killing themselves because hate-filled people told them that God will send them to hell. It’s heartbreaking.
Pam, I like what you said and I agree with you.
One of the very few Bible verses that I will occasionally quote is, “Judge not lest you be judged.” I think that is one that we should all follow.
So true! And “Throw the first stone if you are without fault”
I have never really blamed myself..If anything i blame both parents.The one that was the abuser and the one that did nothing,or supposedlly knew nothing but left. I do forgive them because I do not want that pain and anger to eat me up.But for the abuser he will never get the satifaction of hearing” you are forgiven” But I have told God. But I think that the parent owe a acknowlegment and a apology to the abused.Take responsibility people. And yes I agree They may have done the best with what they had but it wasn’t good enough…..
JoLynne, thank you for adding your words here to our conversation. I appreciate how hard that can be for some of us. Forgiving is not for our abusers. It usually makes absolutely no change in their lives. Most abusers don’t ever apologize to the children that they abused.
Whether my abusers take responsibility for what they did to me or not makes no difference to whether or not I heal. At this point in my life, I don’t need their apologies but since they have all died, that isn’t ever going to happen.
I wish that I could take away your anger and your pain but all I can do is listen when you want to talk. I talked out my incest issues for over 10 years in 12-Step meetings and with a few close friends.
The fact is that very often our parents do owe us an acknowledgement and an apology for the abuse that they did to us but expecting them to do so just sets us up for more pain when they don’t, especially if they feel that they did nothing wrong. I had to let go of that hope for validation so that I could heal. Forgiveness wasn’t for my abusers. It was for me, so that I could feel and then let go of the hurting and the rage.
Everyone, About doing the best they could with what they had…I just don’t agree. I don’t think my parents did the best they could. I don’t think they even tried very hard to do right by me. They still don’t want to put any effort into our relationship and they certainly don’t want to take any responsibility for their actions. I do forgive them but I think they could have done much better and they could do much better. They have no desire to do so.
Pam
Pam, I agree with you. I never thought that my parents did the best they could with the neglect, emotional and sexual abuse that they did to me. By adding the words, “with the tools that they had, but it wasn’t good enough.” made me feel a little better about the sentence but not much.
What helped me with the statement, “My parents did the best that they could with the tools that they had and it wasn’t good enough.” was to look at my own parenting skills and the areas that I wasn’t a good parent in. I look back at my controlling behaviors when I was younger and know that I did damage to my husband, my marriage and my children, not because I wanted to hurt them, but because I thought that if I could control everything then I would feel safe and could keep my family safe too. I didn’t keep any of us safe from life and I shouldn’t have tried to the unhealthy degree that I did. What I was doing, unknowingly, was telling my husband and children that they were too stupid to take care of themselves so I was doing it for them by not allowing them any decision making for themselves which is just what my dad did to me as a child. Until I was able to see, that out of my fear, I had become my dictator dad, I could then make a decision to stop and to change.
Neither of my parents ever acknowledged that they were wrong in their actions toward me. One very important lesson that my maternal grandmother taught me when I was 5 years old is that adults can apologize to a child when they are wrong. Neither of my parents ever learned that or did it.
Back to my point in sharing about my own bad parenting was that it helped me to make a tiny shift in how I looked at my own parents and their bad parenting skills. I still can’t say that the sexual abuse didn’t hurt me because it did. The neglect, I can say, maybe they didn’t mean to hurt me but it did. I hope that my sharing helps.
Patricia, My experience is the same. I tried very hard not to treat the family I created in the same way that I had been treated but I hadn’t healed and I created my own dysfunction. I too felt that it was up to me to be responsible for everything and if something went wrong for me or one that I loved and believed myself to be fully responsible for, it was my fault. My oldest would tell me, “It’s not about you, Mom” and I couldn’t understand what he meant for a long time because I knew I wasn’t selfish but I didn’t respect the boundaries of those I loved by being overly responsible. which translates as controlling. The difference between my parents and I is that I’ve always been trying to do my best and they seldom were. They were overwhelmed by their own problems and could never see how their children suffered. There is a lot that I can let slide because I’ve seen this from both points of view now but when they allowed a pedofile to lead me away from home and keep me when I was a teenager (fresh off the rudabager truck too), that is just too much to let slide. I don’t know if your parents also, used you as a scape-goat but that is the other thing that I can’t let slide any longer. I can’t allow them to use me as the family sin eater, anymore. When I allowed that I allowed them to hurt my kids. They have to take responsibility for their actions and treat me with respect, not just for me but I owe that to my husband, my kids, and my grandkids. They don’t want to do that so I had no other choice but to protect myself and my family. That’s why I know for certain that they’ve never done their best because when I brought things into the open, I saw what little regard they have for me. No one can do their best for their children if they don’t love them.
Pam
Pam, congratulations on not allowing your family of origin to continue to abuse you or your children and grandchildren. That is where we can change what happens for the next generation. I agree with everything that you have said. Your family of choice is very blessed to have you on their side. I am blessed to know you through our blogs. Thanks for participating in this conversation to the degree that you have. Our healing is a good thing to share with others.
Reblogged this on Singing over the bones & rising from the ashes and commented:
I did say that rage and anger will be themes I will be talking about in the next few weeks but I think the “forgiving” theme is closely linked. You can not forgive in the sense to let the negative feelings go if you do not feel those negative feelings and maybe do not even know you have them. So I decided to repost the guest posts on forgiving to guide me along: