Want all my negative thoughts about my mother to end.
I love and miss her but I really hate her for her lack of care, empathy and consideration and violence to me as a young child.
I feel like my life was a lie and a secret with her facade personality, that everyone thought she was wonderful but I know the person underneath, this was harsh, aggressive and unfeeling
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I’m sorry you’re going through this Lettie but it’s good to let those feelings out.
It’s OK to be angry and you’ll probably be exhausted with all those conflicting emotions running around in your head.
Make sure you take time to look after yourself and keep talking…
Thank you for kind thoughts, yes I guess it’s emotionally exhausting, loving and hating a mother with two sides to her personality, who has passed.
Wish there was a switch to turn these thoughts off and lay my ‘cruel’ secret of the way she treated me and my being the only person in the world that is able to acknowledge her two opposing personalities.
Wish to lay my thoughts to rest, with mother and move on with life.
Will you be having counselling?
I know you have to wait awhile after the funeral before you’ll be considered but might be worth starting the process?
I have put myself on waiting list. Mum died 2 1/2 years ago.
Thank you
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Thank you for your reply. I haven’t heard of disenfranchised grief, I will look this up. Feeling love and missing the person but also hating. I think her violent, harsh behaviour to me from my first memories at 4 years irreparably caused me such problems with mental health throughout my life.
It’s such a terrible destruction of a life from the beginning and I never had the courage to confront her or tell her that I remembered what violence and emotional neglect she did to me. I cared for her in her last 3 years, like victim mentality really, I guess.
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I found this below and it sums up a little bit. But it doesn’t address how to cope with what others think and when they tell me how lovely she was and I cannot tell them this was a lie, a facade. I cannot tell them the nasty bad things she told me about these people. I cannot say she had a facade.
The greater dilemma is the internal one.
The one no one sees; the one that isn’t open to scrutiny; the one where you struggle to let go of the pain of longing for your mother’s or father’s love. The inherent birthright of every child is to have parents who love and value them, who support and encourage them. To not have that is a bitter loss that cannot be replaced.
You may have gut-wrenching sobs over your parent dying and still be glad they are gone. You grieve for the loss of never having what you should have had in that relationship.
You are left unable to mourn properly. Gone forever is the chance to confront, to ask why violence, to say why no compassion or empathy, to understand why. To make them account for what they did. There is unfinished business, questions unanswered, words unspoken, actions and physical trauma and emotional abuse that can’t be taken back. How would you want it finished? You get to create, only in your mind, a beautiful ending. There is no ending, the abuse is never resolved.
Hi Letti,
The anger you feel is understandable and of course there should have been some accountability on your mums part for this.
I also hear you say you love and miss your mum and perhaps it is worth redressing the balance of why you loved her and why you miss her too.
You don’t have just one emotion towards a mum. You have a whole range to deal with and as anger is part of loss then I can see why you might get stuck there as you have experienced abuse from her. I think counselling to help you separate out those feelings would help you dissipate the anger you feel.
No one person has the power to leave your conflict unresolved. You can resolve things your way for you with the right kind of support.
Hope this helps. Only my thoughts but I’m sending you much love too.
Louli. X
Thank you so much, kind helpful thoughts
This is so helpful to me Lettie . My Mum recently died and I am struggling feeling like a really bad person . I feel I am not grieving for her but for me . People come up to me and tell me how wonderful she was and all the things she did but I know what my experience of her was when I was younger and it was horrific. I am so tired of feeling angry and ashamed . She got away with it & no one else knows and now no one ever will . It’s truly awful and I feel like such a terrible person
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Hi, please try not to feel a terrible person, you most definiteIy are not. I have been trying to put a lot of time and work into understanding emotions around this parental emotional abuse, especially anger. My mother expressed so much anger and aggression when I was small and later in her life, there was no room for my natural youthful anger or any anger ever. I just physically ran away from angry people and this behaviour has continued throughout my adult life. The emotional damage is so complex . I am currently reading other people’s comments around forgiveness and forgiving their parent who emotionally and/or physically abused them. Forgiveness is for you, not the parent. It’s something to work towards. Take care x
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