Thank you for this. I personally know a parent who should be slapped upside the head with this, repeatedly. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over being told, "Don't be silly," about real fears and issues I had as a child. Sure, it wouldn't make her a better parent, but I'd certainly feel better for it.
This. All of this. All the fucking this. My parents meant well, and I technically had it better than anyone in this year's post except maybe Statistical Outlier, but they made so many of the mistakes in this post that I'd be fully justified in printing it off and handing it to them.
It's been hard for me even identifying what I went through as abusive because there are so many people who had it so much worse, and I knew quite a few of them personally, as a kid -- it's not harder for me than it is for the people who have it worse, obviously, but it's still hard. My dad meant well and did a pretty good job. My mom was mentally ill, though, and seriously fucked in the head because her parents were emotionally/verbally abusive as well. So, really, I feel like I don't have any reason to blame them TOO much for doing the best they could with what they had . . . and I believe that about 70% of the time, they DID. I feel kind of bad taking up space in a therapy system that is full of people way worse off than me. I feel horrible sitting there and going "IT WAS MY MOTHERRRRRR. ERMAHGERRRRRRRD!" when there are drug addicts waiting for someone to help them
( ... )
It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I was abused, because my mother was SO good at hiding it, and at making sure that no one would believe anything I told them. And I knew kids who had it worse, and I felt like it wasn't appropriate to class my childhood in the same terms as theirs
( ... )
I wish our 10-year-old selves could read this. And then I wish the 10-year-old versions of the people we know like that could read this. And then the people who did it to them.
This resonated soul-deep with me and made me even more glad that I consciously made the decision to NOT be the parent witch which I was raised. The only limit I ever imposed on my daughter's future was when she was four and wanted to be the monster from The Relic. Other than that single thing, I never told her she couldn't do or be anything she desired
( ... )
**hugs** Having made the same vow -- much support from the mother of a similarly willful, bullheaded, smart, snarky, loving, complex young woman (who just turned 20 this week, holy SHIT!)
And, OMG. Book "Relic" or movie "Relic"?? I have to know!!
Sabrina (my partners' four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, in my icon) recently went through a phase of wanting to be Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors."
Comments 36
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
My mother suffers chronic depression. This pretty much is a blueprint of 90% of the misery that went on while I was growing up.
Thankfully, my dad did what he could to counter it all. He was the part that mattered, and the reason I can at least appear to be socially adjusted.
I should print that and snail mail it to my mother.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
And, OMG. Book "Relic" or movie "Relic"?? I have to know!!
Sabrina (my partners' four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, in my icon) recently went through a phase of wanting to be Audrey II from "Little Shop of Horrors."
We're raising 'em right ;)
<3!
Reply
Leave a comment