abusive mothers

[rachelsdad]

can anyone offer advice for my sister who suffered physical and mental abuse and violence from her mother-she has now cut herself off from her mother but still feels very unhappy with the situation

[lady_p_gold]

Well this is obviously something that has a massive history which only your family will know ... for instance it would seem that you yourself did not suffer the abuse and I think we need a bit more history. I suppose the only thing to do is to find out the reason for your mother's treatment of her and to start from there. For the meantime she is not happy with cutting off, and so it either needs to be thrashed out so that she can make a decision to cut her out of her life and carry on with regret and yet determination with sorrow that it happened - or you can dig deeper and find out what caused your mother to act like this. Sometimes you just have to accept that you did not get the parenting that you would wish ... but as I said there is not really enough info to give a better reply. At least she has a supportive sister it would seem ... and she will probably need you to help her through.

[mollymandy]

what if she was to write her mother a letter explaining how she feels ?

she could ask her to attend a meeting with you there to keep it netural ?

she needs to know why this happened to her , and she must have a hundred questions that she wants answering , maybe she could get some help before she approaches your mum .

maybe you could get her some books from your local library on simular situations .

she really needs to want to help her self , are you feeling guilty for what happened ? maybe you need some support too ? get a blank piece of paper and write down how you feel and what you think happened and show it to your sister , you may be suprised at your findings .

stay close to each other , but most of all laugh at your selves get out your old photos and remember the happy times .

[tigerthecat]

I tried for years up until the age of 38 to maintain a relationship with my abusive mother. 4 years ago I decided I had tried enough and cancelled all ties. When I think about this I have some feelings and am concerned about what happens when she dies. However, I always return to the question would I want her back in my life and the answer is no. I would suggest good psychotherapy (via your GP) which will enable her to face her childhood, understand that she had no power, and to make a decision based on understanding herself. There is no happy ending, it should never be like this, but for some of us it is. Good luck to her she's not alone.

[noxlumos]

My father seriously physically abused me when I was a child until he got killed when I was seven.My mother whilst never abusing me herself was complicit in this in that she never once attempted to get him to stop.As a result of this I grew up a violent mess ending up in prison,full of anger and hate towards everyone.I then met my wife who is the most wonderful woman and allowed me to be as angry and hurt as I needed to be at that time and slowly helped me out of it until today 9 years on I'm a different man.I have forgiven my father,not for his sake,but for mine,because until you can do that you can never really move on and enjoy your life.Right up until 3 years ago my relationship with my mother was awful.I then made the supreme effort to try and understand from her perspective why she allowed that to happen(I'm incredibly protective of my own children and couldn't understand how anyone could have let that happen to their child).She really didn't want to tackle the subject but I was very persistant and eventually she spoke in great depth about it.My advice would be to talk and find out why,those reasons may not hold water with you but it opens up a line of dialogue and it at least gets things out in the open.In my case my father believed I was not his child, but I was.He,however,had his own reasons for not believeing that,and as a result it was me, not my siblings that got abused.At last I now know why, and at least my mother cried and apologised to me which somehow for me was enough.We have slowly built on that ( my wife has a huge problem with my mother's behaviour) but at least now she has interaction with her grandchildren and I have a realtionship with my mother and understand that despite everything she does love me.I think for yourself, if you can, re-open lines of communication.I always felt incomplete when I wasn't on speaking terms with my mother and although it's been very painful and difficult it's been tremendously worthwhile