As I have shared before, I cut my mother/abuser out of my life back in 2003 when I entered into therapy to heal from the mother-daughter sexual abuse. I told her that there would be no more personal contact (visits or phone calls). She was emailing me to death, which messed with my head, so I cut that back to monthly. Since then, she has canceled her Internet service and just sends me monthly letters through snail mail.
She does send me a one-page letter every month. For the most part, it complies with my boundaries – no talking about the past, reconciling, etc. Since we have nothing in common, there is not much substance to it. I respond when I can handle it, which is often a few months later. If I go too long without responding, she comes up with stupid ideas like trying to call me, which I really, really don’t want.
So, she sent me her letter a couple of week ago. The mere fact of receiving a letter from her triggered me, even though she said nothing “bad” in the letter. I set it aside and haven’t done anything with it since it arrived.
Yesterday, I decided to get responding to the letter off my to-do list. Generally, I write a letter to someone else I care about and fill her in about my life. Then, I strip out anything that matters and send that version to my mother. It makes it much easier for me to write a page, and it takes very little time.
Even with these precautions in place, writing to her is very triggering for me. It finally hit me why – the pretense of these letters ignores the realities of the damage she inflicted upon my life.
I send her letters like this:
Hi, Mom.
It’s good to hear from you. I am glad that things are going well on your end.
[Insignificant information about my life that everyone around me knows.]
Take care,
Faith
It does not include that, thanks to her choices, I cannot sleep at night. My dreams are filled with nightmares. I have spent thousands of dollars on therapy to recover from the damage she inflicted on me. Every single area of my life has been tainted by her choices during my childhood.
Her responses are never about the stuff that matters. Her letters talk about how she wants to counsel other people – what a joke!
So, why do I continue the contact? I don’t know. At first, it was to stay true to myself – my way of showing her a kindness by having this little bit of connection with my life. But now … I don’t now … now it feels like I am continuing to betray myself by pretending that it is okay that she did the things that she did.
I am not sure where I am going with this or what I am going to do with it. All I know is that I sent her a letter and then had a bunch of nightmares centering around her. I awoke at 5:00 flooded with adrenaline.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding as I heal from my abuse that I set a boundary that feels right at the time, mostly because there was NO boundary there to begin with. Then as I heal further, I realize the boundary needs to be reset in a different location because I am further into myself with a better understanding of my real needs.
Sounds very much like where you are now. You will see the right boundary and set it.
There aren’t really words.
I just have feelings.
Sending you warm friendship and support.
((Sitting beside you))
Just here.
Secret Shadows
[…] News Guy wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAs I have shared before, I cut my mother/abuser out of my life back in 2003 when I entered into therapy to heal from the mother-daughter sexual abuse. I told her that there would be no more personal contact (visits or phone calls). … Since we have nothing in common, there is not much substance to it. I respond when I can handle it, which is often a few months later. If I go too long without responding, she comes up with stupid ideas like trying to call me, … […]
Faith,
thank you for posting the difficult things you deal with, it is encouraging to me to see how you handle each step. I have no doubt that you will find the right answer in this situation as well. I will be thinking of you.
My Mom and I speak almost exclusively about knitting and pets.
Every so often she’ll call and bring up something else and the conversation becomes very, very short.
Most of the time I don’t answer the phone when she calls at all. Unfortunately for me, my sister (who is my most favorite person in the world) is living with my Mom right now. Sometimes when I think it is my sister calling I’m WRONG!!! Oh what an unwelcome surprise that is.
-else
Sometimes I just want to cut and paste your blog onto mine, it resonates so perfectly with me and my heart and circumstances. I am coming out of a “honeymoon” period after family disclosure, and lo and behold, my mom is acting just like this…instead of being aghast and the things her parents and siblings did to me, she’s so much more concerned about how I feel or don’t feel about her…it’s just all about her. I should have known, really…Thank you for your truth and for you, beautiful survivor.
Amy,
You are welcome to quote anything in my blog on yours and post a link over for those who want to read more. :0)
Take care,
– Faith
The child inside knows the truth in its pure and elemental form and will react when she is not honored and protected. I can’t imagine still having contact with the actual abuser and making any allowances for the feelings of such a person. The poor child. That must be a real misery. I hope you feel better soon. I wonder where the mandate to coddle this abuser is coming from.
Dear Faith,
We do not know each other, but I’m very grateful for your blogging. It has helped me tremendously.
I’d like to share with you what I think. It sounds like it may be time to be true to the part of yourself that feels it is being conciliatory to “the enemy”. Your number one concern now is you and your family. If her presence has this sort of negative effect for you, it may be time to reconsider having any contact with her until or unless it is something positive for YOU. Not her. Whatever your decision, it should be yours, and only for you.
Good luck and many blessings.
PF
Hi Faith,
Maybe at the beginning it was healing in one respect, to correspond with her, because you could set the rules. You have control over how much she is a part of your present life. Something you never had as a kid. But now, perhaps you dont ‘need’ that control anymore – perhaps you are secure with yourself enough to know she does not control your present life, today. Though her presence is limited to letters, phone calls, messages via your sister, her past with you continues to affect you everyday. Maybe you are ready to begin the process of letting her go completely – not sure thats the right thing to do, and dont know what the steps to that would be. It would probably be an excruciatingly painful process, because I would guess it would be necessary to see her face to face one last time – to say what you need to and to say good bye. I dont know Faith.
I am glad you are healing.
Only the best wishes for you .
Palucci. Simon, I hope you are well.
You don’t say whether you ever confronted her about your feelings about what she did to you? I agree with Palucci. Perhaps if you got her in a room and just let go with the anger and told her off, it would be therapeutic? Then you could tell her to get lost forever?
I suppose it’s too late to have her arrested for child abuse?!
Do what you need to do to heal. I said a prayer for you.
[…] with abuser I was blown away by the number of responses I received to my blog entry entitled Letter to Mother Messing with My Head after Mother-Daughter Sexual Abuse. The timing is doubly interesting because her birthday is coming up. I had not even thought about […]
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