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Hello Philippa
I’m looking for some guidance about how to resolve how I feel about my mother. I need to ‘put her to rest’ and get on with my life free from her impact. She died 3 years ago and I am unable to reconcile how she behaved toward myself and my sister both as children and into adulthood with a more forgiving approach.
I am number 4 of 5 children. I have 2 older brothers, a sister a year older than me (who died 8 years ago) and another sister 4 years younger. My father was in the Merchant Navy and was home only a couple of times a year and was a lovely man who died suddenly aged 62. My mother was largely a single parent with 4 children within 5 years and 5 children within 8 years. A tough situation for her.
I understand that mum must have been tired and frustrated and I would like to be more compassionate about her, but I believe she was the first bully I ever knew. I vividly remember her violent temper as a pre-school child eg being kicked down the hall into a corner and then being screamed at and spat on and being told that she wished I had never been born. She used to force me to admit to stuff I hadn’t done and then she would whip me with a belt. Sometimes she would just beat me up ( fists, feet, belts etc) for no reason that I understood and sometimes because my oldest brother would make stuff up so that she would beat me. He learned to be a bully from her. She treated my sister and myself like skivvies and my brothers could do no wrong. My younger sister was the apple of my mother’s eye and I was very protective of her so that mum wouldn’t treat her the same as myself.
My older sister and I had to clean the house to her standards and do ironing, gardening, shopping etc. It’s reasonable to expect kids to do chores but if they weren’t done to her satisfaction (which was often) she wouldn’t speak to us for days. She swore at us all the time – my sister and I were called bitches, sods, buggers or sluts from a very young age. I was terrified of her and would do anything to keep the peace and try not to anger her. She did not encourage us at school and expected us to ‘marry well’ as she was a crashing snob. I was asked at school when I was aged 6 about my bruising and I couldn’t explain what I had done wrong to deserve punishment from my mother. I was made to leave school aged 16 and get a job and she kept the money I earned, I was ‘too young’ to have a salary.
I went away to University aged 20 as a mature student and never returned home. I have had a very successful career becoming very senior in various large companies including as a CEO. My mother never recognised this and used to say I worked too hard for a secretary and would denegrade me to anyone who would listen. She thought my husband was a failure because I worked. She believed that my son was spoiled because he had never had a good thrashing and because we used to involve him in conversations. When I retired 5 years ago she thought I should have asked for her permission as she still felt she had some sort of control over me. For the last 40 years and there has been a helpful distance of 300 miles between us. About 20 years ago she asked me if I remembered how she had treated me as a young child and I said yes but couldn’t talk about it with her. I’m not sure she wanted a discussion but just to know how much I remembered. She was a devout catholic and I’m sure she felt she was absolved through prayer and confession.
My difficulty is that I was able to put her behaviour to the back of my mind until I had my son. Since then, I found myself comparing her behaviour to me at his same age. I cannot believe how she treated me nor understand how she could treat such a young child so violently and badly. I look at other toddlers and young children and find it really upsetting to see how defenceless they are and remember how out of control she was. My son is now 27 so these feelings have been with me for a long time.
I am married to a lovely man and we have a very happy marriage. However, now that I have opened these memories in my mind, I haven’t been able to sleep well because I play it all over trying to make sense of it but find I can’t. It has impacted our sex life as I can’t separate being naked as an adult from her stripping me naked to knock me about when I was unprotected. I have not spoken to my husband of any of this and can’t understand why he wouldn’t be horrified. He knows she was a difficult bad-tempered woman but not that she was verbally, physically, and emotionally violent.
If you can give me some guidance about how to move on I would be so grateful. I feel I should forgive my mother but know that I can’t and so need to find a way of living with that so that I can get on with the rest of my life and fully enjoy the love of my husband.
Thank you so much
My Reply
I’ve very moved by your email. What a terrifying life you had as a child, and as I said in my book, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, whatever size your child is now is liable to remind you of your emotional life when you were the same size. I don’t know why it happens but it does. And now you son is 27 and the feelings still haunt you.
I’m struck by your telling me some of the horrific things your mother did to you and that you haven’t given details to your husband. Are you worried that if you open up the memories further they’ll be haunting you forever? What I suspect your silence might be about is shame. When we are children to give ourselves a tiny bit of the illusion of power, we feel, if only I was good, this would not be happening to me. So inchoately there is a residue in adult you of “bad”. Nothing specific, because you weren’t bad, so of course there is no evidence for “bad”, there is also the shame of difference – no one else at school was covered in bruises and feeling of having to hide to fit in. The very early defences can have a long life and to speak now of the treatment you, and your sister, suffered may bring up an awful shadow of shame. But if you say it all out loud, or write it down as you have, you realise that shame does not belong to you, it is your mother’s shame. The horrible secrecy of your treatment too, your father away for most of the time and your mother sounded isolated so the only witnesses are the other children, perhaps only your older sister, and I’m so sorry you have lost her eight years ago.
You suffered terrible physical abuse, terrible. I find myself wanting you to tell your husband about it, not only to explain why you find being naked difficult but so you can be fully close to him without this secret. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Yes, he will be horrified but I expect he’d want to be, I doubt he would want for you to carry this horror alone. I’m not saying you must tell your husband, I can’t give advice like that, but I’m wondering more why you haven’t and if it is shame that is getting in the way, as I said, that shame does not belong to you. If it’s you looking after his feelings, I’d say, allow him to look after yours.
Very handy for your mum to be absolved by the Catholic Church. I think an apology might have been more to the point. Not that an apology would give you back your childhood. I doubt your body will ever be ready to forgive your mother. We can talk of forgiveness, but forgiveness is more than words, it has to be felt, and when you have put up with physical and mental torture for years and years, it feels impossible to me that you could ever truly forgive your mother.
And there is, of course, always therapy. I think a way through this is to talk it out.
I am so sorry, you went through all that you went through, and I’m so impressed you built a life in spite of what you went through. You have so much courage and strength.
Sending you love,
Her response
Thank you so much for your email and for such a prompt reply which I truly appreciate.
I have spent the last few days on my own at home with my thoughts and that is what prompted me to contact you in the first place. Once I sent you the email I felt like my weight was lifting as I knew that having shared my experience once I must next share it with my husband. I have been reflecting on how best to do that and will ensure that it’s not rushed and that we have time to work it through together. I am so grateful for your view that I should allow him to help me look after my feelings as you are right and I can see that he will want to do that.
I have taken so much comfort from your message and from sharing this with you but above all, to understand that the shame in all of this belongs to my mother and not to myself. That has been such a powerful message to me and I feel a sort of empowerment has been born within me to help cope with this going forward. I can’t change the past, but I can change how it is positioned and not hide from it any longer. As my mother enters my thoughts I now say ‘it’s not my shame’ and I feel I can begin to leave her behind.
Thank you so much for your counsel and especially giving it to a complete stranger. I don’t know what prompted me to choose you to be the first person outside of my family to tell about all of this but whatever it was, I am so grateful that I did. I have read your columns in the Guardian previously and like your clarity of approach. My husband and I loved your TV work during Covid with Grayson and we are great fans of you both. He will be gobsmacked that I have been in touch with you!
Sending lots of love and grateful thanks
My Comment
When someone has the courage to share like this letter writer did I believe there will be others touched by her and perhaps, I hope, realise that their shame too, does not belong to them but to their abusers. Shame is a sly emotion, sneaking up on us, it hides in plain sight but somehow has the power to make us fear showing others who we truly are, and so it can keep parts of us, lonely.
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