Tag: toxic parents

A Pox on You!

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

That’s what I used to read in my novels. If someone did something wrong to someone, the wronged would tell the other, “I hope a curse gets you! May you suffer for the wrong you’ve done!”

Ps 52

David was a man like that. He knew his weaknesses. He knew his strengths too. And he knew that everyone who was evil only had one place they were going to, only one ‘reward’ coming to them.

This is my strength. People may have the gumption and guts to spout absolute nonsense to or about me. They can be cruel if they want to. They can be nasty behind my back and smile at me and keep digging for information, not knowing I know they’re as real as a Brazilian weave on an African head. But their day is coming. So I’ll wait.

Random side note. Yesterday, I had a sad realisation. I was born with a club foot and feet facing ‘wrong.’ I had physio and stretches etc that were done to me to help me. At some point, I even wore special boots. Yet, instead of my ability to walk without having needed surgery being rejoiced over, my mother constantly told me to fix how I walk. I used to do ballet. You know how ballerinas toes point outwards? That’s how I walked. Toes out. And she HATED that. I was always told to “walk normally” or “properly.” I felt.. Life is not about looks or physique etc but I also grew up being told everything about mine was wrong. besides being ugly, having a large forehead etc, I couldn’t even MOVE right. I felt like an embarrassment and a shame. Which is what I had been told I was, so hey, wouldn’t you believe it if someone older than you kept telling you that?

Yet when I was older and had my boyfriend/husband, when we’d notice people who walked like that, we’d wonder if they were a dancer. He never thought they moved ‘wrong,’ he wondered if they’d done ballet! No man in his car ever mocked me for the way I walked, they wanted to get me into their cars.🤦🏾‍♀️None of my school friends who walked like me had been made to feel like they were an embarrassment. Just like when they got teen acne. I think I shared how my mom would go from doctor to doctor, not be able to pass by a cosmetic counter without asking for my son to be fixed. Yet it wasn’t even bad. It was just really a rash. Our family doctor didn’t even suggest anything medical. My mother is the one who made me wish I could fix my skin. Not my friends, not TV, not my own thoughts. My mom. And I didn’t realise I was being beaten down. I thought only the physical beatings and attacks were harmful.

And so yesterday, as I saw people walking in the shops-all different styles of walking, it hit me that I’d wasted decades fixing something that didn’t need fixing. I still automatically try walk “properly, like a normal person.” But I already was a normal person. And only at the ripe old age of 43 did I finally break free. When I realised that I saw nothing wrong with anyone else’s walking. If I see nothing wrong with them, perhaps my MOTHER was the one in the wrong…

The voice of our mother rings forever in our ears. We are’ trained from birth to love then and need them. After all, they feed us. And the world said we owe them.-whether they beat us (unjustly) or not.

I wish the world had told mothers that they owe their children love, security, uplifting, encouragement, wellbeing, kindness and safety.

My Daddy

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

I love my dad. I loved my mom too. But I’ll quote what a dear friend wrote…A friend who had lived with both parents for over a month, heard them talk about me, and been lectured about me.

“I’m so sorry to hear that, sis. I know you loved your mother though your mother never loved you…”

That is the essence of narcissistic parenting. They love you as long as you are following their own agenda for your life. You are extension of them, you are not your own person. And so, when I became an adult and followed my own agenda, I became a pariah. And the scapegoat.

My dad was violent but also had moments of softness and tenderness that I never got from my mom. I think that’s what stopped me from objectively telling myself, “This is abuse!” as an adult. Yes, as a child I did. But when it stopped being physical violence, I didn’t realise it was still a form of violence.

To again reiterate what my friend said after having spent time with my parents, “I can see why you wanted to escape when you weee young.” So to those who like to excuse the behaviour as “old age,” and somehow diminish the responsibility my parents have..That’s hogwash! It’s always been like this. And I know many old people who are NOT like this.

Let’s start in 2013. My mother was retiring. We decided to take our bonus and pay off her debts so she’d have no debt once retired. We did for MOST but had to keep paying her Truworths and Edgars accounts with our normal salary each month as her debts were greater than the bonus. We finished off the Truworths and then my sister moved in with her husband, and told me they had the Edgars bill under control so we could stop paying it.

That’s when everything went wrong. The data we used to buy my mom to go online, finished within two days when it used to last a month. Her bank cards would suddenly go missing and she’d have less money in her bank. Her laptops started disappearing too, and her cellphones also joined in. I wonder what changed!🫣

My poor mother in law sent phones three separate times till she realised that the problem would never end while the inhabitants lived there.

With our own funds, as a gesture of goodwill and love, we had been giving my parents (and now my sister and her husband) grocery every month. In the beginning, my dad was grateful. He was the only one who said thank you.

But in the past few years, things went crazy when we decided to save my mom her money and I took signing rights over her banking. (We went to the bank together and she willingly told the banker that I should have access to her banking even online.)

We started feeding them from the money from my mother’s pension, AND continued giving from our own pockets as well. This continued till my mother died. And that’s when my dad showed exactly where he stood.

I’d noted it. But I hadn’t clicked! The friend we hired to care for them was only meant to work Monday- Friday BUT lockdown started just as she was arriving. I told my sister the rules. After all, my sister is young and able bodied. Of course she could take care of the household during the weekends!! And I stated that the helping lady should have leave as well.

After four weeks of non stop working, day AND night, their caregiver told them in advance that she was going to go collect a mask, and just visit with a friend. When she got back, my father told her not to listen to me. The ‘Me’ who was paying her measly salary!😫He said I was “poison”🥹and that I was leading her astray. He said that she had to work all the time, as my sister had her five year old to care for.

Wow, wouldn’t it be nice to only have one child to care for and forget all other responsibilities? Of course, I reiterated that her salary was low, what we could afford was little. And that she deserved a rest. My father then asked her (or the neighbour) to take a photo of a letter he was sending me. He was telling me I am a Pharisee and failing at my duty of caring by allowing the poor worker to have a break. That God is angry with me etc.

Guys, this is not old age. My dad has always been like this, ask church members. Always publicly loudly correcting them, telling them they don’t study the Word…It was hurtful to know he could turn his venom on me. It was the first time that I could read for myself what my friend had told me- though I had believed her anyway!

One time, we brought grocery. My husband was putting the sugar my dad had demanded, into a cupboard. My dad yelled at him to open the packet and pour it into a container. Never has anyone thought of how long it takes us to shop for them. How it kills my body. How long it takes to drive to their township. The fuel spent. And how we’d left our children to their devices in all that time. Never! Instead, they’d complain about what we brought. It was hurtful, very hurtful. we didn’t do it for acknowledgment, but don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

But worse was to come. As my husband told my father that he would leave the sugar in the cupboard and my sister could open it, my dad went ballistic, yelling at him, telling him to leave my sister out of it! Huh!? She lived there!! She was eating the sugar too! We had to get home to our children! Then my father asked my husband to phone my sister and tell her to come back home as she’d been gone for too many days.

We’ve played that game before. My dad’s phone calls in the last five years consisted purely of him telling me the extra things I should buy for them, telling me to go look at some mess my mother had made, telling me on weekends to phone my sister and tell her to get back home. Note what was missing when he phoned? Asking how we are. Asking after the children. Phoning just to show he loved me. When my husband told him that every time we phone, my sister never answers so he doesn’t want to phone, my dad said, “Fine. I’ll tell the church people that my son doesn’t help me.”

🥹💔He would sully the name of the only one who was consistently feeding him? Just because he left to the resident, a duty that was hers? And it’s true, my father did indeed sully our reputations to church members and to relatives. It was the worst few years of my life. It was bad enough knowing my parents didn’t love me. But when relatives in other provinces started phoning me when I’d never given them my number, ordering me to sort things out in the home while I had Covid… It was hard. Very hard. My parents were telling people that we weren’t feeding them.

The betrayal hurt. Seriously!? I used to wish the people who were being lied to would go ask the neighbours. The neighbours saw how often we brought food, even commenting that it was a lot of stuff.

Fast forward after my mother’s death. We tried to save HIS money from being misused as it was the only income he’d now have. He then said that he’d heard from the news that workers like my mom had big pensions, so it was clear that I had been stealing my mother’s pension payments and only using a little for the home.😭

Me. ‘Me’ who’d even given our bonus for her. Who took our fuel to give them food. Who used our own money to buy electricity and food and personal care items. Who broke my back shooing for them. I was the thief. Not the one living right there causing cellphones to disappear.

So let’s recap. I’m a hypocrite Pharisee for letting a worker have one morning off after four straight weeks of working day and night. I’m terrible for not phoning my sister to return though I’d phoned multiple times before and been ignored. And I was being lied about to people when I was the only one consistently HELPING.

💔

And the family believed it. I didn’t even want to attend my mom’s funeral even though I’d paid for it. She can’t see me. And I can grieve at home just as much as in a service. Why sit with people who without ever asking neighbours etc, would believe that I was the neglectful daughter? (Though again, the income was enough even without our help, had my parents been living alone or with a caregiver.)

Then, a cellphone went missing again. And my dad blamed my children. Even telling social workers a relative had tried to involve given the poor care and disappearing monies. My eldest is over 18. Start accusing them of crime and things become VERY dangerous.

So I’m done. It’s one thing to constantly be phoned just to be used. It’s a whole other ballgame to accuse my children of theft. Next time, the accusation will be against ME! After all, I was accused of stealing a pension already.

Knowing that your parents are destroying your reputation when you’re sacrificing for them, is painful. Knowing they are defending the real thief is horrendous. That’s not a father. Well, not a father to ME. Only to the one being defended.

And so there it is. I don’t have parents in the sense I think of when others miss their deceased dad or mother. I have people who have used me, not cared at all about my declining health, abused the workers I hired and who now accuse my children – to a social worker!!- of stealing.

As my daughter said, “But grandpa knows the thousands of rands we spend every single month helping him and have spent for YEARS. If we wanted a cellphone, surely we’d have bought one? It’s obvious we could afford it!”

The final call I received from my father was December 31, 2023. He told me he was disappointed that my children (who were constantly in each others’ presence and that of their father who had driven him there!!!!) had stolen his phone.

I asked him if he saw them touching it.

He said no, but it went missing.

Before I could remind him that he lives with someone who makes phones disappear, the line cut. I didn’t call back.

The next day, I got a text from an unknown number, from someone who didn’t introduce themselves by name. They said they got my number from a neighbour. (I’ve never given my number away except to the one neighbour who wasn’t the one who shared my number.) The person said, “You better come fix what’s happening in your house. Your father is being mistreated.”

I told the person that I didn’t know them. That the abuse is by choice as my father refuses any other options we’ve given – caregivers, frail care centers and handing over his card to someone who would keep it safe and go shopping with him or for him. I told her that my house is the one I live in with my husband and family. I asked her never to contact me again.

And I changed my number.

When your father shares your number while making you look neglectful, never telling the things I’ve done despite my poor health, never even acknowledging to us that we paid to bury his wife and express gratitude for that (entitlement?) and hiding the truth about the true abuser, it’s time to acknowledge that the love is one sided.

I have a Heavenly Father. And that’s OK with me.

Emotional Trauma Part 1

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

I just finished reading *Psalm 6, and it reminded of the narcissistic parent and sibling issue. So here goes.

I was a child whose father as more overtly loving. Unlike my mother who told me I was ugly, had a large forehead, looked like a boy, had thin calves, couldn’t dance, had too wide hips (That one only came in adulthood) and looked ugly with short hair (Said when I cut my hair and was growing my locs)

Unlike my mother,y father never told me my lips were ugly, embarrassing and looked like those of a drunk. He told me I was his black beauty, I had skin like dark mahogany wood and he would dance with me and play with me- when I was under six years old. I have fond memories of him. He made scones, made us yummy hot chips and made us porridge for breakfast. He also made amagwinya (vetkoek) and until I started cooking at age 13, cooked quite a lot as well.

But he also used to beat us mercilessly with a long cane. I don’t know what it was made from, it was like flexible wood. Or, like a very hard whip. It was as thick as my index finger and not breakable. He would beat us even when we knew we hadn’t done anything ‘wrong,’ no matter what age we were. Whether it was a mistake (like mistakenly breaking a vase while sweeping), or childish naughtiness. As I got older, I started realizing that he wasn’t punishing us, he was abusing us. I remember one time he was chasing my little sister with the cane and I told her to run. I tried to lock us into the bathroom but knew there’d be even more trouble when we came out. I tried to get into his way and run in front of him but then he just whipped me instead and still ran after her. I told him he was abusing us and would phone the police – didn’t help. And I didn’t know if Black police officers would really have viewed it that way anyway. So I didn’t.

School…My father wanted me to get an education. Even on decades “stay away” days when our people were on strike to try force the apartheid government to take us seriously, when my own school headmistress spoke to us and told us it would be ok for me to stay home so they don’t attack us for breaking their rules, he took me to school. He even took me to school when the whole country was on lockdown and no school was open, thankfully stopped from leaving me outside the gates alone, hates that wouldn’t open, by another dad who had arrived first and told him there was absolutely nobody there so he shouldn’t leave me behind. He valued education above everything else. We had a Christian version of Girl Scouts at our church. From 10-12 on Sundays. If I hadn’t done all our homework, my dad would stop us from going. I’d remind him that I had the whole of the afternoon to do it. He refused. For me as a young child, it felt like he was putting secular education ABOVE God. As mentioned before, my mother definitely didn’t value God at all. She’s the one who mocked me when she walked into my room when I was 16 years old, “What? You’re reading your Bible? Are you trying to make yourself holy?” Wow. “Staunch Adventists” as her sister claim they are.

I will summarise it this way. Two Sabbaths ago, my daughter asked if I miss being young. If I missed being a little girl her age. I told her honestly. “No. No I don’t. My mom used to hit me for anything and everything with whatever was next to her hand. My dad also used to whip us. They didn’t help me with to school work and weren’t fair. I used to wish a kind mom and dad would adopt me. I don’t miss being a child at all.”

I did. I’d seen my friends’ moms. They were even kinder to me than my own parents. They cared about my preferences. My parents hated that I was a bookworm. My friend’s mom let me read books at my friend’s birthday party! I am such an introvert! I’m embarrassed NOW! But it was a pool party, I was 13 and didn’t know how to swim as doctors had told me to never let my ears get water after having recurring middle ear infections from age 3 upwards. It was a PARTY!!! But while the rest of our friends, and the birthday girl played in the pool, I sat quietly reading a book her mom had told me to choose from her personal bookshelf. “N told me you like reading and are shy. If you want to read something, I’ve got lots of books here!” Never ever did a parent ever even know my preferences! When I was 16, I told my mom that my smoking friend had invited me to a club. What we called a rave back then. (I don’t know if they still have raves today.) I was telling my mom in the context of, “Can you believe she asked ME, a Christian girl, to a RAVE!?” My mom’s response was a questioning, “So why aren’t you going??”

Preferences. I was a bookworm that loved my Bible. THAT was wrong. I should have been going to clubs.

Upside down parenting and I didn’t realise it back then. I didn’t realise that the continued insults about my personal, my personality, my body, my looks were abuse. I was abused not only physically, but emotionally or psychologically. And the scars remain for a long time.

But there were moments that made it better. Where I thought, “Well, I’m ugly in my mom’s eyes, but others don’t think so. Maybe I will find a husband who thinks I’m beautiful.”

The Coloured bakery lady at Pick n Pay when I was in high school who called a Black man from the back to say to him, “Look at her! Isn’t she beautiful!!???” I wanted to cry. I had never been ‘admired’ before for anything except my singing by the choir mistress.

Or the Coloured homeless lady when I was in university who told me, “Oh my word! Look at your smile! Everybody!! Look at her beautiful smile! I was having a bad day, girlie. But your smile has filled my heart.”🥹

How could I forget a few years ago? Sitting in a restaurant in Durbanville and a White Roman comes to me and says, “I hope you don’t mind me coming to say this. But my daughter is 11 and she’s been staring at you all evening! She said you’re beautiful! You look like a princess!”

And even today, I have a friend who tells me I look younger than my 43 years and tells me I’m beautiful. I have a friend who LOVES my grey hair. (My mom used to make me dye her hair black.) One day I’ll believe the kind voices. One day they’ll permanently drown out all the negative words I heard over my 43 years of life from the one who should have been my biggest support and who society taught us loved us the most. What a warped idea of love did I grow up on? (Totally grammatically wrong! But that’s what I knew. My mom loves me. She buys me things. She beats me. And she tells me I’m ugly.) She told me she couldn’t wait for my locs to grow so I stop looking ugly. They grew but she found other things to be negative about. I don’t know why I hoped it would end one day.

And actually, yes, mom. I do want to be holy. And God is ok with that! And for Him and others who love Him, LOOKS DON’T MATTER! He doesn’t point our perceived physical flaws out to us. Nor make life all about looking beautiful. He wants the heart, though I will say I know I am fearfully and wonderfully made!

I’ll end with this. The last thing my mother said to me before her death, the very last words she spoke, were, “You’re fat. Your lips finally look better than they did but you’re fat. But that’s good. I like fat.”

When I went to the house upon hearing she’d died that morning, as we got out the car, I reflexively buttoned up my jacket, thinking to myself, “Ok, close it up so mom doesn’t tell me I’m fat. Maybe she won’t mention it…” (I’m very sensitive about my big post- twin pregnancy belly)

Then I remembered. Her words would never come from her mouth ever again. I was there because she was dead.

* I will share Psalm 6 at a different time. It reminded me of someone who was given the power to utter vile words by my mother.

Toxic Parents?

Grace by any other name1 Comment

I have seen this topic on YT where people or psychologists etc speak about toxic parents, narc parents…I came across a concept I shared with someone who because they’d never lived it, it didn’t even merit a comment. Yet is something extremely sad.

Losing a mother who didn’t love you.

I am grieving not the loss of someone who supported me, encouraged me, cared about me, called me to ask how I am, I grieve the fact that I will never, ever, experience that. Ever.

I come across memes (always did) about being grateful for mothers because they are our biggest cheerleaders, will fight for us… I stop reading. I stop reading because it is so untrue that it hurts. What 42 year old woman with a living mother drives home from a medical appointment crying wishing she had a mom? One whose mother doesn’t know how to be one.

Some people grieve their deceased moms terribly because they’ve left a huge hole in their lives. I have an acquaintance whose mom died over a decade ago I think, yet the pain is so fresh and awful even today. When she first told me how much it hurts to not have a mother, I naively told myself that the positive in not having a loving mother is that I wouldn’t feel such pain at her death.

It’s not actually true.

It’s still horrible.

Listening to the lies at the funeral was one of the worst things. I knew I hadn’t wanted to be there! Standing there next to my lying sister was HORRIBLE. During the week, she had sent through what she had wanted to read out as a “children’s tribute.” I told her point blank that it’s a lie. I told her should say “me, I” instead of using “we/our.”

She didn’t listen to me.

“Our mother loved us very much. We are what we are today because of her. She supported us…”Me are what we are because of her…” VOMIT! LIES! I had wept when her coffin arrived at home. My dear sister-who stole from her till her dying day- was busy primping and preening while the body arrived. Some friend of hers was putting make up on her much as a bride gets made up (Well, the bride who wears make up. I don’t.) She was naked under a towel- I assume so that her evening gown type dress didn’t get make up on it. The very picture of deep grief.🙄

She came up with some tears after lying about my mother’s final evening. I can bet anyone a million Rand that my mother was NOT dancing and singing to music by my sister’s singing group. I don’t even know that she was even home that evening. (She seldom is. Ask social workers currently involved. Yes, this year I’m telling all the truth.)

I was so angry at her lies about mom supporting us. Supporting where when she called me “a waste?” When she told me I was “lazy” for being my children’s teacher and my home’s domestic worker and children’s nurse? When she was ungrateful for food bought with our own money, busy telling her niece that we didn’t buy her meat when she had enough money to buy her own meat? Support my foot! Our singing friend had said that if we broke down, she too would break down and then she wouldn’t be able to sing. Well, the lies made sure I felt no grief. I definitely didn’t break down into tears. And I stupidly hadn’t fully realised how bad my sister was. When she broke down as we sang, I kissed her. I thought she had a heart.

Weeks later while she was out having fun, paramedics arrived at my dad’s house- where she lives. She had made a false call, stating that he was frothing and foaming at the mouth and was unconscious. She wasn’t even home. The neighbours had seen the ambulance arriving and had rushed over in a panic. My VERY WELL father was nicely seated in the house. He told the paramedics, “She took my bank card and was meant to buy grocery. She stole R5000. She hasn’t been back, she probably called you so you would take me to hospital so she can be free and not care for me.”

I kissed someone who could do THAT to their recently widowed father. Someone who helped get rid of three workers we hired to do her job as a young, able-bodied adult child living in her parents’ house, eating her sister’s food and using her electricity.

This post is going to be the start of my dealing with my life as the child and sibling of narcissistic people. I hope that in the same way I felt “seen” when I read others’ posts, my post will validate someone else suffering in silence and hurt . Only last week did I state to a friend, and then my cousin also state to ME , that I was not only abused, but am being abused today- by the very same father who we tried to get help for and were still feeding and giving electricity to despite him being able to afford it. This wasn’t only Black Tax, this was narc abuse. And I am trying to now come to terms with that. With what it did to me. What it has allowed others to do to me. And the fact that I was loved as long as I lived by their rules. But now that I’m an adult, that love was found to be conditional.

I didn’t ever have a loving mother. But my father is not loving either. Ask me how many times he has phoned in the last five years to purely ask how I am. Ask how many times he has called me asking me to phone my sister to ask where she is so she can go back home and care for the parents she tells everybody she is caring for. Ask me how many times he phoned me telling me I must buy more than what I had already bought him. Ask me if he at least tried to remember any of my chidlren’s birthdays, and I’ll tell you how he often tells us to remember my narc sister’s child’s birthday.

It all hurt. I have a relative who hated my mother so much that they said I had to now work on the trauma of her hating me. While I was still in touch with my father whose final phone call on Dec 31,2023 to me was to tell me my children had stolen his cellphone.

As my daughter said, “Grandpa knows how many thousands we spend on him every month. Over ten years of those thousands. If we wanted a phone, you’d have bought one for us yourself. We have money.”

I’ll elaborate on this later when I explain why I’ve gone no contact with him and my sister. A sister who stole so many of my mother’s phones that my mother in law stopped sending replacements.

I can’t heal while wounds are still being created.

And neither can you if you came here as the adult child of a toxic parent. You can merely survive. And survive I did. Able to love others. Never emotionally stunted. Able to be empathetic. Able to give my heart DESPITE, not because of her…I am who I am because that is my nature. (When I was a teen, my GP became exasperated with me for caring about a family at church so much that I got tension headaches and a huge IBS flare up.)

I am what I am, because God is my Father.

I know our experiences will be different, but the pain caused is the same. And may we who are believers find healing in Him Whose name we bear. Who is proud of us for following Him. Who loves us for obeying Him. (My mother criticized my decision to be modest over and over and even mocked friends who visited them in my absence when they heard my father was sick, telling they were dressed like me.)

I grieve what a mother should have been to me, and I rejoice in what my children think of me. I pray they always view me the way they do today- fair, not harsh, caring, gentle, very patient…I’ve certainly never whipped them with a cane as my father did, nor threw anything at them that took the breath out their lungs and caused them to wheeze for air. I will never have a mother who is proud of me for living right. But I will be a mother proud of every good thing my children do.

Healing Through Stories

Grace by any other nameLeave a comment

I have nobody in my shoes. And the one friend who is very adept at putting herself in my shoes is always “very busy” so by the time she has responded and put herself in my shoes, I’ve got a whole new pair of shoes on!🙃

So, I will be doing a video sometime soon on going no contact with my birth family. How unnatural that is. All around me, my friends had these awesome mothers. Mothers who mothered ME when I visited them. Parents I thought and KNEW I deserved. But..it’s time to end the cycle of pain. And I’ll lay it out via video. And why? Well, I think you’ve read a bit of why, but the why I’m referring to is, “Why a video?”

I heal through the stories of others. There’s a man who said one needs to have a qualified professional guide them but many comments stated how they can’t afford it, or more worrying for me with my back pain that would be worsened by sitting through counseling, there are no trauma qualified counselors in their areas anyway. Or they try, but the counselor /therapist tells them to “make peace with” their toxic relatives, ‘forgive them’ and KEEP EXPOSING themselves to the trauma.

I’m not going to waste money and time and health to potentially sit through someone ELSE who will invalidate my pain. I get enough of that for free! I am learning more and more to not share with others because unlike that one person in the above paragraph, through no fault of their own, people can’t read nuances. Or don’t wonder about the impact something has on your mental health. For example, let’s pretend I’ve told you that my favourite aunt just ranted and raved and swore at me. And you just say, “Wow, so much for her being a Christian.” But never dive into, “What!? So all these years she has been fake!? Oh no. Do you feel betrayed? How did you feel?? I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone I loved turned on me like that when I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

Or I tell you, “I have to accept that I will never have a father. I kept hoping and waiting.”

And get..no response.

I can’t put into words how silence is violence.

And so how will I heal? By telling MY story. I set up my channel to inform and to help. And the help I received this morning was from others’ videos. By helping whoever might come across it in the future, I will help myself.

By expressing myself fully, I will heal myself by taking the power into my hands- there’s also violence in this cultural notion of “don’t tell people what’s happening in the family.” It’s usually said by the people most harmful and hurtful. Usually said to the victim of their toxicity. Nope. I will say what I want!

By not waiting for a “I can’t imagine the disappointment and hurt you’re feeling” that you’d expect from someone you’ve unburdened yourself to, I save myself the pain of invalidation. A camera is just recording. I don’t expect a verbal or written hug from it.

Win-win. Someone else might weep when they come across my experience that mirrors theirs as I wept earlier on today. Weeping is cathartic. You finally allow yourself to start the mourning process. And nobody will give me an end date to mourning, just like I don’t give anyone a timeline to end their own mourning.

We were a very close knit, (and I THOUGHT) loving family all believing in the same God and wanting the same for each other. I was wrong. To finally realise that I was wrong, that I truly am just something to be USED..not a human to LOVE, is …You’ll find out later. AFTER I change my number…😝