It was late last night as I composed a letter to my mother, and I felt I had hit the high points, but yet....I wondered. So, as I lay down to sleep, I asked for clarity in my dreams, to show me the true overview between, my mother, my daughter and me.
In my dream I was holding my daughter, she was a young girl. I was carrying her around...and out of nowhere a figure appeared. Eyes hidden by heavy scarred lids and hands reaching to hurt us.
The feeling of the dream was my daughter's preciousness and me holding her and harm trying to do what harm does....harm. I did not feel safe in this presence. I felt stalked and pursued.
Waking in the middle of the night from this dream, it affirmed my intentions and my subconscious knowing; that my mother's energy and reckless regard for my boundaries is hurtful...with abuse as its flavor.
The key points I was trying to articulate in a letter...the draft letter, was that I had set up boundaries between us, that I have created a life where I have zero interaction and if she chooses to attend, she is deliberately abusing and overlooking my boundaries.
That the boundaries I was setting up, were boundaries that I needed as a child, that I am doing for my child, what she was unable to do for hers.
It isn't a popularity contest, but rather healthy life choices, to remove and eliminate interactions with people who blindly harm. (hence the hooded eyes in the dream)
She appears unaware of how painful it will be for me, for her to walk over my 8 years of silence...OR that once again my feelings and my pain are not part of the equation as she makes her choice.
I also feel deeply, that her rights to attend, are the consequence for participating and being an accomplice to the sexual abuse in my childhood home.
She at those moments gave up her motherly and grandmotherly rights...with me.
She doesn't appear to know that her presence is hurtful...and yet she has never been aware of the pain that her children were in...lacking compassion.
It isn't me who has landed her into this spot....it was HER choices that got her there, and now she wants to go on like 'normal'. And, may do so.
I will fine tune the letter and send it.
How she responds will be her choice.
I have very little confidence she will gracefully bow out, knowing it wasn't her right to attend anymore. She may choose to stay away, but she will blame it on her daughter and my words. Not seeing that I had no choice....that all my actions in the past 8 years are actions a mother does to keep abusive people out.
Many may feel that I have no right to say what I have to say to her, to even send her a letter, to even 'cheat' her of being at her granddaughter's wedding...they will see and feel her 'rights' being neglected. They are incapable of standing on the victims side.
Another side will see how insane it is to even have to tell her to stay away. That she should surely know she is not welcome, that she will be intruding and breaking down the barriers to get in. An unwelcome guest...due to our dysfunctional past and broken relationship.
I have been silent, after our one encounter, our one day of expressing my feelings and emotions, I have let her live her life in peace. I have not interjected what she can and cannot do. I have allowed her access to my children. I have given them space to be. But this event is My family event. This is not her daughter, but mine. And, I feel that I have earned the right to be there. I do not feel the same can be said for her.
The intricacies of estrangement and children who chose to erect boundaries against their parents due to abuse, is that there will be occasions where these lines will be crossed or challenged. It requires us to once again state our desires and our needs.
If she, after getting the letter, that will clearly state my feelings, chooses to attend, she will be knowingly abusing me again.
What is abuse, if not taking actions without caring how it hurts another being.
What most fail to remember is she started this abusive relationship. I did not abuse her first, but as a child, she abused me.
I am not being a hurtful child, but a hurt child.
