There were so many different things and situations that were going on in my life with work and home at the same time it was hard to breath at times. Following the difficult break up with my partner and trying to sort out the financial disaster with the house and solicitors and process, and was totally out of my depth and my mental health struggle and guard had been let down.
By this time due to my mental health and relationship but also life I had regained most of the weight that I had lost and relationships were strained. I remember I had to put the house on the market and she had turned up and dangled the carrot of hope that we could live with her and to keep the house and offer of help to sort it out. I adamantly refused even though in a broken state I knew that our relationship could not sustain living together and it would end badly, but she kept promising that this time it would be different and I made her promise that she wouldn’t destroy me again and with the hope that this time it would be different and in my very broken and vulnerable state I gave in.
For a few weeks things were okay and I was so broken and not present and going through the motions that things settled into some sort of normal but it was only a matter of time before things from my mother became unravelled and her behaviour escalated.
I had good relationships with her husband, friends and family and had taken on the role of home maker, cook, clean and things were good however I noticed that the more compliments I received from her husband with my homemaker skills the nastier she got and the claws came out. The more my mother tried to keep her behaviour under control it was inevitable there was only a matter of time that she could maintain control and things finally broke down on Easter Weekend when I was 44 years old. I had been really unwell but had kept up the role of homemaker and cooked and cleaned for the family functions that my mother had organised with family friends coming over and entertaining and on the Sunday we were supposed to go out to lunch with my mother and her husband and the children at the Casino and it was such a big deal to her and that we stick to the happy family schedule of the holidays.
I remember waking up Easter Sunday so unwell and had a bad chest infection and had finally succumbed to not being able to get up and that I stayed in my room. My children were about 12 and 14 at the time approximately and they went down stairs and received their Easter presents from my mother however at some point my daughter came upstairs to me crying and told me that my mother had yelled and swore at the children and called them ungrateful for everything that she had brought them for Easter, also because they didn’t want to go down the coast to the casino with her for lunch and shopping because they wanted to stay home with me. I don’t know what happened that day but my maternal instincts set in and I was not well and that was it. She had done the worst thing that she could have possibly done she had taken her venom and set off triggers from my childhood that I couldn’t control any longer.
I remember going downstairs and standing up to my mother and telling her very clearly for probably the first time in my life that I wasn’t going to accept her behaviour toward my children anymore. There was so much hatred in her eyes and her voice and she let her tirade of abuse against me to bring me pain that I just recoiled to the point of not even being able to speak. I remember at one point going back upstairs and she followed me and slapped me hard across the face in front of my children. She knew exactly how to seek revenge and cause my pain and she didn’t hold back, I will never forget this moment in my life and neither will my children who were there and witnessed everything at the time and she spat the words at me, So what your father raped you, Ha Ha who cares get over it and anyway he could never get it up when he was drinking anyway. Those words I will never get over, the abuse and trauma of everything that I had endured in my life will never compare to my mother saying those words to me an adult at 44 and in front of my children was something I will never forgive, no matter what and as I am writing these words has a significant impact every time I think about it.
I don’t know at that point how I even survived but I remember her going downstairs and getting her husband to come upstairs to defend her and I told him what she had said and he then told me that at some stage he had felt sorry for me and for the abuse that my father had done toward me. He then proceeded to tell me that this had all changed when he heard that I had gone back to my father’s hometown when he was on his death bed to care for him.
For him this decision of mine had changed his mind and he had no sympathy for me. He told me that I was I was responsible and to blame for the sexual assault that I had endured through my young childhood years at that point.
I shut down emotionally and physically at this point and my children were witness to all of it I remember looking at my mother and she was coming toward me and I pushed her away and she fell backwards, in that split-second I had an overwhelming urge to put my hands around her neck and choke her to death and I literally was seeing it in my head. In times of deepest darkest of times my spirit protectors and angels brought me back to my children and the reality of needing to protect and be strong for them kicked in and I walked away. I don’t know how I gained strength that day but I knew that I could never see her again because not of her but my own self-protection and I could not trust that I would be able to hold back next time.
The next couple of days were the toughest of my life and we walked out and never looked back and my children have never wanted any relationship with their grandparents. I know that my children have never got over the trauma and fear of what they witnessed that day but also what they had learnt about their mother’s childhood trauma in such a shocking and traumatic way. The realisation that we were so completely alone in life and only had each other to rely on and be safe set in for all of us. I won’t tolerate any more when it comes to my mother and her husband, I don’t care whether its generational, cultural beliefs or their own experience in childhood the generation of trauma ends here. I will always choose to protect and love my children unconditionally and provide clear boundaries and role model for them to learn what is unacceptable and that regardless of family, relationships or love don’t ever settle for someone to destroy yourself worth and your feelings of not being good enough or deserving of love and connection no matter what.
Several weeks later I had received an abusive message from my sister and telling me that I had one last chance to apologise to my mother and stepfather in a two week timeframe otherwise I would be cut out of the Will. Again, I was disgusted with the behaviour and no amount of money or my self-worth was ever going to give into that blackmail, I chose me and I will never touch any money from them because it is dirty money and tainted with evil. I know from various whispers and stories fed back to me that my mother never told the truth of her words and her husbands that day and fed a whole lot of lies to manipulate the situation and make out that I am the bad daughter and it’s all my fault but I don’t care. I have my integrity and I know my worth and the day I walked away I felt finally free and safe and fearless because I no longer had to worry about my mother not loving me because I chose at that moment to not love her and she was no longer my mother and moving forward I have even struggled to use the term of mother in this setting as the two are so far from the reality.
