Hi Everyone,

If you've followed any of my story (some on TestedDevotion's threads), then you know that my mother and father disowned me in July 2005. My mother called once in September or October to yell at me and tell me what a horrible mother I am. Well, she called again yesterday. I spent all of 2 minutes on the phone with her, as the anger was apparent in her voice, even after all of these months (and the ironic thing is, she's mad at me, only I didn't do ANYTHING to her...she's mad at me for choices I've made in my life, including NOT divorcing TD.

I've written a letter to her, but I'd like to "filter" it for any DJs. If you'd read it and give me suggestions, I would GREATLY appreciate it. Many of you have been so helpful to both me and TD.

Crystal

TEXT OF LETTER*******

Dear Mom,

I was very shocked to hear from Aunt C that you wanted me to call you the other day, though I’m not exactly sure why you didn’t just pick up the phone and call my cell yourself originally. As I’d stated in the letter back in October, I believe, I blocked your numbers from my home phone because things were stressful enough around here without receiving phone calls from you containing malicious remarks and criticism; I am unable to block your numbers from any of our cell phones, so that method of communication has always been available, though you chose not to use it.

I appreciate your concern for me and for the girls, however it’s unwarranted. It would be difficult for you to know, since having broken off all communications back in July, that things in our household are going much more smoothly. TD is in no way “psychotic” or “evil,” as you’ve said. He had a drug interaction this summer, was in a deep depression, felt as if I were backing him into a corner with all the police and court stuff, and felt like his entire world was coming to an end with the impending break-up of the family. It seems as though you’re still living in the anger and frustration of July, but we’ve moved forward. We’re not in that place anymore. While we’re not the picture perfect family, everything is VERY civil, and the girls are doing quite well.

I’m sure that you’ve been getting bits and pieces of information from Aunt M all along, as I know that she and Aunt C still speak to each other. I don’t know what you’ve heard or haven’t heard, but I’m not going to use this letter as a summation of everything that’s going on in my household, but suffice it to say that there have been numerous changes. Your call the other day felt more like a fishing expedition than anything else, because of the timing in relation to what’s happening here. Perhaps it was true concern on your part.

I don’t know how you think our relationship can ever be reconciled if you can’t find a way to forgive or apologize for your part in its breakdown. TD and I have said many times that we’re willing to talk to you and Dad, but only when the two of you are ready to truly forgive, as well as to ask forgiveness for your actions against us. I know you think that we’re keeping the girls away from you; however, some of your actions throughout this entire situation lead us to believe that it’s in the girls’ best interest to stay away from you until we are certain that you’re not going to say something inappropriate to them about the events of this summer or any disparaging remarks about TD. I am trying to protect the girls to my best ability, and I’d prefer to involve them as little as possible with any past, present, or future troubles between me and TD.

The ball is once again in your court.

Crystal

Crystal -

I am flabbergasted that your parents would "disown" you. I think they have some problems that a letter is not going to solve.

As a mom of 8 - I can tell you that there is NOTHING they could do that would make me disown any of them. And believe me, some of them have made some pretty poor choices, but I love them like I always have.

Oh, I can do that. Hi Crystal. Oh it is really full of DJ's. Been there done that.

How's this?

I heard from Aunt C that you wanted me to call you the other day. While I stated in the letter back in October, I believe, I blocked your numbers from my home phone because our conversations just added to the stress.

But our cells phones have never had your numbers blocked. So that option is still available to you.

While I appreciate your concern for me and for the girls, things in our household are going much more smoothly. While we’re not the picture perfect family yet , everything is VERY civil, and the girls are doing quite well. And TD is working on his problems. My feelings were hurt when you said that TD is evil and we both got very upset. I hope we can move on past that.

I understand htat you have received osme second hand information but please know that there have been numerous very positive changes. Your call the other day made me feel attacked but I udnerstnad that it could very well have been true concern on your part. And I thank you for htat.

TD and I have said many times that we’re willing and eager to talk to you and Dad so that we can ALL start the healing process and truly forgive each other for the hurtfule things we have said and done to each other.,

I hope we can move on and so that the girls can see you again. But we need reassurances form you and Dad that you will support our decision for our family and that you will not talk badly about TD.

We are trying to protect the girls to our best ability, and I’d prefer to keep them out of any past, present, or future troubles between me and TD.

So please respect t our decisions and I will leave the ball in your court if you would like to call us. Or talk to the girls.

Thank you

Believer,

Check out my history on Crystal and TD's thread...under that huge DJ title: "Advice please! Manipulative and Foggy WW is backing me into a corner"

When I used to tell of my disownment, people would say exactly what you did. I've never had the courage to ask them why they say that? Can I finally ask you?

When I get that response, I feel foreign and uniquely bad, rather defective and embarrassed. How do you feel, Crystal?

Not threadjacking...I'm going to read Crystal's letter (which I hope she won't send for three days) and comment. I read yours first.

LA

Dear Crystal,

"without receiving phone calls from you containing malicious remarks and criticism;"

Idea: "calls from you. When we talk, I hear malicious remarks and criticism."

I'm with fightalone's letter very much. I don't like the half-truth that her calls ARE stressful to you. What you hear in them is valid. It may not be all real, but it is what you hear. That's important information.

"I appreciate your concern for me and for the girls" Do you really? Is that your truth? I thought you didn't believe her concern was real?

"It would be difficult for you to know," That's both a DJ and untrue. Just wanted to help you see, not bash you.

"TD is in no way “psychotic” or “evil,” as you’ve said."

Idea: "I don't believe TD is in anyway psychotic and evil as I remember you saying." Those quotation marks can highlight AND destroy meaning. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I should know, huh?

FA's paragraph is great here, too.

"you’re still living in the anger and frustration of July"

Idea: "I believe you are still living in anger and frustration of July" and drop the rest. "I think we have moved forward." (The "but" is a killer.)

"I’m sure that you’ve" That's a common DJ! I would nix all of that paragraph except: "Your call the other day felt more like a fishing expedition than anything else, because of the timing in relation to what’s happening here. Perhaps it was true concern on your part."

Idea: "I felt that your call was intended to judge my circumstances by gaining more information. Is that because of my new job? I don't know, so I won't guess if it was or true concern on your part. I know I have difficulty trusting what you say are your motives."

"I don’t know how you think our relationship can ever be reconciled if you can’t find a way to forgive or apologize for your part in its breakdown."

I can't suggest because I don't understand what she did. She said bad stuff, defined you, passed judgments...but that's her and not your marriage. And you're making a selfish demand for forgiveness? I'm lost. I don't get it. I don't think I understand this part.

What FightingAlone said, definitely. Beautifully put if you that is what you truly mean.

"I know you think that we’re keeping the girls away from you; however," By putting in the "however" you are technically saying, along with a big DJ, that it is true.

"The only other suggestion...leave out "ball in your court" stuff. "I would enjoy hearing your thoughts and feelings, if you would like to share."

FA's version has my vote (with my nitpicking adjustments, of course). Yeah, it's hard to stand myself. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

LA



FightingAlone,

"Your call the other day made me feel attacked but I udnerstnad that it could very well have been true concern on your part. And I thank you for htat."

I see DJ in "made me feel"...the made... Am I too stringent? I'd just like your honest opinion. And thanking her for assumed concern, I can't buy into either. "I want to believe you are concerned for us, hence your call, but I have difficulty..." I said it above, sorry.

LA - I think that a parent that would do this has SERIOUS problems and it has nothing to do with their child. Of course, a child raised under these conditions probably would not realize that they are not to blame.

TJ over.

Hi, LW. My kids have gone as far as giving me a red pen becasue I edit so often. lol. Comes from being a Technical writer I guess.
Perhaps that was a DJ. I am not sure it was. Part of a DJ is assuming what the other person means or feels. And judging them for their lack of the correct according to your standards. So hence "it made me feel" As in "I felt bad." "It hurt my feelings". etc. You are saying things aobut yourself., NOT about the other person.

But I could be wrong....

THe other thing is that my IC and Dr aArley say that when a statement starts with "You" as in "You did" "you Always" "You Should" etc. it is ALWAYS a DJ. Even when it is a "when you" Same thing. A better way of saying it is to validate their concerns and then an "I" statement. As in "I felt scared when I heard you say that BLAH BLAH, etc.

Thank you, Believer and FA for responding.

FA--You are incredible with spotting DJs and I would really enjoy a thread of your own for them, because they were very difficult for me to understand and more complex than Harley described in detail. Would you be interested in that? I'm an editor-in-progress, so that explains the admiration.

Crystal -

My apologies for the threadjack (twice!). I had an amazing day today and am hyped about it. You were part of it; not the cause, but the inspiration. Glad I did it on your thread. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

LA

cyrstal what is your goal with a letter to your mom...

I think if you know your goals you will be better able to write a letter

or you man even come to find a letter will not work or is unceccessary..

ark

Hi Everyone,

Thank you so much for all of your insight. It's very difficult to get the DJs out as this woman has be so incredibly vicious to me. That's not my perception...it's the perception of everyone involved. When things got hot between me and TD this summer (restraining order against TD, TD suicidal, I finally decided to divorce), the girls and I went to stay with my parents. At the time, TD was in an in-patient psych program (3 days). I had to pack up enough stuff for the girls and I to get by, figure out where to send my 3 dogs, get rid of two rabbits, as they weren't welcome anywhere, and I couldn't leave them alone (I took them to an animal rescue)...and I had to talk to the lawyer, gather information to substantiate my case, AND look for full-time employment for the first time in 10 years (in addition, I was running the registration for vacation Bible school at my church...a committment I'd made 6 months prior). Meanwhile, my mother was treating me AND the girls as though we were burdens to her. She and my dad have a 4 BR, 3000+ sq.ft. house (PLUS full basement), and it's only the 2 of them living there. They yelled at me, yelled at the girls, and my mother was just plain angry the entire time we were there (all of 1 week). She was constantly telling me that she wished TD would've killed himself (I had thwarted a potential suicide attempt) and that I needed to divorce him, that he was NEVER any good for me, he's a terrible father, blah, blah, blah. They criticized me for not spending enough time with my kids through all of this. Who the heck did they think I was, anyway...Superwoman??? I was extremely depressed (but not being treated for it), and I was burning the candle at BOTH ends, getting 3-4 hours of sleep per night, but none of that was good enough for them...so they criticized every single thing I did. Finally, after speaking to TD after the protective order was finalized and the lawyers were out of the way, I realized that he was no crazier or dangerous than I was, so the girls and I started spending time with him, on a limited basis (which PO'd my mother). Finally, we decided to move back in when TD came up with a plan for the girls and I to have the house (this was July and a judge ordered that since TD had nowhere else to go, he could have the house until school started for the girls, which would've meant another 6 weeks of living with my parents, all the while having my mother complain that we were a financial burden on them...yes, she's a selfish witch). Living with someone who might potentially be psychotic (but who was willing to "live" in the basement until I said he could move back upstairs) certainly seemed like a better alternative than having my kids around my mother's constant criticism and viciousness.

When the girls and I spent the first night back at our house, (there was a flat tire on my van involved...long story), my mother was SO ANGRY that she spent the entire night (I don't think she ever went to bed) packing up all of our stuff that was at her house. She came to church the next day (around 11 or so) and had me sign some papers, and told me she was dropping our stuff at my house. When I got home and saw what she'd done, I could've ripped her head off, I was so mad! She'd thrown our stuff in trash bags, not caring if their were important papers, jewelry, or anything else in the mix...and dropped it at the curb, leaving Aunt C. and my mother in law (who was staying at the house with TD at the time) to carry it all into the house. THEN, to top THAT off, apparently there was some stuff that she forgot, so she put THAT in a trash bag, labeled it with my full first and last names (she NEVER uses my first name, but calls me by my nickname instead) and she dropped it at my neighbor's house, who happens to be a member of my church. As if she couldn't have dropped it at MY house...which she had to PASS in order to get to this woman's house??? THEN, I found out that my mother had been telling people ALL ABOUT what happened this summer..."swinging" and everything. So, in order to make people believe that she's more righteous than her own daughter, she'd rather completely ruin my reputation by telling my "secrets" just to make herself appear BETTER than I am.

So, saying that my mother has problems of her own would be the understatement of the century.

I have forgiven her for what she did this summer. I am willing to try to have a relationship with her and my dad. However, I still think that she, at least, is a loose canon, and I'm really afraid at what she'll say ot do to my kids. All along (last several years since we've lived close to them) my mother has been instilling in my kids that women are better than men, that we don't NEED men, that men are pretty much lower than scum (except for my dad, of course, who has the backbone of a jellyfish when it comes to her)...and that you're supposed to "get even" with someone who offends you. All of these things go against the Christian principles we've been trying to teach them.

Do I think that a letter will work to "fix" things with them?? Nope. And right now, I don't want the girls having contact with them, unsupervised by me, because when my 7 YO was staying with Aunt C one day, Aunt C called my mom to let my daughter talk to her. In the 3 or 4 min my daughter was on the phone with my mom, my daughter started crying...because my mother told her that "Mommy and Daddy are keeping Grandmom and Pop Pop away from you. They won't let us see you." Really nice thing to do by getting a 7 YO involved in our "issues."

I know in my head that what my parents have done to me is about the cruelest thing any parent can do to their child. I've realized over the summer that part of my brokeness is that I have been desperately searching for unconditional love, because I've never gotten it from my parents. I got involved sexually at a VERY early age, probably because I thought that's the only way I could be loved by someone. Intellectually speaking, I "GET" all of these things, but it's hard to WALK in that knowledge. My self-esteem is very low, which probably assisted in the whole enjoyment of the "swinging" lifestyle this summer, because I'd never been complimented so much in all my life...by men AND women. All of that gave me more self-confidence, I began taking better care of myself, working out, doing hair and make-up daily, wearing cute clothes instead of frumpy ones...I just felt good about myself. I held my head high and looked people in the eye for the first time in my life, because finally I felt like I was really worthy of being looked at or spoken to by strangers. Ok, I know all of that is really twisted, and I should run to the nearest padded room because I need a lot of head shrinking done. LOL I became addicted to feeling good about myself...so when hubby wanted to nix the swinging, I couldn't stop. I didn't want to go back to my frumpy old lifestyle. I didn't want to go back and live in the pit of despair that I'd been living in for so many years.

Well, I'm sorry to have droned on and on. I don't know if any of that background answers any of your questions or not. It is theraputic to write these things down, as it solidifies the ideas in my head, in a way, making them easier to believe. Cognitive therapy, I guess.

Oh, and when one of you asked if it makes me feel bad when someone comments that they don't know how a parent could disown his/her own child...my answer is Yes and No. Yes, only in that I oftentimes wonder why I got stuck with my parents...what did I do to deserve having them raise me as opposed to healthier parents. No, because I realize that I DIDN'T do anything to deserve being treated like that and my parents are sick...they both had bad relationships with their fathers...my mother's dad was an alcoholic, her mom used to hit her father and the kids used to pull them off of each other...my mother's first marriage ended in divorce as her husband physically abused her...my father's dad didn't have a relationship with him (I can remember as a kid seeing my grandparents 2x a year, and they lived less than 30 minutes away from us)...after my father's mother died, my grandfather re-married, eventually retiring in FL, and would come to town to see HER children, and wouldn't even tell his own that he was even in town; my dad would hear it through the grapevine.

My mother refuses to get counseling, but she's the first to say that the rest of us need it. I think that of everyone in the family, she's the one who needs the MOST counseling.

Thanks again for listening...and for the advice on fixing the DJs in the letter. Geeze, if I'd written what I REALLY wanted to write, I don't think there would've been a single word that could've remained in the letter because they ALL would've been DJs. I thought I was doing pretty well filtering them. I guess I still have a L O N G way to go!

Crystal

Crystal. I so understand a lot of what you say. My parents disowned me for a while too. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

And I have made a choice to NOT have contact with them. For now.

And to this day, I know I didn't deserve it. But through therapy and YEARS of trying to come to terms with this garbage, what it came down to for me is what makes me happy. What can I live with? What are my boundaries?

ANd the other thing is control. You cannot MAKE your parents do anything. Their issues are theirs alone. You might see very clearly what the problems are but you cannot force them to do what you think is right.

And that control works into the DJs. YOur mother's viciousness and cruelty cannot be changed. You can state your opinions and your boundaries. BUt anything else is you trying to control HER. imho.

So in any letter or conversation you can state that you will not accept her doing A B or C. That is your boundary.

So what do you want to do? What do you NEED from her? If anything. If it is just to vent. Well MB is the place. BUt if you NEED closure a break of ties well that is your decision. And the only way to know that is to look at yourself and your needs. kwim? I could be completley wrong. But that is my own experience.

Take care.

Crystal -

I'm so sorry that you went through such a nightmare with your mom. I hope you will get some counseling in how to deal with crazy people.

It's very likely that your mom learned her behavior from dealing with her parents. I'm glad that you are taking good care of your children.

Baby, "forgiveness" is more than being willing to work on the relationship again. And even if you (we) forgive your parents, truly, wisdom and experience warn against significant involvement with them.

Over the last 2 weeks or so, I've come to a place where I am able to hand over the hurt to God when I feel wronged, or when I remember being wronged, and hurt rises up. (This is what the paragraph I emailed to you meant when it referred to "dying to self.") I know that, on occassion, I still take-up offenses regarding some people and have to continuously pray that God help me release them.

For example, I *know* I've forgiven you because I look at you and feel compassion and regret for how I contributed, knowingly and unknowingly, to your pain. I haven't had even a twinge of *my* own pain from your actions in about a week. I feel so much more free than I've felt in months... years! Nevertheless, there are still others that I am still working through forgiving, your parents included.

Don't get me wrong, forgiveness doesn't mean "becoming stupid." You don't need to subject yourself to present and future abuse from someone just because you have truly forgiven them for past abuse. When wisdom advises you otherwise, you take reasonable measures to protect yourself and you give the other to God... Let them be His problem. You can be free. Neither time nor distance will truly heal this sort of situation (they only let the passions subside somewhat), only true forgivenss and release will let a person move on.

I hope this didn't come across as preachy or as if I were talking down to you.

If this viciousness is factual there is no need for a letter. Instead, develop close relationships with non-vicious people. Leave your Mother (and any other vicious person) completely out of your life. The letter serves no purpose other than explaining yourself to a vicious perrson. Complete waste of time.

If you come across a wasp nest, don't poke it with a stick.

I agree with Pep. Usually I think fences with relatives should be mended, but maybe that can happen later.

Believer ... either her Mom is vicious or she's not. And I believe what Crystal wrote ... her Mom has been and continues to be vicious during the entire course of their relationship. There is no point for further contact. It is a loss of hope for Crystal that she will ever have a real Mother ... but facts must be faced. Continuing contact with a vicious parent pollutes Crystal's relationships today.

Got it.

Been there, done that. Got the T-shirt and the Tote bag to match!

And you probably won't ever get that from your parents. But it had nothing to do with you or how loveable you are.

This is their problem/issue and it's not about you.

Your job is to accept this fact and quit trying to change what you have no control over. Don't go to the hardware store for bread.

You can still honor your parents without respecting them.

My own mother needs to try to pull me down with her jabs in order to make herself feel superior. Angry, self-hating people make their light brighter by diminishing the lights of others.

The important thing is that you recognize this, accept it, and take action in your own life to NOT continue partaking of this emotional pie.

There's an abundance of love to be found in other places. My friends are the family I choose for myself.

Right Pep? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

That's Madam Pep to you squirt <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

Madam Pep,

Interesting job you've got... apparently.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />