Estrangement From Parents

FAMILY ESTRANGEMENT

The last little bit about Mother’s Day this year has to do with an article I saw in a newsletter from The Mighty: “What Not To Say To Someone Who Is ‘No-Contact’ With An Abusive Parent.”

What struck me is some people said all of these to me during the years I was estranged from my parents.  I had good reason not to be in contact with them: they were toxic for me.

Childhood was trauma enough growing up with laissez-faire, dysfunctional alcoholic parents.  It didn’t help that they were also Deaf in those years before interpreters were mandated in certain settings.  I had responsibilities beyond my childhood years.  That wasn’t so traumatic; it just meant I “grew up” to life’s realities fast. 

My mother was the primary emotional and physical abuser when I was growing up.  She herself had been physically abused as a child and set apart because of her deafness.  She may or may not have been born with a mental illness as well – or it was entirely caused by having my grandfather bang her head against the wall.  Still, that didn’t help me when I was too small to understand.

Although my father was loving and supporting, when he and my mother got drinking our home turned into a battle scene.  She usually ended up getting the worst of it although she’d give as good as she got.  One night I called the police when they were both beaten and bloody.   The cops stopped the fight but one said to me in a condemning voice, “You don’t want me to arrest them, do you?”  He then suggested I go somewhere else if I was that upset.  Gee, thanks, officer.

After I married, I saw the family through my new husband’s eyes and, for the first time, I saw how “not normal” our home life was.  My husband ended up needing emergency cardiac surgery after our first baby was born.  I asked my parents to stay with our son while I went to the hospital.  They wondered why I needed to be there.  My husband would have nurses, wouldn’t he?  Mom went on to add that I was taking advantage of them.

That was the first time I went on no contact with them. 

Most people who knew the story were supportive. Some weren’t, including family members.

“You only have one set of parents.”  Yes, that’s right and I was an emotional wreck.  From my teen years, I had panic attack disorder and depression, not to mention suppressed rage.  I needed years of counseling and twelve step meetings to start recovering from all that.

“Families stick together.” I’d seen a lot of dysfunctional “sticking together” in my family.  It turns out that alcoholism ran rampant on one side of the family.  Cousins I’d believed had the ideal family life found out what was going on with mine and professed shock.  They suffered as children too, believing MY family was perfect. 

“Forgive and forget.”  In other words, keep submitting to the toxic behaviors because, after all, “blood is blood” and it doesn’t matter what it does to me.  The important thing is to maintain a happy face and go along for the ride.  Well, forgive and forget isn’t supposed to mean that.  Forgiveness means releasing the anger and hurt so it doesn’t eat up your soul.  Forget just means it’s not in the forefront of thoughts; it does not mean trust again.

After our third child was born, I was ready to see my parents again.  They were excited to be reunited with their grandchildren, which brings up another thing not to say.  “You’re being cruel by withholding their grandchildren.”  I felt I was protecting them as well as myself and brought them in when the children were 4, 3 and newborn.

I had to go on no-contact with them two years later because they terrified the kids.

The next no-contact ended when our son graduated high school in 2005.  They were elderly then but still the same people they’d been all my life.  The big difference was we all knew how to protect ourselves from it so gatherings were cordial but distant.

They are both gone now.  I used to mourn the parenting I never got and how I managed it was I allowed my inner child to guide me as a mother to my own children.  The cycle is broken in our family.