26th October 2008
Question
I'm a married woman in my early fifties. I didn't have a good relationship with my mother during my childhood and teens. She projected all her own insecurities onto me, accused me of having faults I didn't have, and insisted I had all the negative thoughts and feelings which were actually her own. Basically she constantly ridiculed and criticised me. And she still brings up ridiculous stories of my 'misbehaviour' at age 4 or 5. I spent most of childhood, teens and early adulthood in a state of anxiety and very low self-esteem.
I have forgiven my mother because despite all this, she was at times very kind and understanding. I also believe she was extremely immature and did not know how to cope with life's difficulties.
The problem is that I now have difficulty relating to my sisters and am very much the outsider. I don't think they see things as they are. They are very subjective. The people they like can do no wrong and the people they don't like can do nothing right. I know one sister in particular clearly scapegoats me. She 'jokingly' criticises and ridicules me and my family to my face. Even my mother has noticed, and commented that we all blame the person we don't get on with.
At the moment I don't care about my sisters, and have no contact at all with some of them, but maybe when I'm older I might regret not trying harder to get on with them. Yet how do I do that, get on with them I mean? I won't accept being the scapegoat. Is there any solution?
Answer
Forgiveness is a tricky business. Of course it's good that you're mature enough to see your mother's vulnerability and limitations. It's good, too, that you can see her as being more than one-dimensional, that you can appreciate her strengths as well as her weaknesses. But we have to draw some kind of line between forgiveness and continuing to put up with bad behaviour. Your mother still stokes the old fires with her stories from your early childhood. That's a problem.
Your sisters learned to be nasty to you at your mother's knee. It was she who gave them permission to behave badly towards you because of the way she treated you. If you like, they followed her example. It's therefore a bit rich to hear that your mother now comments on your sister's behaviour as if it had nothing to do with her. Worse still, she's continuing to enable your sister's nastiness with her own insistence on dragging up the familiar tales of old.
Your mother is wrong. Your sister is not 'blaming' you when she's nasty to your face about your family. Nor is it merely a question of her not getting on with you. She's treating you badly. She's bullying you. She's putting you down. She's dumping stuff at your door, just like your mother did. And your mother is letting this happen, not only by telling her own tales, but by failing to challenge your sister. She 'explains' your sister's behaviour to you, rather than intervening and saying that it's simply not on. In saying all this I don't wish to daunt you. Quite the contrary. You've come such a long way, and I wish only to be of help.
You're doing a bit of a whitewash job on your mother. At an intellectual level you have it well sussed. But knowing doesn't necessarily mean that we've entirely freed ourselves emotionally, as I've learned to my cost. You're still a little stuck in the old role of being the baddie. Otherwise, in your head at least, you would clearly see how your mother is weaselling out of all responsibility. You badly want her to be on your side. In forgiving her, you like to think that she's gained some serious insight. And maybe she has. But she's still not going to bat for you is she?
It's natural to want a good relationship with your sisters. You'll never have it though, until you shed all remnants of the low self-esteem your mother fostered in you. When you have true self-respect, your sister will not be able to ridicule your family as part of a put-down routine. You just won't allow it. Instead she'll have a choice - as will all your sisters - to either treat you with the properly, or butt out.
Forgiveness cannot be a short-cut. It has to be clear-eyed. Otherwise the price we pay is to believe deep down that we deserved whatever we got. But you didn't. You are good and brave and generous and intelligent and kind. If you can clearly face your mother's continuing human frailty, her on-going failure to properly acknowledge that, you'll no longer be a candidate for put-downs. And who knows? Perhaps your sisters will then choose friendship. Even if they don't, you'll be just fine.
