WITCHTIP TUESDAY: Estrangement

 

This is not so much a tip post as one that I hope brings comfort to someone who needs it. As we head into the holiday season, it is important to remember that not everyone is surrounded by family. This time of year can be very hard for those of us who are estranged from our families. The important thing for those who are estranged to realize is that they are not alone. There are a lot of us that don’t have contact with our families for whatever reason. I am estranged from my immediate family. Unlike many people who no longer have contact with their families, my estrangement was my choice. I realize that there are many other people out there who did not have that luxury and were cast out by their families. I do not fully understand the pain these people must feel, but I can sympathize with their loneliness and longing for family. Please understand, I don’t really miss my family. I do find myself wishing that I had been born into a better family a lot though.

To be fair, this is the first holiday season I won’t be spending with my parents around at all. Not that they have been around much in recent years anyway. I stopped going to my grandmother’s home for the holidays years ago. I cannot remember the last time I felt wanted when I went there, and the last few times I felt downright unwelcome. There were times when my husband would need our only vehicle for work and I wouldn’t be able to make it to whatever get together that side of the family was having, and then when I would be able to come to the next get together they would act like I was a jerk for not making it to the last one. My parents didn’t want to come get me, and I didn’t have a car, so what did they expect? Did they think I could sprout wings and fly over? For the record, the other side of the family has never treated me that way.  My parents tried to get me to give it another go several times over the years, but I didn’t want to deal with that feeling and I didn’t want to put my children through anything similar. They didn’t need to see their mother being belittled for not doing whatever the hell someone else thought she should do. They didn’t need to see their cousins receive mountains of gifts at Christmas when they only got one little outfit, their mother received a few dish towels, and their father received nothing. They were getting old enough to notice these things, and shit like that can fuck with a kid’s head and self-esteem. So, I decided to put my family first and stopped going. I don’t know what I experienced was because of racism since my family is a mixed-race family, if it was my pagan beliefs since I am a witch, or if it was something else. Whatever the reasons, it wasn’t acceptable, and I didn’t want my kids to go through that. I’m not saying that I am perfect and not to blame for anything, but what was happening there was toxic and not healthy for anyone involved.

I feel like a lot of the problems I’ve had with my family have been because of my mother. She is a narcissist and very abusive. I know that she has not only lied to me but lied about me on multiple occasions to make herself appear to be a better person than she is. This is the woman who looked me in the eye and called me a slut after I was sexually assaulted and tried to turn to her for help. This is the woman who purposely mixed my daughter’s formula wrong after being told repeatedly how to do it properly simply because she did not want to babysit her. This is the woman who insists that she would help me if I wanted to go back to work if front of other people, and then then flat out tells me in private that she has no intention of helping me in any way, shape, or form. She called me selfish and spoiled after I told her I was suicidal, dealing with postpartum depression, and needed help from a qualified doctor (which I never got because she refused to loan me the money). Every time I tried to tell someone else what she was doing she would tell them I was crazy, but not once did she take me to a doctor to see if I actually needed help. She stopped beating my brothers and I when we were pretty young, but I remember being terrified that she would use my father’s belt again. And I remember exactly how it felt when she hit me with her hairbrush. She didn’t stop because she realized it was wrong either. She stopped because she was afraid of how it would look when her children were taken away from her. That was the only reason she stopped. She has done and said things to me that are so horrible that people don’t believe me when I talk about them. She has done things far worse than the ones I have already mentioned, she will deny ever having done or said anything bad to me, and there are people in my family stupid enough to believe her. There are some people in my family that have tried to excuse her actions by saying her mother wasn’t very good either, but I don’t think that’s a particularly good excuse. As a mother, I do everything I can not to treat my kids like she did me. The only thing that kept me from cutting off all contact before the beginning of this year was my father. I held on so that he could have a relationship with his grandchildren. That all changed in January though.

In January I went to my parents’ home to talk to them. It had become obvious to me that I needed to divorce my husband, and I was already dealing with a lot of depression. (I am still stuck in a failed marriage, but that’s another post altogether. I will say this though: don’t ever judge someone who stays in a messed-up marriage if they have kids. Odds are they’re thinking about someone other than themselves.) As I sat at my parents’ trying to tell them what I was dealing with, my father spent more time paying attention to the tv behind me than listening to what I was saying, and my mother rolled her eyes and acted like she could care less. I didn’t ask for money, even though I really needed some. I didn’t ask them to babysit my kids so that I could get a job and go to work, even though I desperately needed them to. The only thing I asked them for the emotional support I needed to get through all of this.

My mother’s response was, “I don’t want to hear about it! It’s not my problem!”

My father sat there and said nothing.

As I sat there trying so hard not to cry, I wondered what on earth I could have done to deserve that sort of response from them. It wasn’t until later I accepted that they are just terrible parents who never should have had children. Up until that point I believed my father was an innocent bystander who had no idea my mother was abusing me. But after that I realized he had most likely known for years and never cared enough to put a stop to it.

A few days later my mother called me. I had found out some more things my husband had done and reaching out to an old friend was already starting to bite me in the ass. I had reached a point so low that I was having constant anxiety attacks and self-harm hallucinations. I knew it wasn’t going to be a good conversation because she sounded way too upbeat. She asked me how I was, and I told her I was at a low point. She said, “Well maybe you should go outside a freeze for a little bit.” She tried to pass it off as a joke, but I knew it wasn’t. She was being her normal abusive self, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I told her that I didn’t think we should talk to each other anymore and hung up on her.

In May, they tried to use my daughter’s birthday and them purchasing a beef as a way back into my life. They’ve always used money as way back into my life after a fight, and I am sick of it. All it leads to is my mother tearing me down and treating me like shit, and me paying back more than I borrowed in the first place. So, I sent them an email stating in no uncertain terms that I wanted nothing more to do with them ever again. I’m not ashamed to say I dropped more than a few f-bombs on them when I did it. Ever since then every card has been sent back and every phone call has gone unanswered, and it will remain to be that way. I blocked them on social media and try not to share very much personal information on there anymore because I don’t want them to know what’s going on with me. They don’t need to know. After all, my mother did say it wasn’t her problem.

I don’t regret cutting off contact with my parents. I only regret that I wasted so many years trying to have a relationship with them. There are so many better things I could have spent my time doing. It’s sucks to think of how little came out of all that effort.

I know there are a fair number of people who think I should have never written this post and kept all of this to myself. The thing is suffering is silence never did me any good and not having someone who had been through this to talk to only made it harder to deal with. I can hope by talking about it, I can help someone get through their own estrangement.

There are support groups for those of us who are estranged out there. Although it might be more productive to seek counseling, since there are many groups that do not encourage self-reflection and owning the mistakes you may have made. If you know someone who is estranged from their family, the best thing you can do for them is not judge them and accept them as you know them. You don’t know what led to the estrangement. There could have been abuse involved as there was in my case.

I would appreciate the people in my social circle respecting my wishes and not trying to get me to reconcile with my family. My mental health is much better now that they’re not in my life, and I want to keep improving. Having contact with them will only drag me back to the place I was in January, and I don’t want to be that person anymore. I also hope they understand that just because someone is family, doesn’t mean you have to put up with their abuse. Family or not, if someone is toxic, you need to get away from them and stay away from them.

Thank you for reading. Blessed be.

#theaviditywitch #witchtiptuesday #estrangement #estrange #estranged #witch #witchcraft #pagan #wicca #wiccan #metaphysical #newage