Its been years between contact with some of my relatives. Some of them over the years have contacted me out of curiosity and sometimes genuine missing me. The way I have dealt with it is if they are taking the time to locate me and call or write then I also take the time to be back in their lives BUT I also make sure they know I don't blame them for the abuse situations that they did not do that is the perpetrators fault not thiers But I also don't hide the fact that I still experience problems from the abuse and am still not going to retract or hide what happened. This comes about very naturally when they first ask how are you and what have you been doing - my answer is flat out I have good days and I have bad days, Im still in therapy and taking various classes like parenting, anger management and depression classes and my support gorups when needed and of course learning how to take care of the dissociative Identity Disorder and doing that is a 24/7 job in itself with artwork journaling, classes and therapy. If they are contacting me for curiosity sake that answers all their questions and I never hear from them again. If they are calling for genuine missing and loving and accepting me they stay in contact and we work on learning about each other again. Laura Davis's website and book "I thought we'd never speak again" comes in very handy for my mom and a couple other relatives and I forming a new relationship that is one where we aren't hiding what happened but are looking more at having a better relationship then what we had before my disclosure of the abuse.
|