[RACEKA]

I'm in therapy working on abuse issues from my mother who is now deceased. I won't see my T until the 2nd. He has told me usually abuse is from generation to generation.

My mom has always been very secretive about her childhood which was not unusual to me because there were a lot of secrets in our house. She has always told me she was raised by her aunt. I never asked questions, due to our abusive relationship.

When my mom died I was going through some paperwork and I found a name change document which my mom had her first and middle name changed when she was 16 yrs old in 1943. At that time I didn't think much of it and I wasn't in therapy.

She was born in 1927 and her birth certificate has her mother & father with the same address and there is a box that's check that the child is legitimate which I assume means the parents are married. It doesn't ask for the mother's married name only the maiden name.

My dad is also deceased and last night I was sorting some photographs which I hadn't yet done and I was feeling strong enough to do this. I came across some old photos of children and on the back it is written these are some of the children from the home. On one of the photos is a picture of a child and someone wrote my Mom's original name on the top. So this tell's me that she grew up in a children's home. There also are no pictures of her growing up until she met my Dad. She did not have any siblings. There are lots of pictures of my Dad and his family.

Here's where I need help. At first I felt very sorry for my Mom. I started to cry for the type of life she must have had. Then I started thinking how she lied to me and told me she was raised by an aunt. My Dad married her when she 20 yrs old and took care of her. She never had to work and he totally spoiled her. She took all her frustrations out on me instead of getting help.

I want to make excuses for her behavior, but I still have to process how I was treated. I feel so mixed up right now. I have such a headache thinking of all of this.

I don't have anyone that would know about her past except maybe an uncle on my Dad's side if my Dad told him anything. I'm going to try that.

I need your comments please. Why would someone back then change their first and middle names?

Thanks.

[Perna]

Okay, if she was born in 1927, that was just before the Great Depression and I bet her parents couldn't keep her because they had no money. She may have been farmed out to an aunt and/or may have spent some time in a home. Lots of kids got given away or put in homes for a year or two until parents or other relatives were well enough off again to reclaim them.

My aunt changed her first name legally in her 50's. She didn't like her birth name. Someone obviously didn't like your mother's name, maybe even your mother although 16 is not a good age when it sounds like people would allow that for your mother so maybe the aunt or whoever was caring for her didn't like the names.

Other people's lives aren't really our "business" even though they're our parents or siblings. It's nice to know stuff but other people can't necessarily tell things well or feel badly about themselves, etc. just like we do. Different generations have a hard time understanding each other because the experiences are so different. No way we can understand the Depression and WWII, etc. as they lived it anymore than our kids can understand the Beatles or Cold War, Nixon, etc.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com...epression.aspx

[Perna]

Don't worry too much about handing down the abuse; you're in therapy, trying to work to prevent that, your mother was not (as they didn't have/believe in it then). I didn't have children partly because I was afraid since I'd learned a lot of my stepmother's angry ways. A lot of abuse is about "control" and I think most controlling people get that way trying to deal with anxiety. I can imagine your mother had a very insecure childhood/life and a lot of her (and my stepmother's abuse) was trying to get something in her life to come out "right" and the way she wanted it to. But abuse can also be because someone else is still being/feeling abused or anxious from higher up and the frustration and anger needs an outlet so a "safe" target is found. It's the old "kick the dog" trickle down and we children were on the bottom and safe to "kick".

Your mother didn't wake up one morning and decided to lie about her past to thwart her daughter :-) The lies and abuse are not about "us" and who we are, they just get tangled up with our youthful experiences of trying to make sense of the world (like abuse of them did theirs). It's very unfortunate but not a lot can be gained from blaming dead people for how we are now.

It is helpful to learn all one can about their lives to get the larger-than-us picture but "if they only hadn't done X I'd be okay" is a fruitless game to play as we can never know we would have been okay with that or how our lives would have played out had they not done X. Lots of knives cut both ways and I've discovered in therapy how much my stepmother's controlling behavior actually helped my unfocused/under achieving self get things done and made me feel safer from outside abuse or fears based on my own inborn, "timid" characteristics (my father's nickname for me before my stepmother even met me was "mouse").

Not just bad things happen alongside abuse, anymore than our symptoms are wholly "bad". We chose the symptoms to help us cope when we were too immature and inexperienced to figure out better ways and coping is always a good thing :-) That the symptoms don't fit us now is why we're in therapy.

[RACEKA]

Thanks Perna. I always like your posts. You made some very good points. You helped me to get grounded. My thinking was all over the place. I guess it's not that big of deal after all.

Thanks for the website. It was helpful also.

[MissCharlotte]

((Raceka))

My MIL grew up in an orphanage. And she was very child-like in many ways and unable to offer her children the kind of love they needed.

I think it is ok to place the blame right where it belongs and get the anger out. However, working through the reasons gives us the understanding of why they didn't take care of us. It doesn't make it feel any better though does it? It just offers an explanation.

Maybe she changed her first and middle names because there were siblings she didn't want to find her? Or others? Maybe her aunt insisted on it? There could be a million reasons.

My T also explained the intergenerational abuse pattern. He said it takes 3 generations, to a healing. So, because we are in therapy our children will not find it hard or unusual or difficult to ask for help and their children will be so much the better for it. We are leaders and pioneers!!!

Peace

A couple years ago my Mother said to me 'I wasn't a bad Mother - was I?' in a hopeful, kinda sad, kinda upset way. I said 'you did the best you could'. It would have only hurt her if I hadn't have said that. And... I guess I believe it. She did the best she could. Don't get me wrong - her best wasn't good enough. I had many years of hell as a child because her best wasn't good enough. But I honestly do believe that she did the best she could with what she had, yeah.

I don't expect my Mother had a terrific time as a child, either. None of that takes anything away from her best with me not being good enough for me. Her doing the best she could doesn't undermine my pain and trauma that are largely a response to her actions. But I do believe that she did the best she could, yeah. I still hate a lot of the things that she did to me. They were wrong, you shouldn't do those things to kids. But I'm part way toward forgiving her. I mean, don't get me wrong, she isn't a person who it is safe to let in emotionally. We never will be emotionally close. But I guess I'm coming to some kind of peace with her. Sad situation all around, yeah.

[ECHOES]

You may be able to contact the Childrens Home and ask about her.

I wonder if the name change was because at that age she was legally allowed to change it and was wanting to create her own identity for herself in some way. Maybe at that age a child is considered not likely to be adopted so she was encouraged to begin thinking of her adult life coming soon after age 16.

Also I'm thinking of the Catholic religion--which it no little about but I know that a friend told me once about adding a Catholic name to her name; I don' t know what it's all about but it comes to mind.

I wonder if she wanted to spare you her experiences of growing up in the Children's Home if they were unpleasant. I would imagine there must be some heart-wrenching grief of being abandoned, wanting a family, feeling different from her school friends, having very little, etc. There must have been no way for her to learn good parenting skills having no parents of her own.

This must be so hard for you to find out these things now, but I think it's very important for you and your healing that you did. Getting all the secrets out is hard but the truth, reality is what it is and can enrich your life with greater understanding of not only the secrets but the reasons for them being secrets. There is so much there to explore.

((( RACEKA )))

[RACEKA]

Thanks everyone.

I wish I would not have found this out. I feel like I'm now excusing her for what she did to me. On the other hand, she should have been more loving after what she went through. I just don't know what to think. I'm just so confused.

Both of these can be true at the SAME time:

She had a crap life and she did the best she could with you

Her best wasn't really good enough and you have trauma etc because of the things she did to you

Sometimes I feel angry (when I focus on the second). Othertimes I feel compassion (when I focus on the first). But both can be true at the same time.

There probably is some synthetic way of uniting them. But I'm tired...

[Mouse_]

((Raceka))

[RACEKA]

That's exactly how I feel, but I don't want to feel any compassion for her.

But if feeling compassion towards her doesn't undermine your understandable hurt...

Then how come?

(I mean really - I think this is important)

Is it that you will feel bad for feeling angry at her? I think your anger would still be understandable (though rage might be harder to sustain, that is true).

How come?

[RACEKA]

This is very confusing for me. I'm trying to learn in therapy that it's ok to feel. I'm learning to identify feelings. In the past I would dissacociate. I'm just starting to learn how the abuse has affected my life. I'm learning it's ok to be angry.

When I think of or look at the picture I have of my Mom at 2yrs old in an orphanage I feel compassion. Then when I think of her as my Mom abusing me I feel hatred.

I am not even done telling my abuse stories in therapy. It's been really hard.

I'm starting to feel it was ok, she didn't know better, and I know that's not right. It's like here she is dead and controlling me again. She probably left those pictures for me to find on purpose.

I'm not ready for forgiveness yet. I know I will get there someday, but not now.

I just have mixed feelings.

[pachyderm]

I am just coming to realize something more clearly that may not go over well on Psych Central: my "abuser" was a person, not a "monster." All the terror that she and others who were incompetent at best caused me, all the many "lost" years of my life, and I can see that she was herself terrified and did not know what she was doing. It makes it much harder for me to comprehend, in some ways. Harder to know how to handle it. But it won't help to deny it.

[(JD)]

(((pachyderm))) Yes, of course abusers are people. Many of them were also abused and only doing what they know as life, unfortunately. Many of them were people that the victims were to love, were born to love, needed to love...

[ECHOES]

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When I think of or look at the picture I have of my Mom at 2yrs old in an orphanage I feel compassion. Then when I think of her as my Mom abusing me I feel hatred.

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That's okay. Both of those feelings are valid and real. Congratulations for being able to differentiate your feelings about those two separate times of her life.

if they are okay.