[Stu54]

Over the last few days I've introduced myself in my initial post ‘An Introduction From The Heart’ and followed that introduction up with my personal story 'The Journey That Took A Lifetime'.

I hope that every reader can grasp the graphic nature and the darkness of my life journey, while also recognizing the light that emerged after many years of therapy. My journey has a positive outcome that I continue to explore to this day.

I'm now propose to post some of my writing, some of my notes that I took to therapy and hopefully provide some background as to therapy and the nature of what was discussed during therapy.

Again, some of it graphic, some of it distressing but it discloses just how open my disclosure was - but also just how open minded my therapist was. And she was amazing, didn't blink, didn't backdown, didn't judge !

I'll start with my Dear Mum & Dad letter, a letter of closure encouraged during therapy:

Dear Mum & Dad,

I write this letter to remind you that I was born mm/dd/yyyy at ........... Hospital (and Mum, I can already hear your derisory comment “I already know that, I was there as well”).

That's where I was born (in the city), therefore didn’t live in 'rural location.1' or '2' so what happened in either place is not in my living memory – that was all in the past, before I was born, all beyond my comprehension.

The same applies to 'the accident' that happened to my sibling before I was born -but an accident you've relived so many times that it’s almost assumed that I was there when it happened.

I wasn’t, but it certainly impacted on my birth and on what occurred thereafter.

I was still an infant when Dad’s good mate was died in unusual circumstances, so obviously don’t recall the incident but again that also affected the family, it’s collective memory and what happened thereafter.

I’m not asking you to forget what were seriously impactful events in your life but what was I supposed to do ?

No wonder another of Dad's mates took me under his wing during that short period of time spent as a family in 'rural location.3'. He surely recognized that I was being suffocated under the collective weight of memories of a time before my birth – memories that later went on to include the death of Dad's mate.

I wasn't there - and I wasn't responsible for any of it !

My childhood was interrupted after my 8th birthday when another sibling was born.

Instead of ‘growing up’ I was then tasked with babysitting 'her' as soon as it was possible for me to do so. And from that point on my ‘growth’ was curtailed by the insatiable demands from her - a girl in a sea of boys.

The ‘little sister’ that not only usurped me for your love & affection - but also received Dad’s love and affection – love and affection that I continued to crave, but never felt that I ever received.

I would be interested to learn how my personality, my behavior, my attitude started to change from that time - from a child trying to be comfortable in his skin to a child increasingly uncomfortable in that same skin for ever more.

I resent the fact that I have always had to compete for your attention.

I resent the fact that my older sibling was always allowed to speak for me or otherwise allowed to overshadow me. Even Dad, in a note sent to the then Principal of a new school, appeared to recognize that I was being overshadowed - but did nothing more about it.

Anyway, by then it was too late, by then I was completely overshadowed by it all.

I have always felt disempowered by my family. Talked over, over-shadowed or undermined and (for as long as I can remember) I’ve always felt inadequate and insecure otherwise besieged and defensive.

We were quite isolated as a family growing up in 'rural location.4'.

Mum had her outlets in various women's clubs & associations and she appeared to enjoy her involvement - and Dad, he had his work, and alcohol.

Dad took a passing interest in the a couple of sporting clubs as he supported my younger & older siblings - but was otherwise not encouraging or sometimes quite disparaging towards me and my efforts.

Our family home was an intimidating place for the faint hearted, both Dad and Mum controlling who came into the house.

The children of their friends became 'our friends' out of necessity - 'they came with the tick of approval.

Successful residents were dismissed as ‘up themselves’ - or 'just lucky’ or ‘new money' that will eventually get their just deserts and it became obvious that any resident 'below their standard' wouldn't get a look in - but members of the rural community certainly would. and did.

We were never encouraged to be ‘better’ than Mum & Dad – we were always reminded not to get 'too big for our boots’ and we were kept in place by you living by the adage ‘hold them back, don't let them get ahead of themselves'.

New experiences, new people or different ideas were discouraged. Dad was an intelligent man but he appeared to stop learning from about age 40. He tried to ‘lockout’ all new influences like “anti-authority media messages” and other potential influence from TV.

You name it, anything that was different to the backwaters of rural areas was 'not good', but it was 'bad'. The consistent mantra was “rural people are good”, “metropolitan or city people are bad” and the constant tug was “come back home, come back" at every opportunity, or keep 'the family' together was your mantra - and it persisted .

I remember:

the joy of waking up to 'a new dog' the first morning Dad brought him home
the pain and intimidation of receiving ‘the strap’ from an early age, for the slightest of transgressions or going to the town carnival, and a friend staying over. I remember waking up, quite distressed in the middle of the night and him, having heard me in my ‘nightmare’, verbally soothing me before inviting me to share his bed for comfort.

Or crawling into bed on a Sunday morning with both of you before my younger sibling was born. I would be in the middle but ‘naturally’ chose Mum to cuddle up on (+ but I get it now with my boys + grandies) –as much as boys instinctively want to cuddle Mum I also understand that men also turn their ‘boys’ (children) away as soon as they become uncomfortable with their proximity.

The fact that neither of you could talk ‘sex education’ or ‘sexuality’ resulted in denial from the both of you as you began to talk in riddles, lies or half-truths.

Dad, I’m now well aware of your philandering habits before you met Mum and a modicum of honesty would have made a lot of difference in my understanding of you. You physically intimidated me until I was continuously afraid of standing up to you and how you could do that to a very scared, confused little boy is beyond me.

And Mum, how could you simply stand by and leave me so scared, so frightened and so intimidated by what was happening to me, that's also beyond me.

And the arguments, the domestic arguments that raged into the night. Lying in bed and listening to your voices reverberating through-out the house. Your voices raised in anger - shouting and yelling over the top of each other. The sound of objects thrown, the thumping of fists on tables, the slamming of the back door, the car door slamming shut before the car roars down the driveway and up the street – then the silence.

And us, simply left laying in our beds, me barely able to breathe.

We were raised ‘do as I say, not as I do’, and there was minimal or no preparation in life or life skills, or people skills, no talk of ‘life experience’ to build knowledge – it was life in a cocoon.

Mum never lived outside rural areas, and Dad only moved to the city for a short while - before escaping back to rural areas.

There was no acknowledgement or transitional experience for any of us – it was 'sink or swim' and we all suffered through it, and because of it – yet we were all expected to return to ‘our Centre of the Universe’ at every opportunity.

We were always between a rock and a hard place – and I think that I struggled the most due to my cruelled confidence.

And the unspoken, unhealthy monetary focus.

Dad, how could you honestly profit by selling all of us 'your product' at retail price - no discount for us. That was something that only occurred to me in the last 5 or so years. How could you profit from money we all paid (and lost) in commission over the first 5 years of 'the product'.

Mum, how could you possibly ‘ask’ me to pay for the limited time that I returned to 'the family home' for a short, two week period. I was flabbergasted, paid up but I know we had words. You ‘strategically’ placed the paper money in the (slumbering) open fire to make some sort of point - what point ? That ‘money’ wasn’t important to you – of course it was, otherwise you wouldn’t have behaved as you did in the first place.

But you ‘checkmated’ me once more !

And the frustrations that I have just felt at the hypocrisy addressed in those last two recollections has left me simply palpable !

Your loving Son, Stu

[NovaBlaze]

I found it really interesting reading your very personal, intense and detailed letter to your parents, @Stu54. Parts of it resonated with me, and I could feel how raw this must have made you feel as you wrote it.

I did a similar letter to my father shortly after he passed away. I re-read it some months after, and destroyed it. This was mainly because I didn’t want my son or daughter to ever come across it and have it shatter their memories of their Grandad, who they adored. As an aside , I often wondered if the effort he put into his relationship with his grandchildren was an effort to make up for the failure in our relationship.

Does the sharing of this letter with others help you in your own healing process?

I find, as I get older, that I get more forgiving. There were so many things wrong with the relationship between myself and my parents. In many respects, I was so much luckier than others have been; there was no physical abuse of me. I think I understood that my parents were just never equipped to be parents, and that if they were they starting out in their relationship in today’s world then they probably would never have become parents. They did what was expected of them at the time; got married, raised a family. In reality, neither of those things should have happened. I understood that my Mum struggled to be a parent. I think that understanding helped the two of us reconcile long after I had left home.

My last six months with my father were spent with him venting a lot of anger and hatred. His last words to me were spoken in anger (he was still of sound mind at this stage, it was just his body that had reached the end of the road). I pray to God I never allow my relationship with my own children (adults themselves now) to end that way.

After all this though, I wish I could have one more attempt to have a rational conversation with him. I wish he could have acknowledged who I had become, and what I had achieved, and genuinely have been happy for me. However, the reality is I just feel incredibly sorry for him now. He passed away with hatred in his heart. When I pass, I will pass with love in my heart, and that heals me.

Jeff.

[Stu54]

Hi Jeff, thank you for your kind words of understanding, you raise some interesting points in your message.

I started my journey of recovery in mid-2017 and have certainly made big inroads to improving my relationships with our grandies – as well as our adult sons.

My relationship with my eldest was always quite balanced – less so with my youngest but I saw so much of ‘me’ in him that I wanted to change, and he resisted! It’s much better now that I’ve shared some of my childhood challenges with them, shared some of my journey in therapy as well.

It took me far too long ‘to see my father in me’ whereas I quite readily ‘saw my father in my siblings’ – which was interesting !

Writing my letter was extremely difficult, very challenging but certainly therapeutic in the end. I wrote it at the behest of my therapist and it certainly helped my recovery – but I still get quite frustrated and stress when I revisit it - which suggests that the long road to full recovery remains incomplete. But yes, sharing the letter then, and again now, is part of the healing process.

When asked, I can truthfully answer that I feel quite ambivalent towards my parents now. They didn’t understand what affect they had on me, to ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ was the adage Dad lived by.

And Mum, my traumatic, inconsistent early experiences with her influenced my inability to find comfort or develop a secure sense of trust with either of my parents during my childhood.

My relationship with both of my parents was very challenging, me ending up with a disorganized (fearful-avoidant) attachment style as a dysfunctional pattern of attachment where I struggled with both wanting closeness - and fearing it. I desperately wanted to be close to my Mother but she was more focused on her needs, much less focused on mine.

As to my Father, I desperately wanted him to approve of me so I compromised myself on every level trying to gain that approval – and which I never got. If you can relate to a trauma bond, then that was my dependency contributing to a sense of being ‘trapped’.

I never got to make peace with either of them during their living years - but they never would’ve listened to me anyway !

Reading your message has been quite profound.

You, and I, appear to have found some peace in our hearts for those that wronged us at our most impressionable age.

As for me, I probably wouldn’t have it any other way except to note that I wish that I had understood the dysfunctional influences and resultant dysfunctional behavior well before I did - and hopefully would have done something about it earlier than I did !

Kind Regards
Stu