Category: Recent History

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So Not Normal

It would be funny, if it were not so sad, to reflect on the fact that my siblings have — through their actions, as well as their inaction — proven me to be right about all this shit.  Inadvertently, I’m sure, but they have.

If you think about what might have happened instead, in a normal, healthy, functional family, it’s obvious.

Just for starters, take how this all started — or rather, the crisis that precipitated me figuring out what was really going on in this dysfunctional collection of siblings:

Upon finding out that I was upset about the disrespectful way Susan acted towards me when my/our dad died — specifically, her ignoring my reasonable request that, if she and the hospice nurse were going to continue their casual, shop-talk, LAUGHING conversation, could they please do it in a room other than the one with his still-warm body shoved in the corner? — well, the normal thing to do at that point would have been for Susan to apologize — and, in the event that she resisted doing so, for my siblings, especially Joe, to make sure that happened.

The hospice nurse did apologize.  She wrote me a sincere, heartfelt card.  This is the appropriate level of contact for someone who is virtually a stranger.  It’s simple, basic politeness.

Susan also wrote me a card.  That in itself is telling.  She didn’t talk to me the next day, nor did Joe (they yelled AT me, but they sure as hell didn’t talk, let alone LISTEN).  Nor did they call me later.  There were emails between Joe and me (and probably shared beyond that, without my knowledge, but that’s just par-for-the-course disrespect for me, hardly worth mentioning) — but as for Susan and me, we’ve actually never talked about it.

I assume that is because it would be far harder to avoid apologizing in an actual conversation than in a very carefully written piece of bullshit that attempted to pretend that she didn’t know how upset I was, and to share the blame for the incident equally, claiming that I didn’t know how upset SHE was.

Well, no, I didn’t.  That’s because 1) she had only known him a few years, as opposed to her whole entire life; and 2) SHE WAS LAUGHING.

The next abnormal thing that would not have happened in a normal family was everyone blaming me for being upset about it.  Because what she did was SO FUCKING EGREGIOUSLY AWFUL THOUGHTLESS RUDE BEHAVIOR that it’s kind of insane that anyone can say that Susan’s behavior was fine, and mine was not:  for politely asking her to leave the room, which she and Joe graciously agreed that night to “overlook”, bless them — and for the apparently truly unforgivable sin of bringing it up the next day, just to Joe — not knowing that Susan was around the corner, and came into the room like a screaming banshee.

This isn’t even taking into account that she was clearly not invited to be part of that conversation, and she should have not have been eavesdropping, nor should she have butted in, even if she overheard accidentally.  The adult, respectful thing to do would have been to go away, where she could not overhear, and let Joe and me talk.

Or just possibly, apologize for eavesdropping, acknowledge that I was clearly still upset by her behavior the night before, apologize for that, and then either go away, or join the conversation if invited to do so.

Or for Joe to tell her to please leave the room, or for him to drag me and our conversation outside or elsewhere in order to have some privacy, or… the point is made, the possibilities are numerous.  And none of them happened.

Because it was ME confronting JOE — like we were equals, can you imagine the NERVE! — it became okay, probably imperative, for her to attack me for it.  Screaming inches from my face, just hours after my father died.  This was not only allowed to happen, in front of my brother — he joined in.  Until, with my husband, I finally fled the house.

To my knowledge, no one has ever held her or them accountable for that bullshit behavior, either.

The next normal thing that should have happened is that when my oldest brother tried to talk to me about what happened, he should probably have figured out that he was getting an earful of only one side of the story — because he started telling me how I should have approached that next-day discussion (I should have approached Joe on his own) and I remember yelling at him THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DID.

But beyond that, what I realized later was that he was only “listening” to me because he was desperately looking for a way to interpret my actions in a way that would allow him to BLAME ME, in order to avoid holding Susan responsible, and by extension, Joe.

And this was really, really difficult, because my actions were in fact not the issue, and again, it’s pretty insane for anyone to try to justify what Susan did.  Hell, the best even Susan herself could do was to imply the blame should be equal.

But, this is classic behavior for a dysfunctional family with a handy scapegoat.  Find a way to blame them, and it doesn’t actually have to make sense.

Another normal thing that might have happened, but didn’t:  the secondary black sheep brother once told me that he too was upset and annoyed at Susan’s behavior that night, and he was almost ready to speak up himself, but I beat him to the punch.  He could have spoken up as well, and backed me up, that night.  That would have been normal.

But he decided to stay silent, at that point and apparently forever after, rather than voice his agreement with me.  In all the ugly aftermath, he just let me take the fall.

Such is the very strong taboo against sticking up for me, in this collection of wounded, dysfunctional siblings.

More normal family behavior:  if, at any time over the past dozen years, any sibling, or even in-law, had felt sorrow over my estrangement from them, they could have expressed it as such.  They could have called or emailed or texted or sent a card that said they missed me.  That they were sorry about all that had happened when Dad died.  That they would like to talk, or even more appropriately, listen.  That they were willing to start over, as adults, and try to build a new relationship, on whatever terms I could accept.

Needless to say, the calls, texts, emails, and cards that I did receive were not of this nature.

I ended up blocking just about every mode of communication I could — which of course was seen not as a failure of theirs to meet my relatively basic conditions to have a relationship with them, not as their refusal to treat me at least as well as they would treat a stranger — but as proof that I was unreasonably rejecting them.

As has been stated before, I was not rejecting them — I was rejecting the way they treated me.  I was always willing to have a relationship with anyone who had the guts to reach out in an adult, respectful, honest way.

No one ever tried that.  Maybe once or twice, early on, but the one person I can think of who did, probably got pressured into quitting that radical behavior in order to be allowed to fully join the club.

They will claim, as an excuse, that I “told them not to contact me”.  Which is, technically, true, but only as far as it goes.  What is more accurate — the whole truth — is that I told them not to contact me unless they were willing to treat me differently.  With respect, as an equal.  And clearly, they aren’t.

Another abnormal thing that happened was that my sister FORBADE ANYONE IN HER FAMILY TO DO THAT, and possibly that prohibition extends to all the siblings.  I realized that when her husband tried to meet with us once, but he said it would have to be in another city because he couldn’t fly to our location, and I realized this was because my sister must have actively forbidden any contact with us.

I appreciated his willingness to try to resolve things between us, but unfortunately I believe he was hoping to work with the reasonable person, because of the impossibility of working with the unreasonable one.

The last abnormal thing I’m going to write about — far from the last one that’s happened — is that when the news of my diagnosis of terminal, stage IV triple negative breast cancer reached them, it might well have caused some people to re-evaluate their actions and inaction and reactions, what they’ve done, how they think about me, what they blame me for, and maybe try to make amends before it’s too late — but that’s clearly not the case, either.

Word has gotten back to me that my sister’s response to the news of my TERMINAL CANCER DIAGNOSIS was something like,

“That’s HER problem.  She ruined my senior year.”

OF HIGH SCHOOL.

Pathologically, not to say pathetically, abnormal.

And I hate to break it to you, sis, but you’re wrong.

It’s Mom & Dad who did that — not me.  They failed you — not me.

Hope you’re happy having lived your whole life taking all that out on me.

I know I’m not.  And I know that doesn’t bother you in the slightest, good Catholic girl though you are, or pretend to be.

I didn’t deserve that.  None of us deserved the trauma and dysfunction we got, but boy, you really put your heart into punishing me for it all.

If only she had gotten some therapy after that stressful year…
If only she had been able to vent her rage and frustration appropriately…

But the damage is done.

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Weddings and Funerals

“Weddings and funerals.”  Those are the two important events in families, according to both my mother and my sister.

My sister referred to them when she replied with a histrionic email to the prospect that my husband and I were not coming to the sibling reunion one year.  She took it as a permanent abdication, which it wasn’t at that point, but that was probably wishful thinking on her part.  And she wrote, “What are we supposed to do about weddings?  And funerals?”

My mother referred to them when she was staying with me in Texas, when Joe & Susan were getting married.  My then-boyfriend, now-husband of 27+ years had to ask me why, whenever I went somewhere with my mother, I came back crying.

It was because of the awful, hurtful things she kept saying to me.  One was, “I like Susan better than you, because she’s nicer to me.”

Naturally this has been excused by my siblings — as “that’s probably when she was starting to get sick.”  No, she was already sick for a long time before that.  What kind of a mother says that to her actual daughter, about a woman who was practically a stranger?

But two other things she said during that visit were so revealing.

One was when he picked her up from church, and then had a talk with her about her horrible, destructive behavior towards me.  She offered a few excuses, one of which was something like, “Well it’s only [when we’re all together] at things like weddings and funerals.”

Clearly, these were the most important events in families.

At another point she grumbled to me that “if she never set foot in Texas again, it would be too soon.”  I said, “What about if [BF] and I get married?”

She replied that she wouldn’t come to my wedding.

And that right there shows that I was never “in the club”, never really a part of my mother’s family, and where that idea came from.

Weddings and funerals are IMPORTANT FAMILY EVENTS — yet here she was saying that she would not come to mine.

It’s shorthand for saying, “YOU DON’T COUNT IN MY FAMILY.”

Her attitude towards me — and statements like this one giving it away — gave my siblings Mom’s permission, maybe even Mom’s encouragement to treat me as a second-class member of the group.
—————————————–

Well, I have been told by my oncologist that — while no one knows for sure, of course — her best guess is that I now have one “good” year left, before I get really sick and die.

One funeral, coming up fast.  Way too fast.

And will any of my siblings do anything about that?  I mean, it should be IMPORTANT, right?

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Of course not.  It’s ME, so it’s totally NOT important.  In fact I am pretty certain it will be a relief to at least half of them.

They will say that I rejected them, of course.  Which is not true:  I rejected their TREATMENT OF ME.  I have always said that I would be happy to have a respectful, two-way relationship with any of them.

“Set the boundaries… and leave it to the toxic person to decide which side of that boundary they want to stand on… If the relationship ends, it’s not because of your lack of love or loyalty, but because the toxic person chose not to treat you in the way you deserve. Their choice.

“…The choice to trample over what you need means they are choosing not to be with you.  It doesn’t mean you are excluding them from your life.”

That’s exactly what I did, clearly stated even in the very first thing I ever wrote to them about this whole fucked-up mess.

And they made their choice:  not to treat me in the way I deserve, as an actual member of the family, on an equal footing with any of them.

I asked my husband what he thought would happen now if I had not broken up with my siblings.  He imagined that my BIL would probably cajole my sister into visiting me ONCE, in order to forestall any guilt on her part.  She would drag the two brothers of The Triumvirate with her, for backup.  The three of them would do their familial duty as perfunctorily as possible, probably for a weekend.  And that would be that.

I think he’s pretty spot on.  And if he is, clearly I’m not missing much in actuality.

But oh, how my heart aches for the reality of a healthy, unbroken, loving family that could, that should have been.

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Yes I have cancer. No the outlook is not good. Here’s what I want.

Yesterday I got a text from my oldest brother.  (The first text ever, actually.)

At first I assumed someone had died, and he was letting me know.  Turns out, they found out that I have metastatic triple negative breast cancer.  I’ve chosen to keep it from them for almost two years, for several reasons, and it turns out that was the right decision.

He said the way they found out was “almost totally random” but it was actually pretty deliberate.  Brother #3’s second wife, whom I have never met, apparently did a search for me and found me on Facebook, where there was a public post I wrote about it last summer, when a few high school people that I wasn’t FB friends with were pinging me, because I guess the news had gotten around among them.  I got a few really nice messages from some of them, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with each of them, so I just wrote a public post.  I assumed no relatives were looking for me any more (and I was right:  my actual siblings aren’t looking for me.  A stranger was, because a complete stranger cares more about finding out about me than any of my siblings).

I interpret what my brother meant by “random” here is something like, “we weren’t expecting her to find out something like this, where we might have to do something.”

His use of “random” to describe this could also suggest that the wife “doesn’t know the history”, to quote that long-ago revealing statement from Brother #2.  In other words, she doesn’t know that I’m not supposed to be treated like an actual family member.  I wonder just how that unwritten rule is going to be explained to her.

My brother started off using a very old childhood nickname, which was oddly touching.  I now wonder if that was a deliberate way to fake closeness or induce me to be more open, as he hasn’t used that name for me literally in decades.  And the rest of the conversation was fairly formal.

And with a little hindsight, I now see that it was indeed, as could have been predicted, all about him/them.

He didn’t ask how I was.  He didn’t ask what he could do for me, or us.  He didn’t even ask exactly what I have, or what my prognosis might be (although that information might have come from the FB post, but he said he hasn’t been on FB for years, so I doubt it).

He did ask, oddly, if he should ask what last name I’m using now.  I still don’t know what that was about. **  Do they think that my husband of 26 years would now leave me in sickness?  In fact he has been fantastically loving & supportive through everything.

(He reacted to this contact with far more anger than I had, over what they’ve done to me, which is a sign of love:

“Look, just so we’re clear,” he says, “if somebody asks something or says something about my sister that I don’t like, understand that I will break a bottle over their head.” Few words express love clearer than these.)

** ETA:  I probably figured it out.  Due to issues with FB Biz Manager, I had to close down my original account and start a new one, around April 2021. I christened that one “Morgan McDonald” so I could keep the two accounts straight, and then over a few months, I migrated friends from one to the other.  Once I had everyone transferred, I deleted the old one, and changed the name on the new one back to my real name.

BUT — if they are aware of “Morgan McDonald”, that means they’ve been spying on my account for at least a year and a half, and probably longer than that.  Way to “respect my privacy”, assholes.

If this is what they are doing, I’m pretty sure they spin it to themselves and each other  as, “We’re just being good people, looking out for our pathetic sister.”

They just canNOT stand that someone utterly rejects them, and especially someone they see as “lesser”.

Knowing that I’ve been dealing with this for almost 2 years, my brother made an offer for me to come and stay with them if I wanted different medical care.  Lymphoma was mentioned as a local specialty — which is not what I have.

What I have is quite aggressive:  it’s at the far end of the charts on every measure there is.  In fact, I initially had 2 kinds of carcinoma:  both HER2+ and triple negative.  I’m on my seventh therapy in total, including radiation and surgery:  I had chemo & immunotherapy for the HER2+, which looks like it did not metastasize; and chemo, immunotherapy and now another chemo for the triple negative, which did.

If I hadn’t been getting stellar medical care for the past 2 years, I’d probably be dead already.  As it is, a Residual Cancer Burden of III after surgery predicts:

    • 10-year recurrence/death rate = 40% for HER2+ BC
    • 10-year recurrence/death rate = 75% for triple-negative BC

And I’ve already had the recurrence.

Not great odds.

Anyway, it’s clear to me in retrospect that the offer wasn’t meant to be actually useful.  Once I explained that I am not in want of adequate medical care, the tone of the convo became that of someone who wants to end it as soon as possible.  I believe this texting was his way of “doing something” so he can stave off guilt and feel like he did something.  And he can report that back to everyone else, who can then say, “well she says she doesn’t need any help” and that’s that.  Go back to uselessly praying to that same god who GAVE me the cancer, if that’s what you believe in.  And keep pretending to yourself that you care about me, all the while maintaining your long-held beliefs & anger at me for things that were not my fault.

I’m willing to bet a decent amount of money that a few of them are actually glad I might soon be gone for good.

In other words, even though now they know I have aggressive cancer and am likely to die far too soon — I don’t believe they will change a thing.

Because that’s far more comfortable.  It’s easier.  And it’s especially a better option than facing up to the possibility that MY FAMILY gave me this cancer.

I can hear the eye-rolling from here, but it’s a scientific fact:  “The more Adverse Childhood Events a person experiences (such as …neglect…[or] Having a family member attempt or die by suicide [or] …Growing up in a family with mental health… problems), the more likely they are to suffer from cancer…”

From the University of Chicago:

“Local chemical signals released by fat cells in the mammary gland appear to provide a crucial link between exposure to unrelenting social stressors early in life and to the subsequent development of breast cancer”

There’s not much else that can explain how I went from a healthy 52YO who routinely got mistaken for being 10 years younger, to having a super-aggressive, treatment-resistant form of breast cancer.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink to excess, I’m not overweight, I eat relatively healthily.  I have no other health issues.  I got all my preventive care checkups. I have no genetic markers.

Early studies explored ways that children who faced adversity such as… neglect at home were at higher lifelong risk for a range of problems including cancer…
…chronic, toxic stress in childhood can affect a person over the course of their life… the trauma of having one or both parents die does impact breast density, risk for breast cancer, and risk for especially aggressive types of breast cancer.

It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that having your mother disappear for a month at a time, twice, during your first year could have a similar effect on an infant as if she had died.

I’ve given up on any possibility that I might get what I actually want (apologies, respect, acceptance, love — in other words, CHANGE) from my siblings.  And now that they know about the cancer, anything they might do will more probably be out of self-preservation from guilt, and not because they love me, miss me, or care about me.

But – in the unlikely event that anyone actually wants to do something useful for me, here’s the only thing I’m asking for now:

I want to know EXACTLY what happened to me.

I want to know what Mom did that night that made Dad pack Mom off to the doctor, and made the doctor immediately pack her off to the hospital for a month, keeping her away from her infant daughter.  I want to know why & what happened the second time she was hospitalized, too.  I want to know about Mom’s medical history, any actual records, and anything known about her mental health, or why she received electroshock therapy.  I want to know everything my sister knows, because I suspect that’s at least part of what made her try to commit suicide that year.  I want to know what they themselves did to me, or didn’t do for me, when they were put in charge of me and the younger boys.  I want to know how long I sat around in wet diapers and had such horrible diaper rash, and why 40 years later the same brother threw at me the words, “WE CHANGED YOUR DIAPERS”.

I’ve been trying to get any information I could for years.  I had to trick them into giving me a good chunk of what I do know, but they put a one-hour time limit on that one discussion session, and I’m certain there’s more.  And I have a right to my own goddamned history.

Here are the terms I will offer:  any information I get will be kept confidential.  I won’t blog about it, and I won’t rat out anyone who tells me anything to the rest of the family.  I was able to keep knowledge of my cancer from everyone for 2 years, and they only found out by accident — so that proves I can keep that promise.

My time is limited, and there’s a decent chance it’s because of what happened to me as an infant and a child.  Now that they know about the cancer, I’m asking – one last time – for the one thing I can only get from them.  My sister is likely to get what she’s always wanted:  a world without my existence in it.  So the way I see it, it’s only fair that I also get what I want before I’m dead:  and I want the truth.

I hope someone finally has the courage to give me at least part of what I want.  I know no one has the courage to love me in spite of dictates from my sister, and probably Susan — but I have a little hope that someone will have the guts & the decency to finally give me information.

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Familiar Ground

The impeachment hearings continue the theme of politics reminding me of my FOO situation.

Calling out what is clearly bad behavior on the part of a Member of the Club results in yelling, lies, spin, misdirection — anything to defend the indefensible.  To shift blame from the person who did the bad behavior to the person who called it out, because that’s much easier and more comfortable than confronting the real problem.

Nothing makes that more clear than the R’s rabid desire to out the whistleblower.  In their minds, THAT is where the problem occurred. No one’s sorry for anything wrong that was done.  They’re just mad that it got caught, that someone had the NERVE to pass negative judgement on the Charismatic Leader.

And, it’s clear that the conservatives won’t listen to any kind of reason or logic.  They won’t be swayed by facts or evidence.  They will persist in believing that “their guy” is being persecuted, rather than simply being held to account. They will yell and wave their stupid signs and perform all kinds of hysterical theatrics, rather than admit one simple thing:  THEY WERE WRONG.

All that is pretty damned familiar.

And whatever is driving the GOP to this extreme, toxic behavior clearly runs deep.  I assume it’s kompromat of some kind, but is it money laundering? human trafficking?  compromising sex?  Who knows?

In the case of my FOO, I think it’s a refusal to face the reality that the excuses and rationales they were taught for 30 years, and have clung to for 20 more, aren’t actually true.

“If only SHE hadn’t been born, none of this would have happened.”

That phrase, or something close to it, sums up how I think my sister in particular feels about me, and to a lesser extent the other two members of The Triumvirate.  “If only you hadn’t been born!”

It is where the thinking stops, and the anger takes over.

That phrase allows you to be mad as shit at the reality you are living, but it makes a serious error.  It allows you to throw all your (justified) anger and emotions and psychological garbage about what is going on, onto an easy target (not justified).  It’s a way to cope, but not a fair or healthy one.

But when all you know is how to blame — and the idea of blaming Mom, or god, or Dad (on whom they were suddenly entirely dependent, after having scapegoated him for so long) is too terrifying to contemplate — well, you gotta put it SOMEWHERE.  And a baby is a pretty safe place to put it, from your own selfish viewpoint.  No repercussions to yourself.

There might be some for the baby.

Unfortunately, the damage that is done by blame-shifting doesn’t come back to the blamer.  The blamer will just shift THAT blame, too.

And now you don’t have to think about how Mom was mentally ill.

(Actually I don’t understand the resistance to this idea AT ALL.  Mom being mentally ill explains a shit-ton of stuff that otherwise you have to jump through a lot of hoops to explain. To me, the idea is a relief, that finally everything makes sense.  It’s truly never made any sense to me to deny it.)

The reality is different.  Even if I had not been born, “it” still would have happened, in some form or fashion. Perhaps there would not have been a Divorce.  But damage would still have been done, just like Trump would have been impeached sooner or later — because our mother was not a healthy person, and toxic people keep on doing toxic things.

I spent the first few years of my life watching my parents yell at each other. It’s one of my earliest memories of them together.  Would it have been preferable to them if Dad and Mom had stayed together, angry and unhappy, forcing my two youngest brothers to grow up in that environment?

Because that’s some of the damage that happened, until The Divorce.

Of course, by that time, the Triumvirate were all escaping out of the house to go to college, so what happened at home wasn’t of too much concern to them.  And that’s fair enough.  What college freshman should be involved in their parents’ marital problems?

But there were still a couple of little kids left in that toxic environment.

So was it better in their eyes for there not to be a Divorce — as long as they didn’t have to live in the mess themselves? Because Catholicism, presumably.  And this is the major reason I gave up on Catholicism:  because it always puts ideology ahead of actual people.  I have only ever met exactly one Catholic priest in my life who put people ahead of ideology, and I’ve met an awful lot more who didn’t.

The Church brainwashed our mother to do the same thing:  if she hadn’t been Catholic, she would probably have had the medically recommended hysterectomy after her fourth child, and presumably my sister would have her wish:  a family that doesn’t include me.

Well, she more-or-less has that now, and I hope she is happy about it, and also that she chokes on it.

Mom chose ideology over what was better for her and her family.  And it eventually helped to destroy that family. My sister has chosen to cling to her grudge against my existence — rather than as an adult, re-examine the situation, work through the unresolved trauma and pain, and recognize the lies for what they were:  a way to scapegoat me, and protect Mom, and later Susan, from having to take responsibility for their own actions.

I wonder if she ever wonders how it feels to have someone begrudge the fact that you even exist.

How it feels to be deliberately not included in your own family.

What does all that have to do with the impeachment? Not a lot, necessarily, other than the shape of the current situation.

Oh, and that the continued and unwavering support for Trump & the GOP that we see in the polls tells me that about 1/3 of our population has some degree of mental health issues or unresolved trauma.

Anyone who can look at the mess that is Trump & the GOP and think, “That’s fine, that’s normal” and cheer them on — rather than recoiling at the unhealthy performances being put on in order to protect a man who is clearly a narcissist — has some issues of their own.

But mainly, it’s the sight of hysterical, toxic behavior to cover up and excuse previous toxic behavior.  And no hope of anyone ever changing.

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Parallels

Dear Polly,

I have a very severe allergy to mushrooms. I carry an EpiPen, and I have been hospitalized multiple times because of exposure to this food. One time, I began convulsing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My husband politely explained this to his parents when we started dating, and I was invited to family meals.

Since then, most meals we have shared at my in-laws’ house have had very limited options for me. Somehow, they manage to find a way to add mushrooms to almost everything. One time, they made a point to make a special plate of mushrooms and pass it around. My mother-in-law said, very rudely, “I would’ve liked to add mushrooms directly to the salad, but SOMEBODY has problems with it!” They even added mushroom powder to the mashed potatoes at one holiday dinner. My mother-in-law claimed it was a new recipe she’d found…

[So, she’s asked them to do something, because it’s a problem for her, and they’ve refused to do anything about it, and it’s clearly all her fault. Check.]

This has caused a huge wedge between my husband’s family and us. We no longer spend holidays with them and rarely speak. They don’t get to see their grandkids, even though they live very close by. His sister stopped talking to us. He has a brother who still reaches out and is kind to us, but he acts as though his parents are just set in their ways and we should forgive them and move on.

My husband supports me 100 percent, and he is very angry and hurt by their actions. But at times I feel terrible that I am the cause of this rift, and I just want a happy family.

HELP!

Disrespected Daughter-in-Law

Dear DDIL,

You’re not the cause of this rift. The cause of this rift is TRULY TERRIBLE HUMAN BEINGS.

Every now and then, a group of people assumes the traits and behaviors of sociopaths. Maybe one person in the group completely and permanently lost their doughnuts several decades prior, and slowly, each member of the group learns that playing along with this singular menace is the only way to survive. Eventually, the members of the group are so utterly confused and gaslit by each other that they enforce the will of the group and nod along with bizarre opinions …

Because these people are confused and weak and angry — and because they’re rendered increasingly more confused, weak, and angry by their exposure to each other — they tend to have less and less contact with those outside the group. And when they do encounter someone who’s not in the fold, they recoil and attack. Anyone who questions the group is attacked with words and actions. Anyone who questions the group is bad, and the group is good.

This rift has nothing to do with you. You could be the purest, most perfect, most lovable human alive, and these resoundingly toxic humans would find a reason to take issue with you. They are unwell, full stop.

But have these humans ever indicated that they’re open to new information …? Have you seen any signs that they’re heartbroken over this turn of events and they want to find a way to mend fences? If not, it’s hard to see why they’d suddenly wake up and look for understanding now.

Even so, I would get a doctor’s letter. I would send the letter. But I might also solicit a letter from a therapist, explaining that no matter what mitigating circumstances they might ascribe to their behavior, they’ve done a lot of damage to their relationship with their son and with you, and a large effort, either individually or as a group, will be necessary to fix that damage.

I guess that, personally, I’d want to be crystal clear with them before I disappeared for good. But honestly, that’s one of my flaws. Even when the writing’s on the wall, I want to explain everything. I want to believe that people can change… and all of the confusion and bewilderment that stands in the way of those connections needs to be cleared away or at least tolerated, even when that takes a lot of hard work and a lot of forgiveness and a lot of deep breathing on everyone’s parts.

Your situation challenges this view. Your situation points to the fact that some people are at once so ignorant and so disordered that they cannot understand or navigate reality without hurting other people in the process.

Sometimes people are just unwell. There’s nothing you can do but pity them and keep your distance. It’s pretty awful when you’re related to them. But these motherfuckers are unrepentant. They’re angry, and they want to punish SOMEONE. God only knows what brought them to this, but your only recourse is to stay the fuck away.

And honestly, I’m sure that once you two are officially given up for dead, they’ll find another easy scapegoat and that member of the family will defect, too. That seems inevitable. That’s just what happens in the Upside Down.

It’s very sad. Mourn it. Go see a therapist and encourage your husband to see one, too. This is a hard thing to accept. It’s going to take time.

But don’t ever be tempted to believe that you’re doing something wrong here. This is not on you. This is their abject madness, and it’s up to them to grapple with it. It has nothing to do with you. Let go of this and move forward.

We don’t all get the families we want… If they were abusive or violent, it would be simpler. They’re the worst because they still get to think that this [family rift] is just your little hang-up. They’re the worst because they think it’s completely normal to rage at you for [calling out their bad behavior] … They’re the worst because they get to walk around acting like they’re regular, good-hearted people most of the time…

…put them behind you and don’t look back.

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Journaling

Some more evidence that this blog was the right thing to do.

“It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action.”

Labeling emotions and acknowledging traumatic events — both natural outcomes of journaling — have a known positive effect on people, Dr. Pennebaker said, and are often incorporated into traditional talk therapy.

At the same time, writing is fundamentally an organizational system. Keeping a journal, according to Dr. Pennebaker, helps to organize an event in our mind, and make sense of trauma. When we do that, our working memory improves, since our brains are freed from the enormously taxing job of processing that experience, and we sleep better.

This in turn improves our immune system and our moods; we go to work feeling refreshed, perform better and socialize more. “There’s no single magic moment,” Dr. Pennebaker said. “But we know it works.”

On the other hand, Dr. Pennebaker’s research has found that journaling about traumatic or disturbing experiences specifically has the most measurable impact on our overall well-being.

In his landmark 1988 study, outlined in his book “Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion,” students were randomly assigned to write about either traumatic experiences or superficial topics for four days in a row. Six weeks after the writing sessions, those that had delved into traumatic experiences reported more positive moods and fewer illnesses than those writing about everyday experiences.

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Rule of Law vs Charismatic Leader

Politics continues to reveal to me interesting things about people in general, but especially about my FOO.

For about the past decade, I’ve been truly mystified by the number of people who really, really WANT to run their lives and make decisions according to something other than facts and data.

Religion, astrology, tarot cards and palm reading, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop thing. Mysticism. The Power of the Ancients. The Secret.

It’s all the same snake oil, and it’s all bullshit, but it keeps selling.

This post by Teri Kanefield discusses the difference between those who want Rule of Law (a rational system) in our country, and those who want a Charismatic Leader, and boy does it shed some light on that whole conundrum.

One way to understand U.S. politics is a clash between two kinds of authority:

  • Rule of Law
  • Charismatic Leader

The American right wing wants a charismatic leader…  Most of us want Rule of Law (rational-law model).  The “Rule of Law” and “Charismatic Leader” models are mutually exclusive.  To exist, each must destroy the other.

  • Rule of Law requires facts.
  • Charismatic leader requires myth.

AND

  • The way to undermine the Charismatic Leader is to prove the myth false.
  • The way to kill Rule of Law is to undermine factuality.

The Charismatic Leader needs to undermine facts and law…
(note:  This is the same as the form of abuse known as “gaslighting”.)

If the myth that props him up is shattered, the leader loses support.
(It’s okay if he lies. It’s not okay if the myth is shattered.)

Clearly this was my big sin, as seen by my FOO:  destroying the myth.

Prof. Timothy Snyder explains that in the past, the ones who didn’t want to live under Rule of Law went west to the frontier, where there they could do as they pleased and create myth. In Europe, during the period of empire, they went to the colonies.  Snyder says that our current crisis —liberal democracy in trouble worldwide— resulted from the fact that we ran out of places for them to go.

In my FOO, the timing was such that when the Rule of Law (Dad) showed back up to live at home full-time, the Triumvirate was on the way out the door to go to college anyway.  Thus they were able to preserve their myth of our mother as a rational, loving parent, and our father as the source of all the problems.

One idea underlying liberal democracy is the “social contract,” which forms rule of law. The way to save the Constitution is for an overwhelming majority of people to reaffirm the social contract.

In my case, the obvious social contract that was broken is the one that says a family is a family, no matter what; that these are the people you can always count on.

But another one was also broken, the social contract between a mother and her children:  the cultural idea that a mother is engaged and loving, and sacrifices willingly for her family.

The seduction of believing in myths is that they are glamorous and shiny.

The problem with believing in myths is that sooner or later, they run up against the Real World.

One example of how belief in a “harmless” myth affected my mother, and our family, is that she sincerely believed what she was told in her teens by a fortune teller at some fair:  that she would give up a glamorous “stage career” that she could have had. In my mother’s head, this was a career as a concert pianist.  Instead she became a non-glamorous wife and mother.

(I never heard my mother play one single note on a piano, ever. I have no idea if she was really that good, but I have my doubts.)

I heard this story dozens of times through my childhood.  And plenty of mothers probably have similar stories about “what might have been”.  But with my mother, she never followed it up with anything like, “But I have you, and that’s better than anything else I could have had!” and a hug.

No, my mother’s repeated telling of this story was an expression of how dissatisfied she was with her life choices.

If that’s the choice my mother wished she had made, she had no one but herself to blame for it – or possibly she could have blamed a competing myth, the Catholic Church.

But a career as a concert pianist takes a lot of fucking work and practice and grit, and a certain amount of luck.  It isn’t glamorous except for maybe the 2 hours you’re on the stage. I imagine there are plenty of people who did try to make it as a pianist and failed. It’s not quite the same as the failure of not even trying, but it’s still a failure of the myth.

So what happens when the myth fails to deliver?

The believers look around for someone else to blame.

My mother chose to act the martyr and victim, and shift the blame instead, usually to my dad.

Just one small example of how belief in a harmless, entertaining myth can fuck up a decent reality.

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Family Estrangement

I’ve been coming across lots of pertinent things lately.  These are some interesting notes from this article that a friend sent to me about family estrangement.

“For me, as for most people, it took an exchange so toxic, so far outside the boundaries of what’s acceptable, that something snapped inside me.

“…my only regret is that I didn’t do it earlier. Much, much earlier.

“The cultural narrative around estrangement is that it’s a problem that needs to be solved. We see and feel the supremacy of the genetically connected family in a thousand ways throughout childhood. By the time we’re adults it literally goes without saying…

“For us, estrangement isn’t a problem; it’s a solution to a problem, a response to an otherwise unsolvable dilemma. It’s a last resort when you’ve tried everything else over and over, when you no longer trust the relationship. When — as Ann Landers once wrote — you’re better off without the other person in your life.

“I’ve interviewed more than 50 people who have estranged themselves from family members, and I have yet to meet a single one who regrets it. They regret whatever situation made it necessary. They regret not having a parent/sibling/family member they could come to terms with. They regret that their problems were severe enough to make estrangement look good. But they don’t regret doing it.

“More than three-quarters of the participants in one study felt estrangement had made a positive difference in their lives. One woman I talked to who initiated an estrangement said her main feeling was relief, even liberation. Another told me it was as though she’d lived under a cloak of silence that had suddenly been lifted. A third said, “There really are cases where estrangement is the better course. It’s horrific, it’s sad, it’s tragic, and it’s better than the alternative.”

“It’s also a lot more common than you might think…The most recent research suggests that up to 10 percent of mothers are estranged from at least one adult child…

Fascinating side notes from this paper: some suggestion that the lack of a loving relationship between my mother and me was far outside the norm, and probably caused or at least exacerbated by factors outside my control.

  • the mother–daughter tie has generally been found to be the closest, most enduring, and mutually supportive of all parent–child gender combinations.
  • mothers report being most emotionally close to last-born children.
  • parent–child relations tend to be more stable when both parents are present
  • maternal depression has been shown to interfere with parent–child relationships
  • mothers who have a larger number of children may be more likely to have an estranged child simply because the risk of having a child become estranged is greater as the size of the group increases.

“…and that about 40 percent of people experience family estrangement at some point. Most people, though, fall somewhere less definitive on the estrangement continuum, a term coined by Scharp, one of the few researchers who studies the phenomenon…“I find that people are just more or less estranged.”

Some families talk by phone but never visit. Some email but never talk. Some see each other once or twice a year but keep their relationships superficial. Many sustain long periods of silence punctuated by brief reconciliations.

In my case, what I did was put words to a situation that already existed, and eventually I escalated and formalized the estrangement when they refused to deal with it or even admit it.

I forced them to make a choice, and admit to an unpleasant reality:
Prove to me that I’m really a member of this family. Listen to me and defend me against this unacceptable behavior — the way you defend everyone else who’s really included in this group — or not.

Clearly, they chose not to.

They literally could not do otherwise.  They could not show me respect, love, or support against an in-law’s disrespectful behavior, and then a brother’s.
Not even the level you might extend to a stranger.  To them, I am less worthy of those things than a stranger.

It was far easier to judge me, instead of judging one of their own.
Instead they chose to scapegoat me again, to say it was my fault for putting the choice out there — when it was the actions of others against me that brought it out in the open — and then my fault for no longer accepting my scapegoat role.

What makes my situation different from those described here, though, is that I didn’t choose the estrangement.  I was estranged by them from the very beginning.  Thus the difficulty I had, the pain and the loss I dealt with, in grappling with the fact that I wasn’t a “member of the tribe”, and never had been.

What I am guilty of is wanting a family, wanting my birthright — when that “family” made it clear so many times and so many little ways over so many years, such that when the big thing happened, I was supposed to have known better than to even ask.

“In my experience, estrangement makes people deeply uncomfortable. They wonder what’s wrong with you when you can’t get along with your family. They worry that if you can estrange yourself, maybe their parents/children/siblings could do that to them. Estrangement seems to threaten the primal order of things and opens the door to a lot of questions most of us would rather not think about…

“Imagine for a moment that these people have good reasons” to be estranged, says Scharp.”

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Hindsight

Happy 2019. Do less work on being friends with people who are doing zero work on being good to you.

Captain Awkward

I recently ran across this post online and found it surprisingly validating. While the whole thing has parallels to The Susan Incident, this paragraph really caught my attention:

“You are not overreacting, and FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK [Susan] for this behavior and fuck family members for enabling it by acting like your reactions to bad stuff [are out of line].”

All I could think was, wow, I wish I’d had this advice and the ability to respond like this 6+ years ago. For example, I wish I’d been able to say this:

Hey, I don’t want this to be forever, but until I can trust that this won’t ever happen again, until I trust that y’all understand how serious this is, and until y’all stop treating me like I’m the one doing something wrong, this is how it’s going to be.” 

“Until you get a real apology and whatever else you need to put this behind you, as long as other family members keep pressuring you on her behalf, Keep. Naming. What. She. Did.”

(Well, I kind of did do that, after I found out that Joe & Susan lied about it all to everyone else. It’s just that no one wanted to listen.)

For her: “Susan, do you understand why I am mad? It’s not just for having a conversation. It’s because when I simply asked you to go elsewhere to have it, and it was clear that it was upsetting to me, you refused to do that one thing. It’s ’cause you could have said you were sorry but you didn’t. It’s ’cause you raged at me when I brought it up to Joe. It’s because you both lied about that rage attack to everyone else, and told them it was all my fault, that I picked that fight. It’s because your fauxpology came with a side of blame, like me being pissed off and upset about this is “overreacting”.” 

For other family members: “She stood there laughing and chatting with the hospice nurse, while I was trying to cope with my beloved father’s death. When I politely asked them to take their conversation somewhere else, she refused to do so and continued her behavior. The next day she flew into a rage, literally yelling in my face when I tried to talk to Joe about it. They both lied to everyone else about who started that fight. When I got understandably upset, they tried to blame me for “overreacting”.

If you want to work on someone about this, go talk to Susan about her behaviors instead of trying to police my feelings.” 

For everyone/both: “You want me to come back and visit, and put this all behind us? I’d like that, too, someday, so, show me that I can trust this won’t happen again by taking the time it did happen seriously. Show me that you’ve learned from this.

At minimum, going forward, you can’t continue to treat me like the problem person all the time. You can’t treat my opinions or feelings or life choices as though they are WRONG or inconvenient for you or a sign that I’m irrational.

You don’t have to agree with me or understand it in order to do it. Not negotiable. ” 

Not that it would have made any difference to the outcome — I highly doubt anyone would have listened any more than they did(n’t).

I just wish *I* had had the ability, the groundedness to see it that clearly, and communicate it that succinctly. I wish I’d realized sooner that I had spent my whole life fighting a losing battle whose outcome had been decided probably even before I was born. I wish I’d been able to understand that that boundary was needed — even though these people were supposed to be my “family” — and to set it a long time ago. It would have saved me a lot of time, pain, and work.

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Fractured Family

Q.  A sibling’s family has been so torn apart by personal and business disputes that one son no longer talks to his brother or his father and refuses to attend family celebrations. He also refuses to participate in counseling. His perspective on what has caused all this is very deeply felt but not necessarily accurate or realistic, particularly because he refuses to accept any responsibility. Is there any way to break through this impasse? — Concerned Aunt

A.  Only if the father and sons want to.

I have seen families in similar situations decide that they want to heal enough to be able to spend holidays together, or for their kids (the cousins) to have good relationships. In these cases, they have found a family mediator who has helped them work through the business and personal disputes — often in pairs first, to work through issues specific to their relationship. I’ve seen (and helped) people do it, and it’s awe-inspiring. They learn a huge amount about their capacity for forgiveness and about being compassionate with themselves and one another. And they teach these things as family values to future generations. It’s an invaluable gift they pass down.

But it is a lot of work, it’s not an easy road, emotionally, and it takes quite a bit of time. There is rarely one breakthrough moment or one conversation that changes everything.

So as the concerned aunt, you can suggest it, you can even ask permission to look for someone to help who might “click” with them. Most major cities have community mediation groups or associations of family mediators. Family mediators usually do primarily divorce work, but many do other kinds of work with families and family businesses too. Some mediators are also therapists, or work closely with therapists, so have strong background in working with families to understand and promote reconciliation. Not everyone has the resources to take advantage of resources like this, of course, but if they do and they are committed to it, progress can often be made.

It’s important to note (as a number of readers commented last week) that there are situations – particularly when mental illness, addiction, abuse, or deep dysfunction is involved – where the boundaries that family members draw are a healthy and necessary response. As a bystander, it’s tempting to think that the answer is always reconnection. But separation – temporary or long term — is often crucial for self-protection and healing.

At the end of the day, it is their road to walk. Your job is to cheer them on from the roadside, whichever road they choose.

Few things are as emotionally upsetting as having a family member who has severed ties with you (or with the whole family). Most of us work especially hard not to cut off ties with family, precisely because they are family. And so when someone does, it is often experienced by those cut off as being cavalier, petty, or the result of a failure to try hard enough.

In short, he or she is holding a grudge. A grudge, by definition, is a thing that should not be held. It’s not a legitimate or healthy reaction and the resulting choices are bad ones. A more stable person would not have taken offense in the first place and a bigger person would surely have let go of it by now.

But that’s not how it’s experienced by the people holding the grudge. They know that what they are doing is protecting themselves, drawing essential boundaries, doing the only thing left to them to do. When we cut ties with others it’s not because we don’t care; it’s because the friction or pain or dysfunction have finally overpowered even the special pull of family.

None of this tells us whether those who withdraw from families are right or wrong, justified or not. It only says that that their reasons make sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us.

…Here’s what not to do.

Don’t write them a long letter or email explaining your perspective. Even if you do a beautiful and skillful job of it, even if you apologize, it is unlikely to achieve your purposes. Why? Because inevitably some aspect of what you describe will feel “off” to them (“That’s not what happened!”) or will leave out parts that they feel are most important. And their interpretation of your motives for writing the letter is colored by emotion. Your desire to reconnect is seen as a desire to absolve yourself of guilt, to manipulate, or to appear to be righteously taking the high road.

So they finish reading your lovely letter and feel even more upset with you. Now they have even less incentive to reach out and talk because they’ve heard what you wanted to say (and it was wrong). Remember that email and letters aren’t dialogue. They’re monologue. And they’re the channel of communication that can escalate conflict most quickly.

A special note to those who have curtailed family contact

If you are going to cut off ties or establish a boundary — and this can sometimes be a healthy reaction to unrelenting criticism or destructive hurt — here are two things to remember.

First, tell others why you are doing it. You think they already know; after all, your reasons are obvious or should be obvious to anyone who cares. But they really might not know. And if they don’t know, they are free to think the worst. When you inform them, don’t focus on others’ character (“I can’t be with the family because you are all so toxic and hateful.”) Instead, focus on how you’re feeling (“The last three times we’ve had big family get-togethers, my anxiety has just gone through the roof. I leave feeling judged and rejected. It’s too much for me to deal with, so I’m going to stay away this year.”). And if there are conditions under which you would increase contact, let them know (“If you can refrain from commenting on my weight or my spouse, we’ll come.”).