Continuing on with Family...
Why is there a need for healing in my family?
We ain't getting any younger, we can live better lives for the time that we have! So why do it? Mend relationships, let go of grudges, Let go of gossip and rumors. Demand accountability. Have family meetings, not just to plan trips and reunions, but have family meetings to help this family really be something to shout about! Squash some stuff so we can grow closer and have something to really celebrate when we are united!
Open your arms family! Open your hearts, ears and open your arms welcoming back your supposed loved ones!
We need to start a united healing process.
People in the family are still judging people and skating around serious issues like rape, pedophilia, (child molestation), incest, drug abuse, thievery, child neglect, physical abuse, and mental illness for starters. Which have and still affect some people in my family!
The family won't have a meeting about this, but they'll have a meeting about a reunion or have a BBQ! Nothings wrong with those things, but how did they become more important than the issues that are destroying the very family you want to celebrate?
So, as for my public confession of my abusive past, it is time to get that completely out. It is needed to start and create opportunities to talk, to discuss, to get it all out. Understanding, asking questions, holding family members accountable and to understand!
Because of abuse form my mother and 3 of my 4 older brothers, I have been judged and shunned by my family my entire life AND I'M SICK OF IT!
I am tired of being one who is uncomfortable being around my family! I Want the chance to get to know them and they to know me and my son in a a way that their views about my life has prevented!
We had a small family gathering recently one of my relatives homes, my son and I went. We really was eager to see them as we don't often get the chance!
Knowing who was going to be there, I went anyway! I'm no longer giving anyone control of my life or joy! It was a birthday celebration for my mother. See, one of my brothers that abused me, was there. I don't associate with him. HE knows it. We don' t speak. I don't trust him.That always backfired in my face, even as adults! It was sickening to see him there, and
I wanted to leave, but I refuse to give him that power over me. At one point he asked my son, who is 19, for his number saying he wanted to talk with him, my son didn't give him the number and my brother looked briefly and slammed his phone shut! But my brother is a rapist, a child molester and liar and he has NEVER COME TO ME to ask for forgiveness! Yet our family knows! Yet they judge me, but welcome him in for dinner, give him high fives. Nobody ever says nothing! Yet and till I grew up listening the whispers and accusations. I grew up being told by certain cousins that "they were not allowed to be around me."
"I was called crazy." My family, ignored, and others didn't understand that my ownmother in one of her schemes to get rid of me, "tried to have me committed in a hospital, under a siege of lies, to hide her own neglect and abuse of me." It backfired on her though, the hospital found out about her lies and they were the ones who petitioned the court to have me removed form her care to a "safe environment." Family, that is how I ended up in the Foster Care system!
But to this day, some of my uncles think I'm crazy, so do some of my cousins, but the really sad thing is, None of them "REALLY" TOOK THE TIME to talk with me! They never took the time to get to know me! Oh! When we do see each other, we may even hug, but it's more of a polite greeting. Like if I was to greet and old school mate. Nothing more than that!
If we are around each other for awhile ,like at the recent family gathering, we run out of things to say, real quick! We don't know each other! I was glad when I got to talk for a while, with 3 of my cousins. That really did my heart good! We even laughed awhile. Oh! I needed to be around them and enjoy that! They have no idea how much!
My Aunts, they speak to me off and on, but I have this one favorite Aunt, who I call "Aintie". She has no idea, how many time I wished SHE was my mother! I use to hang out at her house all of the time when I was younger and even in my twenties, when I could!! Her middle daughter was like the sister I never had. Although for awhile when we were kids, her oldest sister was more like a sister to me. Although my closeness to her ended when when my abuse had gotten in the way of us, when I tried to kill myself at 17! My cousin turned against me too back then! She thought I was crazy for trying to do that to myself. She didn't understand my sadness. I WAS JUST BROKEN HEARTED! Tired of being ridiculed for what other people did to me! I was tired of hurting, being rejected and mis-understood by of all people... my own family!
Even though Foster care was good for me initially, it also was one of the worst things that could ever have happened to me. They got my hopes up! When I had finally found a family in the Foster Care Home I was in, I was ripped back out of it! The worst thing Foster Care program ever did to me, was send me back to my family!
Though it was another part of my family, to my Grandmother, though she cared for me, it didn't help me, being in her time. It didn't help family because she didn't accept nor understand when I tried to tell her what her daughter and grandsons had done to me. She didn't know how to handle my struggles. I begged her to let them put me in independent living! I begged her to say out of it. Eventually, my mother fell on hard times and came to live with me and my grandmother! She set up house in my grandmothers basement. I hated that! I FELT so betrayed. My grandmother promised the staff at my Foster Care home that she would take care of me, but she let my mother, the woman who beat me, neglected me, didn't protect me from my brothers sexual abuse, and verbal abuse...the woman who tired to get rid of her own daughter, (me)... my grandmother, out of pity for her let her come and live with us! I tired to get my grandmother to kick her out!
Every time I got the chance, I was gone. I was working after school and on the weekends, I would even work double shifts and late at night, so I wouldn't have to be home around her! When I was home, my grandmother made me be nice to her. My Grandmother had to force me to be nice to my own mother !
For the life of me, I couldn't understand WHY my grandmother would LET THAT DANGEROUS WOMAN LIVE WITH US! So, at 17, with all of that weighing on me, no one of my family could I trust,and with my foster care "sisters" (my family) gone
I had no one in my corner who understood, who would protect me. So, at 17, after writing a brief note telling them where they could fine me, after taking many of my grandmother pills (she had diabetes and whatever) I tried to commit suicide.
Then I left without being noticed. which wasn't hard. My family thought I was "strange and a trouble maker." I heard some of my Aunts, and uncles and some of the family friends talking a few times. So, I know what they thought of me! I know what they thought of my mother.
I mean what they really thought! They knew had problems. They didn't know all of the particulars, but they knew she had problems! Still, no one protected her kids, not even from ourselves! I'll talk more about that suicide attempt and how I survived, it at a later time.
There is MUCH to say about family secrets and why it is important to heal and grow!
I heard my grandmother too, when she thought I wasn't around to hear. I know she loved me, she was just helpless when it came to me. She never understood! She never wanted to believe! But that's just like many of us, we don't want to hear nothing bad! We don't want to have to feel obligated to do something about it and just hope "it will work itself out." That irresponsible thinking and my own action, out of a great deal of pain, support and hopelessness, almost cost me my life! These things I never got to tell openly. Because at this time in my life, my healing has reached a major level of completion ...I am hoping that it will ignite healing and understanding in my family. Maybe even in yours!
LET THE HEALING BEGIN!
See Ya, Meetta
No comments:
Post a Comment