Abuse: My Confrontation Letter to My Mother

Me (left) and my best friend in Salem, Illinois. I was about seven or eight when this was taken.

As anyone who has followed this blog knows, I was subjected to abuse as a child by my mother. I have previously written about this subject on this blog here, here and here. I have also written about it on blogs that are now closed, and I will likely be republishing those posts here on this blog.

On February 20, 1995, I wrote the following letter to my mother. I have never before published this letter "publicly," nor have I shared it with anyone but a few family members. But for reasons of which I am not entirely sure, I feel compelled to do so now. Perhaps in some way, this may benefit my own children, who only know their father through lenses which have permitted them only to see darkly. Perhaps it may help others who have experienced abusive childhoods. (I have edited the letter slightly and have added headings for ease of reading.)

***************

Dear Mom,

I have been trying to deal over the last few months with something which I thought I had long ago forgave and forgot. I speak of the abuse, physical and otherwise, that I suffered as a child at your hands. This letter is an attempt for me to explain my own feelings not only to you but also to myself and to let you know how I am feeling at this time.

To properly put in context what I have been feeling the last several months, I have to relate some things which have happened in the past 5-6 years.

Coming To Terms With the Abuse

As you know, I have been troubled with migraines for years.  These became much worse when I got married and started law school. While I was in school, I went to a number of doctors and other health professionals in an effort to determine the cause.  I was able to obtain some relief, but the headaches kept coming back.

In 1990, after I had graduated and just after I started working, I happened to be treated by a person I know who is a "touch therapist." I won't go into the details, but suffice it to say that it came out that I held a lot of anger and anguish inside of me which stemmed back, according to this therapist, to one incident in particular. This was the time when I was about seven years old when you banged my head repeatedly against the dining room plaster wall in the house in Salem. I'll return to this incident later.  Suffice it for now to say that the memory of this incident triggered a massive physical reaction in me as a 31 year-old adult. It also made me wonder, because I thought that I had long since "forgave and forgot" about this and other incidents that happened when I was a child.

A couple of years later, I was experiencing a recurrent feeling in my chest which felt like a heart flutter. I became concerned about it and went to see my medical doctor. He examined me, found nothing seemingly out of the ordinary, then asked me - out of the blue - if I had been abused as a child. I was surprised at the question, but responded that, yes, I had. He said that the symptoms I was displaying were typical of adults who had been abused as children. This caused me to ponder once again just what lay inside my subconscious that stemmed from things that happened when I was a child. Nevertheless, I didn't go for counseling at that time, feeling that this was something I could deal with on my own.

Now I fast forward to this past fall. A number of things happened which made me come to realize that I needed to deal with things from my past. One of the things which made me realize this was my own behaviour toward my own children.  I was responding to their behaviour in a way that I didn't find acceptable, and when I examined it, I realized that my behaviour was really replays of what I experienced as a child.

A series of breakthroughs occurred in early and mid-December. I realized that I definitely had things I needed to deal with. I also realized that, for most of my life - especially after I joined the Mormon Church - I had justified your behaviour toward me as a child, based on the fact that I knew that you had a rough childhood. What I came to realize was that the abuse and dysfunctions which you endured as a child may explain your abusive behaviour, but these things were not an excuse for what you did to me.  I realized that I was the child and that you were the adult. I realized that I was not responsible for your behaviour; you were.

This realization opened up things for me.  I began to seriously look at my childhood and I started to try and reconstruct memories which I had long ago made a practice of turning away from because they were too painful. One of the first things I discovered was that I couldn't remember a whole lot, so I really started working at it. This was about the time you came up for your visit in late December, and I'll come back to this later.  

Investigating the Abuse

After you went home, I started talking to Karen and Dan [two of my three older siblings] in an effort to try to remember things. So much of my childhood seemed to be a blur. What I learned of your abuse shocked me. I had vague memories, but Karen and Dan had specific memories which involved me, too. I still can't remember some of these things specifically, but I think that, someday, the memory may come back.

What were these things? Well, as I said, I specifically remember you banging my head repeatedly against the dining room wall. I can't remember why you did this or my reaction to it. But my doctor helped me to put this in perspective when he asked me if I could imagine doing something like that to Sarah [who as then seven years old, the same age I was when this incident happened]. I was horrified at first, then very, very sad, because I realized you had done that to me.

Then there were the "spankings" with Dad's fraternity paddle or a belt. Although I don't have a specific conscious memory of it, I know that I was hit at least once around the head and back and arms with a belt, because I have had flashbacks about this in the past few weeks. Then there were the times when we had our mouths violently washed out with soap ...

Then there was the time I fell down the basement stairs when I was about four. I still don't have a conscious memory of this incident, although I have a memory that it happened. Karen and Danny, however, remember the incident clearly. They remember you standing at the top of the stairs and yelling at me and hitting me. Somehow or another, I ended up falling down the stairs.

There are no doubt many other incidents of which I don't have a clear recollection. The point is that I was physically abused by you. 

I have a clear recollection of standing in the bathroom outside your bedroom in Salem when I was about six or seven. I remember quite distinctly saying, almost in a wistful tone, distracted, that I wished I had never been born. Looking back on it, I can't help but wonder what would have made a seven-year old boy in comfortable middle-class family say such a thing. I was obviously very unhappy. Yet, how did you respond? You slapped me, hard, shocking me, and told me never to say such a thing again, that it was a mortal sin to say such a thing. Needless to say, your reaction was one more hurtful thing that you did to me.

Then there was the verbal and emotional abuse. I don't remember ever being told things like Danny was, when he was compared to me academically and called "stupid" and a "dummy". Nor do I recall you saying mean things to me like you said to Karen. But I do know this: I have no memories of you being a tender, loving mother. You have spoken in recent years of how you used to sit and read to me.  I have no memories of this. All I can remember is that you were always either angry or depressed or otherwise unavailable and distant.

These things continued when we moved to Carmi. The physical abuse (at least as far as I have been able to remember) tapered off to ordinary whippings, but you were still distant and cold and often irritable. I have since learned that perhaps this was probably attributable in no small part to your addiction to both amphetamines and tranquilizers. But, once again, this is not an excuse; it is perhaps part of the explanation.

Dissociation and Repression

Before I go on to my teen years, I will just comment briefly on what I think some of the effects of all of this were on me. First of all, at a very early age, I learned to be afraid of you. I also adopted the survival strategy of being "the good son" in an effort to both gain approval and avoid further punishment. I figured if I was "good enough," I could stay out of your way and avoid further abuse. Karen and Dan both commented on this.

I also learned to very quickly repress memories of what had happened. I realize now that so much of my childhood is a fog because, at a very early age, I learned to repress memories and dissociate from what was going on.  In the past few weeks, I have realized through flashbacks that if I had consciously realized as a young child what was going on, it would have killed me. By this, I mean that if I had fully, consciously realized what it meant to have my mother beating on me, I think my psyche would have broken down completely. 

So, I did two things:  I disassociated myself from what was happening and I repressed memories, telling myself that these things didn't happen. I know that I disassociated myself because I discovered in the past few weeks that, when thinking of what memories I have of my childhood, I would usually be "viewing" these memories as if the "adult me" was a third person: I would see myself as a child, as though I was looking down on the scene, rather that actually being that child and seeing the world through that child's eyes.

The tragic thing about all of this is that large chunks of my childhood are sealed to my memory.  I can't remember the bad things; but I also can't remember the good things. What I have been left with for years is a warning signal that goes off every time I start to look too intently at the past.  

I have also discovered in recent weeks that my headaches -- which I can remember having as young as 10 years old -- are probably attributable in no small part to repressed anger. We were never allowed to express emotions when we were children - even though you regularly expressed unbridled emotions. 

We certainly we never allowed to express anger at what you were doing to us; that would only get us more punishment. Besides, I was not rebellious by nature, as Mike and Dan were. They both eventually got to a point where they rebelled against you and refused to take any more. I never did that because that wasn't in my nature and because I was too afraid to.  I'll come back to this later.

Nevertheless, I still felt things, including anger, as a result of what was being done to me. All of those feelings were simply stuffed away in my subconscious, deep inside of me. I never let them out. Now, as an adult, I am starting to let them out because of the destructive affect all of this repressed anger and hurt is having on me as an adult.

My Teenage Years

Well, I'll now go on to the separation [of my parents, in 1971]. This was a very painful period in all of our lives. What I realized upon looking back on this, however, was that I had anger toward you because you never focused on the pain that we children were going through. All you could focus on was your own feelings. I remember you sitting out there on that screened porch that summer for what seemed like weeks after Dad left, just sitting there for hours, staring off into space. Finally, I went to you and asked you to please stop it because it was only making our lives that much more difficult.

Then you went to work and I was left to take care of Martha. Before I go on, let me say that I have written to Dad about this, too, and expressed feelings of anger and frustration toward him, too. Once you went to work, I basically became the parent to Martha. I could never leave home while you were away and Martha was there because she couldn't be left alone. After all, she was only in first grade the first year we lived on Kirk Street. I never had the chance to be a normal teenager and go and come and be lighthearted and carefree. To the extent that I wasn't one already, I became, overnight, an adult. I had to be at home with Martha, I had to get her dressed every morning for school, and I had to come home right after school to be there when she got home. Then there were the household chores.  When you went to work, I was left with a large share of the household chores because you simply weren't in any position to do them, for whatever reason.

Then there was your behaviour. You frankly weren't a very pleasant person to be around during those years. I can well remember the times you threatened to take your life and the times you woke us up after we had gone to bed, telling us to get dressed because we were leaving and never coming back. And, as always, there was your irritability and temper.

Yes, there were a few good times, but I became an adult overnight. I was left with responsibilities which properly belonged to you and Dad. My childhood had already been wrecked, and my teen years were taken away, too, because of events beyond my control.

I have never confronted you about any of this. In fact, the only time I have ever confronted you about anything that I can recall was the one time in my senior year when you complained about me practicing Methodist hymns on our piano at home [after I left the Catholic Church and joined the Methodist Church]. I replied that I didn't think you had any right to do that, considering you hadn't attended a single band or choir concert the entire time I was in high school. It was as if you simply lost interest after the separation in anything involving us kids.

Your Dealings With My Children

I still haven't worked out all the ramifications of what happened to me when I was growing up. As I said, I still can't remember a lot of the abuse that happened. Yet, I felt I needed to tell you what I have been going through. These feelings were heightened when you were here because I saw how you interacted around my children. Sarah asked if you wanted to play a board game with her.  You responded, "No. I didn't play board games when my kids were little and I'm not going to now."  Well, that told me a lot about how you were with me as a boy, and it showed me how you were with my children now. You seemed disinterested in them and jealous of the time and attention I gave to them when you were there.

I also became angry when you questioned me about how the children refer to Ruth [my step-mother].  I had told you before what they called her ["Grandma Ruth"] and you had expressed your annoyance that they called her "Grandma" at all. Well, I became angry because you have no right to dictate to me or them what kind of a relationship they have with Dad, Ruth or anyone else. You did that to me and Martha when we were teenagers [with respect to Ruth, our new step-mother], but you cannot do that to my children. 

If you are to have any relationship with my children, you will have to earn it. They don't owe you anything. We have taught them that you are my mother and their grandmother, and they have normal feelings of love and respect toward you because of that fact. We have explained to them in very simple terms why their grandfather is married to someone else. They understand that you were once married to Dad, but that Ruth now is. 

You cannot expect them to love you when you act as though they owe you their love. If you show no interest in them as children and as persons, then you should not be surprised if they in turn are distant from you. I cannot force them to love you.

You Were the Parent; I Was the Child

As far as my own feelings are concerned, I think it is fair to say that I have grown increasingly distant from you as the years have gone by. I was not really that close to you when I was at home, but this was not my doing. In fact, I felt a great sense of duty and responsibility to you when I was at home. I cannot, however, say that I was close to you because of your own behaviour toward me ever since I was little. You abused me physically when I was a younger child and you became emotionally unavailable as I became older. I have searched my memory for one, tender, nurturing moment between you and me, and I frankly cannot recall one. This is a source of great sadness to me, but the fault for this does not lie with me. I was the child; you were the parent.

One of the main realizations I have made in all of this is that what happened to me as a child was not my fault. I have learned that, unfortunately, most abused children tend to blame themselves for the abuse they suffer; this is their way of coping. They can't blame the person who is supposed to be protecting them and loving them (but who is instead abusing them) - that would be too psychologically devastating. Instead, they blame themselves. Well, I am now an adult, and I realize that it was not my fault. It was your fault.

I wish we could have some sort of a relationship from this point on. Frankly, that is going to depend an awfully lot on you. You cannot expect that I now owe you the kinds of feelings that I would have liked to have had from you when I was a child. I am angry now, as well as sad, and I may be for some time to come. That anger will eventually cool and the sorrow may become less painful, but I cannot guarantee what sorts of feelings I will have toward you when the anger does cool. Again, a lot of that will depend on you, just as your relationship with my children will depend a lot on you.

Well, I guess I've said enough. I regret that circumstances were such that I need to write this letter, but I cannot change that. The future holds hope, and I guess it is toward the future that we must both look.

***************

My mother did not respond to this letter for a very long time. When she did, it was a written note, saying that she did not remember any of this.

Though I saw my mother off and on for the next 11 years until she died, we were never again close, nor could it be said that we had any kind of "relationship." This was a source of great sorrow for me, but I eventually had to just let it go.

Several months after my mother died, I learned that her surviving brother had found this letter among her personal effects when she went into a nursing home. He returned it after she died. I found it interesting that she had kept it. Perhaps she did mourn - over many things. I genuinely hope she found a bit of peace that carried her into the next life.

Surprised by ... Memory

Me and our dog Herman on our front lawn in Salem, Illinois about 1963/4. St. Theresa's
Catholic School is visible across the street. My older siblings went there, and I attended there 2nd and 3rd grade.

This post starts out on somewhat of a bit of a down note, but it gets better.

One of the saddest legacies of child abuse can be the loss of memory of one's childhood. I never thought much about the fact that, as I aged and became an adult, I couldn't remember much of my childhood - until, that is, I started meeting people whose memory was much clearer. My former wife, for example, seemed to have volumes of crystal clear memories of her childhood. 

This fact became increasingly distressing to me until, in the mid-90's, I had a sort of a breakdown and, for the first time, started dealing with my childhood abuse. I made numerous phone calls to my older siblings, trying to pump them for memories, recollections and "evidence" for the case I was building against both my parents, but particularly my mother. 

Me and my best childhood friend, Chuckie, who lived two doors down

I recall meeting with my doctor/counselor at that time and telling him about my investigation, about how I would examine my body for scars after having been told something by a sibling of which I had no memory, e.g., looking for evidence of the time Mom hit me with a hairbrush. As I counseled with Dr. Mate, he told me I couldn’t approach this as a lawyer looking for evidence in order to validate what happened. It happened. My body knew it happened and my psyche knew it happened.

Over the years, through reading and counseling, I learned some important psychological principles that bore directly upon my lack of childhood memories. A couple of these were succinctly summarized in the book by psychotherapist David Richo to which I have been referring in the last few posts (Catholic Means Universal). First of all, the psyche knows best when it comes to memory:

“It is important to respect our own timing in the process of remembering abuses. We let in only what we can handle as we can handle it. Temporary denial of some of the facts is useful in grief work because our psyche knows how much we can deal with at one time and lets the information in, little by little, as we become able to stand it. When we are ready to know, we will know. We may never know it all. Only then can we allow a full venting of feelings like sadness, anger and fear."

Secondly, a survival mechanism employed in childhood distorted and drew a veil over memory:

“Part of the abuse cycle is learning to dissociate. Dissociation can be described in this way: while we are being abused, physically, sexually or emotionally, we become numb to the hurt and pain that is happening to us. Unconsciously and automatically, we ‘turn off’ the stimulus and take flight into fantasy or distracting behavior. This dissociation has a wisdom in it because it helps us bear the pain without being overwhelmed by it. Such dissociation accounts for the fact that later in life we forget the abuses that happened to us. Part of the work of mourning is re-associating with the occluded vision of our pain. What was necessary and wise in the past is no longer so in the present. We now allow ourselves to know our hurts and others’ abuses of us in order to clear our path to healing."

Because my psyche, through dissociation and because of its role as guardian, couldn't handle a lot of my childhood, it simply closed most of the doors. When I first started the recovery process almost 20 years ago, I relied chiefly on the memories of others ... but in many cases, they might as well have been describing someone else because I couldn't remember what they were describing - and this was the case for memories when I was as old as eleven.

I mention all of this because a week or so ago, I had an experience where images popped into my head while reading an author's reminiscences of his childhood. It was a simple story about his journeys to and from his elementary school when a boy. In autumn, he recalled riding his bike down a bumpy dirt path "through a meadow fully of crunchy brown leaves, desiccated grasses and dried milkweed plants ..."

Flash.

The simple image of a milkweed plant took me right back to my childhood. I couldn't recall where I had encountered these, but knew that I had.

The author continued, describing his winter journey over "an open landscape of white snow that rose wetly over the tops of my black galoshes."

Flash.

Suddenly, I could remember the black galoshes I wore as a boy. The kind that fastened with several buckles, sort of like ski boots. I recalled the cold. My freezing fingers after I came in, trying to undo those stupid buckles that were caked in snow. I recalled the clinging sound the buckles made as they loosened and snapped back.

The author next described an incident that happened one spring. "My schoolbooks, heavy in the bike's metal basket swung violently to the side ..."

Flash.

As soon as I read these words, I envisioned the old red tank of a bike I had (after I had outgrown the one in the above picture, which I don't remember). I recalled the huge tires and the big basket in front, how it could easily upset my balance, just as the author had described. I recalled using that basket to deliver newspapers when I was about 11 or 12.

These are such simple memories. One might wonder why I even bother writing about them. Well, I write about them because of the joy that I felt at recollecting such simple things from my childhood. It was as if a fragrant summer breeze had wafted from distant corners of my psyche, bringing - unexpectedly - feelings of contentment and happiness. And the sheer unexpectedness ... I had chased memories like a butterfly earlier in my adult life; these simply came and "sat on my shoulder."

I am also writing about them because I saw these images through my eyes. When I was going through counseling immediately after my mid-1990's experience, my counselor asked me whether, when I remembered scenes from my childhood (particularly those of abuse), I saw the scene through my eyes or through the eyes of an observer (who would also see me). This, of course, is precisely what dissociation is. The child sees himself in the memory through the eyes of another - the child who chose to detach himself from himself in order to survive - not through his own eyes.

That is a large part of the reason why these seemingly silly little memories brought such happiness to me - because I realized that my psyche was allowing me to see my childhood, and that it was allowing me to see it through my own eyes, through my own memories. It was an indication of healing and a promise of more to come.