Even though these days children have support if they ask for it  they are not likely to do so

Even though these days children have support if they ask for it 

Some are not likely to do so

For several decades I thought I deserved abuse

i had no siblings or extended family (grandparents were in the UK)

My mother had most people convinced that she was all sweetness and light

And in my 20s I thought I was a bad mother because I didn’t scream at my children and bash them

My Mother had wanted a boy and couldn’t have more children after my birth, hence she never liked me.

 I can still remember her screaming at me when I was still in my cot upstairs in a “two up, two down” house “After all the pain and suffering I went through giving birth to you: you are useless a failure a disappointment: neither use nor ornament -Cannot do anything right ”

She repeated this statement frequently for 63 years and 8 months

 She never liked me but I always loved her. When I was a child I thought that she was the most beautiful and the cleverest person I knew.

 I started school when I was four: Mother arranged this so that she could go to work.

I have blocked out a lot of my abuse but somethings will occasionally trigger a flashback.

When we were still at Northfield and I was already going to school my mother pushed me into the wood burning part of the wood stove when it was lit and shut the door: She then pulled me out: wrapped me in a blanket and told people that she had saved my life after I crawled in. I had first degree burns.

 A few years later we moved to Salisbury North. It was still mostly farms at the time.

When I was ten my mother was bashing me with a scrubbing brush and had also washed my mouth out with soap. I said to her “I haven’t done anything wrong” and she told my that she just felt like bashing me.  Despite this, for over half a century I believed that I deserved abuse because this is what everyone told me.

 mother kicked and bashed me Christmas 1993, a month after I had had an hysterectomy. (After this I didn’t speak to my parents for six months.)

 The reason it only lasted six months was that my parents had relatives visit from England and Dad phoned and asked me to come and visit.

 (Mother smirked like a child getting her own way and never apologised or even admitted she had done anything.)

I let my mother mind the children, which in retrospect was stupid.

My husband’s nephews were four and six at the time and the four-year-old was in his twenties when he told me how abusive my mother had been to him. I didn’t hear about the abuse to the then six-year-old (now in his early forties) until just after my mother’s funeral.

My mothers physical abuse was horrific but her mental abuse was worse and this continued up to and including the week she died.

When my Dad was dying in 2004 I took her to the hospital every day and we stayed for most of the day.                          I initially presumed she got upset because she thought she wasn’t getting any attention:

l later realised it was because my Dad said that he was proud of me.   

  I had been helping the morning shift and when the roster changed Mother went crying to the RN who came back and glared at me.

 When we picked up Dad’s things after he died this same RN told me off for abusing my mother.

My Dad was a lovely person but was never allowed to pay me any attention or my mother would have a screaming fit. On his death bed he asked me to look after her. I did so, not just because I had promised him that I would but because I was hoping that my mother would love me and be nice to me.

  Never happened!

 

AHIMSA