I have an elderly father who was nothing but emotionally and physically abusive to me and my siblings, he refuses to accept responsibility for anything, and I quit expecting him to, I wall myself up around him, I don't feel safe around him, and I will not visit him without my spouse or children with me as he still treats me very differently (somewhat nicer) when they are around. When I visit him in the nursing homes, he yells a list of demands, I do them quickly and get the hell out of there, I hate visiting, and honestly will be relieved when I get the call. I don't feel anything for him except regret.

It is so much easier said than done! I have a father who after my parent's divorce had very little to do with me or my sister. He didn't acknowledge birthdays or Christmas, and would not come to visit. He was never very nice to his three wives, insulted them in public etc. His third wife divorced him last year, and I don't blame her really, but unfortunately he has dementia, and he can't be left alone. I moved him across country to be with us, and he is miserable, complains all of the time, and will call me all day at work and act insulted if I can't talk. I feel as though I have been forced to take care of him since he had no-one else, but I feel if he had tried to be a decent human being all of his life he wouldn't have ended up alone.

Forgiving an abusive parent for how you were treated in past, implies that the abuse has magically stopped. Guess what, most parents who abuse their defenseless children are lifelong abusers. The abuse only stops when the parent loses their mental faculties or dies.

Also, for an abusive parent to deserve forgiveness, they need to embrace both repentance and atonement, which most do not.

Getting old is a rite of passage… it is not a “get out of jail free” card.

Also, the “s/he did the best they could” does not hold any water, either. In my situation, they would put on this “act” whenever people who lived outside the four walls we occupied were present. The “act” was deserving of an “Academy Award” as no one would ever think that these “wonderful people” were physically, emotionally and verbally abusing their children. But, once we returned between those four walls, the “act” was over and the “tyrants/terrorists” returned in full force.

Now this does not mean I am a bitter and angry person… hating my life and blaming them for everything. Far from it, I have long moved past that… But, there is no “love” present. My father (the enabler and who deserted me at age 11) is deceased, never once trying to re-connect me with me before he died when I was 38 years old. My mother (the tyrant/terrorist) is a NH. I visit her once a week for about 30 minutes. There is no joy or pleasure in it for me. I do it for her… not because she deserves it, but because I am a kind-hearted person. Plus, if she starts to get abusive, I just say” I guess you’re not in the mood for company today. Bye” and I just leave.

I remember countless times throughout my childhood, when I would beg and plead with her to “Just leave me alone”. But, no amount of pleading would stop her from tormenting me. Her abusive behavior was her choice… and now she is old and alone. As you sow, so shall you reap.

thank you everyone for sharing your stories!
my mother who is still alive was emotional abusive,critical and negative my entire life. in my forties i was diagnosed with chronic depression which i now understand contributed to having a very difficult time in general and coupled with moms abuse set me up for a life of poor choices and very low self esteem.several years ago my father was diagnosed with cancer and had one year to live. neither he nor my mother told me. i loved my father deeply and he loved me to the ends of the earth. by the time i found out and flew to see him he lived one month and passed away. it is a grief and anger i still struggle with. mom was an alcoholic and prescription drug abuser and later after her suicide attempt was diagnosed as bipolar, same as my younger brother. after my father passed away mom spiraled out of control and I completely cut her off. I was a wreck and it was the way to keep any sense of sanity i had remaining. A year later on Christmas she attempted suicide ,was unsucessfull and hospitalized. My brother upon hearing of this stopped eating but continued to take his lithium. This can be fatal. my brothers wife is an alcoholic and low intelligence so had no idea that he was becoming seriously ill. I flew to see him and realized something was very wrong. He was becoming catatonic. I took him to the hospital where he was given a 15% chance of passing away that night. He made a miracle recovery. Mom and brother are now stabilized. I moved from the east to west coast to be in the area they reside to supervise them. In the course of all this i found a fantastic therapist that mentioned CODA -Codependents Anonymous. This was the key to so many issues for me. I learned to establish healthy boundaries and say no. Co-dependency is a real issue with those of us with mentally ill and or difficult family. I highly recommend checking this organization out . It was very very helpful and there are meetings in every city. One day at a time. Love and Light to all of you . Melissa

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lucyndesquise, you are a strong personality because of what and who you were raised by. I know the feeling.... but take that strong personality and use it for good. Use it to fight for you this time. The determination built within you truly can be used for good or evil. Your parents chose their path, now the choice is yours. I fought for peace at all costs. That involved a lot of therapy over the years and a lot of tears. Their behavior is not your fault. Don't give up!

Wow. thanks to those that commented on my Post. I really have a lot to think about now and am definitely going to get help. I have a strong personality and a strong will and heart and I will get through this and make a way for myself. Hearing form you all about about how serious to take it has really been sobering and i will definitely take in everything and I feel very helped and supported by your comments. Thanks you so much and God bless you all.

Well if she was always like this, then the question becomes why put yourself back in a harmful situation? Sometimes its just the hope that a person will change. Truth is, when you have a narcissistic person, nothing we do can help them. They are destructive to everyone around them because if no one can help them or benefit them (the narcissist), they discard them or abuse them into submission.

I think that finding an exit plan is probably your best bet. Forgive yourself. You made a choice to help with the best of intentions. It failed. It cost you. But now you have a choice before you knowing now what you know.

Talk with her doctors, get things documented, work on you. You may have to let your parents suffer their own consequences. Make sure things are well documented, but you may have to leave your parents to self-destruct. Love does not equate to being tortured or manipulated. Love is a gift, not a controlling feature. Love is unconditional. The moment people start putting conditions on it (for their own benefit), it is no longer love.

You are in an extreme situation. Get counsel. Get assistance, and definitely talk with someone (a counselor or other professional). This is something you cannot do alone, but you must take care of yourself. It is so sad when parents are self-destructing and have spent a lifetime doing so. Watching them at the end of their life continuing on that path is just heart breaking, but you cannot fix it.

Forgive yourself. Forgive them for never getting it. With support, move on. It will be a painful process, but with the right support, you can do this and find healing for yourself.

Lucy, yes, I think you made the wrong decision. She had no right to demand your entire life of you, she apparently does not need it, and to top that off does not benefit from it. And yet she took you in with the usual recipe of fear, guilt, and obligation, and cannot bear to face any of her own guilt. You are doing right to do anything possible to get yourself out of that trap, and I hope the route to the end of the tunnel is shorter than it seems.

Do you have POA? Can you insist that Mom use her own money for care, at least enough for respite for you now? Of course she will not see any value in that, and at this point it is very very clear that this will not change and you are right that you and you alone will take your own current or future well-being into any consideration whatsoever. Some people who create this kind of toxic relationship don't even recognize that the caregiver child should have any benefits when they are gone - they have been known to leave everything, even the house, to a sibling who has done nothing but happens to be the golden child in their eyes.

If this is the case, that you cannot bear anymore, find a women's shelter or residential program especially for working adults who find themselves homeless and move out; if she really cannot care for herself without you, you let Adult Protective Services know. I won't tell you to blow off the constant criticism she is dishing out and not let it get to you, because it really is too toxic and spirit-sapping to deal with 24 x 7. Have an escape route in mind if it becomes unbearable, just something, anything, that would keep you from wanting to die instead of going on living. It can get that bad.

lucyndesquise,

I really don't know what to say for it does sound like you are trapped in an extremely toxic situation.

What do you do when the elderly person is continuing to be the same old hurtful ways or even worse but you are still stuck caring for them and going crazy because now you are stuck and isolated in the torture chamber daily with no respite and they are not interested in forging a new family dynamic? (longest run-on sentence ever! Whew!) I try and try to create a new dynamic, but she will not be any different now than when she hurt me in the past and she expects the best most loving and compassionate treatment even when it was to my detriment and causing me to miss workdays, then weeks then leave of absence till now i am not working and taking care of her full time! !even though the Doctors have said that she should be able to be independent if she would just stop eating and get some exercise. She pushes and pushes and manipulates and threatens even when my back is out, or i am sick from exhaustion and losing my future.and have gained over a hundred just eating my feelings because she literally won't listen to me when i try to talk to her about it. she just rolls her yes and tunes me out and if i continue, she brings out the big guns and starts going on about how i am ruining her life and just to get out then. Only I have nothing now having given it all to her and now am living with her in a city i do not know and have no connections in and no money and even had to sell my car to have enough money to move here to help her! I am being really used but when i call her on it she acts like i am the abuser and starts telling me to leave then even though i have no where to go now. I left a good job to come rescue her and it was supposed to be temporary and then i could go back. but she won't do physical therapy or do anything to get better and instead just seems to want to make her servant. Its been 6 years and it just keeps getting worse and I'm pretty sure my old job has moved on... lol. not that there is any money for me to move back anyway! One good thing is i did start going to night school to get a aa degree and hopefully that will help me get a job that pays enough to cover the home helper we will need to replace me. otherwise we are actually losing money if I am working away from the home. Oh Lord I really feel like I made the wrong decision to come help her. She is just so cut off from any empathy towards me it actually breaks my heart every day how cold and demanding she has become and how un feeling and un sympathetic she is towards my pain. I have some pretty severe physical issues including a birth defect (Hip dysplasia) that really limit what i can do too, so il have my own problems and she has never helped me with them. Even when I had times when i was injured unable to work or care for myself she never was there, never came to help never called to listen and make sure i was ok. she actually laughed in my face and then asked me what did that have to do with her. Its not her problem. But all her problems are my obligations or i don't love her... But if I tell her this and try to get her to see how unfair that is she tells me i am crazy and wrong and she has no idea what i am talking about and i am just being overdramatic. Ouch. It is so disempowering and i have such a broken heart from it, i fear it will affect my other relationships and make me paranoid or unable to feel safe with someone because of being around my Mother who is not been someone i could trust or should trust. I fear its making me weird messing up my resume and work history making me fat and sick and depressed as hell, and bitter and isolated and when she dies there is no insurance or house to inherit or anything i can rest in for a minute. I will be broke and probably in need or a hip replacement and probably homeless and jobless. I will have to get right back in survival mode for me and the army of cats we have here and try to keep the lights on the kitties fed! She just has no care in the world about what happens to us after she's gone and i have to get to work and get a a decent job so that doesn't happen. I have to start to save myself from that future no matter what it takes and get to to work and get someone else in here to take her abuse. They can at least go home to their families and vent afterwards.

Ok, all done now... Thanks for letting me rant. and rant. and rant. i feel like I can go another minute now. God Bless all of you.

It is not a low road to totally detach from an abusive parent. It is more often a needed route to self-protection and survival that many do not take. I think that unless one has been there, it is a difficult choice for some people to really grasp intellectually and emotionally.

The abusive parent who was abusive when we were children is not going to suddenly change because of something we do. Not going to happen! Therapists will often tell adult children of abusive parents to not be the person directly involved in their parents care as older adults.

Realistically, reconciliation is not always a possibility although it is a nice ideal. One helpful was for me to look at forgiveness has been that is really not so much for the benefit of the abuser as it is the abused.

For me forgiving an abusive parent means moving them off my hook onto God's hook. In one of my therapy sessions, I was encouraged to write my mother a letter about all that I was angry at her about which I did. Later on, I read it to my therapist, we went outside, burned it in a trash can, and threw the ashes to the winds as my symbolic way of forgiving my mom in the sense of letting go of the anger by taking her off of my hook and placing her on God's hook. \

That may be a different way of looking at forgiveness for some, because it does not require the other person to repent, but at least it frees me up from the internal anger that was doing more damage to me than to her. I wish you and everyone dealing with an abusive parent the very best in their journey.

Where2Turn, this is not the low road. My heart goes out to you. All these stories of forgiveness and reconciliation are great, but that is not what happens in every situation. At some point you have to understand that YOU did not ask to be brought into the world: that choice was all about them. You are in a sense the victim of someone else's choices; but how long will you keep being the victim? Now that you are an adult, you do not have be their victim ANY MORE. Your obligation to them is a matter of your choice, and it may range from zero to 100% (or, it could be less than zero: I heard of a son who took the opportunity to "pay back" his parents by abusing them just as they abused him when he was a child). I think that is bad, really bad, but I don't think it is bad to walk away under certain circumstances. They are reaping what they sowed: they abused you and warped and wrecked your life in ways you have had to take a lifetime to get over and restore, so really, what do they expect? Of course abusers tend not to take responsibility for what they have done, and have "selective memory" (my mother thinks and says she was the greatest parent ever!), so in their minds, you are "bad child" etc (but don't forget, those fictions serve them and allow them to keep abusing). Just as you said, the outside world expects it all to be saintly and sweet, but the truth is, they are reaping what they sowed. For an abused child even to consider going back and helping is really above and beyond (and may in some cases be a kind of sick participation in the abuse), and it is NOT necessarily a "low road" to walk away.
I am right now dealing with this.
My mother is declining fast and I have to decide what, if anything, to do, and how, if at all, to participate in her future. Last night there was a horrible hour and a half phone call in which she verbally harangued, manipulated, lied, blamed, etc etc etc. At the end of it when I hung up shaking, heart trip-hammering, and with BP through the roof, probably should have gone to urgent care, my beloved partner asked me, "Why did you let that go on so long? What were you getting out of that? This is making you ill!" A great question: the old familiar victimhood, the old pattern of trying so hard to be the good child and to be slammed (sometimes literally) against the wall. Once a victim, it is hard to break out of that dynamic, but it can be the only healthy thing. You owe it to yourself to get and stay healthy; you know in your heart that abusive parent is toxic to you and will make you sick.
So how do we keep this at arm's length? One idea I heard is to think of yourself as a social worker: don't really engage, just be really practical. I was thinking if I set initial boundaries and stick to them, that is one way (I will come there and supervise the clearing out of the house and readying it for sale, but I will only be there three days; I will not stay in the house, I will not eat meals with you, I will deal only with the housekeeper, etc.). But will that even work in situations like these? I doubt it will work, and I can guarantee that this will be a nightmare, so why am I even contemplating going back there? She is still mentally competent and can set up her own situation. This is not my responsibility, and so why am I even considering going back there even for three days? This is not some fictional "love" or "filial duty"--this is sick, even to consider going back into that crazy mess. That is a question for therapy and I encourage all adult children of abusive parents to STAY IN THERAPY while you are dealing with this. This thing can create real setbacks for the progress you have worked so hard to create. Sometimes the healthy thing to do is nothing, not to re-engage. Good luck to all.

The article and following comments about how to forgive an abusive parent who has entered a stage in life when it is becoming clearer everyday that despite the hurts from the past, caregiving might well be in your future. The tips that outline strategies for overcoming resentment and even perhaps taking baby steps toward forgiveness are clear and seem possible and encouraging. Regardless of abuse any of us endured as children at the hands of the now terminally ill parent, not to feel even a glimmer of compassion I think is probably rare. Many of us now move around in a world where only those with whom we share relationships like marriage know anything about what we endured during our formative years ......and beyond. So to the outside world we are expected to at least attempt to fill the role of loving, nurturing caregiver....because that is just what we do for those who selflessly cared for us, guided us and provided for us.
My father is an alcoholic and I have vivd memories that begin from about the time I was 3 of him passed out on the floor or asleep at the dinner table with his head on his plate. When Alcohol alone no longer did the job he started shopping for doctors to get prescriptions for Xanax, several brands of sleeping pills and different anti-depressants. There were several occasions when, while drinking he would also take one or more of anything that was in a prescription bottle. He threatened suicide in front of his very young children more than once. Surprisingly, I would have categorized him as a functional alcoholic (able to pass out at night but still make it to work the next morning) rather than a remorseful one (he never in my life expressed any regret about the effects witnessing these things had on others). Despite continued pleadings from his children and wife, more than one formal intervention and 'confidential' conversations initiated by his friends, he never, ever sought help. He sat at home drinking while I was trying to attend every Al-Anon meeting I could find. He is now 83 , has survived several catastrophic strokes, has Parkinson's and is in the early stages of Alzheimer's. Despite his medical history and increasing memory loss he seems to have retained the art of manipulation. He and my mother,who is the last agonizing stage of Alzheimer's , entered a retirement home with healthcare facilities available for future transitions. The move from their home of 50 years was if course traumatic for both of them but my mother seemed to adjust fairly quickly because I think she finally felt safe. Eighteen months after their move my father was still threatening suicide.......but as I found out later those tearful threats were reserved just for me. I truly tried to tap into all kinds of thoughts like the ones mentioned above and sometimes that strategy would help me for a week or so until my father would begin some new form of manipulation. I began to take care of his meds as soon as I realized he was tapping into the next days supply. It isn't unusual under those circumstances for the patient who is confused to accuse a caregiver of taking their mess or refusing to give them. My father accused me of trying to kill him by with holding his medicine regardless of how often and patiently I tried to explain that if he took a 30 day RX in only 18-20 days, the pharmacy could not just refill his RX when he wanted it. It may be hard for many folks to believe, but this kind of behavior was the norm for my father even in his 30's. I truthfully wanted to try to take advantage of the transitions as he aged to forgive, let go, make peace.
I am a strong advocate of therapy and made a point never to miss an appointment from the time I was 16 and could drive myself. It is still an important part of my self care. It was through therapy that I finally had an ah-ha moment and was able to admit that for a number of reasons that I may never know, my presence was like lighting fireworks for my father whether I was helping him fold his clothes, fixing a meal or filling his med box and most of the time his cruelty wasn't the result of a confrontation. As a child my options were limited but what I finally realized was that as a grown woman (and even a grandmother myself) there were options in front of me and I surely needed to pick one and quickly. I had begun feeling physically exhausted around the clock and catching every little virus that was floating around.
So I chose to completely detach from my dad. By that point no one could have inflicted anything, guilt, criticism or anger that would have come close to causing the pain I was already in.
What I chose to do was to sit down with my father on a day when I felt both physically and emotionally rested and tell him my plan. Somehow I was able to hold it together well enough to be kind and calm yet completely honest.
I still make a point of stopping to say hello when I am at the facility with my mother.
Do I feel guilty? No. Do I feel like I abandoned my father in his time if need? No. Do I wish with all my heart that things could have been different? Of course. Have I forgiven myself from detaching? I' m not convinced that there is anything to forgive myself for.
To all those with similar stories who find they finally need to make the choice I did, I wish you well and applaud your decision. There isn't much support to be found for those of us who take the low road!

Hi everyone, if you have this kind of feeling and bad experiences way back when you were still a child then maybe it's time to move on. I am not saying that moving on is an easy thing to do but at least we have to try and just focus on the brighter side which present life brings us. If we can't let go of our past we can't live well for today and we can't even build a wonderful future if we won't accept things in our life. It is always better to forgive and think of the good things that they have done.

My father always was verbally abusive and has occasional bouts with rage. When I was a small child he use to call me retarded and dummy because I was a horrible student. That was a reason why I never was a high achieving student in grammar school and university because what he had told me always played into my head and still does to this very day. I have moved back home to care for my mother who is wheelchair bound and no longer could walk because she has developed weakness in her leg where she broke her hip. He too always have been verbally abusive towards her for years and more so now that she is disabled. I respect my father because he brought himself from his boot straps and came to the USA with nothing and had a successful home improvement business but as a parent I have none for him.

i took a 12 step healing for damaged emotions... little did i know it would heal my mom and my relationship.... i couldnt stand her.... but before the class was over i would go see her and the love in my heart was so huge that i felt it in my throat... then she fell and broke her arm.... and then got dementia... i have been taking care of her now for 5 years. i wouldnt be doing it if it wasnt for forgi veness

I finally forgave my dad for his neglect and it was more healthy for me. I am the only one able to take care of him (only sister with three brothers) because they get physically or emotionally upset dealing with him. I can not tolerate the alcohol abuse because he falls when he passes out and gets seriously hurt. But I can talk to him when he is sober. I wish my brothers would forgive him because I know it would be better for them. I too worry what the world thinks of me but recently found out most people feel sorry for me. We are trying to move Dad into a home where he will be monitored.

@Lifeinhell.... my mother has a long and negative history with me and then in the last 10 years of her life it accelerated into unbearable. When she wished me dead, that was the defining line for me.

It is all about healthy boundaries for both of you. My father passed two years ago and that was a hard loss. My mother pass just over a year ago and that was a fairly easy transition for me other than getting past no longer having dysfunction in my life. THAT was a weird adjustment.

I got so tired of people saying to me when mom was alive that I would miss her when she's gone. They didn't have to live through the misery that mom put me through for a lifetime. I've been in counseling for over a decade because of the emotional unsettling in my life from her. Without doing some major rehashing and complaining all I can tell you is that I went into counseling many years ago to find "peace at all costs".

I found that in those last 10 years with constantly going to the mountain top with her and then when the ball was in her court, I learned to live with her choices. They were not mine. She was the one miserable. She was the one choosing to distance herself, not me. Anytime I had an idea, she fought me tooth and nail so I let her have her way.

When she passed, there was a huge sense of relief but it also took me a little while to get past all those old tapes in my head. Now, I am enjoying working in my life, by my choices and knowing I don't have to run around playing those "games" anymore. I also know that because of her salvation, although she never took advantage of God's provisions for her, she is now in heaven restored. She is no longer miserable, she no longer lives in fear, she no longer has severe anxiety and she is free! That is how I get past this.

Although my story doesn't contain as much hardship as so many others I've seen on here how do you move on when they continue to make your life a living hell.

This thing with my father has not only brought me to tears but financial ruin and questioning my own sanity at times. I commend those that have and want to thank them it gives me hope that I might find my own way out through the advice you guys give.

Thank you!

You guys should listen to Joyce Meyers story about her father (who sexually abused her) and how she cared for him. She talk about the pain, the emotions, but the end result. I think you can call and request her CD about her testimony. That will bring you to tears after all she encountered from her father.

Caring for a father, who sexually abused me when I was just an infant and toddler, has been the most painful experience of my life. The big secret was finally revealed to me at the age of 38 and just after a full hysterectomy and coming to terms with never ever being able to bare a child of my own. People tell me to speak out, but when I do, my brothers shun me and call me a crazy troublemaker; friends turn their backs and flap their tongues. Because it seems the right thing to do, and for the sake of my family's honor, I will continue to care for my father, at arm's length, until the day he dies. Thanking God for Hospice, who is now helping me care for both parents at the same time. After my father passes away, there will be more emotions, but once the storm has passed, I'm leaving "The Shack," and I'm never looking back. Peace and love to those who have experienced this type of pain. There is a light at the end of the tunnel . . . keep moving toward it.

And Debralee, allow me to add one thing to that. You have to not accept the guilt the abuser "attempts" to pass on to you.

Sometimes the only approach is to walk away totally from any of your abusive elderly parent's responsibility and don't look back. No one deserves to relive the nightmares of their past due to the needs of the elderly perportrator's care. Abusers never change their behavior they only get worse.

Good point. If I let the director know that the box I mail over will have her winter/spring wreath, she will make sure it gets put up! That would be such a relief, not to visit right before we leave for my son's wedding. Jeanne, you are right, I need that break.

I have to see her after the wedding as her medical POA for an oncologist visit. I can make sure the wreath is up then. So- I still need detachment strategies but not for a couple of weeks.

surprise, why do you "need to" visit next week? If you had a violent reaction to eating kumquats, would you feel you "need to" eat a kumquat on a certain schedule? Would you deliberately walk into a patch of poison ivy every week? Send her a nice but not gushy or sentimental birthday card from where ever you are. Enjoy your time away.

Forgive if you can, for your sake. But take care of your mental and emotional health. You owe that to yourself and to your family, to a far greater extent than you owe anything to your mother.

I'm really working on forgiveness, and I thought I had come a long way from 20 years ago when I first went into therapy. My mother cut off communications with me 8 years back though she still talked to my husband professionally. Last summer, Adult Protective Services called us to come rescue her in her serious dementia, and we did. She, like the previous poster's fil, had forgotten she hated me.

Now that she has recovered from her cancer, she remembers her hatred again, and it has become very trying. We had been visiting her in AL twice a week, and after Christmas, she really fell off behaviorally. First, she was verbally abusive to me in front of the children, a line she had not crossed before. That made it easy to decide not to allow the children to visit during the rest of flu season = April or if she ever gets better.

A week later, she was calling out of state friends to come get her from their state capitol where I supposedly had abandoned her. They called me and berated me until I interrupted and explained this was her dementia acting up and that she was safely locked into a Memory Care unit. Hubby and I went to see her that night after work, and that visit touched off my PTSD.

That afternoon when we visited she was convinced I had hired someone to take her car that morning after she had driven up (her car is still at her home 2 states away). About 10 mins into the visit, with a perfectly evil look on her face, she told husband in front of me that she had contacted her hit man friends and put a contract on my life - the same story she used when I first came to live with her about 8 until I entered high school at 14. She said it with a straight face every time just like this when I was little but it always upset me considerably. I had pushed this memory out of my head and her repitition brought it back to the front of my thoughts. How could a parent use a child's death as a threat to control a child's behavior?

This time, I told her that her words were evil, and if she wanted to have a relationship, she could not treat me like that. I left, hubby stayed to calm her down a little, but she followed him out the door of the car to apologize with a "but you deserve it" negation.

How do I detach when she pulls out old memories I wish I could permanently forget? If you have strategies, please share. I did not visit this week, but feel like I need to next weekend, before we are gone for a couple of weeks over her birthday.

Hi Joan-i think everyone has different views as to what forgiveness means to them. I for one just dont believe in ever forgiving my mom-I just cant do it. I cant understand where the hurt goes away by forgiving her. The hurt is going away slowly by no contact. And like I said its working. I made the decision to move anyway from her-I should never have moved last year to be close to her in hopes of helping her. She is starting her old tricks again and I am not going to be sucked into her behavior. All I can say is Im good.

I have seen forgiveness expressed as "giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me".

In my view, forgiving is mainly for the person who has been hurt, in order to, as you say, book, let go of the anger, and start to heal.

The anger we keep inside hurts us, and does not affect the abuser, unless we try to hurt them back, in which case it affects us and the abuser. To me, forgiving the abuser does not let them off the hook. There still are consequences for abusing some one - even legal ones, and I fully support anyone for following up on these. Other consequences include cutting, or limiting contact with the abuser.

What concerns me about people who do not forgive their abusers is that they carry bitterness and anger within them the rest of their lives and the abusive acts which hurt them years ago, continue to hurt them. I think I understand the difficulty some have who expect repentance before forgiveness, but some abusers seems to not capable of that. My mother who has Borderline Personality Disorder seems not to perceive that what she does, and says in harmful to others. As I do continue to have limited contact with her, I have to forgive on an ongoing basis, as the abusive behaviour does not stop.

I don't want to carry the hurt and anger inside. Hurts still happen but I try to deal with them quickly.

I find than limiting contact - taking long breaks at times - helps me to heal.

Playa I am glad that severing contact is working for you. I may have to do that myself one day.

To any who have been sexually abused, my heart goes out to you. This is the most damaging kind of abuse, and very difficult to deal with.

((((((((((((hugs))))))))) to all Joan

I haven't read this article yet. I have sooo many people who have abused me while young. I'm just not ready to read this and get so angry. This is one of the reasons I failed miserably as a Christian. I have problems Forgiving. I have bought a book on Forgiving. I'm hoping it will give me an idea on how to go about it slowly on MY terms. So far, I'm only on the intro. Yesterday during lunch, I meditated on what I read on the few paragraphs. It's so true - that in order to forgive we need to acknowledge the ANGER from within. It warns that once I start on this Forgiving Journey, other Hurts will be remembered, and Other Angers will come out. And that I will be working continously to keep forgiving all these past hurts. It's so true. If so-and-so was abusing all of us girls, why didn't mom protect us? It's all links to one another. Why didn't oldest sis say something? or try to protect us younger girls? It just goes on and on the anger I felt throughout the years. So, I'm reading that Forgiving book with trepidation. I hope I have the courage to continue to learn from it....Like Cmag said, it will help us in the long run. I just wasn't in the mood lastnight to read this article...but I put a "follow" so that I can read it when I'm ready.