I am the youngest, female child of a second marriage with one brother and a half-sister (another half-brother died some years ago). My parents were unhappily married and my father had mental health problems. They divorced when I was at primary school and I lived with my mother. She began a relationship with an alcoholic, who used to attack me physically and was emotionally abusive, too.
After a few months of terrible and neglectful parenting, I went to live with my father. Contact with my mother was scarce and difficult for most of my teenage years and into adulthood. She was emotionally distant, selfish and quite cruel. My father was demonstrative and I always knew he loved me, but he was a difficult and troubled man.
My older half-brother died when I was a teenager. I remember him fondly.
I was sexually bullied and emotionally abused when I was under 10 by my brother (not the one who died) and the trauma has dogged me for most of my life. I have had therapy and counselling and, as a young adult, had the courage to tell my mother and my half-sister about it. They shut down and refused to accept it and tried to get me to forget all about it.
Fast forward to today, and our mother has died. The abusing brother lied to her and manipulated her into cutting me out of her life. He partially succeeded – by getting my mother to change her will in favour of him and his family – but he did not succeed fully and I was able to look after my dying mother for most of last year.
Unfortunately, he had power of attorney and controlled my mother and her finances. He lied and manipulated and continues to try to get at me. He does this by withholding money from my mother’s estate (my mother appointed him and my sister as executors). He would not let me see her will until I paid a solicitor and then he had to let me see it. He game-plays by making himself seem like the victim and me the “mad” evil sister. This is hugely damaging for me emotionally as I feel this is another rejection and denial of me by my mother and half-sister.
What I want to do now is protect the little girl in me and cut off all contact with my siblings who deny me. This has been difficult to do because of unresolved money issues and my mother’s recently altered will.
I would also like my brother and sister to own up, apologise and, finally, not deny me as a person. I really want to cut off all ties as they are so harmful. I have explained this to my husband and kids who seem to understand. What should I do?
Exactly what do you want? You are not, unfortunately, going to get your siblings to admit anything or apologise, but what you can do is pull up the drawbridge and have nothing more to do with them for a while, or ever. You don’t have to make any hard and fast rules. You are in charge.
What seems to be holding you back, however, is the will/money, and that’s something only you can decide to relinquish (incidentally, anyone can see anyone’s will if it’s gone through probate; you pay £10 and can request a copy here: gov.uk/search-will-probate).
I consulted the psychotherapist Gail Walker (childpsychotherapy.org.uk). She found your (longer) letter quite muddled and said that “that in itself can be a sign of trauma”. And your upbringing was traumatic.
Walker wondered why you had written in now – and thought that perhaps, and understandably, your mother’s death had brought a lot of rejection to the fore again and that the alteration to the will “was another rejection”.
Walker thought you had made “remarkable achievements” in your life that were not to be underestimated. And the traumas your mother and father had suffered in their own upbringings (which you mentioned in your longer letter) would have greatly affected their ability to parent. “Your ability to come through this,” says Walker, “speaks volumes about your resilience.”
She explained that the only person who “can validate you, is not your siblings, not anyone else, but you, and you can do that by making sense of your history”.
I know you’ve had therapy, but if you could find someone to “put heads together with” as Walker put it, again, now that your mother has died and stirred up feelings, you may be able to move forward.
“Whatever happens in our past,” says Walker, “gets ploughed into who we are now, but in order to be a coherent personality the trauma has to be ‘digested’, or it can take us by surprise and we can find ourselves thrown by something unexpected happening.” This is why we can sometimes completely overreact to things.
No one had stood up for, believed in, or protected the little girl you were (indeed, you mention it, which is very astute of you) and now you want to do that yourself.
Sometimes we reach a point in our lives where we’re adult enough to look back at our childhood selves and say: that wasn’t OK. Enough now. I think you are at that point.
If you want help with the abuse you suffered, go to napac.org.uk.
Your problems solved
Contact Annalisa Barbieri, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU or email annalisa.barbieri@mac.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence
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