B
Being_Brave
Guest
There is a lot of back story to this, but I’ll try not to write a book series. (skip to the bottom to avoid the drawn-out details)
My aunt has “disowned” me multiple times in the last year and it didn’t start until I found out I was pregnant. My mom said my aunt has always done it & only recently started in on me. To be honest, my mother isn’t innocent either. She has a diagnosed personality disorder and is a master manipulator so sometimes it is hard to know what to believe from her.
1st Trimester- disowned me for not coming to her house every morning after I got off work (I worked midnight shift dispatching for a police department, didn’t get off work until after my aunt left for her job). Not leaving anything out, literally got an e-mail saying the sole reason was not coming every day.
2nd Trimester- “forgave” me for not coming to her house, but decided to disown me again when my mother in law extended a word-of mouth invitation to my baby shower in stead of a written one (it was last minute, so nobody got written invitations). Again I asked her to stop sending e-mails and actually call or some by so we could talk, and again she refused.
I had to have an emergency c-section and was put on house-rest for 6 weeks to recover. During that time my aunt called me to say she “forgave” me for the baby shower incident & asked if she could come over to talk to me. After all the hurt she caused me I didn’t want to let her back in, but she had been like a second mother to me, so I tried to rationalize away my negative feelings about letting her back in. I thought that once she saw this beautiful baby she’d get her head back. The meeting went well, she seemed to be back to her kind self…for a week.
We share the same birthday and it was a week after her visit. She said she was going out of town so I called her home & cell phones, left e-mails telling her happy birthday. The next day I got a nasty e-mail telling me that I did not try hard enough to reach her, that she was home all day and I didn’t come by, and revisited all the other reasons she’d “disowned” me in the last year to emphasize how disrespectful and “worthless” I am. She cursed me for not driving to bring the baby to see her while I was recovering from the c-section, then rounded the e-mail off by telling me that she had “beautiful neices” to attend to and that she was “trimming” me and my “little family” out of her family tree.
I asked her to call or talk to me in person but once again, she did not. I sent an invitation to my daughter’s baptism- she did not show up. Sent Christmas cards- her response was a self-help book called “Learn To Love”. I don’t know any other way to view that than pure spite. At that time I decided that the emotional rollercoaster was not something I wanted my child to be raised around anyways. We decided to not allow my aunt back in this time. She had made her choice to “disown” us for the last time & we were going to make her live with her choice this time. I didn’t tell my other family members about what my aunt had done, I honestly wanted to avoid causing or being a part of any more drama.
2 weeks ago my grandmother was told that she had rapid spreading breast cancer & they had to schedule an immediate double-mastecotomy. Two days ago my grandmother had her surgery and the entire family was there to support her. I knew my aunt would be there and decided to tell my mom about our decision to exclude my aunt from interaction with my daugher & she agreed to be supportive of our decision, saying that she’d done the same thing with us which is why I never knew about my aunt’s dramatic side growing up.
It was a stressful day but without any confrontation. My aunt did not approach my daughter & our interactions were cordial & brief. Everyone put their own issues aside to come together for my grandma. We were allowed to go into grandma’s room to wait for her to be released from recovery, and that’s where my mother, of all people, wrecked it.
My mom asked to hold my daughter, then immediately turned to my aunt and and shoved her into my aunt’s arms. My mom knew exactly the situation she was creating, and my aunt went along with it. My reaction was to gently take my baby girl from my aunt, and when she asked why I calmly told her that she’d made her choice. I left it at that and did not let my mother hold my girl the rest of the day.
When I got a chance to speak to my mom alone she brushed me off saying, “My mom just got out of surgery, I need to grieve.” ((When my father passed away, my mother didn’t allow me to grieve. He hadn’t told us that he was homeless, and I was the only person he had listed with the shelter as next of kin and I had to go out of state to handle his affairs, my mother went with me for “support”, and ended up drunk and beligerent for the entire week, physically attacked me in my sleep while we were there, and pretended that her loss was greater than mine because she’d “known him longer” than I had…))
Today I got another nasty-gram from my aunt: (coped and pasted, minus her signature)
My aunt has “disowned” me multiple times in the last year and it didn’t start until I found out I was pregnant. My mom said my aunt has always done it & only recently started in on me. To be honest, my mother isn’t innocent either. She has a diagnosed personality disorder and is a master manipulator so sometimes it is hard to know what to believe from her.
1st Trimester- disowned me for not coming to her house every morning after I got off work (I worked midnight shift dispatching for a police department, didn’t get off work until after my aunt left for her job). Not leaving anything out, literally got an e-mail saying the sole reason was not coming every day.
2nd Trimester- “forgave” me for not coming to her house, but decided to disown me again when my mother in law extended a word-of mouth invitation to my baby shower in stead of a written one (it was last minute, so nobody got written invitations). Again I asked her to stop sending e-mails and actually call or some by so we could talk, and again she refused.
I had to have an emergency c-section and was put on house-rest for 6 weeks to recover. During that time my aunt called me to say she “forgave” me for the baby shower incident & asked if she could come over to talk to me. After all the hurt she caused me I didn’t want to let her back in, but she had been like a second mother to me, so I tried to rationalize away my negative feelings about letting her back in. I thought that once she saw this beautiful baby she’d get her head back. The meeting went well, she seemed to be back to her kind self…for a week.
We share the same birthday and it was a week after her visit. She said she was going out of town so I called her home & cell phones, left e-mails telling her happy birthday. The next day I got a nasty e-mail telling me that I did not try hard enough to reach her, that she was home all day and I didn’t come by, and revisited all the other reasons she’d “disowned” me in the last year to emphasize how disrespectful and “worthless” I am. She cursed me for not driving to bring the baby to see her while I was recovering from the c-section, then rounded the e-mail off by telling me that she had “beautiful neices” to attend to and that she was “trimming” me and my “little family” out of her family tree.
I asked her to call or talk to me in person but once again, she did not. I sent an invitation to my daughter’s baptism- she did not show up. Sent Christmas cards- her response was a self-help book called “Learn To Love”. I don’t know any other way to view that than pure spite. At that time I decided that the emotional rollercoaster was not something I wanted my child to be raised around anyways. We decided to not allow my aunt back in this time. She had made her choice to “disown” us for the last time & we were going to make her live with her choice this time. I didn’t tell my other family members about what my aunt had done, I honestly wanted to avoid causing or being a part of any more drama.
2 weeks ago my grandmother was told that she had rapid spreading breast cancer & they had to schedule an immediate double-mastecotomy. Two days ago my grandmother had her surgery and the entire family was there to support her. I knew my aunt would be there and decided to tell my mom about our decision to exclude my aunt from interaction with my daugher & she agreed to be supportive of our decision, saying that she’d done the same thing with us which is why I never knew about my aunt’s dramatic side growing up.
It was a stressful day but without any confrontation. My aunt did not approach my daughter & our interactions were cordial & brief. Everyone put their own issues aside to come together for my grandma. We were allowed to go into grandma’s room to wait for her to be released from recovery, and that’s where my mother, of all people, wrecked it.
My mom asked to hold my daughter, then immediately turned to my aunt and and shoved her into my aunt’s arms. My mom knew exactly the situation she was creating, and my aunt went along with it. My reaction was to gently take my baby girl from my aunt, and when she asked why I calmly told her that she’d made her choice. I left it at that and did not let my mother hold my girl the rest of the day.
When I got a chance to speak to my mom alone she brushed me off saying, “My mom just got out of surgery, I need to grieve.” ((When my father passed away, my mother didn’t allow me to grieve. He hadn’t told us that he was homeless, and I was the only person he had listed with the shelter as next of kin and I had to go out of state to handle his affairs, my mother went with me for “support”, and ended up drunk and beligerent for the entire week, physically attacked me in my sleep while we were there, and pretended that her loss was greater than mine because she’d “known him longer” than I had…))
Today I got another nasty-gram from my aunt: (coped and pasted, minus her signature)
And I will definitely be taking your advice to send cards as well, I hadn’t thought of it but you’re exactly right that she would apreciate it, especially seeing that I may not be given an oportunity to even get in her front door if my aunt is given any kind of control over the house while my grandma is recovering.