Dear DC:

You are again welcome and thank you for your empathy, kindness and grace. The ways you’ve express your kindness and grace in 2021 and currently, are evidence to me that you have a lot of experience being as kind and gracious as you are.

Oct 31, 2023: “My mother has just passed away – she died in June after fighting cancer for about a year. She was a fraction of herself – very thin, utterly helpless. I felt sad to see her that way”-

Back in Sept 2021, you wrote on the topic of unethical behavior in regard to the Strata Committee (SC) and in general: “I am often the ‘unwelcome’ voice which calls out on such unethical behaviour. Most SC members would not call out such behaviour for fear of retribution… I find it hard to be involved and not blow the whistle on such unethical behaviour… I simply cannot ‘unsee’ things that I see…I continually go out of my way to see that perpetrators do not get away with misdeeds“.

You shared back then about the major perpetrator in your personal life: your mother, “a narcissistic and toxic person. She has little capacity for empathy, is self centred, controlling, critical, etc… very ungrateful and demanding… it is all about her“, and that when you were 5 and all the way to your late teens, she had an affair with a married man who “tortured and abused.. physically and emotionally” you and your siblings. “When we were kids.. no one held her accountable. We were little and utterly vulnerable. No way to defend ourselves. Therefore easy for her to exploit within the walls of our house. Cane marks were hidden… She hit us to vent her anger“.

Why am I repeating this.. is it disrespectful of the dead? Should I not close the topic with the standard I-am-sorry-for-your-loss and let it go?

My answer (to my own question): NO. Because what you wrote about yourself back in Sept 2021 is true to me too: “I simply cannot ‘unsee’ things that I see…I continually go out of my way to see that perpetrators do not get away with misdeeds“.

The great majority of abusive parents all over the world get away with their misdeeds when they are young (the excuse, paraphrased: they didn’t live long enough to.. be held accountable), when they are old (the excuse: they lived too long to be held accountable) and when they are dead (…the dead are not to be held accountable and if we hold them accountable, we are judged as rude, petty and .. bad people), and so, many millions of abusive parents, generation after generation, are never held accountable.

“It is my culture to respect elders, so all my siblings just give in to her whims and wishes. She is getting older now, and those demands are increasing” (Sept 2021)

It is our world culture to respect (to not resist, to not condemn, but to excuse and to tolerate) abuse by parents. And in turn, too often, abused children become abusive parents, or we become parents who are blind to our children’s emotional experiences, and in so, passing abuse to the next generation, and to the next.

“Maybe my preoccupation with justice, albeit a little trivial,  stems from what happened during my childhood… perhaps my attempt to right the ‘core injustice’ that happened to me and my siblings all those years ago. Perhaps within me is an anger – a burning flame – that has never been extinguished” (Sept 2021)-

– May the burning flame in you continue to be about righting wrongs. Notice about anger: your mother hit you and your siblings to vent her anger (“She hit us to vent her anger”). This is where her anger went: to do what’s wrong and unjust. Your anger goes to righting wrongs, to promote justice.

My mother used to hit me too, during my first decade of life, my second, and then.. my third. I was 20 something when (I remember) her running toward me. She was only a few steps away.. but she needed to run to me. It was passion in her heart that made her run those few steps.. but it wasn’t passion to hold me gently, to take me in her arms and tell me she loves me, that she is there for me.. No, it was her passion to cause me physical pain and as quickly as possible.

I reacted that time in a way I never did before: instead of cowering, I held my arms straight in front of me and as she reached me, I grabbed her hands in mine, so she wasn’t able to use her hands to hit me.

Next, I stood there and she stood there, no one moving (I extended just enough force to counter hers), and then.. she withdrew, quietly. That’s all. Nothing happened. And I was livid, thinking: this is ALL it took all these years, for me to not be hit..? Why, I should have done this years ago!

In my mind, all those years, I thought of her as Strong and Courageous, someone who will not back away with the slightest, real-life resistance. All those years.. I gave in to a coward.

And this is my point about abusive parents: most if not all, abuse their children- into their children’s adult years (in one way or another)- because they easily get away with it.. no real resistance, not from their children (who love them nonetheless), and not from other adults, neighbors, etc.

I haven’t been in contact with my mother for ten years. I imagine she is dying, or soon. And I love her so much. I always loved her. All through my life, I would have given anything.. everything to make her happy. I would have easily given away my life to make her life worthwhile. And in some major ways, I did (But all in vain).

When I used to feel any kind of love for her, I used to also feel confused; I needed to feel anger at her, not love, so to protect myself from her, so to not resume contact with her. Fast forward, I can feel love for her without the confusion, without getting scared about the possibility of resuming contact with her. (1) My responsibility, my duty is to the child that I was, the child that I still am.. to be the one whose passion is not to cause her pain, but to hold her in my arms, love her and protect her. (2) The love I feel for my mother, an early-life, natural, instinctual love of a young child to her mother.. that love was never an indication of who my mother was as a person, but an indication of nature: an automatic love every mammal feels for their mother. (3) The love I always felt for her was an unrequited love. It was not returned. I only imagined there was love in her heart for me because I needed there to be love for me.

Back to what you wrote yesterday: “As they say, nothing is permanent. Death is grounding for all of us“- let us not die before we do what we can do, in any possible way, to hold our parents (young, old or dead) accountable for the real abuse that they perpetrated against us, so that we can open our eyes to what really, truly constitutes abuse in our current lives and in the world at large, and then- right those wrongs, in any way that’s possible for us.

anita