Post # 1

Dear Shipp:

In regard to your last advice for me: “The next time someone suggests that you agree to disagree and move on, maybe you should.” I am not taking your advice because my motivation is not and has not been to be liked by you, to make friends, to feel a warm fuzzy feeling. If these things happen, that is a nice side affect. My main motivation is to learn and to try to make it a win-win experience. Disagreements are the foundation of learning. And so, I am hoping to learn something as I develop this response to you.

It is my understanding, at this point, that you were indeed abused as a child, primarily by your mother. As an adult, you proceeded to abuse one of your daughters, at the least, and later, you proceeded to abuse Emmet’s three children. This is usually the case, that abuse breeds abuse. I wonder if I can gain a better understanding of how it happens by reviewing your thread today.

A few days ago you wrote regarding your older daughter who is living with you (and who you wrote suffers from lose self esteem, is “extremely” shy, introverted and needs therapy): “I went off. I told her (and I’m omitting all the cuss words but you can probably guess where they fit in.”

In your very last post above, you wrote: “loosing your temper and yelling at someone isn’t an act of intentional child abuse, its being a human pushed past the point of endurance.”

The great majority of personal acts of abuse are not carried on with a “cold heart”- forming a dispassionate, calmly arrived at intent and then carrying it on. Most abusive acts follow an fast-arrived-at intent to hurt the victim, and then carrying on the intent with anger. The fact that you are not alarmed by your own behavior and do not see it as abuse, means to me that this kind of verbal assault of your daughter/s is business as usual for you when you get angry.

Emmet’s three children grew up without him for 12 years and obviously did not have a single adequate parent in their lives. According to your descriptions, they all suffer greatly as a result. Yet, your only expressed sentiment toward them is: ” “lying, cheating, stealing, lazy, messed up on drugs.” in the five years or so that you were in their lives, to one extent or another, there seems to be absolutely no empathy on your part for them. Quickly, like a storm, you got them out of Emmet’s house and out of his finances, out of his will.
And you saw to it that your two daughters are the only beneficiaries to his estate.

And again, you see nothing wrong with your behavior toward these three.

anita