Sara,

Thank you so much for your kind reply. You and Anita are of course right, my family are mean, manipulative and nasty. I knew that all my life but of course it was the norm.

I never had that childhood where you felt safe, loved or like your parents would hug and kiss you. My mother did her best, but she kept having children with a man that couldn’t be a father, putting more and more pressure on me to help her take care of the babies. I was the eldest and grew up very fast. I know my mother loved me, she walked me to ballet lessons in all weathers with young children cold in the winter. She used her last penny to pay for me to go to ballet. My father didn’t give my mother a penny and he once a week gave us a basic shop of a couple of tins of value beans, a big sack of potatoes, fish fingers and spring rolls. We had no fruit or vegetables. We had a sunday lunch once a week and that was our only luxury. My school lunches were value yoghurt, value crisp and I’d get badly bullied so in the end I’d throw it in the bin and stave myself all day. I became ill from lack of food. It’s probably why I had serious stomach issues and weighed less than 90lbs all my life. I only gained weight 3 years ago when I went on an anti depressant to help me sleep and function after the attack. I am now a healthy weight around 118lbs.

I had a tough childhood dealing with all of that then on top a mentally ill brother that saught my mothers attention constantly by attempting suicide, self harming, running away leaving notes… childhood was awful. My parents used to fight infront of us evrey night when my dad returned home from the pub. My only happy memories are of being at my nan and grandads. It’s where I felt safe and loved. I looked forward to every summer as my nan would have me on my own for a week, I remember i used to cry and beg her to let me stay. My Nan was like a mother to me, she is ebverything I hope I can be. When she passed 4 years ago I never got over it, I was distraught. 3 months later I was attacked by my brother and family gave me hell. I have never had a chance to grieve her. I cry if I even think about her. I am so grateful for her, she has made sure I had happy childhood memories. My mothers side of the family are nice people and sane, they were where I felt I had a normal life. At home my mother was stressed, always shouting, spitting at my dad, my dad would escape to the pub…. it was awful. At 19 I developed anxiety and it’s no wonder really looking back.

I moved out at 20, married at 21 and my first child at 22. I adore my children, they are my world. Looking back though to their younger years I was always anxious and stressed because of my family. They were always causing an argument over something. My husband still recalls coming home from work and he said I’d have a banging headache, and I’d be on the phone trying to prove my innocence to someone that I’d not been ‘slagging them off’ as my family would accuse me. Then after my brother attacked me (the year before he had attacked my hubby) I said enough was enough. I’d still get random messages saying ‘Jo said you’ve been slagging me off, what have you been saying’ from my younger sister and vice versa. I had it and told them to never contact me again, I was sick of the childish nonsense and I am not a nasty person, I don’t ‘slag people off’. I was always the scapegoat and I had to get away from it all. My brother attacked me because my sister convinced him I had rung social services on him. I hadn’t, he was abusing his son but I never called them. He knew my mother and sister knew everything as he had told them what he had been doing and for some reason I was framed. Now my family just expect me to forget what he did to me, forget that they framed me and are the reason he attacked me, forget that my mother abandoned me after I was attacked, forget the abusive texts I received for over 2 years from my sisters…… They want me to be part of their family again because it’s my mothers wish and my mum said it will always be her dying wish.

I can’t do that. I have stopped craving my mothers support in the last year, being ill with my thyroid has made me a stronger person even if I don’t realise it, but I feel sorry for my children. They know my family are toxic but they miss their cousins, they love their grandmother and I just can’t seem to completely break that last tie. My children are all older and do understand but my sons have said they still want to see their grandmother, so my fear is if I say they can’t then they will hate me.

For now I am keeping well away from my family. My thyroid isn’t good again and have had to increase my dose. My anxiety isn’t good as a result and I cannot handle anymore stress. I know cutting them off completely is what I need to do but I honestly feel I can’t do that to my children. I have cut off my siblings and as a result they have no cousins in their lives. I feel terrible for that because they used to see them a lot. I feel they have grieved the loss of family despite knowing how toxic they are.

Thank you for your kind reply, sorry I waffled on.

Julie x