Dear DC:

You are welcome and I hope that you have a good week ahead!

Before I answered your original post in your current thread five days ago, I noticed that we communicated in the 4 pages (Aug 31- Nov 13, 2021) of your first thread Letting go of injustice, but I didn’t re-read it until this morning. I will be doing so this morning.

In your first thread, you shared that you were a member of Strata Committee (SC) which made decisions for the 45 owners who lived in a block of townhouses where you were one of the tenants, and the Treasurer of the SC “has been paying for certain repairs for his own unit without the permission of the SC”.

“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 wrote back then.

As I often ask members, I asked you too about your childhood, and you shared that your father died when you were five, and your mother had an affair with a married man who “tortured and abused.. physically and emotionally” you (and your siblings) until your late teens.

You shared this about your mother: “We were parented by a single mother, whom I came to realise is a narcissistic and toxic person. She has little capacity for empathy, is self centred, controlling, critical, etc. If you read about the traits of a narcissistic mother, she has all of them. To this day, each time I contact her (we don’t live in the same country), she would never ask about how I am doing but instead, focus on what she wants from me – in a very ungrateful and demanding way. It is very clear that it is all about her.  It is my culture to respect elders… I find myself wrestling with a dislike for her as a toxic person/parent, but a deep care for her because she is my mother“.

On Sept 2, 2021, I wrote to you: ” I want to jump straight into what I’ll call The Core Injustice: the biggest and earliest Injustice that you experienced… I know that it is in your culture to respect parents (and) elders. Thing is, culture does not make an exception for very abusive parents or elders. Without such exception, culture teaches to respect abuse…. What kind of justice is it when a woman is allowed to hurt her children badly for years.. and she get away with it, no one holding her accountable as she keeps abusing them into adulthood: no apologies, no regrets.. no guilt, no justice… Your mother used and still uses her position of power to abuse you and her other two adult children. It is society and culture that give her this position of power to keep for the duration of her life, turning the other way when she uses her position of power against her children…  It is society and culture that instill in children this Guilt, a terrible pain of being a bad-boy (or a bad-girl) if you act to correct the injustice of parental abuse…  saying: well, look at your mother.. she is elderly now, harmless.. about to die.. don’t upset her now, take the non-physical abuse (as she is too weak being elderly.. to hit you herself or to have an affair with a man who will) for just a little bit longer.. okay? Good boy!”.

Your response on the same day: “Your insights have enabled me to again revisit my childhood, and realise that maybe my preoccupation with justice, albeit a little trivial,  stems from what happened during my childhood – and to put in your words, 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“, and you asked: “to heal and move forward, would the way be to accept that all of us are flawed (including my mother), and then let go?“.

I answered: “True: all of us are flawed.. but some people go out of their way to be repeatedly abusive, month after month, year after year, no regrets, no efforts to correct. There needs to be a distinction between being flawed and being abusive. To heal and move forward, do let go after you no longer avail yourself to your mother’s abuse… Many adult children of abusive parents, wanting to heal, insist (because of Guilt) on keeping contact with the abusive parents, figuring they can find a way to not be affected by the ongoing abuse.. it doesn’t work”.

In your reply, you agreed with what I said but added: “I find it next to impossible to go no-contact with my mum. Sorry to disappoint. Instead, I think that I will write her messages to show that I still love her. She needs the assurances as she is now frail and elderly – and has health issues… Perhaps she does love me in her own selfish way. Or perhaps I really want to believe that. While there are tiny moments of love or kindness towards me, they are largely swamped by her abuse…. She is like that, perhaps because of her own childhood and biology. I don’t know that it is her fault“.

In your next post, you wrote: “You have this gift of clarity and getting to the guts of things.  I really like that! (I copied and pasted this just now because it makes me feel good to read it). It is true that she could abuse us when we were kids as 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 and I used to go to school with Elastoplast in several parts of my arms to hide those bruises. She hit us to vent her anger – not to help us be better humans. Perhaps she did not understand how else to release her own frustration“.

On Sept 5, you asked me: “Why do you do this Anita? Why do you go into these forums and put in so much effort, time to help people like me? You are also unrelenting and unwavering in your support. Most people would give up.  I am curious as there are very few gracious people like you on this planet” (Again, makes me feel good to read this).

My answer the next day: “Because to me, on the other side of my computer screen, I can almost see you: you are a real person, flesh and blood, thinking, feeling.. just like me. I know how you feel when you feel hope or sadness..  pain. You are just like me, so when I am helping you- I am helping myself, no difference. In yet other words: you are important, there is no person in the world who is more important than you. You matter, your experience of life matters no less than mine. You are therefore worthy of my effort and time”

On Nov 13, you posted an update on the issue you presented in your original post 2.5 months earlier: “Managed to deal with the committee issue and exposed the dishonest behaviour within it at a general meeting of all owners. As a consequence, the treasurer resigned, which is an excellent outcome.  I have decided to relocate as it is not worth my while to be engaged in such toxicity.  I am sure that this is merely a short-term reprieve and there will be further undesirable incidents later down the track“.

And as you predicted back then, there is currently a “further undesirable incident” about which you posted 5 days ago in your second thread (the current).

My input today: (1) It is interesting that on both threads, I assumed that you are a man, and sometime along each thread, I was surprised to find out that you are a woman. I think that two of the reasons I did not even consider that you are a woman are that a– I assumed (wrongly) that your courage to fight-and-right-wrongs indicated that you are a man, a gender stereotype that I need to correct, and b–  because you were so kind and gracious to me in both threads, I assumed that you were a man.. Because of my personal experience, I learned to expect aggression from the female gender.

(2) Injustice in the world is massive in magnitude, mind boggling.. almost unbelievable in extent, the extremes of it. Abuse of children and of adults is about the Abuse Of Power: political leaders/ people in the position of financial power abuse the power they have over millions and billions of people.., and parents in countless homes abuse the power they have over their children, and society/ culture at large.. allows it.

If you’d like, we can talk more about any or all of this…?

anita