Dear marthams:

Your grandmother is a bad mother and a bad grandmother. She has been repeatedly and habitually hostile and cruel to her own children when they were children, I bet, and all through all their adulthood (your mother, aunt, uncle) as well as to her grandchildren (you and a few of your cousins).

It would have been nice if you had a nice grandmother, but you don’t and there is no way for you to .. make her someone she is not.

I suggest that you don’t do her hair anymore, don’t try to make her like you, don’t apologize for doing nothing wrong to her, and protect yourself from her by staying away from her. I hope that your mother stays away from her as well.

* I will be away from the computer for a while. I hope other members answer you as well. If you post again, I will read and reply to you when I return to the computer.

anita

Dear marthams:

“I’ve been living in a feeling of guilt…it’s like.. someone punched you and yelled at you and then said it’s you who have hurt him and you’re to blame forever… I felt bad because it’s family. When it’s a stranger you can move on and get over. When it’s family.. you feel guilty because she is offended… being a bad person.. sneaky, evil, shady person who committed such a disgusting ‘crime’ of knowing she was dead and pretending I didn’t know”, in your dream.

My input this morning: as a child you look up to adult family members, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, there is a connection formed in childhood and the interactions with those family members in the child’s life are very meaningful to the child. When an adult family member blames the child, the child automatically feels guilty. Because a child is not able to evaluate people and situations and understand she is not blameworthy, that it is the adult with the problem.

A child automatically views the adults in her life as all-knowing, the ones who are perfect. So when a perfect person, a god of sorts, blames the child, why… the adult must be correct, and I (the child) must be wrong.

Later  in life you are able to evaluate people and situations, and at this point you are able to see that your grandmother is a cruel person who “doesn’t value us in her  life”, but the belief that you are guilty was formed before this evaluation, so it persists.

Regarding “she (grandmother) doesn’t value us in her life”- I think she does value you and your mother and the others as places to dump her distress into. That is your value to  her. So when you do her hair, and have done so for years, buying the material yourself, buying food for her pets and on and on, she doesn’t value these things. When you forgot her birthday once, she took that occurrence as an opportunity to dump her distress into you.

Because that is your value for her, and your mother’s and the others (including those who are currently on her .. good list, soon to be on the bad list, I am thinking), places to dump her distress into.

I do hope you and your other family members reject being those dumpsters for her.

anita

Dear marthams:

Your grandmother’s weapon is her anger. When she is displeased, she angrily attacks her now adult child, or grandchild, attacks by words (ex: “Yes she did and she had to buy a house but I don’t care about yours“), or silence (“sweeping the floor, still no talking”), and then she waits for the one she is angry with to crawl back to her, to apologize, to repent, repeatedly until she decides that her target suffered enough and starts talking to her/him until the next time she is displeased.

“I really regret calling her when my mom wanted me to, because ‘I should'”- your mother is still trying to please her mother, she is still on that impossible mission of being on her mother’s  always-good-list, a list that doesn’t exist. Better you don’t encourage your mother’s impossible mission.

“I often got bored sitting there because I used to sit there and listen, she didn’t actually have a conversation with me, a dialog. I wasted many hours sitting there and being bored”- it is difficult to imagine that a grandmother or a mother has no interest in her child’s or grandchild’s thoughts and feelings and what is happening in their lives, and even more difficult to imagine a grandmother being upset when she hears about something good happening in her grandchild’s life (ex., you buying a home), but it is reality.

See your grandmother as who she is, a selfish woman who has hurt her own children repeatedly and continues to do so. She is a bad person who hurts others and then wants them to apologize to her, repeatedly, for wrongs not committed.

anita

Dear marthams:

A quick reply (I am in a hurry, need to be away from the computer): yes, no talking is the best choice. If you go to this wedding, you will not fix the family situation, and you will not change that woman, your grandmother. No point trying to  prevent your grandmother’s next outrage- she may be outraged right after the wedding if she doesn’t like the gift you will  bring…. or during the wedding if she doesn’t like what you are wearing, or if you didn’t smile at her at just the right moment, or whatever her displeasure may be.

And if you escape her outrage this time, it will be there next time. Who wants to be on a hostile person’s temporary  good list, not knowing the next time…

I wouldn’t  go to the wedding if I was you, it would be a waste  of money and effort and nothing to be gained.

I will be back to the computer in about 13 hours, if you would like to add anything, please do and I will be back with you when I am back.

anita

Dear marthams:

Your grandmother really is a bad person, hurting her own children and grandchildren, going out of her way to make it happen. It is tough for a child at any age (your mother is her adult-child) to accept that about a parent. The child, minor and then adult,  often tries to please the cruel parent her whole life. The cruel parent’s weapon is her anger.

“grandma is angry with me?” is the title of your thread.

To remove yourself from a cruel, hostile person is the right thing to do.

As you remove yourself from your grandmother, don’t be surprised to see your mother still trying to please her mother (your grandmother), still trying to get on her (forever-temporary) good list.

anita

Dear marthams:

I have experience with people exhibiting the behaviors you described on the part of your grandmother, a whole lot of it so I feel qualified to answer your question about your grandmother’s tears:

– every person, no matter how cruel and how deceitful, still feels sad at times, still feels a desire at times, be it for food or for kind words, for attention, still feels all the emotions we all do. So your grandmother, when you see tears in her eyes, she likely feels sad or happy but she is also thinking, right before crying or right after something like: they can see that I am crying… good! They can see that they hurt me and I hope they feel bad about it… now what will they do about it?

So the emotion is there and the manipulation. Let’s say she really felt sad and tears appeared in her eyes, the moment she thinks the manipulative thoughts, her emotion is no longer genuine, now it is forced and probably doesn’t appear genuine anymore.

It is better that you decide on your own position regarding your grandmother and other family members and not … try to please your mother who is trying to please her mother!

One more thing, regarding what your mother told you: “perhaps we should call her or something.. she is getting old and in case something happens..”… we will have this guilt forever“-

-not true: it is not only grandmother who is getting old, or older, we all do. It is not only grandmother who will die, and therefore, no one will live forever with guilt or with any other emotion. Better we all live the rest of our lives with the least suffering possible. When a grandmother’s agenda is to bring unnecessary suffering into our lives, better unnecessary we don’t avail ourselves to her.

anita