About Me, My Family and My Life - Revelations and Learning

by Elaine Riley
(Lancashire, UK)

Strange, but it's somehow a huge relief to have got here! Well, you may be asking, what on Earth made me so keen to speak out? What made it so important that I write so much about my experiences?

I guess it's a multi-faceted thing! The motivation was primarily twofold, but went on to have many more cascading effects than anticipated. Some were, perhaps, selfish... purely about me. These included a desperate need to "vent"; to offload all the pent-up emotions, to have MY side of the story heard, to "dump" some of my "baggage". And believe me, once this process is started; once the initial fear of disclosure is overcome; matters take on almost a "life of their own"! It is as though the pressure of wanting and needing so much to relieve oneself of a "burden" breaks through the "floodgates"... once the words start flowing, they practically form sentences for themselves! After all, deep inside, any of us who have been abused know this - we know our own truth, and know that we WANT IT TO BE HEARD.

And that's just a part of it. We, who have been abused, been victims and been silent for so long, WANT and DESERVE a voice. Speaking out releases that voice. It gives us back POWER. This is the power to be heard; the power to have our experiences recognised, validated. It is the power that comes with ownership... ownership of our experiences. We assimilate our past, and in so doing, learn from it, learn to cope. We grow STRONGER.

My own learning and growth has been a gradual thing. It has included the need to face up to past experiences which I had deliberately kept hidden, put away in a recess of my mind, marked "dangerous, do not open!". But this just added to the "pressure cooker" effect! Stuff too many things into a box, and keep cramming more, then it becomes impossible to keep the lid on! So, rather than just letting things spill out, I took the lid off the box, then had a good rummage, and WROTE!

By looking at matters afresh, and with the eyes of experience (which nearly always accompanies "hindsight"), I could begin to unravel my experiences, analyse them, and learn...

I learned a fair bit, I think! Start with my mum... Here we have a woman, abused herself as a child, brought up in a strictly religious family. A woman "brainwashed" to believe in "Original Sin" and the fact that girls aren't as good as boys. A woman taken out of school to care for siblings because she WAS a girl. A woman who, had she been offered the chance, was more than clever enough to go to University. A woman who felt obliged, because of her religious upbringing, to marry and have children as opposed to solely pursuing a fulfilling career. A woman who developed a Mental Illness...

This woman gave birth to two children, boy and girl, and brought into her role as a parent all of her negative past experiences. Besides, her first child (me) came unplanned! Suffering Post Natal Depression, mum never really "bonded" with me, and perhaps it was this fact that singled me out for abuse over my brother.

Like my mum, my dad had come from a poor, neglected background, being the youngest boy in a fatherless family. He learned early that he had to "look after himself", again leaving school early to get a job, and provide his mother with a source of income. From this experience, coupled again with a religious upbringing that stereotyped male and female roles, dad probably came to view "breadwinner" as a man's only role. Men did not provide affection and emotional support - they did not hug and cuddle, that was "sissy"! Having lost his father, my own father never really had a male role model, to help determine the sort of father he might grow into.

You see, adults (and parents) kind of "make it up as they go along". They have to make difficult, sometimes on-the-spot decisions, but as adults must be responsible for these. They are only human, and don't always get things right. They may learn some of their parenting skills from their own parents. Hence, bad parenting repeats itself. ALL of OUR parents have had experiences BEFORE they became parents, and they bring these with them, into the family. Some have learned well from these experiences, and make a good job of parenting... some do not.

My parents, having lived unfortunate early lives themselves, chose later to live vicariously through their offspring. This included an expectation that we, their children, would do all the things that they had not. Unfortunately, it DID NOT take account of whether we wanted to. My parents attached excessive importance to things that, for other more balanced individuals, would have been trivial. They needed desperately to prove that they had risen above their poor backgrounds, had achieved... and in doing so, forced upon their children the same obligations - to compete, to prove. But as individuals in our own right, we, the children, had NOTHING to prove; and should not have been living with the after-effects of someone else's problems.

My father never really learned to control his temper... his anger, bitterness and frustration (which I bet is all based in the loss of his dad). My mother, with mental health issues, perhaps found it difficult to take responsibility for her actions, and to know reality, to distinguish fact from fiction. Many people with mental illness are the last to be aware that they ARE ill. Others around them see their bizarre behaviour, their irrationality... but for the person with a mental illness, the delusions, the hallucinations, seem real. And so the person acts as if they ARE real!

Being female, and the elder child, I became the focus of my mother's delusions. Perhaps she found it hard to distinguish between me, and her sister (who had become pregnant in her teens), believing ALL girls to be like this? She has often described it as "her mission" to prevent me becoming like her sister. Clearly, mum's illness had an effect on family life; whether it was in enforced secrets, discomfort around relatives, difficult interactions... As a Mental Health Social Worker by profession, I firmly believe that greater levels of support need to be offered to parents, especially those with mental health issues. Also, the "taboo" that surrounds mental illness should be lifted, making it easier to talk about, making people less scared to ask for help. Closer monitoring, and effective co-working between professionals, patients and families should encourage sufferers (and carers) to be more aware of symptoms and the need for treatment.

I cannot excuse my parents' actions, but I can try to recognise and understand. There is an overall need for recognition of abuse, and its effects. This is where Darlene's little gem of a website comes in. It gives me, and others, a voice. It brings together the experiences of SO MANY people who silently suffered childhood abuse. It allows us to share experiences and offer support. It draws attention to abuse - its effects, how to recognise it, how to seek help... Most of all, it champions the survivor...

For everyone who's written in to this site IS a survivor. A person who, despite their past, is now trying to live a good, full, ordinary life. And that's just it! NEVER believe "ordinary" - it hides so much. Behind EVERY "ordinary" person's exterior is SPECIAL, PRECIOUS, BRAVE, COURAGEOUS, LOVING, KIND, CARING, SENSITIVE... ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY. We are none of us ordinary. We are INDIVIDUAL. WE ARE AMAZING!