How does one accept their caregivers actions?

[pluto]

I am still trying to understand my CPTSD diagnosis, but I am having major problems with seeing my parents through a different lens. My parents were emotionally neglectful and emotionally manipulative. My father struggled with alcoholism greatly when I was younger and he would often drive drunk with my brother and I and my mom wouldn't do anything. My mom was always working and would be gone for a week at a time, but she was still absent even when she was physically present. I used to think that I was invisible when I was young, but I eventually I started to feel like a ghost instead.

My parents both had very tough and challenging childhoods and I was constantly reminded how lucky I was because I would never have to go through what they did. My father would always say this verbatim, "you will never know real trauma." But I also became the emotional support for my parents at a very young age and I am still both of their main emotional supports. All I craved was for my parents to see me and love me, but I learned I would only get that from them when being who they wanted me to be. My childhood was filled with parent surrogates and anytime someone opened their arms to me, I would happily run into them but I eventually learned that just because someone approaches you with open arms does not mean they have pure intentions. I struggle with setting boundaries and with placing myself as a priority, disregarding my needs often or sometimes purposely not fulfilling them.

My father no longer drinks as much as he once did and they have both done quite a bit of work on themselves, but when I am home with them I often get sent into what I have learned is emotional flashbacks. I am back home for a month and the last time I had a very intense emotional flashback I ended up in the hospital. Knowing and understanding how my CPTSD came to be is challenging in regards that I struggle to see my parents as causing this harm. I am very understanding of my parents, but just because I understand does not mean it hurts any less. I have tried asking my parents for some accountability, even just for putting my brother and I in harms ways time after time with drunk driving. They both do not know how to take accountability, but I also do not want to continue apologizing for them.

I have the habit of excusing people's actions against me because I am able to understand (ie: my dad's never healed his own trauma and found comfort in the numbness that alcohol provided, so I feel that I cannot be angry with him because of this). I always tell myself that my parents are just people that were trying to figure their own lives out but now with the added responsibility of children and while this is true, so is the fact that they continuously endangered us and neglected us. My father saying that I will never experience the trauma they did has become the voice in my head and I devalue my own experiences because of this. My parents are very different from who they were in my childhood and I still question if certain things even really happened and I gaslight myself into believing it didn't, but I am getting better at listening and trusting myself. It makes it hard because I see who my parents are now and while there are still some major problems, they are not who they used to be and I so grateful for that, but it just hurts so much knowing what they did and how they treated my brother and I in our childhoods and they seem to have no issue with it at all.

I struggle with trusting my parents and when they are kind or expressing their love for me, it makes me panic and I struggle with accepting it due to the emotional manipulation I experienced. I guess I am just wondering if anyone else has or is struggling with accepting their parents actions? What did you do? How did you come to accept and did you learn to forgive? I am trying to be patient with myself as I know I cannot rush my healing  or rush my understanding, but it is very hard.

I am trying to listen to how I feel without letting it be impaired by my understanding of my parents, but I am finally having to confront the fact that they had a choice, but they still continued to hurt me and that is what I am having difficulty with. I became a weapon to my parents to get back at one another and they toyed with my emotions while doing so. I always saw my parents as being the ones that were hurting and that I was to be there for them, but I was just a child. I saw them as the victim even when they were hurting me, but I am the victim and they had me convinced that they were.

My heart feels like a raw, open wound. My life has been flashing before my eyes and it's like my brain is now categorizing my parents actions and my experiences into either being emotional neglect, emotional manipulation, or just into the pile of "I don't know what this is but I know that it was not okay or good." I always felt immense empathy towards my parents, but I am learning that it is because they made me feel and see them that way. I am now learning to see them without the guise of them being the victims and learning to be okay with the fact that I was victimized.

[Armee]

I'm not sure what to say exactly, except I get it. My mom's behavior was always excused by me and others "because she can't help it" and "we just need to accept her/support her/etc"

Anytime I start to have an emotion it gets smashed down by me because "she can't help it/she's mentally ill/it's my fault for not behaving like a perfect robot therapist for her."

So I'm still deep in the grip, honestly. It's happened in other relationships too. I "understand" why someone behaved the way they did toward me which then somehow makes their behavior ok and this is the part that I think has done the most damage...smashes down any emotion i start to feel except shame and self-blame.

It's super damaging.

Learning that no one has the right to hurt you, no matter why they are doing it, is important. I had a big breakthrough with that about 6 months ago. But now I'm buried in the wreckage of that realization and the repercussions of setting up boundaries.

[zanzoken]

Pluto, first off I just want to say that I really admire your perspective and what a kind and compassionate heart you have.  I can sense that you love your parents very much, which must have only deepened the pain you felt and are still feeling from their abuse.

Everyone's story is unique, but just so you know I have also had issues with my parents.  When I was 11 years old, my family disintegrated.  My mother essentially abandoned me, and my father subjected me to coercive control, beratement, manipulation, gaslighting, and many other forms of emotional abuse.

These were all things that happened 15 to 20 years ago, so I've had a lot of time to think about them.  And over time, to come to terms with them in ways that I believe to be true.  Keep in mind that it's still an ongoing process, and I am in no way trying to imply that I have it all figured out.  So feel free to reject any part of this that doesn't feel right for you.

Here goes:

- The only person who gets to decide the reality and severity of your trauma is you.  Not your abusers, not your family, not your doctor, not your T, not anyone.  You are the one who gets to say.  If you are in pain and distress over what happened to you, then your trauma is real and it is exactly as bad as you perceive it to be.

- You are allowed to feel whatever emotions that come up in response to your trauma.  It's okay to be angry.  It's okay to be devastated.  It's okay to feel like you can't trust people.  You don't have to apologize or suppress or be ashamed of anything that you feel.

- Children are never at fault.  Don't ever entertain the idea that you did anything to bring the abuse on yourself, or that you should've done something to stop it.  You were just a child, an innocent and defenseless soul that deserved to be loved, protected, and cherished.

- There is no excuse for parents abusing their children.  It really doesn't matter what their issues were, how hard their lives were, or what they may have been going through at the time.  They had an obligation to provide a happy and safe childhood for you, and they failed.  It's okay to feel empathy and compassion toward their struggles, but that doesn't excuse the abuse they inflicted on you.

- Getting your parents to hold themselves accountable for abusing you can be meaningful, but you don't need it in order to heal.  Even all these years later, neither of my parents has ever apologized or taken ownership of their actions.  I wish they would, but I recognize and accept that it's beyond my control.  Fortunately, you can still forgive people and find your own sense of closure, even if they are unrepentant. 

- Child abuse doesn't necessarily stop once you become an adult.  Our parents often continue to hurt us even after we are grown.  If that's the case for you, you have the right to confront them about it, to set boundaries, or to go no contact.  You have the right to take care of yourself and do what's right for you regardless of how they feel about it.

Okay, that was a lot.  Maybe too much... I apologize if so.  And again I just want to reiterate, I'm not trying to speak to you in any kind of authoritative posture here.  These are just things that have been helpful for me, and I hope they can be for you as well.

[jay5r]

My situation is completely different (gay son of very homophobic parents), but I came across something at one point that helped me come to a point of resolution with them. A lot of articles on forgiveness say (or imply) that until the relationship is healed you haven't fully forgiven the person - that you still have work to do. But what if the offender can't or won't change their behavior? The article I found back then (I wish I could find it now) basically said forgiveness is you forgiving them, just because they're not doing their part in the healing process doesn't mean you haven't forgiven them. Once you've given them adequate opportunities to change, you're allowed to do what's best for you. You can still feel hurt, but if your anger is gone and you just let them be themselves, then you've forgiven them.

In my case I walked away. The homophobia of my parents cut too deep. There were too many years of conditioning telling me to care about what they thought of me. Once I realized they probably would never change and the relationship was harming me, I just quietly ghosted. Years later when my father was dying my sisters didn't understand why I didn't want to come to visit him. They told me it was time to forgive him - that I'd regret it if I didn't make peace with him. My response was that the moment I let go of the anger and walked away was when I had fully forgiven him. I still felt hurt, but I was at peace with the situation. I didn't need to do more. If he had asked me to come, I would have, but he didn't.

It sounds like you still have a fair amount of interaction with your parents. It also sounds like you've tried to understand why they did what they did which is part of accepting them for who they are. If you've explained to them how their actions harmed you and continue to harm you and (after some time) they can't or won't change, then you need to figure out what's best for you. But once the anger is gone, you have accepted/forgiven them - your forgiveness work is done at that point.

Apparently my grandfather used to tell my grandmother "Float above it Bertha, just float above it" when she was frustrated with something. To me the goal is to be able to at peace with situations like these to the point that you can just "float above it" and not have it harm you. One of my sisters is brilliant at it. I'm not. If you find you can't float above it, if it continues to harm you, then do what you need to do to protect yourself. Caring for yourself comes first in cases like these (most of the time).

[Papa Coco]

I think this is an important topic. I've wrestled with it my whole life. When is it right to disconnect with family? It's a big step. I wanted to disconnect from my family from the time I was 11 years old until I finally did disconnect at 50, but not until after a LOT of unnecessary damage had already been done. From teen years to 49 I fantasized about it. When I finally did walk away at 50, I told my therapist I wished I'd have done it sooner. He told me it would have been impossible for me to walk away sooner because I hadn't evolved into someone who could do that until I finally did.

My walking away was a life-threatening ordeal, filled with horrific loss and nearly unbearable sorrow. So rather than go into it here, I'll skip the story and just share what I've learned.

Here are a few of the things I've learned after walking away.

•   I started to get better very quickly. I learned that You don't start healing the victims of a train crash until after the train stops crashing. In the same way, as long as I was choosing to stay in the abuse of my parents and older siblings, I could not start healing. The first 30 years of therapy was just sustaining me, keeping me alive while I continued to take the abuse. As soon as I walked away from the abuse, the therapy started to work. In 40 years of therapy, the last 10 has given me all the healing that I have enjoyed so far.

•   It's not about love and hate. It's about survival. You don't have to hate alligators to survive, you just have to stay out of their pond. Disconnecting from my family doesn't necessarily mean I hate them. For my own survival, I just needed them to stop attacking me. The problem is that they wouldn't stop. Every plea to get them to stop hurting me went unanswered. In fact, I had been gaslighted and lied about for my entire life by the very people I trusted the most. I was driven so crazy that if I tried to describe their abuse to anyone at all, I couldn't. I was so confused I couldn't even verbalize what they'd done to me. I'd start off okay but within seconds I'd be ranting like a lunatic. Within a few more seconds I'd freeze, dissociate, and very nearly forget my own name. I tried SO HARD to coexist with them. But after my final brush with self-harm, I really, truly understood that I wouldn't survive them anymore. So at 50, I gave myself the gift of life. I just had to leave them and their toxic influence completely.

•   To make a clean break, some of us have to leave everyone. I envy those who can cut one person out of their lives, but in my family it was impossible. In order to be cut free from my sociopathic older sister and all her relentless attacks, I finally realized, the hard way, that I had to cut myself off from everyone who knew her. A sociopath's only power is their words. If you stop listening to them, they lose their power over you, BUT they move their attacks to the people around you. They tell lies and accuse you of things you'll never find out about. Anyone who still listens to the sociopath will begin to believe the lies and you will be victimized vicariously through the false reputation you've been given. I now say "If I connect with even ONE member of that family it will be like putting a single crack in my hull, and the entire ocean of her hate will flood and sink me for good." For a lot of people, getting away from a toxic person means they may not have a choice but to walk away from everyone connected to that toxic person. Still...if it means survival, it may be the only choice.

•   "Losing one's life for family is noble. But losing one's life BECAUSE OF family is just wrong." If they're the cause of your misery, and you've unsuccessfully done everything to get them to respect you, why stay with them?

[Bach]

I’m wrestling with all these feelings right now. I have long been pondering the question of whether or not I can or should or must forgive my mother to progress in my healing.  After five years of not having any communication with my mother, I have for various reasons recently resumed somewhat regular communication.  This is tremendously difficult for me in some ways, but it is also hugely useful.  I re-established contact with her because I felt stuck in my therapy and had been feeling for a long time that I might need some controlled exposure to her to help me root out some deeply buried thought patterns and conditioned responses.  So far I’ve been on the money with that and the contact has been feeding some very deep and important work with my therapist that I think will help me reduce my triggers and improve my life going forward.  I have discovered that it is helpful for me to let myself recognise that she abused me the way she was abused by her mother, and feel the natural empathy that I would feel for anyone who suffered abuse from someone who was supposed to love them and take care of them.  Still no real answer about forgiveness, though, because it is also helpful for me to recognise that my feeling empathy for the wounded parts that we have in common DOES NOT mean that I am obligated to feel that she is not responsible for what she did to me or that anything about the way she treated me was okay.

[Armee]

This is not the right answer but it's how I am dealing with it right now...

I forget very easily, I stuff it down, I excuse it, I understand it, and I try to have zero expectations.

This is not healthy but it's how I have to do it to survive contact. The healthier shift though is that until recently, I blamed myself for everything trying to figure out what I did wrong and what I need to do better or different to make it work.

I tried all sorts of harebrained schemes to be in contact like everytime I saw my mom I'd pretend she was a stranger I felt sorry for and was helping  but had no history of connection with. First I tried just pretending she was a stranger but that didn't work so then I tried pretending she was a different stranger everytime so that I couldn't carry things over from one visit to the next and could have a blank slate. When I told my T that plan he laughed and said "let me know how that works out for you!"

I have had periods of very limited contact with her and I was able to heal a lot during those times. But terminal illness, living alone, has me back in nearly daily contact. I am now back to being in physical pain, having insomnia, and feeling extremely unwell. I have thoughts I'd rather not have about another person. I feel pity but not love. I feel hate. And yet, I do forgive her. I always have. She's mentally ill. She could have done better and she can't do better. It just is what it is.

Once it is over I can forgive AND not have the other bad feelings I have toward her. But right now, I shove the bad feelings down to get through. Even though I forgive, each new incident and contact requires new forgiveness and coping.

[Papa Coco]

Hi Bach,

It's nice for me to hear that you have been able to reestablish some contact with your mother. Even though it's bitter-sweet, it's giving you some forward motion in your healing. And that's always a good thing.

Forgiveness is a funny concept. There's no real firm definition of what it means. If you google "What is forgiveness" and then avoid any religious mumbo-jumbo, but stick to the psychology-centric websites, you start to get a picture that it's sort of up to the individual as to what it means.

To me, forgiveness is a combination of accepting them for their own struggles, plus losing my sense of powerlessness that was making me so angry at them.

And to me it's not an on-and-off switch. The more I learn about the mental fragility of my parents and my sociopathic older sister for being mentally broken, the less powerless I feel over what they did to my little sister and me. The less powerless I feel, the more I can accept (or forgive) them for just being who they were.

So I guess you could say I'm forgiving them in stages. I don't hate them as much today as I did a year ago, so I guess I could say I've forgiven them a little bit more over the past year. If I keep learning about who they were and why they really did all that, and as I get stronger in my own skin, I lose more of my fear, I feel less powerless, and that, to me, means I keep feeling more forgiving all the time.

So I have hope that you're reestablished relationship with your mom continues to aid in your healing and helps you continue to grow in your own sense of power and acceptance; i.e; forgiveness.

[Bach]

To me, forgiveness is a combination of accepting them for their own struggles, plus losing my sense of powerlessness that was making me so angry at them...The less powerless I feel, the more I can accept (or forgive) them for just being who they were.

This is so astute, Papa Coco, and so helpful to me. Thank you for sharing!

[woodsgnome]

Acceptance, sadly, is a given. It's truly all that can happen, as what happened ... happened; including repercussions after. Working this out after acceptance is more difficult.

Maybe I've seen too many labels that never seemed to fit, but even the term 'forgiveness' can be problematic. Too many self-help gurus, even therapists, throw the forgiveness word out there as if it's a panacea and must be a step taken. Simple enough -- what could be better than another step? Plus everyone says it HAS to happen (preferably by whatever multi-step guaranteed method is being offered).

The problem is -- who's defining the measures that get called forgiveness? I guess I thought for a long time that there was a certain set of rules to follow and forgiveness would magically be accomplished. So I tried, yet afterwards it never felt quite right -- acceptance, yes, albeit a little reluctantly; but what I'm accepting (the multiple abuses) was senseless in the first place and remain so. Trying to put sense into senselessness, for me anyway, didn't wash out the stain.

I do admire and concur with what Papa Coco indicated he's been discovering, and some of the attitude adjustments that have resulted in his feeling better -- STARTING WITH HIMSELF. Self-care is ultimately what matters here. It's not about making anyone else feel okay about what they did, but about your own feelings and reactions.

Of course, if it does make the other party realize and/or feel better that's a plus as well. But first priority is calming the inner fires of one's own tortured soul.

What seems most needed, whatever one chooses to call it, is to somehow create more spaciousness (nicely described by Papa Coco) for one's mind not to constantly get caught up in some grand strategy to forgive at all costs. But not at the expense of losing one's self-care and self-respect during the process.

Thanks for reading -- the topic of forgiveness has been a lifelong struggle for me. I've obsessed about it endlessly, but I think I've begun to open up that inside sense of spaciousness or whatever one chooses to call this inner re-adjustment.

[Bermuda]

What a kindhearted text.

I just want to start by saying that I have not read every reply. It was hard for me emotionally.

I have often asked myself questions about what forgiveness means and if it's an act or a natural process rather... And I think your question of acceptance, at least as I see it, is of self-release rather than an act of forgiveness. Logically, you see your parents are flawed people capable of change, but C-PTSD can make this release hard because sometimes we are gripped by the past. We are not dwelling on the past, the past is often dwelling on us. It's not an urge that we can simply control, and often trying to control our feelings about experiences exasperates the symptoms.

When/if your mind relearns to feel safe then it can accept things as you see them now from an adult perspective. Until then, your brain may still tell you that you are a ghost, even if you are seen and heard by everyone in the room. It's rough.

I do wonder what your motivation is for this acceptance. Sometimes I have heard stories of therapists trying to encourage a forced acceptance/forgiveness as a way of healing, and at least in my own experience and in my own research this can be very detrimental to progress. Your experience is valid. Your feelings about your experiences are valid. Your childhood self is valid. Children are rational. It's healthy to mourn the childhood that you didn't get. You can do this, and also logically see your parents in their entirety with your adult mind. With C-PTSD there is often a duality and huge contradictions. You can know what happened is wrong, have a terrible breakdown about it, and then feel silly because that's not happening now, and would not happen now, and then that feeling of silliness can cause the whole cycle to repeat again. Release and acceptance come from validation.

Just to answer your question, no. In my situation I have never gotten to a level of acceptance. To me it feels like tolerance, and my C-PTSD inner child is still struggling to escape and save herself. I see my carelessgivers as flawed complete people, but I can't accept abuse in my life. Maybe I would have felt differently if I had seen any positive changes in them.

Sorry if this came off as preachy. I do struggle with communication. Imagine it's written gently that's how I mean it . 

[CactusFlower]

Hi, Bermuda!

I'm just going to state my position here and please realize I can't speak for anyone else, I know this is just my reaction. Sometimes I can stick to the literal meaning of words quite closely, whether for good or bad.  Do I accept my abuse happened? Yes. I cannot deny the reality of it, nor change the past. Can i work on it now? Yes. To me, "accept" here means conscious acknowledgement.

Do I accept their actions? If "accept" here means forgive, then no. I looked up forgive in the dictionary to see if there was a meaning I was missing since a lot of people (mainly people not dealing with this) say "forgiveness" is a mature, healthy goal. Looking at that definition led me to the definitions of absolve, pardon, etc. And the great majority of them in this context boils down to saying "It's okay, it's over."

In that case... no. I will never forgive him for what he did. It's not okay now and it wasn't okay then. I don't frankly care if he himself had trauma or was an alcoholic, or anything else. What he did was terrible and wrong and nothing will change that or "make up" for it. I do not (even though I haven't seen or heard from him since I was 18, and I'm 51) release him form blame or responsibility. To use a word that basically means saying it's okay or it's over would be lying to myself. Clearly it's not over because I'm just now starting to deal with and it's affected my entire life. I don't see anything morally wrong with not forgiving him. Again, this is my choice and if someone else feels they can forgive, that's fine. I'm refusing to measure others by my own yardstick, so to speak, that wouldn't be right. I struggled with it due to our society's emphasis on forgiving, but I've gotten to a spot where I can just say, "No. I don't forgive him and I'm not going to." :shrug: So I don't think poorly of anyone else who's unwilling or unable to forgive. Kinda rambly, but just thought I'd share. (I know my opinion might be unpopular)

the definitions:
FORGIVE
to cease to blame or hold resentment against (someone or something)
to grant pardon for (a mistake, wrongdoing, etc)
(tr) to free or pardon (someone) from penalty
(tr) to free from the obligation of (a debt, payment, etc)

PARDON
to release (a person) from liability for an offense.

ABSOLVE
to release from blame, sin, punishment, obligation, or responsibility

[woodsgnome]

This is all murky, yucky, confusing, and maddening territory. Yet I just have this hankering that I want to clarify my take in shorter language than I previously used.

My only acceptance of anything is that some horrific things  happened to my younger self's parts. For now, that's history. I only can accept that much. Yet there are times I can move on in peace just because the direct actions are over. Never in a million years would I/could I accept what they chose to do.

I was damaged, inside and out, and it sure hasn't healed. It happened, yes; I accept that much and that much only. What I have felt better about is distancing myself as far as possible from my entanglement with the originators (FOO but also several others). I can vaguely sense some of the why of what they chose, which still in no way exonerates them or puts me in a position to accept anything they did.

My most healing self-approach is to forgive myself for the years of guilt I've carried against myself for even being there in the beginning. The best I've felt about the whole mess was to throw a little humour into the mix -- e.g. now that I'm past ever getting ensnared by them again, I can laugh at myself for having gotten on the wrong bus.

Whatever they did -- there they go, receding into the rearview mirror more each moment of every day. Why they acted so horribly -- I can't forgive the unforgivable anymore as 1)they're gone and 2 I'm too busy exploring the openings all around for me to be me, to grow like they never allowed me to. At last. 

[bluepalm]

I feel this is one of the most important threads I have read on this forum. It certainly goes to the heart of my struggles over the years. Thank you to everyone who has contributed.  It's taken me a while to try to put my thoughts together and I hope they make some sense.

It is a fact, that I now accept as something unchangeable, that from my birth my parents, through their combined actions of neglect and active abuse, tormented me such that my brain was damaged and I was left helpless to protect myself from the first predatory man who came along. I then, living with my husband, went through thirteen years of a continuation of what I had previously endured with my parents. Our two children, now in their forties, are more like my husband and my parents in the way they behave towards me and towards life in general than they are like me. All of this I now accept as being what it is.

I felt as if I lived 'under assault' every day of my life for the first half of my life and I have now effectively run away from my children through moving hundreds of miles away and disengaging from them emotionally, while remaining in touch from a distance. These actions are, to my mind, acts I've taken as a result of accepting these people are who they are and I need to protect myself from them. These actions have been freeing and have given me peace.

However, arriving at this acceptance has been a life's work - years of therapy for myself and then even more years of puzzling alone over why what happened happened. In attempting to understand, I've long tried to 'diagnose' them as a way to forgive them - 'they know not what they do'  - they are helpless in the grip of their own impulses. It's their DNA and life experiences that drive them helplessly along to behave as they do.

To some extent I believe this effort to understand and forgive (at least in my mind) has been healing for me.

However, recently I've allowed myself to judge them. To assess their characters in the light of how they behaved - often when they knew no-one but me could see how they behaved and so they felt safe to be deliberately cruel. I sense that because the relationship between children and parents is so intense and fundamental to life, it is hard for children to see their parents as people who have characters - that is, as people with personalities formed through choices made, values held and patterns of behaviour developed.

I was about 35 years old when I admitted to my therapist that I did not love my parents. While making this admission I curled into a ball of shame and self-blame. I felt it was the worst thing I had ever said to anyone in my life. Given that objectively my parents never expressed or showed any love for me at all during our entire lives together (they are now dead), this indicates to me how strongly a child desires to love their parents. And how strong the cultural demand is for children to love (and presumably therefore forgive) parents despite how they are treated by them.

I have now reached the point, more than thirty years later, where I can judge my parents and my husband as being evil people - people who behaved in a profoundly immoral and wicked manner towards me. My husband once said to me he thought he was a psychopath. I suspect the same could be said of my parents. See, again I diagnose - which is a way to 'forgive'. But now I also judge because for my own sanity I now believe these people had choices.

To think otherwise is to make a mockery of all the work I have put in to overcome the damage done to me and to be a good person, a person of 'good character'. To be a person who absorbs but does not pass on the hurt. I have never deliberately set out to hurt my parents, my husband or my children. Inadvertently I must have hurt them, I'm sure. But I have never deliberately behaved towards them out of malice - to watch them suffer. It has taken a lot of self control and reflection and work in therapy to  be who I am and not to give in to rage and and resentment and a wish for revenge. Not to lash out mindlessly at them as they did to me. If I can do that work, why couldn't they?

On a larger social scale, it is the oppressor who demands that the oppressed be forgiving and accepting of the status quo. That the oppressed do not rise up and demand accountability but accept their lot in life as suffering. No social progress could have occurred if the oppressed had not refused to forgive their oppression and instead had fought to demand accountability and change from those more powerful than themselves. My sense is that the strong demand for 'forgiveness' in a culture, the ease with which people will say things like 'it takes strength to say sorry but even more strength to forgive', is a reflection of the fact that those in power wish to avoid accountability and to protect their privilege as the oppressors.

In my experience, the failure of my oppressors to say sorry for their behaviour, to accept responsibility, and be accountable for their conduct, is the reason I now judge them as being evil people.  This is a poem I wrote earlier this year (and posted on this forum) when I realised I had reached the point of judging my parents. The emotional release I have felt to state this without guilt has been enormous.

Victim Impact Statement

You damaged me irretrievably

You stole any possibility of my feeling safe, contented, warmed, loved, wanted, precious

You condemned me to a lifetime of isolation and loneliness

You deprived me of human touch and acceptance

You made me feel I was living in a war zone - hungry, thirsty, frightened

And you did it with malice aforethought

You were evil


bluepalm

[johnram]

I am a little confused, and i think its the word "acceptance"

for me there is a conotation of allowing absolvement, and letting it be.  As my gran would say "just forgive and forget"

I think before acceptance there needs to be a sense of loss, there needs to be a sense of grief, and there needs to be anger - it needs to be felt, as hard as that is.  I say that, as in the end, we are carrying the burden, and we wont get acceptance from FOO.  Its the impact they wont accept, and we have to live with, so how do we do that.

We need to come to terms with it, and have to become selfishless in love with who we are, and give our childparts lots of love (i am crying typing this), as they never got that, and were abused, abandoned, neglected or whatever.