I really needed to vent about this, thought this would be the best subreddit to post this. Also, I'm writing on my phone. So sorry if the format is weird. This is going to be long. TL;DR at the bottom!
A little background: My husband and I we're both raised as JW. He was a full time pioneer and even became a bethelite at one point. I never got baptized (best decision I ever made!). We've been married for 10 years. Have a 7 year old son. I'm currently 39 weeks pregnant with our daughter, due date 12/29. We've faded from JW pretty early on in our marriage. Celebrate holidays and everything.
My mother is an extremely active JW. She moved to China to go where the need is greater. Lived there for the last 7 years. Visits for a month, once every six months. She has never approved or liked my husband. Never made an effort to get to know him. Barely knows her grandson. But my husband and I have a great relationship and love eachother very much.
Everytime she visits...I get the lecture of why I need to go back to meetings. Then I get berated in every other possible aspect of my life that I'm doing wrong....diet, cooking, how I raise my son, how I clean my house, basically making me feel like as inadequate as possible. We used to have a very hostile relationship that would turn into a yelling match if we were together for more than twenty minutes. But since she's been in China, I stopped fighting her. Let her lecture me and say what's on her mind. Then let her go back to China. Big mistake on my part. Over the years, she's just gotten more confident to walk all over me.
She came back to visit this time from November to January, the longest visit ever because is October we got into a five car crash, totalled our car. Then I got a blood infection the very next day after the car accident. I was in the hospital for 17 days. The first 10 for the blood infection, the last 7 for discovering I'm allergic to Penicillin. It was hell. So my mom felt obligated to visit early and "help" out. She also wanted to be here for the birth of her granddaughter. She has helped out in buying baby things we really needed, picking up my son from school. But overall, she has just yelled at me, berated my life choices, lectured me about everything in my life is wrong, back to all her usual bullshit. Basically everything is somehow my fault and she can do no wrong. Especially if I try to call her out on anything..it gets turned on me or a subject change happens for what I'm doing wrong in my life.
My brother and his girlfriend came to visit from out of town. So we were going to have a family dinner with them and my mom. But my mom whispered to me "If your husband goes to dinner, I can't go.". She basically said because he is baptized and turned his back on the religion, the consequences are being shunned from her. She completely blindsided me and acted like I should've known she already shunned my husband beforehand. I was dumbfounded, pissed off, and deeply saddened. I had to run to the bathroom and cry (3rd trimester hormones). My brother asked: "how can you not be in the same room as him, yet be at the hospital when the baby is born?" Her response: "During dinner, I would have to visit with him. I don't have to visit with him at the hospital."
My response to her is that she has to accept all of us as a family or none of us. We're a packaged deal. Clearly, she is picking and choosing what part of that talk at the convention about cutting off inactive family members. Somehow she thinks it's okay to disown my husband, but still have a relationship with me and the grandkids? Hell no. I'm so sick of her super judgmental, religious crusade, superiority complex. So I wrote her a long letter, explaining why I'm disowning her until she is ready to apologize for all the awful things she has said over the years about my husband and his family. When she's ready to accept us as a family and treat me like an adult. When she decides family is important. Until then, she isn't allowed to contact me in any way or visit the hospital to meet the baby. The ball is in her court.
I know this has been a long time coming and I'm partially surprised it hasn't happened years ago. I didn't come to this decision lightly and I feel very sad right now. I have the letter and will drop it off at her house today, on Christmas Eve. I have zero Christmas spirit, feel partially depressed. As awful and set in turmoil our relationship has been...she's still my mom and I love her. I really wanted her to be there at the hospital to meet her granddaughter. She missed the first year my son was born, being in China.
My dad died a month after I got married. That was really tough. So I feel like I'm in mourning in losing my mom. But it's worse because she's still alive and I have to think of her as dead to me.
TL;DR My husband and I we're raised as JW. Married for 10 years. I never got baptized. My very active JW mom has decided to disown my husband because he is baptized and we've been out of the religion for over 10 years and celebrate holidays now. So I decided to disown her from my family. We have a 7 year old son, and our daughter is due 12/29. Even though her and I have a very toxic relationship, I feel very depressed about this whole situation. I didn't make the decision to cut her out lightly.
Submitted December 24, 2016 at 01:58PM by SkyleeAttack7988 http://ift.tt/2hcCQ5Y
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