u/SerLambsalot

TW: child sexual abuse, religious abuse

I’ve had a dilemma for the last few years about how to navigate a relationship with my mother now that I’m a parent myself. This is long, so apologies in advance, and thank you to anyone who makes it to the end.

For some background, my siblings and I grew up in a very religious household. A lot of that was dictated by my mother’s second husband (my stepfather), rather than my biological father, who lived several states away.

When my twin and I were around 4–5 years old, my mother and stepfather brought us into the basement and told us that we would be spanked by him if we didn’t call him “Dad.” We were afraid, so we did. Neither of us ever really considered him to be our father, though.

There was a lot of messiness throughout our childhood, although as latchkey kids, we actually had a pretty fun childhood in many ways so it wasn’t all bad. Some details relevant to my childhood trauma:

- My stepfather was obsessed with making sure we knew that our bodies “belonged to our future husbands,” that we would “go to hell” if we had sex before marriage, etc.

- When I was 11, he offered to buy my sister and me promise rings. When I said no, he called me a “jezebel.”

- He was extremely offended that we refused to let him adopt us and take his last name.

- My mother and stepfather openly criticized my twin for being overweight, while my stepfather would sometimes grab my hips from behind with both hands and comment on how nice they were.

- He would tickle us in the groin area. When we told my mother, she said he meant no harm.

When my sister and I were 16, my mother cheated on my stepfather and left the house. There’s a whole separate story there, but at the time she told me that if she had stayed living with us, she would have killed herself. My sister and I were traumatized, but we were determined to protect our 12-year-old half-brother and support our stepfather.

A few months later, we had largely forgiven her. My mother asked my sister and me to go on a road trip with her to visit a family friend. While we were there, she called us into a meeting with her friend and told us that when we were around 11 or 12, my stepfather had confessed to her that he had been sexually gratifying himself while watching my sister and me shower through an old pipe hole into the bathroom from the basement.
My mother and stepfather sought counseling through their church, but they stayed married for 4 more years before my mother eventually left all of us.

My sister and I stopped speaking to him after we found out. He was angry that my mother had told us. After that, my sister and I bounced between the homes of different friends and family members for the last few years of high school. She went to college locally, while I joined the Air Force and eventually had a career that took me all over.

For years, my mother was kind of a gray area for me.
She remarried, and I actually really like her current husband. I didn’t spend a lot of time consciously thinking about what had happened to me, but it was never really far from my mind, even though I had gone to therapy over the years. For a long time, I figured keeping peace in the family was the most important thing.

Then I became a mother myself and all the greys started becoming black and white.

My sister had her first child around the same time I did. She had never really wanted to talk about what happened to us, but one day very early postpartum, she called me crying. She said that now that she knew the love a mother should have for her child, she couldn’t understand how our mother could have done what she did to us. She’s never brought it up again, but I imagine that feeling still lives somewhere deep inside her, just as it does in me.

In 2022, I was out of the military and living abroad with my then-3-year-old son. For the first time in my life, I had built a stable home and life for us. I finally felt like the sense of security and home I hadn’t had since I was a child was something I could actually create for my own son.

Unfortunately, due to political changes, my position was eliminated around the time the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan. We had to return to the States on very short notice. I had been solo parenting for nearly three years through COVID, and I missed my family.

I took a sabbatical but kept casually applying for other positions. I spent some time staying with different relatives so I wouldn’t overstay my welcome anywhere. I spent the majority of that period staying with my mother and her husband in their camper.

At the time, my mother also had a state ward living with her. I’ll call her “Ashley.” Ashley was generally quiet, but she was very attached to my mother and had some scary episodes periodically. Shortly before we arrived, Ashley had threatened to stab a number of people. At one point, I also overheard her joking with a friend on the phone about pedophiles.

I privately asked my mother if we could please make sure Ashley was never alone with my son. My mother argued that Ashley was safe, that she had never actually acted on the threats she’d made. When it became an argument, she called me an “overprotective bitch.”

Ashley also repeatedly sought out opportunities to be alone with my son. I had to address this boundary with my mother multiple times because I was increasingly uncomfortable with how deliberate it seemed, and because I was concerned about Ashley’s inability to respect boundaries.

I reminded my mother of all the times she’d told me and others that if she could go back and do things differently and be a better mother, she would. I told her that she had an opportunity to do that now. She still continued taking Ashley’s side.
Eventually, when Ashley claimed I was being mean to her while my mother was away, my mother banned my son and me from the house until her return.

She also told the rest of the family about the situation, which caused a major family split. Some people understood why I had established the boundary. Others accused me of being disrespectful toward mentally disabled people and ungrateful to my mother because I wouldn’t allow Ashley to be alone with my son.

Since leaving, I’ve repeatedly asked my mother to go to therapy with me. She always says she will, but there is inevitably another reason why it can’t happen (timezones, money, etc).
Now she’s asking what she needs to do or say to help me get over this.

I don’t feel like this is simply about my ex step dad or Ashley anymore. Having a simple boundary regarding my child’s safety repeatedly dismissed brought up a tremendous amount of the trauma from my childhood. I’m struggling with the fact that my mother has demonstrated a pattern throughout my life of not making the right decision in the moment, but eventually apologizing and acknowledging that she was wrong afterward, albeit sprinkled with excuses.

A large part of me wants to go no-contact, but I know that doing so will probably give my mother more ammunition to portray herself as the victim to the rest of the family. It took me years to have the confidence to vocalize my opinions and feelings.

I’m also struggling with the guilt of wondering whether I’m being too harsh. I don’t know that I believe my mother is a bad person. She is a good Grandmother to my son, and I know there are good memories from my childhood. But I also know that when I was a child, she failed to protect me in ways that were very serious.

And as an adult and a mother, I’ve watched her once again prioritize someone else’s feelings over a boundary I’ve established to protect my child.

So I guess my question is:
At what point do you stop giving someone chances to prove they’ll make the right choice next time? Am I expecting too much from her by wanting her to go to therapy with me?
I’m genuinely struggling with where the line should be. I do live abroad again, but she visits sometimes. It’s easier to have boundaries in my own space, but I’m still angry.

Thank you if you read this far. Writing this all out has been cathartic in its own way.