u/asteriskiness

I am venting here, sharing a letter I recently wrote to my Mom. I am a single 43-year old adult child who is estranged from my immediate family.

I was diagnosed ADHD in 2018. I was slow to accept the diagnosis and get medicated. When I did, my family accused me of playing the medical system to feed an adderall addiction. This was difficult because for my whole life, I had understood my older brother to have ADHD.

In 2020, I learned that my older brother was born with prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. This was a bombshell for me, because he is >20 years sober from Crystal meth. I thought he had ruined his life, when really he is a walking and talking miracle for how he has fought an addiction he was born with.

Turns out my parents’ belief that I was abusing adderall in my late 30’s and 40’s was a projection of what my mother did at this same age.

It has been a year since my older brother blocked me and got my parents to do the same + change the locks on the house because I insist we address elephants in the room (including a babysitter’s CSA of my brother and me) that continue to haunt our family.

I know how unlikely I am to receive a response.

I’m just venting here.

————

Hi Mom,

This might be hard to believe, but since I got into ACA in 2022, I have a constant vision of hugging you so tight, balling my eyes out, pressing my face in, and saying “I love you and I forgive you” the moment you stop lying to me.

In this vision, you are crying even harder and I do not even want to hear the words “I’m sorry.” In this vision, you’ve already said sorry with the admission.

I’ve been hurting for so long and I know you and Dad and ***** have been too. We’ve never once been able to hurt together in order to finally move through that feeling.

I accept that I am absolutely powerless to bring this vision about while you are still here and that I am set up to never see your beautiful smile again.

Because I do not need to.

I just want to.

And at this point in the vision, I just chuckle to myself as I hear your voice saying one of your trademark phrases: “tough titties!”

I love you Mom. It does not need to be like this. But if the titties must be tough, may the rear end be tender!

(I just made that up and don’t even know if it makes sense!)

I am a single 43-year old adult child who is estranged from my immediate family.

I was diagnosed ADHD in 2018. I was slow to accept the diagnosis and get medicated. When I did, my family accused me of playing the medical system to feed an adderall addiction. This was difficult because for my whole life, I had understood my older brother to have ADHD.

In 2020, I learned that my older brother was born with prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. This was a bombshell for me, because he is >20 years sober from Crystal meth. I thought he had ruined his life, when really he is a walking and talking miracle for how he has fought an addiction he was born with.

It has been a year since my older brother blocked me and got my parents to do the same + change the locks on the house because I insist we address this elephant in the room that continues to haunt our family.

I know how unlikely I am to receive a response. I’m just venting here.

————

Hi Mom,

This might be hard to believe, but since I got into ACA in 2022, I have a constant vision of hugging you so tight, balling my eyes out, pressing my face in, and saying “I love you and I forgive you” the moment you stop lying to me.

In this vision, you are crying even harder and I do not even want to hear the words “I’m sorry.” In this vision, you’ve already said sorry with the admission.

I’ve been hurting for so long and I know you and Dad and ***** have been too. We’ve never once been able to hurt together in order to finally move through that feeling.

I accept that I am absolutely powerless to bring this vision about while you are still here and that I am set up to never see your beautiful smile again.

Because I do not need to.

I just want to.

And at this point in the vision, I just chuckle to myself as I hear your voice saying one of your trademark phrases: “tough titties!”

I love you Mom. It does not need to be like this. But if the titties must be tough, may the rear end be tender!

(I just made that up and don’t even know if it makes sense!)

Venting here as I begin to reach out to my brother 9 months after he convinced my parents to block me and change the locks on their properties. I have been hard on my mother after taking her to therapy where she denied family secrets from my childhood, including a nanny’s CSA of my brother and me.

My recent messages to him are further below. They are not being responded to. First, though, I will share a little more context.

8 years ago, my brother appealed to my parents to remove me from their inheritance. Since then, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I did not trust it at first and so I got a second opinion. A year into taking medication, my parents and brother began to suggest I am using the mental health system to access and abuse stimulants. They declined to make the accusation out right when I asked them if they believe this, though last year in therapy my mother did finally admit she’s been looking at me as a pill addict.

My brother and I are in our forties and our parents are 54 years married in their 80’s. We are an upper middle class family from the north shore.

My brother is 20+ years sober from crystal meth after a troubling childhood defined by low expectations, an ADHD diagnosis, constant medication tweaks and unending therapy.

I am the neglected “normal one” who has always been able to make friends, move to new places, learn foreign languages, tell funny jokes, get good jobs, and appear upbeat.

In late 2020, I came to question how my mother could believe I was a manipulator pill abuser with no ADHD. The signs were there in childhood - room was always messy, I was either sleeping or bouncing off the wall in class, I procrastinated entire semesters of homework until given exceptions to complete it all in a week, and I have been notoriously poor at reconciling my own time and space.

The disconnect is my brother’s condition. They called it ADHD, and my markers did not match his. I discovered that this is because HIS markers, one of which was ADHD, match those of a child born with prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. Mom didn’t think she could get pregnant after some failed pregnancies and she took over the counter supplements sold to women for weight and appetite control.

I have been pressing my parents to come clean about this for the past 5 years and it has been ugly. My mother spent 4 years as a deer in headlights with her denial, expressing zero concern that my view of her changed and she lost my admiration. My father admitted all of it very briefly one night in 2022 before returning to the denial, telling me I lie to myself and do not live in reality.

There is a school of thought in ACA that says I should not be so charitable with my energy toward my family anymore, now that I can see who they/we are. This is a complete re-wiring, though, and the way I was raised does still serve me and work for me.

And ironically, they estranged me preemptively. My response was like if someone fired Donald Trump: “no, you have it twisted - I’m the one firing YOU!”

The family curse I have come to see is that we all hold others to higher standards than we hold ourselves.

I am pretty sure my brother has gotten my parents to make him the sole heir. And that’s fine. I have tools and a career he does not have, to generate money for myself.

All I want to be able to do is discuss this stuff with my family openly. And the more I want it, the more they retreat.

On May 3, 2026, at 10:51 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <\*\*\*.\*\*\*\*\*@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi \*\*\*\*\*,

I am unsure of how aware you are of the issues between our parents and me. I recognize that ‘unsure’ might be how you prefer I remain, though I prefer not to jump to that conclusion. It is just getting agonizing watching the clock tick.

Over 5 years ago, I came into information about our immediate family. It deeply impacted how I see our parents, how I see you, and how I see myself.

As I sought to communicate with our parents about this information, I saw them visibly threatened in ways I did not know were possible for them. I had believed our family to be incredibly progressive and open, and I did not let myself ever consider signs that we were not. I modeled myself after our parents as a trilingual proud Jewish professional determined to raise a family in a more just world. And I could never understand why this made them more worried than proud.

When it comes to how this (new-for-me) information relates to you, I have been careful to first address it with them, before any thought of engaging with you about it. The information is more directly pertinent to you than me, and to this day I cannot begin to understand what you know about it. I have no view into whether the denial I am experiencing is one person, two people, or three people deep.

This has been a very heavy burden to carry, though it is also one that my higher power only placed at my feet knowing that I now have the strength to carry it in ways that I did not prior to 5 years ago.

I do not believe I was meant to receive this information so that I can shed my family and move about the world free of my family’s influence. I am too broken-hearted for that to be it.

I do believe that our family has a rare opportunity to take the past out of hiding so that we can starve it to death. And finally heal.

I mention the above because this information is about as past as it gets. It dates back to our origin. It is from before either of us were born.

Will you have a conversation with me about this information, \*\*\*\*\*? It can be with a neutral professional therapist who has a series of 1:1 meetings getting to know each of us before we all 3 get together.  

No worries if you don’t want to do this, I’ll still find a way to share the information with you in time.

Love always,

\*\*\*\*\*\*

On May 17, 2026, at 11:27 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*.\*\*\*\*@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi \*\*\*\*\*,

I trust you are having a great May.

Life has changed for me since I learned I am a tool my parents use to revise history.

I had no business being born with how full our parents’ hands were with your condition (and at their age). Luckily, though, Mom was an only child determined to give her son a sibling.

I am working on forgiving myself for being born, for being my brother’s play toy, and for failing to see who we are until I’m of no use to my family anymore.

It is a blessing to have come this far on borrowed time. It is another blessing to learn to love through a series of denials, omissions, and lies.

To make amends with myself, though, I need to get past uncomfortable truths that continue to be attentively guarded by my family’s active dishonesty.

The denial is a constant reminder of how insignificant I am and have always been. Of how much waste of life I represent. The work in progress is to make my family’s denial not matter - and that is pretty dang tricky when ‘denial’ uses the same letters that spell my \*\*\*\*\*\*’s name!

For 4 decades, Mom told me how jealous of me you were - and why. I hope by now you are no longer jealous - or better yet that this was never the case!

I feel like you have been a very different person in your recovery than you are with me. You have remained distant, cold, and antagonistic toward me during adulthood - and I get it. I tempt you toward the past without even trying.

We have yet to make amends, \*\*\*\*\*. You have not made amends with me in your program and I have not made amends with you in mine.

Will you have a conversation with me about the information I learned about our family, \*\*\*\*\*? Information about you? Information that makes you a very special person instead of the screw-up my parents needed me to see you as?

It will move us closer to amends, just in case that is something that you really value.

You’ve got a big payday coming up either way. One you fully deserve.

Best regards,

\*\*\*\*

Venting here as I begin to reach out to my brother 9 months after he convinced my parents to block me and change the locks on their properties. I have been hard on my mother after taking her to therapy where she denied family secrets from my childhood, including a nanny’s CSA of my brother and me.

My recent messages to him are further below. They are not being responded to. First, though, I will share a little more context.

8 years ago, my brother appealed to my parents to remove me from their inheritance. Since then, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I did not trust it at first and so I got a second opinion. A year into taking medication, my parents and brother began to suggest I am using the mental health system to access and abuse stimulants. They declined to make the accusation out right when I asked them if they believe this, though last year in therapy my mother did finally admit she’s been looking at me as a pill addict.

My brother and I are in our forties and our parents are 54 years married in their 80’s. We are an upper middle class family from the north shore.

My brother is 20+ years sober from crystal meth after a troubling childhood defined by low expectations, an ADHD diagnosis, constant medication tweaks and unending therapy.

I am the neglected “normal one” who has always been able to make friends, move to new places, learn foreign languages, tell funny jokes, get good jobs, and appear upbeat.

In late 2020, I came to question how my mother could believe I was a manipulator pill abuser with no ADHD. The signs were there in childhood - room was always messy, I was either sleeping or bouncing off the wall in class, I procrastinated entire semesters of homework until given exceptions to complete it all in a week, and I have been notoriously poor at reconciling my own time and space.

The disconnect is my brother’s condition. They called it ADHD, and my markers did not match his. I discovered that this is because HIS markers, one of which was ADHD, match those of a child born with prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. Mom didn’t think she could get pregnant after some failed pregnancies and she took over the counter supplements sold to women for weight and appetite control.

I have been pressing my parents to come clean about this for the past 5 years and it has been ugly. My mother spent 4 years as a deer in headlights with her denial, expressing zero concern that my view of her changed and she lost my admiration. My father admitted all of it very briefly one night in 2022 before returning to the denial, telling me I lie to myself and do not live in reality.

There is a school of thought in ACA that says I should not be so charitable with my energy toward my family anymore, now that I can see who they/we are. This is a complete re-wiring, though, and the way I was raised does still serve me and work for me.

And ironically, they estranged me preemptively. My response was like if someone fired Donald Trump: “no, you have it twisted - I’m the one firing YOU!”

The family curse I have come to see is that we all hold others to higher standards than we hold ourselves.

I am pretty sure my brother has gotten my parents to make him the sole heir. And that’s fine. I have tools and a career he does not have, to generate money for myself.

All I want to be able to do is discuss this stuff with my family openly. And the more I want it, the more they retreat.

On May 17, 2026, at 11:27 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <********.****@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi *****,

I trust you are having a great May.

Life has changed for me since I learned I am a tool my parents use to revise history.

I had no business being born with how full our parents’ hands were with your condition (and at their age). Luckily, though, Mom was an only child determined to give her son a sibling.

I am working on forgiving myself for being born, for being my brother’s play toy, and for failing to see who we are until I’m of no use to my family anymore.

It is a blessing to have come this far on borrowed time. It is another blessing to learn to love through a series of denials, omissions, and lies.

To make amends with myself, though, I need to get past uncomfortable truths that continue to be attentively guarded by my family’s active dishonesty.

The denial is a constant reminder of how insignificant I am and have always been. Of how much waste of life I represent. The work in progress is to make my family’s denial not matter - and that is pretty dang tricky when ‘denial’ uses the same letters that spell my ******’s name!

For 4 decades, Mom told me how jealous of me you were - and why. I hope by now you are no longer jealous - or better yet that this was never the case!

I feel like you have been a very different person in your recovery than you are with me. You have remained distant, cold, and antagonistic toward me during adulthood - and I get it. I tempt you toward the past without even trying.

We have yet to make amends, *****. You have not made amends with me in your program and I have not made amends with you in mine.

Will you have a conversation with me about the information I learned about our family, *****? Information about you? Information that makes you a very special person instead of the screw-up my parents needed me to see you as?

It will move us closer to amends, just in case that is something that you really value.

You’ve got a big payday coming up either way. One you fully deserve.

Best regards,

****

On May 3, 2026, at 10:51 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <***.*****@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi *****,

I am unsure of how aware you are of the issues between our parents and me. I recognize that ‘unsure’ might be how you prefer I remain, though I prefer not to jump to that conclusion. It is just getting agonizing watching the clock tick.

Over 5 years ago, I came into information about our immediate family. It deeply impacted how I see our parents, how I see you, and how I see myself.

As I sought to communicate with our parents about this information, I saw them visibly threatened in ways I did not know were possible for them. I had believed our family to be incredibly progressive and open, and I did not let myself ever consider signs that we were not. I modeled myself after our parents as a trilingual proud Jewish professional determined to raise a family in a more just world. And I could never understand why this made them more worried than proud.

When it comes to how this (new-for-me) information relates to you, I have been careful to first address it with them, before any thought of engaging with you about it. The information is more directly pertinent to you than me, and to this day I cannot begin to understand what you know about it. I have no view into whether the denial I am experiencing is one person, two people, or three people deep.

This has been a very heavy burden to carry, though it is also one that my higher power only placed at my feet knowing that I now have the strength to carry it in ways that I did not prior to 5 years ago.

I do not believe I was meant to receive this information so that I can shed my family and move about the world free of my family’s influence. I am too broken-hearted for that to be it.

I do believe that our family has a rare opportunity to take the past out of hiding so that we can starve it to death. And finally heal.

I mention the above because this information is about as past as it gets. It dates back to our origin. It is from before either of us were born.

Will you have a conversation with me about this information, *****? It can be with a neutral professional therapist who has a series of 1:1 meetings getting to know each of us before we all 3 get together.  

No worries if you don’t want to do this, I’ll still find a way to share the information with you in time.

Love always,

******

Venting here as I begin to reach out to my brother 9 months after he convinced my parents to block me and change the locks on their properties. I have been hard on my mother after taking her to therapy where she denied family secrets from my childhood, including a nanny’s CSA of my brother and me.

My recent messages to him are further below. They are not being responded to. First, though, I will share a little more context.

8 years ago, my brother appealed to my parents to remove me from their inheritance. Since then, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I did not trust it at first and so I got a second opinion. A year into taking medication, my parents and brother began to suggest I am using the mental health system to access and abuse stimulants. They declined to make the accusation out right when I asked them if they believe this, though last year in therapy my mother did finally admit she’s been looking at me as a pill addict.

My brother and I are in our forties and our parents are 54 years married in their 80’s. We are an upper middle class family from the north shore.

My brother is 20+ years sober from crystal meth after a troubling childhood defined by low expectations, an ADHD diagnosis, constant medication tweaks and unending therapy.

I am the neglected “normal one” who has always been able to make friends, move to new places, learn foreign languages, tell funny jokes, get good jobs, and appear upbeat.

In late 2020, I came to question how my mother could believe I was a manipulator pill abuser with no ADHD. The signs were there in childhood - room was always messy, I was either sleeping or bouncing off the wall in class, I procrastinated entire semesters of homework until given exceptions to complete it all in a week, and I have been notoriously poor at reconciling my own time and space.

The disconnect is my brother’s condition. They called it ADHD, and my markers did not match his. I discovered that this is because HIS markers, one of which was ADHD, match those of a child born with prenatal exposure to methamphetamine. Mom didn’t think she could get pregnant after some failed pregnancies and she took over the counter supplements sold to women for weight and appetite control.

I have been pressing my parents to come clean about this for the past 5 years and it has been ugly. My mother spent 4 years as a deer in headlights with her denial, expressing zero concern that my view of her changed and she lost my admiration. My father admitted all of it very briefly one night in 2022 before returning to the denial, telling me I lie to myself and do not live in reality.

There is a school of thought in ACA that says I should not be so charitable with my energy toward my family anymore, now that I can see who they/we are. This is a complete re-wiring, though, and the way I was raised does still serve me and work for me.

And ironically, they estranged me preemptively. My response was like if someone fired Donald Trump: “no, you have it twisted - I’m the one firing YOU!”

The family curse I have come to see is that we all hold others to higher standards than we hold ourselves.

I am pretty sure my brother has gotten my parents to make him the sole heir. And that’s fine. I have tools and a career he does not have, to generate money for myself.

All I want to be able to do is discuss this stuff with my family openly. And the more I want it, the more they retreat.

On May 17, 2026, at 11:27 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <********.****@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi *****,

I trust you are having a great May.

Life has changed for me since I learned I am a tool my parents use to revise history.

I had no business being born with how full our parents’ hands were with your condition (and at their age). Luckily, though, Mom was an only child determined to give her son a sibling.

I am working on forgiving myself for being born, for being my brother’s play toy, and for failing to see who we are until I’m of no use to my family anymore.

It is a blessing to have come this far on borrowed time. It is another blessing to learn to love through a series of denials, omissions, and lies.

To make amends with myself, though, I need to get past uncomfortable truths that continue to be attentively guarded by my family’s active dishonesty.

The denial is a constant reminder of how insignificant I am and have always been. Of how much waste of life I represent. The work in progress is to make my family’s denial not matter - and that is pretty dang tricky when ‘denial’ uses the same letters that spell my ******’s name!

For 4 decades, Mom told me how jealous of me you were - and why. I hope by now you are no longer jealous - or better yet that this was never the case!

I feel like you have been a very different person in your recovery than you are with me. You have remained distant, cold, and antagonistic toward me during adulthood - and I get it. I tempt you toward the past without even trying.

We have yet to make amends, *****. You have not made amends with me in your program and I have not made amends with you in mine.

Will you have a conversation with me about the information I learned about our family, *****? Information about you? Information that makes you a very special person instead of the screw-up my parents needed me to see you as?

It will move us closer to amends, just in case that is something that you really value.

You’ve got a big payday coming up either way. One you fully deserve.

Best regards,

****

On May 3, 2026, at 10:51 AM, xxxxx xxxxx <***.*****@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi *****,

I am unsure of how aware you are of the issues between our parents and me. I recognize that ‘unsure’ might be how you prefer I remain, though I prefer not to jump to that conclusion. It is just getting agonizing watching the clock tick.

Over 5 years ago, I came into information about our immediate family. It deeply impacted how I see our parents, how I see you, and how I see myself.

As I sought to communicate with our parents about this information, I saw them visibly threatened in ways I did not know were possible for them. I had believed our family to be incredibly progressive and open, and I did not let myself ever consider signs that we were not. I modeled myself after our parents as a trilingual proud Jewish professional determined to raise a family in a more just world. And I could never understand why this made them more worried than proud.

When it comes to how this (new-for-me) information relates to you, I have been careful to first address it with them, before any thought of engaging with you about it. The information is more directly pertinent to you than me, and to this day I cannot begin to understand what you know about it. I have no view into whether the denial I am experiencing is one person, two people, or three people deep.

This has been a very heavy burden to carry, though it is also one that my higher power only placed at my feet knowing that I now have the strength to carry it in ways that I did not prior to 5 years ago.

I do not believe I was meant to receive this information so that I can shed my family and move about the world free of my family’s influence. I am too broken-hearted for that to be it.

I do believe that our family has a rare opportunity to take the past out of hiding so that we can starve it to death. And finally heal.

I mention the above because this information is about as past as it gets. It dates back to our origin. It is from before either of us were born.

Will you have a conversation with me about this information, *****? It can be with a neutral professional therapist who has a series of 1:1 meetings getting to know each of us before we all 3 get together.  

No worries if you don’t want to do this, I’ll still find a way to share the information with you in time.

Love always,

******