Be a Peacemaker in your home and with your family...

December 28, 2009 at 9:18pm

This has been made a part of my personal responsibility for some years along with genealogy and serving a mission. This is actually the biggest struggle. Giving up 18 months to the Midwest was a joy and a pleasure I would do again if I were reliving my life - I have no regrets. The genealogy on my mother's side is done further back than I can grasp and Aunt Ruth has been careful to make sure the names, dates and locations are correct and verified in every way. My father's father spent a great deal of time in his latter years also in this pursuit. I have had joy working on both my husband's and my ex's lines, but healing anger and hurt feelings between some of these lines are monumental. I think I would settle for just not making more rifts at this point but that level of communication seems beyond me.

The rift between my mother, sister and I would be put to bed if I were more financially independent. I have had to borrow so much from mom and that is going to make waves, I understand and except my responsibility in that. I am grateful that Mom and Kari both understand I wouldn't have put this disability on my worst enemy little though chosen it for myself. I believe that though some say that Money is the root of all evil, and some say that the love of money is the root of all evil. I believe that it is lack of money that is the root of all evil. I believe that having to worry about keeping a roof over your kids’ heads, how to afford medications, where your next meal is coming from, etc distracts you every moment from focusing on the more eternal perspective. When you are financially dependant on another you are not free. That may mean if you are dependant on a job you can't just blow the day off but more enslaving is the image we grew up with of people waiting in line to get grain so their families wouldn't starve or waiting in line for toilet paper.

The PTSD I have includes flashbacks which I suffer from due to childhood abuse. These were especially rough this last 2 years as I was contacted that my father was in the hospital dying. He evidently survived but I had to mull over the decision of whether or not to contact him. After much prayer, fasting, crying, cursing, etc I came to the decision to stand by my original decision. If my father had really wanted to apologize he's had years to write to me through the church. If my father felt he did anything wrong it would be his job to make the move. I could not open up the opportunity for him to hurt my kids. My responsibility to him is infinitely smaller than my responsibility to keep my children safe from a pedophile and a monster that should have done time or been put to death in my opinion.

At that time I wrote a detailed and graphic statement to an online support group that I was using as group therapy. My dear daughter, who was like 18 months to 2 years old at the time, clicked a button as I was sending it which added a the group of emails I had for my mother's family to the list of people it was being sent to. I was afraid, embarrassed and horrified. My mother had never told any member of her family the extent of the abuse and threats we faced growing up with dad in the home. This wasn't the way the topic should be brought up. I was contacted by one of her brothers and forbidden to ever bring these things up to his children again. When I went through a period of flashbacks 6 months or so ago I had to drop his children from my friends list here so that my conversations with friends would not offend their dad and there-by my mom; so now I am seen as a snob for dropping them. Can't win for losing. There was a rift there long before that but it is more pronounced now. My grandfather disowned my whole family when my father was disfellowshipped when I was 7 because mom wouldn't tell grandpa what was going on and he assumed if dad was guilty of something she must be too. Kari and I were never really part of the group after that even though he put mom back in the will and un-forbid mom to bring us visiting at the holidays.

The rift between my family and my father's side seems to boil down to the belief that my father loved my sister and me and that my mother somehow turned us against him. Nothing could be further from the truth in either case. My father attempted to rape the mother's of several of Kari's and my best friends growing up. When I got older he started groping the friends themselves. He tortured Kari and I and asked my sister to kill me when she was 8 years old. He claimed he was making us tough but by the disabilities and scars Kari and I both carry I would say the metaphor would be to cut off a child’s legs and claim you were trying to prepare him for the Boston Marathon. I told my father I never wanted to talk to him again when I left on my mission. I said he would never have contact with any child of mine to hurt the same way. Now he's old and his health is failing. His 3rd wife had like a dozen kids from her previous marriage. If dad had changed there would be at least one who would stand by him I would think. The mental scars he caused me are bad enough to be considered disabling. I am on social security at 40 thanks to his concept of loving his kids.

I would like to be able to sit down and have lunch with any one of my cousins on either side but I don't feel like I speak the same language as most of them, I feel I have to hide from many of them. I feel like I have to hide from most people to some extent because I can't fit the mold, like Hellboy trying to fit in at the prom. The PTSD, OCD and Fibromyalgia leave me not only crippled from being able to work but from being able to have the life I wanted. I am controlling and vicious because I had to fight to survive, I had to fight for my testimony, fight for every inch I got in life. I am floored that anyone could look at their children and want to hurt them, abuse them, destroy them, and more shocked that some would blame and judge the children for that abuse. I have been told if I were faithful and righteous my husband and children wouldn't have Autism. If I had been closed to God the elevator accident wouldn't have happened.

Then there is the impossible hope of making peace with my husband's family. A day or so after I started this epistle one of his cousins freaked out about a picture that had been posted for a full year before she noticed it. When she unloaded on me I must admit that I couldn't even thik of what it was she was talking about. It had been posted for so long. Now thanks to this argument I am getting messages every day or two about how Chris and I are not welcome in another familly home that we haven't seen or spoken to the inhabitance of in 10 years. It shouldn't hurt but it does. I shouldn't care but I fall apart crying. I go int he shower to cry because I hate for Chris to see how much they hurt me. You seee the picture is of a woman and her spouse and child dressed in 70's clothes, she's in slacks if I remember right. I assumed it was the baby in the picture that was the most important part. Evidentally this is a wedding picture - the baby was before the ring, it happens, they chose not to do a big formal affair evidentally, and apparently he was absive to his spouse. That picture would therefore be one she would never want to see again. Do I blame her, no. Am I Cuthulu or Bealzabub himself for not knowing this or for telling her to leave me alone when I couldn't figure out what she was frothing about? Well, this is our point of arguement isn't it. You see if I mention that the workers comp doctors had me over medicated 10 years ago and it made me lethargic at such and such an event then I am a drug head now aren't I. If I say that the autism Chris and Kirk both have is genetic then I am obviously a liar because Chris is not Kirk's biological father, if they both had diabetes no one would question that or would they. I understand by todays missive that I stand occused of making harassing phone calls which I haven't made to a famliy member who is suffering from Cancer which I didn't know about.

Chris' mother lives with his sister who has some serious health concerns of her own. The hatred in this family is so bad that when Chris dragged home from the Hospital the day Jenny was born, he'd gone 36 hours without sleep but before going to bed he called to tell his mother that the baby had come, His sister answered the phone and hung up on him without letting him speak to his mother. He called back and yelled at the sister until he was finally allowed to speak to his mother, then the sister blocked our number so he couldn't call agian which we didn't know about until we tried to return her call 2 years later and couldn't get through.Chris and I have felt for years that it is likely we won't be notified when his own mother dies. He got less that 24 hours notice of his father's memorial service. He's not the only one who gets left out like that either. There was a cousin recently that wasn't contacted about his step mother's death in time to attend her memorial service even though they were quite close. it seems there is this core of 5-8 people that tell each other what is going on and everyone else be hanged. I rattled the cage trying to get communication going and trying to reach our to family outsdie that and have offended the core possibly irreparably. Its one of those "think I'll eat some worms" moments.

Perhaps the others I reach ot too will fell the void with something better or behaps I shall be despized of all "Frenches" At this point I do not know and wish I did not care. I only know that anything and everything I've tried even when my mother in law lived with us 6 years ago turns to fecalite (Petrified dino poo).