This afternoon I met with Fran, my godmother. We talked until the coffee shop closed and I learnt a little bit more about my upbringing.
She told me that she remembers seeing me as a baby in this large cot and that the room was so cold. I was in this large box like cot with mesh over it, wrapped in a blanket. There were no toys with me. “Just the basics” she said. Fran could see I was unsettled and thought to herself “no wonder. It’s so cold and lifeless in here”.
Fran said that kids she knew used to say they didn’t like coming to our house to play because my dad was so scary and mean.
She said we were all a bit wide eyed and stiff in our demeanour. As though there was no spark or spirit. She said our mother was very focused on food and ensuring our basic needs and privileges were met but agreed there was no emotion or love there.
Fran thinks my parents joined a charismatic church group that held its services at the primary school I went to. Fran went along one night and they had healing services where people went up the front to get healed. She saw my father and when the healer laid her hands on him, he fell down.
She said my brother was demonstrating conspiratorial and strange views when he was about 18. Fran said during Covid my mother went on this tirade about our Victorian premiere and alluded to the end times. Fran found it really overwhelming and told my mother she needed to end the conversation and hang up the phone.
Fran told me my mother went to a convent school called Loreto in Ballarat, but didn’t last long. Something happened and she never went back but no one knew what. My mother also had no relationship with her sister Marie but no one knows why they didn’t speak.
Fran said most people in my mums circle were a bit strange and said as kids we didn’t really have any relatives or extended family to connect us. This is because all of our grandparents died either before we were kids or when we were young. We also moved to Perth so that made it harder to see people.
Fran also said it was my mum that convinced my father to move to Perth and take the management job. It was her that didn’t want to move back. That’s a bit weird to me as from my perspective my mum made it out that she really wanted to come back and live in Melbourne. She didn’t like Perth.
The conversation felt somewhat validating. At least I can stop second guessing whether my parents abused me. I know in my heart they did and were both complicit. Funeral is next week then go on some sort of process to contest the will and move on with my life yet again. I’ll try and find out some more stuff at the funeral but it feels like I have to accept I grew up in an environment of fear, terror, silence, secrecy, control, guilt and shame. I always knew that but now I feel more confident owning it. It’s helpful to have this information as I often feel like I am making things up.
Oh one more thing. Fran was at my wedding with M. She said she remembers thinking that I was “marrying the father I never had”. This is pretty much true given all my littles came out for M and just wanted to be looked after by him. I alway felt like it was a period of seeking to be reparented. I don’t regret it although it can feel a little sad as it was such a trauma reenactment. Nothing like ending a marriage when you turn into a string of little kids. 🫣
My life as a dissociative 
I also had a family history weekend with my aunt. My mother’s experience growing up wasn’t great either and she had the best experience. My aunt had it really rough.
We are all products of our parents over correcting what they felt was wrong. My step father never spoke about his childhood until a long lost brother came to visit. There they were laughing about their experiences and I was horrified as a fairly new mother myself. He was abused in today’s view, but when he was a lad growing up in Holland, that was pretty much the norm. I always thought he was very strict, but after that remember-when session I realised he was actually quite kind compared to his parents. He never thought badly of his parents, and he was our model of an honourable man without him actually telling us how to behave. We learned by osmosis.
I didn’t know how much I disassociated through my school years until much later.
I outgrew it, thankfully, but I am aware that I was always on the back foot in all my important relationships.
Our memories can be faulty. I only felt what I went through when I had my children. So that was a bit of a time. I later discovered, very much later, that I am a bit autistic and have ADHD. All the more to complicate relationships. But I am 73 now and still in one piece.
Don’t write God off though. You seem to have a negative memory of church. I don’t think I would have coped with all of my experience with knowing God.
Best wishes on your journey.
Thanks Sasha for your reflections. I definitely haven’t written off God. I was spiritually abused and satanically abused so my relationship with God is complex and split. I don’t have much respect for the church but understand it can offer a home for community for so many. My negative experiences relate to Catholicism. God is counter to religion in my eyes. He is all loving and inclusive and all powerful. I wouldn’t be where I am in my healing without God but that doesn’t mean it is not complex or challenging at times to keep steadfast faith.
As a raised Catholic I now find myself in a Baptist church. So, I do get it. As long as God is still in your view that’s what matters. I found God evangelical churches and fell in love with the word. Because in the beginning there was the word… and the word was God… John 1:1. Keep the faith is all. ❤️🙏
I will keep the faith. The only reason I’m here is because of God. I just need to let go of the “I gotcha God” and the “punishing God” as this prevents me from experiencing true light and love