This page explains the intent behind the site: to collect material related to child abuse, parental alienation, and parental abduction, and to make that material available to other readers looking for recognition, context, or closure.
Purpose of the resource
Adult Survivors of Child Abuse, Parental Alienation Syndrome and Parental AbductionThis site is a content portal for other adult victims of the many faces of child abuse. If one person who views this site finds the same sense of closure I have found, it will be worth every minute expended.
Some personal lessons I have learned:
Abusive parents never change. What changes is their ability to continue to physically and emotionally harm us, as we grow up and eventually leave home.
But the attempts at mental abuse and emotional blackmail will usually never end. The opportunities for the toxic parent to cause you new emotional pain on top of the scars from the old abuse will not arise as often as they did when you were under the same roof. But at certain points, opportunities will arise and old behavior will be repeated with continued contact with the abusive parent.
Why?
Because the personality flaws that make an abusive parent abusive do not change. Given the same opportunity, or the same set of circumstances under which they abused you before, they will abuse you again. Abusers don't "get better" (except perhaps those with chemical dependencies) The victims merely get away from the abusive environment. If you never grew up, but remained a child forever, they would still be abusing you today.
So what now?
Spare yourself the hopes for a sincere apology (any apology you have to ask for or even beg for can't really be sincere). Forget about ever finding an understanding for why the abuser treated you (and others) the way they did, and give up on any hopes of closure through some miraculous, healing reconciliation.
Tell yourself right now: "The person who abused me does not consider themselves an abuser".
Consider: As a child, how many times did you try to tell the abuser or someone else, a family member or friend, how you felt about the abuse, only to hear the abuser deny it ever happened, or say (even worse) that you deserved everything you got?
Some counselors recommend a face to face confrontation with the abuser to reach closure. Depending on the nature and degree of the abuse, this may help the abused reach some temporary sense of closure. But for others, that confrontation is going to escalate into a situation that mirrors all the others before.
For the sites author, any confrontation with the abusive mother about her behavior ended in one of three ways, usually with a variation only in the order they were played out:
1. The tried and true "You're just like your father", which was the beginning and ending of so many beatings as a child and through adolescence that they defy counting, though they can document the frequency from the very detailed journals kept throughout that period.
2. The ridiculous crying jag full of self-pity eliciting statements, all of them said in a harsh accusatory tone: "I guess I just wasn't a very good mother then, was I. But you seem to have turned out okay".
3. The feigned panic/heart attack. "You're killing me with this. You're just killing me. I can't take this from you."
In all three, the net result is always the same. No acknowledgement of responsibility. No apology for the abusive behavior. No closure.
So were do you find closure?
You get closure by getting on with your life. As a victim of abuse, the past will never truly be behind you. You will live with a part of it every day. But you may choose to accept it, and you can cut the abuser out of your life just as you would a cancer from your body. Don't wait for the day when they can reopen old wounds, or worry about how they may treat your own children should you leave them alone with them. As an adult, you have a right to choose who you and your children associate with, even if they are 'family'.
You can also get closure by talking about your experience, and receiving reassurance from friends and true family. You can do as the author does, and post your experience online, and find reassurance that others have survived. There is also closure in merely getting the matter out in the open, reviewing it, and letting it stand on its own.
Be aware in advance that the abuser will of course claim that you are a liar, that you were never abused, and have some ulterior motive for wanting to harm him or her with your words. Let them. It's amazing that years after living in a home with an abuser, the abused still have a tendency to worry about their opinion, worry about what they might say about us, worry about what they might do to us. That is the painful legacy of abuse. They may try to slander you to family or friends, to protect their own "image". You may have already been through this kind of behavior before. Don't worry about the opinions of others. Worry about your own.
Live the life you deserve, and leave the abuse behind.
My Personal Experience with PAS