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Home » The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints » General Conference & Devotional Discussion » Overcoming abuse through the atonement (Need Help)
Re: Overcoming abuse through the atonement [message #1121 is a reply to message #1116] Tue, 18 September 2012 15:25 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Ashleyd is currently offline  Ashleyd
Messages: 100
Registered: May 2012
Senior Member
Thanks for the post Dragon. My problem isn't so much with forgiving my abusers. It is with forgiving myself and trying to make sure that I do not pass down the abuse to my children. I feel ashamed to say that to some degree I already have passed down some of this burden to my oldest son. He has already learned some bad habits and behaviors because of me and I feel terrible for the times I have exercised unrighteous dominion and have been unkind to him. He is a real challenge and always has been. It's not so much of an issue with my youngest son. He is pretty typical for his age and his bahviors are not anything I am ill equipt to deal with. Before I had kids and after I had joined the church I felt that I would be so much better of a parent then mine were and I think I am doing better already then they did. But I know better then they did and have much more knowledge then they had also since they did not know about the gospel or the restoration. It's hard to talk about these things with others for sure. Especially when they cannot understand what it is like and just how hard it can be to not perpetuate the cycle. The abuse I endured is much worse than anything my son has had to endure from me but still I do not take my mistakes lightly and feel horrible for any amount of emotional pain he has to endure because of me.

Sometimes I wonder why HF would place him with me knowing his particular challenges and his personality and knowing my past and the things I would struggle with as a parent from having bad examples for most things. I have been told HF placed him with me because of my particular gifts and that I would be able to help him but I often feel like I am not only NOT helping him but that he is going to end up completely messed up because of me. I never realized how much the abuse affected me until I became a mom and my oldest son got older. When he was a baby I couldn't even imagine ever getting angry with him. Much less losing my patience or being too hard on him. The sorrow I feel for my constant mistakes is sometimes unbearable and I feel hopeless and completely helpless to change myself the way things need to be changed.

I suppose I am looking for the Savior to just fix me and do it quickly so that my children won't have to deal with the burdens of my own abuse and then continue to pass it down the family line. I love my family so much and want them to have the wife and mother they deserve. I have grown a lot but the growth process feels slow and painful at the same time. Right now is a particularly challenging time because we just had our third child and she is only a few weeks old. So post partum depression, fatigue and lots of other things have combined to create the stressful situation I am in that has made me to not be a very good mom the past few weeks. Just in the past few days things have gotten better as I have made myself rely on the Lord more and work harder to remain patient and kind regardless of it all and how much my oldest child who is about to turn four refuses to listen to me.

I haven't been a believer in spankings for quite a while and tried not to do it much but at times I could still feel myself doing it more out of anger and less as a teaching tool. Iv'e come to realize its no way to teach. Trying to control using fear and force are detrimental to the soul. Its just that, that is all I know. So now I find myself trying to rely even more on other methods and it doesn't seem like any teaching methods or forms of discipline really work with him and then I start to want to fall back on what I learned because I get so frustrated that he wont learn and listen. I am resolved not to do it anymore and not to do it to my other kids either and my husband has agreed not to do it either.

Anyway, I just hope that the Lord will continue to strengthen me and heal me so that these things truly end with me.

Maybe once you become a parent it will help you to forgive and let go of the mistakes your parents made Dragon. It certainly is very difficult. But since becoming a parent myself I have been able to understand my parents better and understand that the things they did to me really had nothing to do with me. That they really hated themselves and every time they inflicted pain on me in one form or another they hated themselves more and it was a downward spiral. I also know that they were abused themselves and were doing what they were taught. I don't try to excuse their actions because on some level they knew what they were doing was wrong but I just understand that, thats not really who they were. They let the pain drive them to dark places and they never got the help and healing that they needed.

For some reason it has been easier for me to forgive my dad then my mom. Forgiving my mom is still an ongoing process and maybe its because she still hasn't changed much and my dad did change a lot and apologized for things and took responsibility for his actions but I do have desires to forgive her but having a desire is only where it starts and actually forgiving doesn't take place over night. I think I understand at least partially how you feel though our circumstances were likely and maybe even very different. I just try to remember that forgiving her is for me and not for her. She doesn't need forgiveness from me and my forgiveness is not going to help her at all or save her in any way. She needs forgiveness from Christ and those are things she will have to work out with Him. I do know that forgiving is part of the healing process. I hope you know that I do not judge you one little bit for your struggles with that. And forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean you want to let them in your life or that you should so those are really two different things. I may forgive my mom but it doesn't mean that I can suddenly trust her. Sometimes separation is vital to the healing process. You can't really worry about healing when you are still in the thick of it. It's not until you are out of it and in a safer environment that people can even try to reflect and move on.

I wish I could give you a hug. I know how deeply the scars can go. And I understand perfectly what you mean about your personality and your soul being distorted because of the abuse. It's part of the reason I have such a hard time believing Christ wants to forgive and heal me for my mistakes because I was raised the way I was and my parents were so hard on me and I grew up feeling worthless and hating myself because of the abuse. I was abused in every way possible. I was abused sexually..not by my parents though. But I was put in one of those situations to be abused because my alcoholic mother did not have her wits about her and allowed me to sleep in the same room alone with some guy she worked with. I had to defend myself as a little girl at like 8 or 9 years old because my mother passed out in another room on the couch. The reason I got away from him was because once I woke up and realized what was happening I punched him in the side of the head and started hitting him. I think it startled him and he let me go.

I went in the living room and tried to wake up my mom but she wouldn't wake up so I just laid down beside her until the morning and then I went out to the car as fast as I could because I did not want to see him again. I was afraid. My mom only found out because I told one of my cousins later about what happened. I remember my mom cried and blamed herself for it and I remember consoling her as a child telling her it wasn't her fault he was a bad man but what I failed to understand at that age was that my mom should have been consoling me and she should have been there for me and protected me. But I didn't know anything different. My relationship with my mom has always been somewhat backwards. Iv'e never had a real mommy type of mom.

She usually only calls me when shes drunk and usually wants the conversation to be all about her but that's just how it is. The interesting thing is that of all of the abuse I actually think the sexual abuse affected me the least. The abuse by my parents is what affected me the most. The yelling, the name calling, the manipulation from my mom, the verbal and physical abuse I received from both of them but mainly my father. I wouldn't change my family though and I love them dearly and want to spend eternity with them. In spite of their mistakes they both have good in them too. I actually miss my Father terribly. He was really the only stable parent I had left. He did mellow out a lot as he got older and he stopped the physical abuse after one particularly bad incident when I was small and he did later apologize for those things when I was older. He did still occasionally slap my brother and I in the face which was totally humiliating. And he never was a patient man and always had a bad temper and a knack for verbally assaulting you when he lost his patience. He told me on a number of occations that I was stupid, helpless, a failure...etc... but I think those were things he really felt about himself. But he also had a very gentle and loving side and a wonderful sense of humor and loved to play games with us and have fun. My mom also has a good heart inspite of her alcoholism and selfishness I still think of her as a good person. She just has a lot of pain to still overcome and I hope she does.

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