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236 Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
Determining your family history can sometimes be a difficult mat-
ter, especially in dysfunctional families where secrecy, denial, and
rationalization are prevalent. Although you may have heard many sto-
ries about the escapades or hardships of various family members, elic-
iting information relevant to the history of abuse in the family will
undoubtedly be harder to come by.
My Family Legacy
I found this to be especially true in my family. My mother was
extremely proud and secretive and believed strongly in keeping things
to herself. Whenever I asked her questions about our family she was
very elusive. She always cried whenever I asked her about my grand-
mother (who had died before I was born) and so I stopped asking
about her. The only things she told me was that my grandmother had
suggested my name, that she died when she was hit by a car and that
she was a wonderful, gregarious woman that everyone loved. When-
ever I asked about my father she was even more elusive and I soon
learned to stop asking about him as well. Even so, throughout the
years I was able to piece together enough information to give me a
fairly good picture of our family legacy.
My mother s parents had five children: three boys and one girl.
My grandfather was a carpenter who designed beautiful hand-crafted
furniture, so the family was fairly well off. My grandmother was a
social butterfly who loved to entertain. That was before the Depres-
sion came. When the Depression hit my grandfather had to go out of
town to work. He sent a check home once a month with the warning
to my grandmother that the money had to last all month. But my
grandmother didn t heed the warning. As soon as she got the check
she went right out and bought liquor for herself and her friends and
chocolate-covered cherries for the kids. Then she had her friends over
for a party. By the last week of the month the family had to live on
boiled potatoes.
As the Depression dragged on my grandfather was finding it
harder and harder to find work and to feed his family. My mother s
oldest sister decided to get married at sixteen, which helped the fam-
ily out considerably. But there were still four kids to worry about. My
uncle Forrest went to work at fourteen, and they decided to send the
youngest son, my uncle Kay, to California to be with relatives. My
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Facing the Truth about Your Family Legacy 237
uncle Kay never got over this abandonment by his family. He became
a lifelong alcoholic. My uncle Frank also suffered an enormous disap-
pointment. A very talented artist, he had been accepted to a presti-
gious art school just before the Depression. Unable to pursue his
lifelong dream, he eventually became an alcoholic as well.
The five children were devastated by the Depression, and
although my uncle Forrest tried to keep them together, they were
never close again. My mother and my aunt Natalla stayed in Missouri,
but the boys eventually all went to California. Frank died in his forties
of alcoholism and a broken heart. He never married. Throughout his
life he continued to paint but always regretted not attending art
school. Kay lived a long life, in spite of his alcoholism. He was mar-
ried once, in his early twenties, but abandoned his wife and newborn
baby (as he had been abandoned).
Aside from the alcoholism, the other thing that Kay and Frank had
in common was the fact that they were selfish and narcissistic. This
can, of course, be partly explained by the fact that they probably
became stuck in their adolescence an adolescence that was taken
from them so abruptly. But it can also be explained by the fact that
narcissism runs in my family. Forrest and my mother also suffered
from it.
So where did the alcoholism and the narcissism start? Even
though my mother had always spoken of my grandmother in glowing
terms, just before she died I learned that my grandmother was an alco-
holic. It wasn t until then that I learned the whole truth about her
death. She had been drinking the night she was killed. She was drunk
and had decided to walk down the street to see some friends. She evi-
dently was in the middle of the street when the car hit her.
As far as the narcissism is concerned, this disorder is not neces-
sarily caused by spoiling a child, which is often the belief, but by
emotional deprivation. Certainly my mother s siblings were all
deprived of love and emotional security.
And the criticalness? I saw one picture of my grandfather, who
looked very cold and rigid-looking. I can imagine him being very crit-
ical. And even though my mother had always spoken of my grand-
mother in glowing terms, after my mother died I learned from my
cousin (Forrest s daughter) that my grandmother was actually a very
stern, critical, almost caustic woman. She had visited them several
times and was very critical of my cousin s children.
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238 Breaking the Cycle of Abuse
From what I was able to piece together both from the little I
learned about my family and from my mother s behavior, my mother
and her siblings were raised by a selfish, critical mother who was also
an alcoholic. My mother in turn became highly critical of me and was
too wrapped up in herself to pay much attention to me. My mother
also abused alcohol and when she drank she became very verbally
abusive to me.
Learning more about my mother s family helped me to gain a
great deal of empathy for both my mother and myself. I too abused
alcohol in my younger days and became verbally abusive when I
drank. Once I understood more about our family legacy, I was able to
understand myself better, and this helped me to forgive both my
mother and myself. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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