Mom has not spoken to me since Thanksgiving and will not talk to me again until after the first of the year. Anyone else have this problem?
Anyone else going through this?
I know she is upset because she is alone, and I'm sorry. Holidays have not been great for my family, nothing tragic but not good. No money growing up, not a close family, and usually in fighting with the family. I'm usually a bit depressed over the hoildays beacuse of not having a close family relations with my mom. I have not spent enough time with her over the hoildays in the past. It does not feel like a hoilday at her house, I'm not talking about gifts...There is always so much stress and bickering going on. I do feel bad this year but I don't want to kill anyone in the process. She will not answer texts or phone calls. I guess I would rather have a nice zoom on Christmas with my daughter than nothing at all. Am I being unresaonable? She put out so little effort in our relationship, I'm tired. I feel a bit guilty this year beacuse of the election, I did not really want to go. She was so nasty to me about the election, I did not want to hear it over the hoilday. And no, I did not bring it up. I do respect people have different views than mine. I try to keep my views to myself. She speaks everything thats on her mind. I don't know what to do....
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It might be time to sever ties completely and move on if you haven't already done so. There is no reason to feel any guilt for protecting yourself and not allowing someone to abuse you. Take care of you and enjoy a stress free peaceful holiday. The freedom from their toxicity is worth it. It will get better. I am still angry but working on it.
My sibs and I laugh now and say "It wasn’t Christmas until Dad lost his temper and made someone cry." Is it any wonder that none of us wanted a close relationship with him?
I do not put a manger scene up any more---it seemed a mockery. Christmas is a family time, I play the music I love, buy thoughtful gifts but have cut back immensely as to what I DO to gift my family. DH looks at me every year and says "This is ALL you bought??" . To him, since he cannot voice feelings, buying stuff is how he functions. The joke is, he happily accepts the 'thanks' from the kids, but never once acknowledges that he had NO IDEA what had been in any given bag. He runs to Walgreens at 9:45 Christmas Eve and I get whatever leftover crap they have (unless one of my daughters has already bought, wrapped and given him something thoughtful for me. They got tired of seeing me trying to not cry as I pulled unwrapped packages out of a Walgreens bag every year).
After 46 years together he STILL hasn't figured it out.
I used to work so hard to make that one day just perfect and some years ago realized I could not. It was the ONE day of the year when I felt the least Christlike and once I acknowledge that to myself, I quit trying to cram all the good feelings and traditions into one day.
So my take? 364 days, Jesus is the center of my life, 1 day a year it's the gluttony of gifts, kids and food.
Dh is not speaking to his mother this year. He plans to not call nor see her. Whatever he chooses is fine with me. I'm not involved in her life anymore. He's calling her bluff--wonder how it will work out.
2020 has not been a great year for anyone. I am VERY grateful my cancer is in remission and that my hair all grew back. And that I am slowly getting well. I have a beautiful family and enough love to sustain me. (Cancer really makes you stop and think).
I don't have time or space in my life for toxicity and so anyone who IS toxic, gets zero airplay.
I Love YOU ALL--seriously, I look forward to the hour I spend here. Enjoy your families as best you can, or take a break. Find somewhere to give service and make that your Christmas!
Wishing you and your family blessings and happiness in the days going forward.
Liz
Enjoy not having to listen to or deal with her negative self. Spend your time and energy in more positive activities.
Thank-you for writing this post! It's good to know I'm not alone in how the holidays are for me. I totally get everyone's responses to your post and can relate myself to every single one. Every Christmas until I was adult in my mid 20's, my mother around a week or so before the holidays would start her tradition of picking a fight with me. I have siblings, but she never did it to them. She'd work on me a little bit every day until right around Christmas Eve there would be the big blow-up she wanted. I'm sure everyone here must be thinking what parent would do such a thing to a little kid as Christmas? Mine that's who. My adult relatives would then chastise me about what a terrible, nasty, and ungrateful kid I was. My mother would get the sympathy she craved from them and enjoyed my embarrassment from being scolded by my family. She wanted to ruin Christmas for everyone in the family, but do so indirectly. She used me as a tool to do this. She wanted to spread around as much misery, disappointment, and ruin as she could but wanted to avoid getting the blame for it. She didn't want to be there because she was jealous of family who had better than her. My uncle was the only one who didn't feel sorry for her because he knew what she was about. He was good to me. I remember how I used to dread the last day of school before the Christmas break when I was a kid because I knew that's when she would start up on me. She didn't want to try and be happy and enjoy the party with her family and needed a reason for why she sat there with a long face and her head down all night complaining about me to whoever would listen. When I wasn't a little kid and a teenager anymore she couldn't keep up her holiday tradition with me. My family of course think I'm crazy and that it was always my fault. Even my siblings thought it too because mom was so subtle in how she'd work on me to make sure she got the blow-up and big fight for Christmas Eve that she wanted. In my adult life she tries to ruin the holidays by either working herself up into an anxiety attack or with the gloom and doom bullsh*t that I get daily from her. Around the holidays I get it double. I tell her if she doesn't want to come on Christmas Eve then don't. If she doesn't want to sit down with us and eat the nice dinner I cooked, then don't. What she wants is for me to coax and beg her to join in. I will not do that though. That's my little gift to myself. I will not do it.
As a teen, I tried to absorb Christmas meaning from others who seemed to "get it." The closest I ever came was being 19 or so and leaving the candlelight church service at exactly midnight and knowing it was now Christmas officially. It was a moment with fresh snow and a feeling I'd never had before (or since). I am grateful that I can hold that memory close.
I married into a family where Christmas is the focus of entire year. Planning for the next year's Christmas starts at 12:01 AM on Dec 26th of the previous year. Gifts EVERYWHERE. The more gifts the merrier - none of it practical. All of it bought on a whim with no thought of the recipient's preferences or needs. Food and alcohol to the maximum. No worries about the credit card debt that was required to pull it all off.
As an adult, I continued to be the subject of family ridicule/bullying, but it spilled over into Christmas. My family of origin has no shame when it comes to destroying someone. When I stood up for myself, I was told they were "kidding" or "just funnin' with me".... Straight out of the abusers' handbook. Decades ago, they pushed me too far with the abuse and ridicule. My relationship with all of them forever changed. I will forgive them, but I need to also stop the abuse cycle. Once someone shows you how little you mean to them, that information needs to be carefully considered!!! I do not miss them when I don't see them - even if it's Christmas. My mother is not speaking to me right now and I am currently looking at a letter I received from her today - I'd rather not open it. Could be a coupon she wanted me to have, but it could also be a list of all I've done wrong. I end up just trying to survive the holidays, but I do know it shouldn't be like that. Other than that one night outside in the snow when I was 19, I never could find the magic. I'm also the one who made the NH decision for LO and that's put me at the center of THAT controversy. I am now officially blamed for everyone's pain and LO is on lockdown. If I defend myself, somehow I'm being disrespectful. No one cares the degree to which I have been disrespected and how many times I took the high road (or tried to take the high road). It's just too much and Christmas just amplifies it as holiday emotions run ridiculously high.
I am not a religious person, I like "a woman of faith" but maybe thinking about what Christmas really is...the birth of Christ...will help. Everything else does not compare to that. Maybe go to a Christmas Eve service. Maybe it will snow.
You have tried to explain to your mother that going physically to her house to see her over the Christmas season, with the risk that you will merrily give her a lethal virus, is a Bad Idea; and as an alternative you have suggested a special, scheduled Zoom visit.
This has gone down like a lead balloon. Your mother is having a sustained sulk.
When you have said or done something that is correct and necessary but has upset another person or persons, the only consolation is to say ruefully to yourself "it is better to be right than popular."
Is there a compromise available? Sure! You could say "oh well, if it'll make you happy we'll come to your house with our gift-wrapped microbes and civil disobedience then. Is that better now?"
The fact that there are also other subplots, such as its being quite a relief not to have to rehearse the election with her while you're trying to have a festive time, is neither here nor there. It might *also* be true that you're not sorry not to go, but the main truth is that it isn't safe. 2020 is a write-off. No one will be gladder than I am to see the back of it. God willing, come Christmas 2021 we can all gather round the tree and argue about something else :)
Meanwhile. Get the most decorative card you can find and write her a lovely letter. Write to the mother you like and love (so much easier when the real life warts and all version isn't right there, poking all your buttons). Mail it. Feel better x
There were some trying to guilt them into coming... Sure we'll miss them but it's just how this year is.
Sorts the flexible from the inflexible (the gracious from the selfish).
I once posted that I felt the US holiday season was a bit hard, particularly on the cooks: Halloween (Candy and Nightmare on Elm Street, the Nightmare probably being obesity and diabetes), Thanksgiving (overstuffed underdone turkeys), Christmas (Retailers Day Number1) and New Year (First Hangover of the year). I got vituperative replies telling me to pull my head in. Plus Cwillie gently telling me that it was a sensitive subject in the US (perhaps all those hangovers). So I didn’t say it! Note! I didn’t say it again! None of it is true!
After my kids were on their own, I often wished people at work a Happy Day Off with Pay - no offense to people of other or no religion, no pushing buying or getting "stuff", etc. Now that I'm retired (not much of a retirement at all, just no need to join the rat race to work daily) one day is more or less like another.
Taking corporate America (the "Hallmark" types) out of the equation, holidays could be fun again, for those who aren't stick in the mud types. For me, the important part was getting together as a family, but that hasn't really worked out for my extended family, not in a long time.
Hoping once the virus is under control, I can rebuild good times with my kids and their LOs, including my grandson!
My mother thinks the phone only operates one way, me calling her.
I used to be upset over it. Not anymore.
I learned that if a person continually behaves a certain way, then it is a character trait.
So it’s foolish to expect a different behavior.
Once I accepted this fact, I was at peace knowing that her behavior has absolutely nothing to do with who I am.
It isn’t about your worthiness. It is her behavior. This is who she is.
As for the holidays, don’t buy into it.
I love the spirit of Christmas. I hate the commercial side of it so I refuse to put that kind of pressure on myself or anyone else. That isn’t what Christmas means to me.
I try to do nice things for her, and she tells me to stop. So I do. "Stop bringing me delicious Italian food that I love b/c the stupid caregivers can't heat it up properly." Okay, I'll stop.
"Don't come and see me for a window visit on Sunday, I'm not feeling all that good."
Okay, I won't.
If she decided to stop talking to me from Thanksgiving until New Years? I'd put out the flag & consider it a VACATION. A reprieve from all the BS I have to put up with the other 300+ days a year she loves to dish out.
Whatever your mother tells you, believe her. If she's telling you she's a passive/aggressive mean woman, believe her.
She had better be careful though. Because the day after New Years, when she's finally ready to stop her pouting and talk to you again, YOU may not be ready to talk to HER.
Careful what you wish for, mother. It may just come true.
Growing up there were 4 of us kids. We lived from pay to pay. Dad worked OT to get us presents. We each had our "pile". We didn't get all year, you know a toy everytime we went to a store, but my parents tried to make sure we got what we wanted for Christmas.
Mom always cooked the meal and others were invited to join us. That continued until my Dad died. Then Mom got invited to my brothers. MIL moved to Fla. We would go down for Thanksgiving but Christmas we stayed home with the kids. It was their day. No more big family dinners. My girls miss that but not much I can do about that. One daughter has two sons, the other no children. It was hard adjusting but my Lasagna for Christmas is now a tradition, as my Gson says. Its just the 6 of us. No more gift exchange, we use the money we would spend on each other and help a Mother and Son. I do decorate but don't send cards. I have learned to enjoy the peace and quiet.
The elections in the last 12 years have broken up friendships and families. I choose not to get involved. I think social media has not helped. Too much false news out there that people believe. Used to be your could believe what was in the paper and on the TV news, but no more.
Please, don't feel quilty. Why should you spend a rotten holiday with people who will bicker and stress u out. I wouldn't want to go either and I would tell Mom that. Send her flowers saying "sorry just can't make it this year, Love" When we r younger we tend to do things for others we really don't want to but we do. As we age we finally realize, why can't I have it my way. You don't have to be religious to go to a Christmas Eve service. A lot of places have take home Christmas meals and they r good. Bake some cookies. Decorate a little. Zoom that daughter. Sit back and watch a Christmas movie with a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows. Enjoy the peace.
We have 14 grands, and can only be around 7 of them. We're currently trying to figure out SOME scenario where we can watch them. minimally, open the gifts I put together for them. Looks like they will be in one daughter's big living room and we will watch from the front porch. Not the best situation, but better than nothing.
2 of our families are immune to covid, and our SIL, who is a Dr. says there is just no possible way the 3rd family isn't immune, but the mom refuses to take the kids in for antigen testing. I can't make her, and she doesn't seem to care that DH and I would like to be able to be with them on Christmas.
I always do too much, care too much and work too much to make the holidays lovely, and year and year I wind up crying myself to sleep on Christmas night.
I've tried this year to do more service and small acts of kindness--kind of a challenge since I do not go out much.
I'm on OK terms with MY mother, which is always a challenge, However, DH and his mother had a HUGE blowup 6 weeks ago and she told him 'go to h3ll'--and that she hated him, wished he'd never been born and hated me and wished he'd never brought me into the family, etc. etc. I was not there to hear it, didn't need to, she's talked to me this way for almost my whole married life. DH ignored her birthday last week and plans to do nothing for her for Christmas. I am not encouraging him to be the 'bigger person' because he finally sees the light. She pretty much ruined any holiday spirit he may have had.
I hope DH takes care of himself emotionally this year. His guilt level from his mom is always sky high---but since I absented myself from his mother's life almost a year ago--he's begun to realize how much he used me as a buffer--letting her chew ME out and feeling fine b/c it wasn't directed at him.
If you don't want to talk to your mom on Christmas, don't. Be with those people who DO bring you joy.
This year will soon be over and hopefully, 2021 will bring a level of peace and calm--I'm just hoping we all learned some valuable lessons from the pandemic.
As to your Mom, she shows with her behavior who SHE is. There is nothing in the world you can do about who SHE is. You can only be who you are. And clearly you are a caring person. So simply care, and send a lovely note once a week. Pretty card, nice little note, and end with "Thinking of you; hoping all is well with you". Then get on with your life.
She is attempting to punish you. But she isn't WITH you. So let her steep in her own meanness, and let it hurt only her. Respond with love or gentle humor, and forget about the rest of it.
My current partner and I have been together for 35 years. The best thing he ever did for me was teach me that a disagreement is words in those seconds, then it is over. You had your mini explosion and now life goes on with the basic premise that you love and enjoy one another. He can't hold a grudge for three seconds. Holding grudges is warfare. It is meant to punish. I had a girlfriend years ago who lived in the flat downstairs. I then was the "grudge-holder" type. She hurt me and I withdrew; wouldn't speak to her. She however continued to speak to me with sweet words. Finally after a month I shouted over the clothes line "You ARE aware I am NOT speaking to you, RIGHT!!!!" and she smiled and said "Yeah, but I like you lots, so I AM speaking to you". How could I continue the grudge?
So just ignore it. Send a lovely note. Like "Hi, the magnolia is in bloom. So pretty. Hope all's well", Love Mathis. And forget about her for the rest of the day.
Great response and I love the "girlfriend" story - that's funny, I can actually visualize that one!