A personal reflection on abuse, estrangement, The Incest Diary, and healing.

Read more about Pernille Yilmam at the end of the blog.

Six days before my birthday, my mother emailed me that she no longer recognizes me as her daughter. 

She is angry with me for sharing (some of) my story publicly, describing situations that occurred during my childhood and teen years. Despite keeping the narrative rather vague, providing only a few concrete examples, she feels “misunderstood”. In her email, she went as far as to say that some of the examples were completely untrue. I wonder which ones she’s referring to.

When I first saw her name in my inbox, I actually sighed. Out loud. I couldn’t believe it. She was trying to reconnect. Again? After reading the first couple of lines, it  dawned on me quickly how wrong I was. This email was not to implore a possibility of  reconnection. It was a letter to solidify our eternal goodbye–our complete separation. You could say that she sent me the divorce papers, a legal ending to the parent-child relationship.

It’s interesting to sit with that bitter feeling of banishment, of being uninvited and formally thrown off the family tree. But what really hurt  me, and made me tear up, was her accusation that I spread lies. It’s funny, because at this point, you might think I would have  become accustomed to this pattern. I grew up being told that I was lying about my experiences and making things up. It took years to trust myself again, to believe that when I saw or heard something, I did indeed see or hear something. Even well into my twenties, I’d turn to my friends to double check that my experience and interpretation were correct. Frankly, it was embarrassing, and as I healed, I came to realize how exhausting it had been to doubt everything about my senses and thoughts. 

For years, I didn’t want to become a mother. I was afraid my mother was right when she told me I was too selfish to have children. For years, I thought I was a person only motivated by my own goals, willing to stomp  on everyone else to get there. It took years to recover from these misbeliefs.  Yet, it takes just one email from her, one sentence, to make me reconsider my truth.

A look into the science

People often ask me why my mother has so much power over me. To which I respond: Excuse me?  You are asking why my mother, the only parenting adult I consistently grew up with, has a significant power over me even after all these years? The reality is–of course she does. Read a biology book and find out. 

I often grunt and make faces at this question. It’s difficult not to, when someone is, intentionally or not, trying to displace responsibility onto me. My warped sense of love and support came from a woman who was unable to consistently provide me with that. My sense of security fluctuated with her mood. I was scared of my mother, but I loved her. I wanted her to love me, but I wanted to leave her. I wanted her to hug me, but I could not stand her touching me.

I understand how confusing this can sound, but I’m not the first, and not the last, to describe the psychological consequences of emotional abuse. 

During my psychology and neuroscience studies, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what happens to people when they grow up around uncertainty, manipulation, and gaslighting. What are the long-term consequences on these people’s thought patterns, behaviors, and their brain? For better or for worse, I’m not the only one asking that question. We now know that emotional abuse has neurobiological and psychological consequences similar to physical and sexual abuse (Radell et al., 2021). The consequences amp up if the abuser is unpredictable. Unpredictable abuse, whether sexual, physical, or emotional, is the absolute worst thing you can offer a developing child (Glynn and Baram, 2019). Unpredictable abuse wires our brains in a way that increases risk of mental illness and cognitive challenges (Glynn et al., 2021; Birnie et al., 2020). Worst of all, we get wired to attach to the people that are hurting us (Sullivan and Lasley, 2010). 

If we’re lucky, we overcome the mental illnesses, addictions, and diseases that our childhood inflicted upon us. Going through and overcoming these consequences is difficult, and for some, it’s impossible. But I think the most difficult part, by far, is having  the courage and strength to speak up–to stand by your voice and truth as you are disparaged, ousted, and hated by your family members. I have learned that sometimes in order to recover, you have to be willing to lose everything. 

From the outside this may sound easy: these people treated you badly, leave them behind! Or perhaps you are thinking: these folks are your family, just be “friendly” with them, you don’t have to love them. Both of these perspectives are naive, reflecting the misconceptions embedded in our culture, promoting the idea that we can become friends with our abusers.

When I finally spoke up, my entire maternal family ousted me.  Almost eight years later, my mother got so angry with my public sharing that she no longer considers me her daughter. Over the years, I have come to learn that my mother’s behaviors, my entire family’s actions,  are outside of my control. It is their choice. Not mine. Their refusal to hear my perspective, understand why I spoke up, and admit their mistakes is their choice. Their obsession with denying the truth is their choice. 

A kindred book

As fate would have it, I had just finished reading The Incest Diary the day before receiving my expulsion. The Incest Diary is written by an anonymous female author who was sexually abused by her father from the age of 3 to 21. She provides the readers with a journey of her life during and after the abuse, including the “after-effects” of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (cPTSD). It’s a harrowing book that explores the absurd but very real emotional dependence children develop with their abusive parents. 

When I turned the last page, I looked at my husband in revelation, shocked by how much I resonated with the author’s thoughts and symptoms. You may immediately think “Hey! This woman was molested for almost two decades, and you think your emotional abuse is comparable?” 

I experienced this emotional abuse for almost two decades. While our stories were different, complex PTSD does not discriminate. Complex PTSD arises from prolonged or repeated trauma, especially during childhood, and the symptoms can include a mix of sadness, hopelessness, suicidality, distrust in others, preoccupation with their abuser, self-blame, substance use, and increased fear responses. 

The author and I expressed the same symptoms from a young age: dependence on the abuser, hopelessness, and social withdrawal. We experienced abuse that was unpredictable from the people  that were  supposed to keep us safe. We both grew up not understanding what a safe relationship looked  like. When we first spoke up, our parents briefly admitted to some of their mistakes, of their immoral actions, of their lack of parenting. But after our parents got to think it over, they both changed their minds and decided it was mostly, if not completely, untrue. Again, we had to constantly face the unpredictable actions of our parents’ minds and behaviors.

 All types of abuse are horrible. The severity of the abuse depends not on the “type” of abuse, but on how it’s delivered. 

The key difference between the author and I is that I kept speaking up and she didn’t.  When she spoke up, her brother’s immediate reaction of isolation and depression led her to retract all of her statements. I kept saying my truth, even when my sister let me know she would not talk to me as long as I was separated from my mother. We have not spoken since. 

I think it’s fair to say that navigating childhood abuse is significantly more difficult when you have a sibling who wasn’t subject to it. Your sibling cannot attest to your experiences, and while they may have seen signs of the abuse, they most likely did not understand the full reality of it. They love their parents. Their parents always loved them. How in the world could their parents do something so terrible to their other child? I understand that this is a terribly difficult situation, and I harbor no negative feelings towards my sister for her choice. I do wish she had talked to me about my experiences before making the decision to cut me off. 

When the author and I enter our early twenties, our life paths start diverging: 

At 21, she confronted her family, but ended up recanting her words, minimizing her truth to save the relationship with her brother. 

At 21, I moved from Denmark to the United States, against my mother’s approval, to study the brain and human mind. 

In her twenties, the author married a man to whom she never shared her experiences of childhood abuse. She lived a lovely, safe life, not having to openly face her past.

In those years, I lived alone (except for one boyfriend), and most people knew about my past and mental health challenges.  I saw what felt like a million therapists, and I was faced with my past constantly.

In her thirties, the author divorced and moved  in with a man who was turned on by her childhood abuse. A man who fantasized about having sex with her as a child. She became fully dependent on him. He reminded her of her father.*

In my late twenties, I finally moved through the grief and mental illness my past had triggered. I could look forward rather than backward. I found the love of my life, and, despite a tumultuous start, our relationship is rooted in open, honest, non-judgemental communication. I’m healthy, mentally and physically, I don’t cry too much about my past, and I’m excited about the future, of being a mother, of living. 

 An ending

It was December 2017 when I first told my mother that I needed a break from her for an undetermined period of time. I knew that in order to recover from my serious and, at the time, life-threatening mental illness, I needed her, my biggest trigger, to be removed from my life.

Over the past eight years, I have come to realize that my mother could never become a part of my new life. I could not risk her contaminating my newfound joy and enthusiasm with our unresolved and  depressing past. Perhaps I should have told her, but in truth, a part of me, the part that is still 11 years old, was hoping for a better ending. It’s that irrational hope that drives many people to never leave their abuser. Just like the author of The Incest Diary. 

Six days before my birthday, my mother wrote to me that she no longer considers me her daughter. That my public accounts of her behavior, which I had brought up to her many years earlier, were misrepresented and untrue. June 27th marks the day of our formal divorce. 

In some way, it’s relieving that my mother and I have “mutually” agreed to separate, but it also leaves me feeling unresolved. I have so many unanswered questions. More times than I can count, I have desperately traced my inbox for information about the therapist my mother and I briefly saw together. Somewhere deep inside, I still hope that this person can help me find clarity by giving me answers to why mother behaved the way she did, why she says the things she said. It’s the part of me that wants to find a reason for my mother’s behaviors, perhaps so I can make it all feel meaningful. I’m afraid that despite obtaining a PhD in neuroscience in search of these answers, that I will never come to understand my mother. That is a fear I’m learning to live with. 

*A note of interest for the neuroscience enthusiast: we now know from research that rat pups can find painful stimuli attractive if it’s experienced in early life (Sullivan and Lasley, 2010). In other words, our early life experiences, even if immoral and dangerous, can become (distorted) cues of safety to us throughout our adult life.

For a deeper understanding, consider exploring The Incest Diary yourself.

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