Sexual Abuse Support Group

Why tends to be a fruitless thing to ask in our cases. However, usually our parents were like they were to us because their parents were like that to them.
So your mother likely got used as a thing to vent frustrations on. When your parents, the people you adore as a child, turn into your tormentors...it damages your ability to love, usually. Love=hurt, so you become cold, angry. You stop loving yourself because your parents don't love you unambiguously, if at all.
Unless you become conscious of this and stop yourself, you will go on to treat your children in the cold, hard, abusive manner you were.
So that's the likely answer.

Oh, and stop shoulding on yourself. You are where you are, beating yourself up for same won't get you out of it any faster.

Hi there. If there's any consolation, I asked my mom and she denied everything, became angry, gave me every excuse there is in the world, and finally blamed me. Sometimes confronting our abusers don't give us any benefit.

So if you never asked, maybe it was better than getting the kind of answers we get when we confront our abusers. Nothing worse than having our abusers furthering abusing us by blaming us for their nonsense. I hope you find comfort in that.

i am so sorry and it must be hard, very hard and very painful. i wish there was an easy answer but i don't think there is. I was deprived of confronting my abuser becuase he had died and i know this not close to being the same. I dealt with it by changing my thinking about it. Rarely are there any real answers to why people do as they do or are the way they are. and in truth there is not dam thing anyone can do about it. In my case, after allowing myself to grieve for a bit, i decided to start thinging in terms of "what now" and i began focusing on this thinking and gradually my need to know why disolved into the past. I know it is easy for me to say this and it may seem a bit out there. But when you think about - i think we only have two options. Heal from the past and move forward by asking "what now" and move on with what now.

rich

My abuser was my brother. He too, is dead. I do not think I would be where I am in recovery if he was still alive. It was a dirty little secret that I kept for 40 some years. It was a secret I kept for me and for him. After his death I was able to start healing. It was because I felt like I was as dirty as him, but too, I felt safe. He couldn't lie, he couldn't deny and he couldn't hurt me anymore. I do believe I would never have confronted him out of fear. Also, I believe I wouldn't have told anyone. Secrets are poison and I am freeing myself. I am feel so much better that he is gone. Is that horrible? I will always have that love hate relationship with him, but I feel safer now and I guess I don't have to look at him all the time and have him there making me feel ill and uncomfortable.

You are stronger than you think. You are alive! You survived something so horrible and are here. I think that survivors are so strong and even when we first think of ourselves as victims, we are still strong we just don't feel like it. We have over come so much. Hang in there !

I agree with everything that everyone above has said. However the fact of the matter is that when the abuser is family it brings a whole range of different issues. But the simple fact of the matter is that we have to contend with the realization that while these people, especially when they are our parents, were meant to be the ones who loved and protected us the most they failed us more than anyone ever could. The fact of the matter is that our parents were still the ones to bring us into this world, still the ones to provide shelter, food, send us to school and provide us with money often after we had satisfied their needs. Like people have already mentioned often we will not know the answers to the questions we want to know. Sometimes as hard as it is we just have to be happy that they gave us a life and use that life to prove those people whon were meant to love us the most, WRONG, that we will amount to something, that we will be important to someone other than just to satisfy their needs and that no matter what the dished out in our childhoods we will not be beaten.

For yrs I felt the same way.
This is what my therapist told me
It was nothing that I did or didn't do
or said.
Some times it is what they went through as a child some times not.
it is their issues not ours
we do tend to try to find reason sometimes we blame ourselves
it was not your fault .
Just like it was not mine.
I know I wanted a reason
I did X so that was why it happened.
unfortunately many times the reason was b/c you were there.
I wish you strength in your journey

she did it because she could...that's the simple answer at any rate...and also because she had issues of her own that she cld not deal with so she took it out on you...it was not your fault...you are not to blame in any way at all...it was nothing you did or said wrong, you were just there and convenient...or INconvenient as it was in my own case with my own mum who also abused me...she is sadly still alive but i haven't had anything to do with her for 9 years...and when i did ask her the reasons why all i got was a load of crap and excuses and also blamed for even bringing it up...so there is very little point in asking 'why' because in all likelihood if you had asked her when she was still here you wld have got the same response as i did, as did many others here did too...hope this helped...

love Manda xxx

I wonder why to, and although this may sound simplistic.. I pray to the angels... people usually role their eyes at this... but I believe in the angles, and if there are angels, then there are demons... and just like angels can help you out, demons can mess you up...

so because I because I ask why, but I will probably never get an answer, I pray to the angels instead to help me let it all go, and practice forgiving it and letting it go... because then the pain is less... and I believe that if you pray to the angels for long enough, you wont feel the pain anymore, I hope this helped... it helps me to focus and believe in something good- like angels,

My mother still won't admit to anything that she had done while I was growing up and most of it she doesn't remember because she wasn't around or was drinking so she doesn't remember. That must be why she says I make things up. She doesn't know that I was sexually abused at age 10 and I can bet if I brought up the rape at 20, she wouldn't remember that either. and as far as my 13 step fathers, who knows. don't want to know anyway. I believe that even if your mum was still alive and you asked her 'why', she would be in denial and you would get nowhere anyway. i know it sucks. But it is reality. I'm so sorry.