It's good to hear from you, KOME0253. I'm sorry for all you've endured this year, but I'm very glad for your legal news. Too few perpetrators suffer real consequences for their actions, and I'm certainly relieved that he's not able to inflict pain on anyone else for 25 years.

Thanks for the thanks, Answering posts on this page is a volunteer position! Anyone here can read and reply, and should feel free to do so. This site works best when many members share and contribute. Each of our experiences and perspectives is unique...but we all get it, in a way no one can who has not been through this, so we call can help equally.

As for leaving therapy, so did I, after several months. I had nothing new to say, just healing to do. But because you got help, you were the example your daughter needed. And, as you say, you can always go back. I had to laugh when you mentioned having an appt on a "good" day -- that also happened to me, and I'd think, Do I really want to focus on something depressing today? But even those days were helpful for reminding me that I was making some progress. The dark days fool us into forgetting that we haven't gotten up every day after disclosure and still found some way to function. Because, somehow, we have!!

Thanks for the shout-out for me too. We can all use all the words of encouragement we can get after all the ugly stuff we've had to face.

Thanks for updating us on your life too. It really sounds like you are all doing about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. It is great to have the legal stuff behind you and that your husband is being held to account for what he did, as much as human systems can do. It is great that your daughter is still benefittitng from therapy and that you can have good days without therapy.

I can really relate to having a goal of more good days. I think that is really how healing progresses--not that each day is better than the last but that over time you get glimpses of a new height of healing or normalcy or feeling good, then over time those experiences happen more often. On a graph it would be a very jagged line but slowly trending upward.

I can also relate to having therapy fall on good days. So often the days I feel like I really need it, it's a long wait, then when the day comes I feel like I don't need it, or I don't want to ruin an otherwise good day by going "there." I'm spreading out my appointments but haven't yet gotten to the point where I wouldn't panic if I didn't know another one was out there somewhere.

I've found therapy to be up and down, too. It usually consumes my day after meeting with our daughters. I feel that there is nothing that I can really do to mend what has been broken (brothers SA). It's very hard to be blamed for something that you did not know about. Now our daughter says that she can't trust us. So being in a relationship with us is confusing for her.
We generally just sit in on criticism about us as their parents and the steps we need to take to build back a relationship with them (It's strange to have your children scold you). But we have never expressed our hurt of ignored texts, emails, birthday wishes etc. Our therapist does not really look at it from our view as the parents. In other wards, we are not able to defend/explain ourselves and it really hurts. If our daughter(s) choose to believe that "we did nothing" there's not much more we can say. For me, it's not healthy to continue to be held under those accusations. I'd rather move on. I would like a relationship with our daughters, but it's a downer when all we do is sit and take their accusations.
They laid into my husband this week, which really hurt because I know it's not true. He is very patient, kind, and nurturing, seeking their best interest and supporting them.....especially financially. When I've wanted to walk away, he says, no. We need to keep working on it.
I tried helping my mother, who was never happy, and a sister who is never happy and now I have a daughter who is behaving the same way and I'm growing weary. I'll be starting back to work as a teacher so I won't be able to be a the next counseling session or two. This is probably good, because I don't want to sit under another "guilt" session.

This doesn't sound like the healthiest therapeutic environment. Does the therapist never intervene to say, "How does your brother fit in to all this? Did he play no role? Who made his choices for him?"

Good luck with your school year!!

Yeah, that's a whole different ballgame than your own individual therapy. Is this supposed to be family therapy, or you coming to your daughter's therapy? If it is family therapy, you should be able to privately express to the therapist how you feel about it. (If it's your daughter's therapist, that might backfire as the therapist might tell her what you said.)

It sounds a lot like the turn things took with my son's therapist, who then was the only one left to be our "family therapist" once my daughter's therapist retired. Somehow everything ended up being my fault and now my son has estranged himself from me. I was just talking to my therapist today about how unfair it seems that after all the forgiveness and mercy that everyone gave him--my daughter, us as parents, even the frickin DA--he has no forgiveness or mercy for me. And I have anger at the therapist for allowing things to be left there.

But in my better moments I can stand back and realize that he has anger and shame that needs to go somewhere, and being mom I'm standing closest to the horse, so I get the shit. I have heard a lot of moms of victims end up in the same spot--for some reason their anger ends up on mom than on the one who actually harmed her. Hopefully the anger is a stage your daughter has to go through and when she gets past it things will get better.

Josh Coleman's work, including his latest book "Rules of Estrangement" has helped me understand a little more what's going on--and he is an ally for parents. https://www.drjoshuacoleman.com/reviews-rules-of-engagement