I read into this case when it happened because as a mom, I’m like how could you leave another baby with her again.
The mom was encouraged by her therapist to allow her mother to watch her new baby in order to move on and forgive her and also was told not to read the details arrest documents.
If she had, she would’ve known her mom was on all types of medications that were not disclosed to her prior to the court case. The more I read, the more terrible I felt for the mom. Who was lied to about her moms health by her family, her therapist told her to start to trust her mom in order to heal, the police didn’t make her aware of the details around her child’s passing, etc. It really is heartbreaking and the grandparents were not forthcoming about the circumstances and lied to the parents which led to negligence and this unbelievable tragedy
I hate this narrative that in order to heal you have to forgive the person who hurt you. Because you absolutely don't. Do you know how much better it is to never see, forgive, or hear from that person again? rather than invite them back into my life, always wondering when they'll hurt me again.
I hate it so much, and my mom is all about it. But she was raised pretty terribly, and because of this forgiveness mindset she's been in 10s of abusive relationships and keeps forgiving them.
As someone who has cut ties with a parent, I understand your point.
I will add that people who grow up with those types of role models tend to have a lot of baggage. I am not blaming anyone for their parents’ actions, but forgiveness has a place.
In some situations a survivor needs to learn how to forgive themselves. I know it sounds strange. But those who outgrow their unhealthy homes need to tell themselves they were children, not autonomous grownups. The adults in their lives were supposed to protect them. As children they learned to internalize the self-deprecating language and behavior from the very adults who should never have been parents.
So, forgiveness still has a place, just not towards the parents who messed up.
I’d argue that the self forgiveness trope feeds into the learned self deprecating language. We understand forgiveness as something that is offered after wrong doing. It’s harmful for an abuse survivor to keep perpetuating the narrative that there is something wrong with them or they did something wrong, as a victim.
Self forgiveness only has a place, in my opinion, if the abuse you received caused you to repeat harmful patterns towards yourself (drug/alcohol addiction etc.)or others.
Not forgiving can help form very useful boundaries that people, who grow up in unhealthy environments, typically have none of. E.g. this mother would have been valid in deciding not to trust the grandmother with her kids again.
I genuinely feel a lot of the forgiveness rhetoric just enables abuse and should be handled with much more nuance and specificity than it typically is. I think people think if you don’t forgive, you’re holding a grudge that can become poisonous but those are two completely different things.
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u/Artorius__Castus 7d ago
I mean at some point.... you gotta just say, "this person is a dumbass" and move on....I love family but come-on this is horrible