It's not your fault

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Recently, I had one of those realizations: My mother orphaned me, abandoned me. and dumped me at age 2 1/2; I lost all trust of her when she threatened me with a stick with a nail in it.

I continued to live with her until age 14 when I hit the streets at her invitation. Other siblings left earlier, they hated me for leaving and not care-taking her. This put the responsibility on them for her eventual care. So they dumped me as well.

The nail in the board incident came back to me in a dream clear as day, I woke in a state of extreme anxiety.

The next few days I felt/feel a sense of relief and freedom a sense of being spaced out, very emotional in that I’m experiencing my emotions quite sharply. Inner peace and calm at the same time.

Why? It’s not my fault. She was, like my family of siblings, a blame shifter. Intellectually I knew she was nuts but as she manipulated with fear, obligation, guilt, and boards with nails in them, from a very early age, it has taken a while to recover. I’m 71. 


 

 

Jerald is a Canadian visual artist, educator and essayist with a focus on personal history through the lens of REBT, rational emotive behavioural therapy, the work of Dr. Albert Ellis. After a debilitating stroke in 2017, he re-tuned his studio to write and explore creating/editing time based art. He has since published 12 books of personal essays and photo-based artwork, the most recent published title Intimate Writings A Living Autobiography “Warning, confidential matters will be discussed.”was released in the winter 2024. His website is jeraldblackstock.ca

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