A letter to my abuser add yours

Thank you grandparents for physically abusing and sexually abusing and emotionally abusing my parents who took their physical and emotional abuse onto your future grandchildren.

- for calling me horrible names
- for destroying my self esteem
- for never feeling good enough

I'm sorry you went through this ordeal and hope you heal from this. The cycle of abuse needs to end.

Rest assured, I can understand the self-esteem part, because I deal with that, but I'll tell you this...you're good enough!

Dear Abuser,
If it weren't for the abuse that you inflicted upon me I wouldn't have changed into the beautiful person that I am today. I am stronger. I have adapted more. I have learned to view the world and people differently than I have before the abuse took place. I have a tougher skin now. I have learned to let things roll off my back instead of taking everything to heart. I learned not to be too trusting. I realized that sometimes I should let people earn my trust instead of just giving it to them so easily. like the lyrics to one of my favorite songs by Andra Day Amen" I'm feeling like the velvet in a beat up guitar case." "Amen to all the people who have hurt me I'm stronger cause of them Amen". If it weren't for the abuse that I suffered at your hand I wouldn't have evolved into who I am today so I wouldn't change it . Because who I am is greater than who I was . You know there is a saying that a broken bone heals stronger than when it was ever broken and I believe that is true. I believe that I am stronger now that I have healed than I ever was before I was broken!

Hey Buffy. Forgive my ignorance but is that sarcasm or are you reversing the negative narratives with this letter?

Ok, well I’ll write a letter..

To the kids around my age who saw weakness in me and felt compelled to attack it, for those who I was seeking validation from and yearned to be understood by, and those same peers who felt it necessary and, from my perspective, enjoyable to destroy my self image and feeling of worthiness…I hated you, fiercely and with a cruelty that even outmatched yours.
I held that seething, writhing mass of hate in my chest just for you, for all who were like you and I wished upon you the most horrible and tragic things.
Well, we were wrong, I was foolish and so were you.
You applied the method and I accrpted it as though I deserved it.
I had a guilty heart, long before your form of cruelty reached me and it made me the perfect recipient of your abuse.
What was your form of learned behaviour that drove you to bully people like me?
Have you changed, have you healed?
I have healed, not from your attentions but I have healed that which made me ok with being a victim.
No hard feelings, we were kids and we were fools.
I don’t miss you, haha, but I miss those days, man were they wonderful.

I have been listening to Louise Hay You Can Heal Your Life audiobook.

It’s just a letter where I am reversing the hurts I went through.

Dear sister,
Thank you for beating me up regularly, almost every day. Thanks to you, psychologically, I grew up feeling inadequate, weak and unworthy for losing fights to my little sister. My self esteem was so low that I was feeling terrified all the time and was always scared of getting beaten up. Physically, you broke my tooth a couple of times and my finger once. You kicked me in my privates so many times that I lost count and your kicks sent me to hospital twice. Even when you didn’t kick me there, you made sure to give me fake kicks to scare me, and then went for my face. You were so proud of yourself that you bragged about it to your friends. Also, thank you for doing it in public in front of the neighbourhood kids so everyone would see you in action and i would feel so humiliated all the time. The kids (and some adults) loved the neighbourhood freak show. Do you still smile when you think about them? They also didn’t dare to mess with you. Do you remember how they treated me thanks to you? Thanks to you. I developed many issues including PTSD, anxiety, self-esteem, and some other problems. I am however working through them and I am not defeated.

Dear family,

Sad that the cycle didn’t stop with you. Too busy playing the blame game, and not acknowledging the harm you committed.

It’s too late, and you’re too far over the line for me to consider reconciliation. It’s wild how much you fear abandonment. You wanted to punish me for having boundaries. You want to shift the wrongdoing of what you did onto me. But you can’t acknowledge how that would push me away.