Hey y’all i just wanted to get something off my chest and it’s one thing (among many) that is gonna make my sobriety even more difficult: i’ve developed a pure hatred for my mother that has at best calmed down for sporadic periods before being sparked up again. When i was growing up, my mother constantly called me retarded and stupid for seemingly anything i said or did that was wrong and she very often yelled at me and cursed at me for even the slightest mishaps which unsurprisingly lead to me becoming a quite fearful person for many years. It took me a lot of years to realize that she was verbally abusing me all throughout my childhood (there’s disciplining your child and then there’s losing control and snapping on them). I have yet to ever tell her the real reason why i very rarely talk to her since moving out on my own but this has stirred up years of hatred and resentment in me part of which likely lead to my drinking problem in the first place. I have unfortunately kinda become like my mother with an alcohol addiction added on top of it and i don’t know if my current inability to forgive her (or anybody else that’s abused me throughout my life) will be a problem in my current effort to stay sober but this is all so daunting and having to now face all of this with no alcohol is making me deeply emotional
Hey @Arianna thanks for sharing. I was at my regular ladies aa meeting tonight and the topic was forgiveness. Not saying its easy but when you are able to letgo of the resentment and forgive your soul will lighten. I think youve done some amazing work identifying how these resentments trigger you. Now you will have to work thru it. It wont be easy but lean on your supports and just dont pick up. Life is better on the other side.
@Arianna so sorry you had to deal with that. Forgiveness is for you not for her. Stay connected when you feel triggered and perhaps therapy would be helpful.
Sorry your mother has repeatedly let you down, it sounds as if her treatment of you was a tool to self serve. I recommend that you give a listen to any podcasts or read any books on childhood trauma.
I’m currently really loving The origins of you by Vianna Pharaon, after I listened to her podcast appearance on Modern Wisdom the past week or so. Very very very poignant towards my own childhood and family trauma.
Sending you love and light. You got this.
I feel it isn’t as much about forgiveness per se, as it is about getting out of the dynamic of resentment and hate. And somehow moving on with your life. You seem to understand pretty well what happened and how it has influenced your life and your choices. That’s an excellent start to a better life.
This is about you. Therapy, if available for you, indeed seems like a good idea. I won’t forgive and forget. I can’t. Too much happened. I can understand though, and learn how I function because of what happened in my past, and work on making faulty coping mechanisms and ways to tackle stuff better.
Looking at my own parents, I can see they came from fucked up backgrounds that made them the fucked up parents they were. So they couldn’t do much about it and I don’t hate them but they still fucked me up. Forgiveness for me is irrelevant really. What I can do, what we can do, is work on ourselves and make sure that vicious cycle ends with us. That sure is a big part of recovery for me.
I can relate with your story a bit.
I still carry alot of resentment for my mum and it pops up out of no where.
My very first AA meeting someone’s share mentions that they had so much resentment for their mum, they where doing the steps and by the time it came to forgiveness she had passed away.
It isn’t easy.
With my mum now, I know as soon as I call if she is having one of her moments and I just come off the phone. Others times I try to just be patient and understand she had alot of trauma as a child.
With my mum it is alot that she just doesn’t know any other way or how to love. Compassion I have sometimes. Others I have none.
I’m glad I still have a chance to give her a chance and I can’t say I have been perfect either but I haven’t been nasty like she is. But yes I’m trying to be empathetic and compassionate to how she became that way. But I can’t forgive, not right now I’m just not there yet.
Big hugs 
Exactly Menno. I was listening to an Inner child session the other day that clarified a few thoughts:
In court, we don’t lesson or dismiss an act/crime due to previous trauma the offender had. Responsibility and behaviours must be acknowledged. Say it, name it, know it… Be clear what they did and hold it with no sugar coating. That’s where you START AS DEFAULT. with kindness and compassion you may be able to work backwards into forgiveness or compassion from that truth (as @Twizzlers mentioned). But it doesn’t change the fact that those words to describe how they treated you exist. No excuses, we make too many excuses. All it does is invalidate our own truth, rather than telling a truth.
I think this is a massive part of my own realisation. This shit stops here, mainly because I don’t have kids… But I do have friends and people I liaise with and love. They deserve emotional honesty and me showing up. Not putting them down because I feel like a piece of poop myself. Don’t be mistaken, it is our caregivers responsibility to nurture us healthily. That doesn’t cost anything to develop a child resilience and inner confidence.
I literally read this thread and within minutes I opened my daily readings to this and I felt like I needed to share it here:
Keep It Simple~June 7
Forgiveness is the way to true health and happiness.—Gerald Jampolsky
We can’t afford to hold grudges. We have all felt hurt by others at times. But when we stay angry at
another person, it hurts us. It keeps our wounds open. It takes our energy away from healing.
We can forgive now. We know that living our program of honesty and love make us safe. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to be angry. We don’t have to let old hurts stand in our way. We let them go. We empty the angers from the hearts to clear the way for love.
Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me forgive the people I’m still angry with. Help me see that each
of those people taught me something about myself.
Action for the Day: Am I holding on to anger and resentment? If so, I’ll make a list today, and I’ll talk
with my sponsor about ways to let go of them.
I think that letting go of resentment and forgiving the other person are two different things. I think forgiveness is about the other person, and letting go of resentment is about you. They say that resentments are like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Resentments just suck your energy and soul. And you should focus on using your energy for yourself and nourishing your own soul. You do not have to make yourself think that what you mother did was OK. It wasn’t. But you can try to stop it affecting you and your life now. Like Mno said, part of letting go of resentments is often understanding what was going on for them, and that doesn’t take away from the hurt they did.
I have issues with my own mother; a total lack of unconditional love, parentifying, lying about who my father was, gaslighting. But I can appreciate she was doing the best with what she had at the time. Her best was nowhere near good enough. Those two things can be true at the same time. I can not exactly let go of the resentment (yet?) but it doesn’t consume me.
Like you I came from a alcoholic filled home of abuse. I’m sure there must have been words of encouragement and love but that isn’t what I remember. We are not programmed to remember those things, it’s why ruling by fear is so much easier than ruling with love.
What I’ve come to realise is that my parents did the best they could at the time. I’m certain that they didn’t set out to intentionally hurt me, they didn’t wake up in the morning with the goal of fucking my world up. They were flawed humans stuck in selfish, active addiction. It doesn’t excuse those actions but I do realise it wasn’t intentional.
Your feelings of resentment are justified and normal. Those instances during your childhood have shaped you, but you can break free from that mould. I strongly encourage to to keep talking about these things and work through them to find your peace and freedom. Hugs to you.
It all sounds so incredibly difficult to even begin to be able to let go of
For me, resentment and hate have been normalized in some way shape or form throughout my life. Not even factoring my mother i grew up in the ghetto which means i had plenty of negativity around me for a very long time (which i unfortunately chose to partake in in an effort to seem cool). Now thankfully i’m not really around any of that any more but i know i must unlearn and let go of the stuff i learned, endured, and absorbed growing up if i wish to have any chance of staying sober cause i really don’t want to live like this anymore
I totally understand that…it’s SO hard to change when that was our normal! For me, working the 12 steps is what allowed me to completely change and reprogram my life. I really needed a new way to live and that program of recovery path worked wonders for me. Know it CAN be done, and you aren’t in it alone. 
In my own recovery circles, I run into a lot of spouses dealing with sexual betrayal. And forgiveness is often viewed as a 4-letter word.
But I want to encourage you. If you seek to forgive someone, you seek a good thing. Unforgiveness has no value; no benefit. And forgiveness can be very difficult for some more than others. Which is why for many resources on this topic I’ve read, I find them to be pathetically inadequate.
I really don’t understand the daily battle that these spouses endure to practice forgiveness when the feelings just don’t go away. But some of the best books I’ve read so far on the subject are
How to forgive … when you don’t feel like it, by June Hunt and
Forgiving what you can’t forget by Lysa Terkeurst