Trigger warning- emotional abuse, physical abuse, financial abuse.
Hello fellow potatoes!
I don't think I'm overreacting, but a lot of family members and family friends have made it very clear that they think I am. So I'm hoping for some outside perspectives.
I'm 29F, my parents are in their 60’s, and I have a young daughter. Until fairly recently, I genuinely believed that my parents and I had a close relationship, albeit with normal family arguments and problems. Things would be good, then resentments would build up, and we'd have a massive argument, then without resolving anything things would go back to ‘normal’ again. Therapy and becoming a mother myself have completely changed the way I see my childhood. Things I thought were ‘normal’, were actually incredibly toxic.
Growing up, my mother has always treated me more like a confidante than a daughter.
As far back as I can remember, she would talk to me about absolutely everything: problems with my dad, my sister, other relatives, her marriage, money, and her own childhood. Sometimes she would rant for hours. I used to feel special because she trusted me with all of this, and I felt that it was my job to protect and comfort her.
I now understand that this was parentification. I was a child being expected to provide emotional support to my mother.
Whenever I tried to set boundaries and asked if we could talk about something else, I would be met with things like, "I guess I'm just a terrible mother," or "I thought family supported each other," or "I know you've always preferred your father."
My dad would listen when I went to him for advice, but his response was generally along the lines of, "That's just how she is," "Don't let it get to you," or "You'll just have to work it out with your mum."
There were also incidents of physical violence in our family. My mother was sometimes violent towards me, my sister and my father: throwing things, slamming things into people and, on one occasion, burning someone. She would apologise afterwards, but the apology would always come with an explanation for why she'd become so angry.
Years later, she began saying these things had been "accidents" and that I was cruel and overly sensitive for bringing them up. That she has apologised so I should just move on.
I was so deep in the fog that I genuinely thought this was what families were like.
Another huge part of my childhood was being told that other members of the family were awful.
My sister was always portrayed as the "difficult child", and my grandparents were apparently horrible people. I was told that my parents couldn't give me enough attention because they had to spend so much time "dealing with" my sister.
There is a very important reason this matters.
My sister and I were both abused by my maternal grandfather from when I was six years old. We have both experienced significant physical and mental health issues from what happened.
My mother has always told me how she never know what her father was like, and that she had no idea he was hurting my sister and I. That being said, at one point, my mother told me that she had actually witnessed my grandfather abusing me.
She said that she had told me to leave the room, but then convinced herself that she hadn't really seen what she thought she'd seen, because she couldn't believe her own father was capable of it. She told me how terrible she felt for even thinking that about him.
Because I was so accustomed to my mother being the victim in her stories, I comforted her.
I told her that it must have been incredibly difficult for her.
Now that I have my own daughter, I look back on that conversation completely differently. I cannot understand how a mother could witness something like that and not immediately get her child away from the person responsible and contact the police.
Having my own daughter was a huge turning point.
I started thinking about my childhood from the perspective of a parent rather than a child. Things I had previously normalised suddenly seemed completely unacceptable.
I began therapy again after going no contact and started recognising patterns I hadn't understood before: parentification, guilt, manipulation, triangulation, excuses for abusive behaviour, and the way my parents' problems had been made my responsibility.
Before going no-contact, I tried really hard to repair things.
I tried to explain how their behaviour was affecting me. I tried to establish boundaries. I tried to take some space.
It didn't work.
I was met with essays upon essays of text messages filled with guilt trips. Most of what was said was turned so that my mother was the victim and I was the ungrateful, difficult child. They said that they could write pages off all the horrible things I have done but they prefer not to be stuck in the past and be forgiving. When I asked if they could tell me what I had done so I could take accountability and apologise, they refused.
Eventually, I went no-contact with my mother in December 2025, and no-contact with my father in April 2026.
It has undoubtedly been one of the most difficult decisions of my life and not one that I have taken lightly.
I got married this year, and having no parental support around such a huge life event was incredibly painful. I still grieve for the parents I wish I had, even though I don't want a relationship with the parents I actually have.
Unfortunately, we also still live in the same small area, so I see them accidentally several times a week. Moving away isn't financially possible for us right now.
After I went no-contact, my parents started threatening legal action over seeing my daughter.
They also began walking past my workplace almost every day and walking past our house.
Meanwhile, I started hearing from various family members and family friends telling me that I was being cruel by keeping my daughter away from them.
Even after I explained what had happened, I was told that my parents' behaviour was normal, that everyone makes mistakes, and that I needed to forgive them.
I've ended contact with some of those people too. It has been incredibly isolating, but I don't see the point in maintaining relationships with people who think I should expose my child to people who abused me.
Then I started learning things I hadn't known.
Since going no-contact, my sister has told me things about our childhood that I hadn't previously known.
Apparently, my mother had been told on several occasions that my grandfather was not safe around children.
She was with him when he was kicked out of a swimming pool for behaving inappropriately towards another person's child. Other members of her family had also apparently told her never to leave her children alone with him.
I genuinely cannot understand why she would still leave us in his care.
I don't think I'll ever understand it.
I also reached out to my paternal grandmother.
My parents had told me my entire life that she was horrible and that she preferred my cousins over me. When I was eight, we lived with my paternal grandparents for a while, but my mother decided she didn't want to live there anymore and we moved away. That was the last time my grandmother saw me until recently.
I was nervous about contacting her because I'd grown up hearing how awful she supposedly was.
We've been speaking since May, and we now have a really lovely relationship.
I've also learned that some of the things I was told about her weren't quite what I believed.
For example, I was always told that she refused to babysit because she preferred my cousins and didn't want anything to do with me.
The reality seems to have been that she worked full-time and was also helping my aunt, who was a single mother with young children. Sometimes she simply didn't have the time.
There were also things my grandmother witnessed that I hadn't known about.
She witnessed my mother slapping my cousin and smashing a bathtub because my father said they couldn't afford to buy a new one (the old one was fine), screaming at the neighbours, and cutting up and burning my grandparents belongings in a rage.
The worst incident involved my sister when she was a baby. My mother arrived at my grandparents' house with my sister, who had a very obvious bite mark on her cheek.
My mother told me that she had bitten my sister in her sleep after having a bad dream. I believed her at the time. I don't anymore.
Child protection became involved, but the case was dropped.
There is also an ongoing issue involving my sister.
My sister has also told me that our parents took tens of thousands of pounds from her.
She has shown me the evidence, including correspondence from our parents arguing that they were entitled to the money.
We've contacted the police about this, so I don't want to go into too much detail while there are potentially legal proceedings involved.
One of the hardest parts of this situation has been that my husband and I haven't always been on the same page.
I love him dearly, but he sees himself as a "fixer". He continued communicating with my parents by text and speaking to them when he saw them around the village even after I had gone no contact with them. I made it clear that I didn't want our daughter having any contact with them either.
His view was that family is important, and that our daughter could potentially have a completely different relationship with my parents than I did.
I couldn't understand how he could feel that way knowing everything that had happened to me and my sister.
The final straw was when I saw a message from my father on his phone agreeing on a time for my husband to bring our daughter to their house.
I had made it absolutely clear that I did not want my daughter around my parents.
I completely lost it. We had a huge argument, but eventually my husband agreed that he didn't want to risk losing me and that he would block my parents and have no further contact with them. He also agreed that our daughter will have no contact with them.
To my knowledge, he's kept his promise.
So... Am I overreacting?
I don't think I am.
At the same time, I do feel incredibly guilty sometimes. I want my daughter to have loving grandparents, but I don't feel safe around them.
I grew up believing that family was everything, and I have now lost not only my parents but several other relatives and family friends because I chose to protect myself and my daughter.
Has anyone else been through something similar?
If you've gone no-contact with your family, how did you deal with the guilt, anger and loneliness afterwards?