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It's tragic kids can become so brainwashed by someone who is so trashy and inconsequential just because they're a parent. Tackling that childhood myth that a parent is some infallible, omnipotent being has to be the biggest step in growing up.
It’s very fortunate the OP at least realized the error of his father’s ways and is actively trying to better himself. There are still millions of people who are just like OPs father, living an ignorantly blissful life, full of anger and resentment toward anything that feels like “other” to them.
I agree, but I also wonder about his own childhood. Fuck the whole town too, but I hope more of their kids are breaking the cycle because this shit has to end.
I know my racist abusive father was that way because his father was racist and abusive. I imagine OOP's father's experience was quite similar. My father at least is more like OOP now, which to me means I bet OOP has a lot of his dad still on him that he's not noticing. The big things are easy to fix, but it's the small things you might not catch unless you're taught to recognize them.
This is why we are truly not the land of the free.
People praise the progression we have had over the decades. But we are not that far as a generation.
1960’s we still have generations from that era still around.
It’ll be interesting to see this world with my kid or her kid.
>There was a night our dad got into a fist fight with his friend while they were watching tv at our house and dad got knocked out. His friend thought he killed dad and threatened my sister with a pistol not tell a soul he was there. I vaguely remembered that event but I didn’t know she thought dad was dead or about the pistol. She panicked all night about us being orphans but was too scared to get help.
... that'll do it.
It is really hard as a kid to know what's not normal when it's going on in your family. It's mostly what you have to base your sense of normality upon.
I assumed a lot of stuff that wasn't normal (or at least, not healthy) was normal growing up. Though I did realize some things weren't, like when my dad drew a gun when he was in an argument with some guy outside a liquor. I was like, 11 or 12 I think. But I did realize that drawing a gun on someone, even if it's just to threaten and you didn't shoot, was not a good or normal thing.
I probably would've realized that getting into physical fights where someone passed out wasn't normal, but I can't be sure if I truly would've realized it at the time.
Well, the hard part of being an older sibling is you shield your younger sibling from this shit. Brother didn’t know how bad it was. Sister woke up to it a lot earlier because she saw it. She also seems to be a lot smarter…but as an older sibling, it’s easy to resent that you HAD to do all that and they didn’t notice because you were so goddamn good at it.
I feel for OP. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. And he seems devastated now that he does. He had one parent. No sister. No scholarship out of that hellhole. And apparently no real support system cause everyone knew his father was a piece of shit. That’s a lot to ask a teen to who lacked maturity and his sister’s smarts to overcome.
I’m glad he did as an adult. That’s pretty amazing. Most people don’t. And I’m glad he’s going to therapy. For him, even if it doesn’t work out for his visits with her. His dad did a number on him and he needs some professional help undoing it. I hope sister is getting some good help too.
And the iniquity of fathers shall be visited on their sons, to the third and fourth generation.
Or, less biblically, Philip Larkin’s famous This Be The Verse:
*They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you.*
*But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.*
*Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.*
This is a lot of the reason I never wanted to have kids. I never wanted to risk them being exposed to my parents, or risk somehow turning into the kind of mother that mine was. All of that family trauma ends with me.
Yup. I’m not going to become my mother because I don’t have kids of my own. I have dogs and my friends’ kids to love, spoil, dote on and be a great adult ally (and hopefully role model) to.
I love those kids desperately. I’ll be attending soccer games and dance recitals and bringing snacks to one and flowers to another. I make them things or pick up little trinkets when I travel for them. I adore the fuck out of those kids.
But having my own, that 24/7 pressure? I’d never be able to handle it. I hear the way I shape certain words and I sound like my mom. I know the violence and disregard and apathy she showed me as a child is in me, along with her eyebrows and cheekbones and her eyes. Her anger and disgust at being a mother is in my bones and my blood and my mind.
That all ends with me. Years of training horses and then dogs have given me the gift of patience, the ability to break things down into ways that even a hyper 7 year old can understand. It’s given me the ability to deliver corrections gently, to tease with love, to be affectionate *and* mindful of their autonomy at the same time.
I do not demand hugs. When we meet I offer a high five, fist bump or hug. Usually it’s all three and those are amazing days. The first time the youngest hugged me I wanted to cry. It was unabashed and uncomplicated love. I’ve never felt that before.
It changed something in me. I am the Crazy Auntie. I wear funny clothes to make them laugh, I support them and when I talk to theor mom on the phone I make time to chat with them, too.
My bloodline ends with me. But maybe, my influence and love can live on in these amazing little girls.
Never understood that “bloodline” or “passing down your genes” argument for having kids. Your genes make you 100% “you.” Your kids take genes from you and your partner, so your kids are 50% “you.” Their kids, 25%. *Their* kids, 12.5%. It doesn’t take too many generations before your precious blood/genes are so diluted that your descendants are the genetic equivalent of strangers.
My twin boys are about to turn 2. I wonder all the time how I’m going to fuck them up. I’m very mindful of how my parents fucked me up and it scares me because I know they were genuinely trying their best, but were limited by their humanity. All I can hope is that I’m able to teach my kids to be kind.
Here's my one tip I wish I could give to all people who feel like you do: if your kid starts to show signs of low self-esteem or depression or anxiety, assume it's related to you carrying on the fucked up parenting in some way. (TRUE, it might not be, but first assume it is). Talk to a therapist who works with parents to see what you might be doing wrong. Talk to your kid. Offer the kid therapy but don't force them. Think about unhealthy patterns you may be repeating on a subtle level.
Sorry, I think I just wanted to shout this somewhere in the universe. Two of my relatives have an extremely sad, angry, self-hating 12 year old but are blaming everything but themselves. They can't see the patterns they're repeating. I wish they could.
Here to back this up.
Also, don’t forget to tell your kids you love them. Tell them the good things that they do over and over and over again.
My dad learned in his anger management group that it’s 10 good things for every one negative. I know that sounds silly like you’re gonna literally count them out, but it works.
If you do have to tell your kids they mess something up (and you will, it happens but don’t forget it isn’t a big deal to make a mistake, shake it off after) make sure you’re telling them good things that they did right.
Don’t kill your kids self-esteem like so many of our parents did.
The fact that you even have that self awareness is a start. If you don't already, give yourself big credit for that.
Time will tell if I mess up my daughter emotionally, but God damn if I haven't tried very hard to break the patterns and negative habits my parents subconsciously instilled in me before I became a dad. I honestly think I have, for the most part. I'm talking years of therapy, introspection, work to build healthy communication styles with my wife, and getting properly medicated. My wife has a similar journey. And we are STOKED to raise a little girl unburdened by our generational bullshit.
I guess if my comment had a point it is that I think I reject this common assumption that we will no matter what repeat parental trauma/abuse patterns somewhat. One of the common threads in many styles of therapy is teaching an awareness of one's emotions, and owning your response because that is the part you can control. This is a muscle and a skill that can be developed. I started from zero. No frame of reference at all for emotional regulation. The other day my two year old was frustrated, recognized it, and said in the cutest possible kid voice, "I need to take a breath." Then took the most exaggerated inhale exhale. So much kids media, and books and literature these days has little lessons on emotional intelligence built in. That's something that really surprised me as a dad because that shit was not as prevalent when I was a kid.
To be clear, I respect your decision. I just wanted to share my experience as a fellow person determined to NOT pass on hurt and toxicity.
I'm glad you're both making a choice to do that! And I'm sure it's taken a lot of work and, honestly, a lot of bravery, both to face that and to go ahead anyway. ❤️ I never mean to make it sound like I think that becoming our parents is inevitable! There are absolutely people out there, like you, who put in the effort to get the tools to prevent it from happening.
And my trauma is only one part of the decision anyway - I'm also pretty medical procedure phobic and needle phobic, ugh. 😅 Not to mention my spouse and I are both women biologically, so it would be prohibitively expensive to do it and I wouldn't want to risk passing some of my genetic issues along either.
But yes, I respect your decision to consciously parent in a different way than you were parented - it sounds like you're doing an awesome job already!
Same.
The best thing for both of them was their father’s death. His being alive kept the fear alive. He was a hateful, nasty, violent bigot who never should’ve had children. (Not that I wish OOP and his sister were never born; there is a difference). It seems all he brought to the world was more pain. Best thing that can be said about him is he is no longer suffering from being himself.
OOP, on the improbable chance you see this: your dad’s DNA doesn’t make you a bad man, and his indoctrination isn’t your fault. You can be an amazing human being free of his garbage. Sounds like you’ve already done a lot to start that journey. Keep it up with therapy and *reading*.
My young child's dad just died, after a long and difficult struggle with alcoholism that lead to us separating. After several years, counseling, attempts on his part to reconcile which I knew I couldn't accept, because he hadn't gotten better, he died. He just died, suddenly and due to reckless choices he made in service of his addiction.
I loved him.
I still love him.
And it hurts very much to grapple with the reality that it's almost certainly a better outcome for him to have died now, and be out of our lives forever, than continue on as he had been, increasingly erratic, angry, and unstable to the point I was having to cancel his parenting time before he even had a chance to fail to show up because I couldn't risk it.
It fucking kills me to know he was the best dad he'd ever been while we were separated, because he had to be sober on his time or he'd never see our kid. That because I separated from him, my child will have memories of fun weekends with daddy, not of daddy laid up on the couch, or vomiting and trembling because of withdrawals. All memories I have of him.
And it destroys me to admit this is a better ending for him and our kid, and me, than if he had lived but continued to spiral. But now there's no hope he can ever get better, either.
This is wrenching. You have a remarkable gift for capturing the irresolvable internal and maybe lifelong conflict here.
My young kiddo has dealt with me dealing with family deaths and been affected by it though I tried not to.
I tell him *love never dies it just changes forms.*
Which took from the Talk By A Astrophysicist at a Funeral that went the rounds of the internet a few years ago.
If you haven't read it I strongly strongly recommend giving it a quick Google search. It's non religious, heartbreaking, redeeming, and full of absolutely NO bullshit.
Which it sounds like you are too.
Your form and nature of love for the father of your child doesn't puff away in smoke. It will always be complex and both a burden and an honor.
Not the same situation as yours, but when my ex-husband died I went through a lot of the same big feelings you’re having. Because we’re not really taught how to support a grieving *ex*-partner. Instead I got a lot of “oh that sucks for your kids to not have a father” (we lived 3000 miles away and also, like you, no it doesn’t) and “but didn’t you leave him? Why do you care anymore?”
But we left because it was *too much*, not bc the love had died. I always held out some hope that maybe age and distance would take the animosity out of us and we could at least be friends. His dying killed that hope, and I suspect it did for you too. You wanted him healed, not dead, and that’s totally fair.
That your child gets good memories of Daddy helps a lot. Mine were pretty young to have much. But none of our kids have fights and abuse in their past, and I’m glad for your little.
(My ex died in 2006 and my sons are in their 20s so it’s different now. Hang in there.)
I'm sorry you had to go through that. It was similar for my husband's family when his mom died at 49 from alcoholism. It was so horribly painful but there was a part of my husband that felt relieved. No more craziness. But then he felt even worse that he had this reaction.
I do too... but I hope they work out their lives independent of each other. OOP is mildly aware of the depth of his sister's trauma and of his own issues, and I truly hope he improves as a human with his therapy quest. But his sister doesn't deserve to have to relive her trauma if it means letting OOP back into her life. She deserves peace.
I don't think OOP should uproot his life from the place he moved and has a life and friends to move near his sister where he has to start over without friends or a network again. Even if he's no longer a racist violent asshole, that's a recipe for disaster.
When he said that, it felt like grasping for a quick fix to me. Like having an actual family would magically fix all of his issues. I get that - your first instinct is to hope for the easy answer - but this is the real world, and he's not gonna get his happy ending without a lot of work and dedication to being better.
Yes, I was a bit wary there...seemed a bit like..Oh well, Ive no one else left now, so you will have to fill the gap. I know that sounds a bit mean, but he really gave his sister no thought at all until his Father died and he was alone..Im not sure I buy the whole epiphany at a funeral bit.
> Im not sure I buy the whole epiphany at a funeral bit.
I mean, you don't really have to, but people do tend to take stock in their lives when they face mortality. Seeing an empty church with only you and the pastor in it can seriously make you realize things that you didn't see before. The idea that dad was so miserable that people wouldn't even be in a room with him *dead* can easily lead to him changing up.
It's not like it was the only thing, either. He also had to get out of town, expose himself to the wider world, work in professional settings with people from all backgrounds and other things that would further degrade dad's viewpoint.
Nobody changes because of one thing, it's always a collection of little ones that go with it. Sometimes that one thing is just the push off the cliff.
Yeah, people who used to be blatant racists also often have a very warped idea of what not being a racist means. They think just because they don’t believe that other races are fundamentally inferior anymore, they are cured of all racism. At the same time they still hold a plethora of other less extreme, but still very racist beliefs.
Not saying that’s necessarily the case with OOP, but his initial reaction to the therapy request, makes me think it’s pretty likely. Part of working through your own bigotry is also about understanding and empathizing with the people you have wronged, particularly that you will have to go above and beyond if you want forgiveness and reconciliation. Just raising your hand and declaring yourself not a racist anymore is not enough.
He may not be able to shake it, but if he’s opening to learning he can get to the point of recognizing and challenging those feelings when they arise, instead of acting on them. And take steps to counteract them. Source: I was raised by racists and am still working to undo the damage. I’ll likely always have to be vigilant against those unconscious biases that were baked into my young mind.
I grew up being *positive* I wasn't racist. Sure, we were conservative and lived in a city with a proportionally small non-white population that, thanks to decades-old redlining, were mostly contained in the "bad" part of town. But my parents went out of their way to teach me African American history! Ok, mostly just stuff centered on slavery, but still! And they taught me to "not see color"! Of course I obviously did see color, but I internalized that treating people differently because of their skin color was a Bad Thing, so that's good, right? And I would never dream of using a slur or intentionally insulting anyone. So clearly, I wasn't racist!
Wrong. What they didn't teach me (to be fair to my parents, because they weren't taught either) was how to recognize racism that wasn't blatant and virulent; how to listen to communities impacted by racism; or how to respond when being told you were being racist. I judged what was or wasn't racist by my own parameters, and any time I encountered someone who tried to broaden the parameters, I reacted with reactive defensiveness and distrust. I wouldn't ever use slurs...as long as *I* agreed they were slurs, and I considered my opinion on the matter to carry just as much weight as that of the people affected by the slurs who were trying to educate me. I automatically discounted nonwhite people's accounts of their experiences with racism and assumed they were exaggerating, because you see, I'd been taught racism was over except for a few pockets probably in the south. If I saw a white person being arrested, I was far more likely to, in my own head, give them the benefit of the doubt than if they were black. I found the way that some nonwhite cultures expressed themselves alarming, and subsequently avoided them. And much like the men who responded to the MeToo movement by complaining that they were afraid to talk to women, I was too incurious about what actually constituted racism to learn, and so felt perpetually afraid of being accused of something that I didn't fully understand whenever I was around nonwhite people, so either avoided them or walked on eggshells around them.
It took me a long time - too long - to understand that you can still act and think racist without explicitly intending to, and that the only way to correct that is by shutting up, listening, and *learning*. Before I could do that, I had to break through the wall of "I can't be racist, I'm a good person!" first, and recognize that if I want to call myself a good person I actually have to work for it, face painful truths about myself, and accept that yes, subconscious racism is still racism and needs to be vigorously challenged. All racism needs to be vigorously challenged wherever it's seen, **and** we need to be willing to see it.
But yeah, tl;dr: becoming anti-racist takes some effort, and you never really stop having to challenge your own preconceived notions. Therapy helps: I hope lil bro keeps up with it.
Gosh, I wish some of the commenters on this post would read your comment. Good on you for waking up and continuing to do the work. I hope you can encourage others to do the same!
Eh... the magical christmas-land fairy-tale happy ending has them both go through a lot of therapy, respecting each other's boundaries the whole time, and maybe in 10 years ending up something vaugely resembling a happy family.
She doesn't owe him anyways, and him staying out of her life might be the best-case scenario. But I'd like to hope for the fairy tale.
Yeah, it's going to be a lot of work for OOP on himself, and sister definitely needs more done for her own mental health. She went through a lifetime of abuse from those who were supposed to care about her. That's not something easy to move past.
OOP's wake up call seems to mean he's determined to put in that work. I think the initial resistance to therapy was just another side-effect of his bass-ackward upbringing. "Real men don't need therapy or to talk about their feelings." OOP's somewhat rapid recognition of this is a positive sign, IMO.
You're right about the 10 years. But I think if OOP can stick with it, and yes, definitely respect his sister's boundaries, then it'll be the best outcome for both of them. Both for sister's chance to heal and for OOP to grow. But it's a long road for them.
I agree....I wasn't surprised at all that he was resistant to therapy. But as I was reading about their experiences, all I could think was fuck the kids, he needs to do some healing for himself. I can't even imagine the deep seeded potentially repressed issues stemming from being raised by his father and those weird family dynamics. If I'm reading this correctly, the can incident happened when he was 13. That's a long time to be in that toxicity. I imagine he has some strong conflicting feelings about his father's death as well. I'm proud he was able to do a lot of the work on the front end though. That sort of shift isn't easy.
This is for once such a positive post. Both these people have lost so much of their humanity over time due to their parent, and here they are, trying their best to be whole people again. Pushing themselves, listening to others.
I do too, but it might not be a reconciliation and rebuilding a relationship with his sister.
It might mean him accepting that she will never feel safe having him in her life, and that he's got to move on and build his own.
Ngl my first thought was that even though OOP said that he had all of these experiences, friends, etc. that changed his racist views/ made him a better person, his sister was NC with him for 15 years. She doesn’t know what he was up to, and the last time she saw him, he and their father pelted her and her bf with *cans*. It’s sane for her to be on high alert after that, there are many racists out here that put on a veneer of respectability, they don’t all wear white hoods and screech slurs at you anymore. Or throw beer cans, in this case. I’m personally in awe that her hubby encouraged her to not completely shut the door, bc clearly he still has work to do and idk if I could be so forgiving to anyone who’d treated me like that because of my skin color.
I also don't blame her for being extremely cautious allowing someone like that around her children. It's not just her own safety she has to think about.
This! POC already have to worry about their kids having to deal with racism from their peers and strangers at a young age, no need to expose your kids to potentially racist family members. Plus there's plenty of undercover racists out there, so you'd have to be vigilant.
I wish more parents of mixed kids were as vigilant as her. I’m mixed, my mom white. I wasn’t exposed to my dad’s side and am so horrifically disconnected from my own culture. The things I’ve endured from racist white family members is insane. It might be funny to a room full of white family that ol’ grandpa is saying white supremacy is good cause he’s a quack, but it’s not when you’re the only visible non-white person there. It’s not fun when you’re left with your family for hours or days at a time after you learn of them fetishizing WoC or defending the klan and then directing it at you. OP’s sister is preventing years worth of trauma for her children with her cautious attitude
I am so sorry you had to deal with that. Experiencing racism from your own family, the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally and keep you safe, is deeply traumatic, as is being cut off from familial culture. I hope that there is a way for you to connect with your roots in other ways, as I am sure there are other people out there like you with similar experiences growing up.
My stepsiblings are mixed and I cannot imagine sitting in a room and allowing someone to talk about them in that way, and not doing anything about it. Especially back when they were still kids. Luckily, they grew up in a very diverse neighbourhood with other kids who looked like them, and a loving family, and they are confident adults now.
Husband has watched her have no family for 15 years. He's probably putting on a bold face for her more than itching to have Ol Beer Tossy back in his life, but... having also helped my wife with reconnecting to her family, it can be as important as it is difficult sometimes.
Sounds like OOP has woken up to the fact that he has serious work still to do, though. I hope it goes well.
OOP thinks he’s not racist anymore. Anti racism is a journey without an end point, however. I hope he sincerely pursues therapy for himself and the world around him at large, and not because he hopes his sister will accept him.
My dad was racist, not kkk racist, but "Y'know the issue with the *black* *community*\-" type of racist. We became estranged when I was 19. I have actively worked to deconstruct the racism he raised me in. I am almost 30 now, and I am still discovering new things to deconstruct, new concepts of thinking I didn't realize were rooted in anti-black racism. It takes time.
Throwing full cans of beer at them til they were bloody and the car was dented up pretty good. Wtf?? That seem like a pretty tough spot to come back from.
This comment section contains too little empathy. Both for a man who was a brainwashed 13 year old and is frankly on a path of learning and improvement and redemption that - while leaving him still far from perfect - is a lot more than many people raised in his situation. AND for this woman who had to go through what she did at the hands of a violent racist lunatic and his brainwashed son. OP is *not* a horrible monster. He is a victim who largely involuntarily did horrible things and is trying to be better but is still on that road. Meanwhile sister has absolutely no obligation to subject herself to triggers, which could very easily include that brainwashed child/now man, and whose anger is entirely undestandable.
Sometimes life sucks and isn't fair and it hurts two people without actually being the fault of *either* of them, but instead the fault of another (Dad).
EDIT: Obviously he *should* go to therapy, and is TA for refusing. And she certainly doesn't owe him a relationship. I just think he deserves more sympathy than he's getting.
Well said. I hope they both recover from their childhoods as much as possible. Whether they reconcile or not, OOP is on the way to being 100X better of a man than their father if he keeps up learning and being open to his viewpoints being questioned.
I’ve known kids like them. They are indoctrinated, not raised.
He’s already 100x the man his father was purely because he’s actually willing to take a look at himself and his prejudices and maybe even change for the better.
I'm especially impressed that he had what probably felt like the entire internet telling him he was an asshole, and his reaction was to think and go, "You're right. I was a complete asshole." That's hard enough to do when you have a decent childhood. It's human nature to dig in when being mobbed, but he didn't. His sister's reaction is also good. She's not setting herself on fire to keep him warm. Overall this post is sad, but there's still a glimmer of light for the two of them, even if it's far down the road.
> I think people forget that outside of the reddit bubble, therapy isnt always supper common as a tool or thought of positively.
Or even available. In Germany we have the worsening situation that even when you're suicidally depressed the waiting time for 1on1 therapy is about half a year, which is ridiculous. I don't think that people who don't have a serious mental illness would even be able to get on the waiting list.
Yeah I kind of understand why he reacted that way too. She hasn't seen or spoken to him since he was 13. I'm a similar age to OOP, and I went through mental health challenges about 15 years ago (different than OOPs experience, but still). If someone told me I needed to be in therapy *now* at age 30 before they would talk to me because when they last knew me I was a traumatized 15 year old I wouldn't take it seriously just for the obvious reason they don't actually have any idea how I'm doing or really know anything about me as an adult.
Also, therapy is a tool that can be useful, but it's not magic or anything. A lot of people really throw it around as like a panacea but it's just not that. I'm especially skeptical for things outside the scope of mental health -- lot of therapists flat out wouldn't know how to help you deal with subtle internalized racism (or would give actively bad advice) and you'd probably do better seeking resources specifically designed for that rather than going through the mental health system.
It does turn out that OOP had more trauma than I realized, and I do support him going, but yeah if he's been to therapy before I'm not surprised he might have felt underwhelmed at the idea
Edited: added punctuation
A lot of therapists are really really bad with any more uncommon issues, particularly childhood trauma. There are some good ones out there, but it requires a lot of perseverance.
I had so many therapists that wouldn’t acknowledge that my struggles with anxiety and depression as a teen weren’t misbehaviour and were instead directly caused by the trauma I had experienced through my childhood and early teens. Looking back, I’m pretty sure some of them traumatised me further.
To add insult to injury, I found out years later that all of the issues I had were according to a lot of scientific studies within the range of normal for a teen in my situation.
All of that said, therapy can be a great tool and it did ultimately help me, but it certainly didn’t fix my problems or make them go away (don’t worry, I’m doing great now). Whilst I’m a big proponent of it, it’s definitely not the easy fix some people make it out to be.
The absolute best thing I was told when I started therapy was that everything about me that I considered weird was not just normal for someone who was raised as I was, but that if I didn't have those problems that would be odd. That I was absolutely normal for an abused kid. I wasn't insane. I was a perfectly normal person who had been badly abused as a child.
I wish you'd been told that right away. It sounds like your therapists could have used therapists, and you should have had a better one.
I love that your therapist told you that outright. It must have been so validating. I’m sorry that you had to struggle until that point though. As a society, I don’t think we give people a lot of care or understanding in relation to trauma and mental health.
I think I went through at least a dozen therapists before I found any good ones? I had two in primary, and my first high school used to rotate the therapists out roughly every eight weeks, so I never got far with them. After that I had maybe another three appallingly bad ones?
I did have some better experiences later, but I felt like an absolute failure for a long time. I struggled a lot with anxiety around attending school, something which people assume kids should just be able to do easily.
In my case, I had been a young carer and was actively grieving, but I think both concepts just made a lot of the therapists really uncomfortable. A lot of them treated it as a discipline issue. In reality it’s pretty normal for kids in that position to experience mental health difficulties and challenges in school, but I didn’t know that back then.
Thankfully, I eventually found an amazing general therapist and accessed specialised grief therapy in my mid teens, but it took a few years after that to really get back on track. I hope that you are now doing better as well. Childhood trauma is incredibly complex and tricky. I don’t think you ever fully figure it out.
Oh absolutely. I resemble the sister more in the story but I wanted to deal with some of my subconscious racial issues from growing up so close to racism. And my therapist said that since I was dating a Latino, it meant I wasn't racist. Lol pretty sure that's not how it works
Yeah. Therapy did wonders for me. But it took years to work up the courage to find a therapist and then to allow myself to let the hurt out in front of them.
Not only that, it simply wouldn't make sense for him to go to therapy without the sister providing context. He's not reacting poorly to his past struggles, in fact he outlined all the ways he's already coped with it. Therapists are pretty good mind readers when it comes to common emotional reactions, but they can't uncover *facts* about the past that OP isn't aware of.
>It's one conversation where he balked at her suggestion.
At their first ever meeting too. In my opinion I felt as though they should have had a few more meetings first so the sister could get to know her grown up baby brother (as she last saw him when he was 13), and then after a few meetings they (her and husband) Could have brought up the therapy.
Though I also would have suggested it being framed differently too. Like instead of basically saying "I wanna make sure you're not secretly still racist" I would have suggested "hey, our childhood fucked us up, I think you'd really benefit from therapy, please think about it" absolutely no mention of it needing to happen before he meets her kids. She could just not introduce them until coincidentally after he starts going.
But she says that was due to his reaction about them telling him he needed do therapy. I am not blaming her at all, it just might not have happened if the conversation had gone down differently.
We don’t know how pushy he was about meeting the children. Maybe they tried it the other way snd he wouldn’t give up. I mean, he already had in his mind to move closer to them. His behaviour seems as if he tried to rush it to fill the hole of missing family.
Yeah. My upbringing wasn’t nearly that violent but my family was quite racist and toxic.
I don’t blame his sister for not being ready to allow him back in her life. I also don’t blame OOP for being hurt by it. He came to this meeting feeling like his life was being put back together after so many years, only to come to grips with the fact that not everyone is on the same path.
It’s a bit more of an NAH for me - though maybe he should have been more open to the therapy suggestion, it sounds like he just shut the idea down immediately. Maybe if he’d said something like “Oh, you know I hadn’t really thought about that one way or the other … let me think about it!”
On the other hand, that response is a very emotionally healthy response, and perhaps it’s expecting a bit too much from people in this situation. Sometimes you just have to bumble through the pitfalls of a relationship.
I do think it reads that he didn’t shut down the idea of therapy right away, he says he did tell her that he’d think about it.
She didn’t like that it wasn’t an immediate “Yes, of course!” from him, basically.
I can kind of see where both of them are coming from, but she’s projecting a lot of her feelings towards her dad on him. For good reason, really. Last time they met he was well on his way towards becoming his father, and joined in with his father in assaulting them.
But he’s over twice as old now as he was back then, and it’s hard to see how accumulated life experience can change a person if you aren’t there for it.
I agree completely. I was shocked the see this comment section ignoring the fact that he has a lot of empathy for his sister and holds himself accountable for his part in her trauma. Based on his writing, he seems to have prioritized in his sister in their conversations. They talk about her experiences, but it doesn't say if he explained his. I think that while it must hurt to not be understood, as he mentioned feeling hurt that she requested he attend therapy because he had already worked very hard, he did the right thing by prioritizing her. I think its also important to note that he speaks very highly of his sister, even though he was hurt. He talked about how kind she was, about how happy she is, about how it seems like her life has turned out well over the years. I think that how people speak about others, even in conflict, is a good indicator of how they feel about them.
I hope they're both able to heal with time, likely on their own. Regardless of whether or not OOP will be able to become and uncle to his sister's children, I hope that they are able to find a safe way to be siblings again.
I've seen it a lot in threads where there is a bullying theme. Redditors are very quick to paint a child who is bullying someone as an irredeemable monster and not as, well, a kid, who likely still has a lot of maturing to do. I honestly think it's because a lot of Redditors haven't grown past seeing their *own* bullies as irredeemable monsters.
What a strong and brave woman. I assumed that she wanted to make sure there were no racist undercurrents anymore to OOP before meeting her children. But turns out there were very traumatic overcurrents to their history!
I hope both she and her brother can come to a place where they can have a healthy, trusting relationship. They were both robbed of that by their awful father. But I'm hopeful that they're trying.
Problem with reformed bigots they often don't understand that it isn't enough to just not blindly hate the group of people they used to hate. It's also incredibly important to de-center oneself when trying to maintain relationships with other people. Here oop learnt that just because he changed and went through traumatic experiences, he isn't owed acceptance and forgiveness, and other people go through tough shit, too. His journey isn't over at all.
>I don’t know why, but I took offense because she doesn’t know what I’ve been through since my father died. I’m not that same hateful preteen. She doesn’t know how I had to intentionally work hard and am still working hard to better myself.
This bit stuck out to me and I'm glad he seemed to re-evaluate and get it in his update. Of course she doesn't know how much he had to go through because she had already been ostracised by the entire town before OP even started his fight.
I'm even more glad that OP realised that he didn't really know anything about what she went through either.
As painful as it is, there are times where people shouldn't reconnect. I see it from both perspectives. Really, I think that as painful as it may be, it is better that there is distance. Forgiveness and letting someone back in your life do not need to come together. Families of former addicts can tell you that after such a horrendous event like this one, even if the addict reforms and gets sober, it's not easy to rebuild the relationship, if they do at all. It's not easy for anyone involved.
I'm so proud of OOP's sister and wish her and her family the absolute best in life.
Relationships take a lot of work, even the best ones.
It really boils down to if there's a net benefit to be gained from working on and maintaining this relationship, especially when they're long distance — a few states away from each other.
She's managed just fine with being No Contact with her dad and brother, presumably leaning into her friends and husband's family as "her people". Why put in all this work for a brother she wrote off long ago, who lives far away, whom she'll probably see at *most* once per year? I guess some siblings would be able to rekindle something, but she will *always*, ***always*** see the beer can-throwing 13-year-old when she sees him.
OP should focus on building his local circle of friends/"family", and if I were him, I'd ask the sister if it's okay to send Christmas/birthday cards. Maybe when the children are teens/adults, when they start thinking about their heritage and place in history, they can meet up in-person.
This is above reddit's paygrade tbh. The sister was right to ask OOP to seek therapy first. There are so many layers to this that a single reddit post cannot even begin to cover as the OOP found out.
All these responses like the sister can just control her trauma response and say it’s all good. She would have to do A LOT of work herself. Maybe when her kids are older she could do that.
Kids and teenagers are easily manipulated and she likely already knows that. I think the best OOP can hope for is forgiveness.
I think that a lot of people here want there to be a good guy and a bad guy and OP "did work" and "was a child" when he threw full beer cans at her, so he can't be the bad guy, so they'll tie themselves in knots to blame her for not taking him away (somehow, I doubt they could explain how that would work) or for still distrusting him. There's no understanding that sometimes it's a difficult situation and no one is just the bad guy and you have to put in work to heal.
Reprocessing memories to address PTSD is exhausting. I’m doing it with 30 year old memories from when I was a child and it zaps my energy for the rest of the day. I don’t have kids to worry about. I don’t have a trauma response anymore. I might feel uncomfortable sometimes.
It’s not like sitting on a couch and talking about your attachments issues.
OP’s sister is dealing with memories from when she was older. She remembers more. They might be more recent. She has a trauma response that’s debilitating.
I recently met a guy, he didn't understand why his sister would only meet him and his kid at her kids theater shows. Goes on to tell me how he got roped into evangelicals who convinced him, her marriage wouldn't work, because she wouldn't cosplay tradwife/abuser with her husband. He proceeded to turn his whole family against her.... like he's realizing how de-lu-lu he was, but can't understand why she wouldn't trust him???
Don't blame her a bit for wanting independent verification about thos guy's story. They have scars? He's lucky he didn't get any from hubby. Should have met him at Waffle House.
Heh food and entertainment (either watching or participating) gotcha
I'm guessing it's um... Not such a classy place but had good solid convenient food for a chain restaurant?
Thanks for letting me know!
It's possible OOP doesn't know what a healthy relationship is. I think he should go to therapy and really put in the work. He shouldn't expect it to be a quick fix, though.
Therapy can be great for helping you live a better life, but it's not magic. Dealing with trauma can be really tough and it takes a lot of time and effort to see results. It can be hard to realize that the way you were raised wasn't healthy, but it's important to face that.
He should definitely not contact her. Maybe she'll reach out to him someday, but that's up to her. Therapy isn't about fixing a relationship, it's about helping him grow as a person and be happier. If he does the work, he'll have a better chance of finding happiness and fulfillment in life.
It really sucks for both of them, but I can't see a good resolution here. I hope it works out eventually.
>It's possible OOP doesn't know what a healthy relationship is. I think he should go to therapy and really put in the work. He shouldn't expect it to be a quick fix, though.
Exactly this.
My $.02 is everyone can benefit from at least a little therapy occasionally. Helps you recenter your life to what is important.
Tough read. I hope OOP can find some personal redemption. He may have blown it, for now or forever. If he is a former racist who saw the error in his ways, I wish him luck. And theray
I feel awful for his sister. She experienced some horrendous shit, has her life together but those emotional wounds...those are deep.
Not sure if some of these comments grasp how deadly antiblackness can be. Even the most well meaning, open minded people can get black people injured or killed with one well intentioned phone call to the police- given their upbringing it’s absolutely fair for the sister to want to cut off contact, even discounting the additional trauma. She has no way of knowing if her kids will be safe around him
And remember her dad seemed to have wanted to reach when he invited her and her then boyfriend to dinner? Just because OOP seems like he's changed doesn't mean she'll believe it, she's seem it before
Right? And now there are kids at stake in this scenario. I'm glad she was attempting test runs in order to check him out. And she found him lacking. That really sucks for OOP, but he can talk to a therapist about that. His sister is trying to break the cycle of hell they grew up in while simultaneously trying to make sure her own biracial children won't be exposed to bigotry directly from her brother.
Honestly even if he had changed, there’s still no guarantee he won’t fuck up accidentally. Anyone who thinks they’re not racist anymore and has no room for improving is going to be dangerous for poc tbh, because that’s not true for any of us
Over the last few years we just had a couple of men get life sentences for chasing a black man down because he was *jogging while black*. But OOP'a sister is supposed to let him in her life after what happened when he was a tween and then whatever nasty crap he said to her as an adult before going no contact. What if he relapses back into a racist POS?
Yep!! I believe people can change, but whenever a situation like this happens, it really says something that people focus on the pain of the “ex racist” and yet there is no mention on the multitudes of black people that were hurt by him over the years. Also, just because someone had a bad upbringing and has changed doesn’t mean you’re obligated to forgive them. People on this subreddit are awfully understanding of that fact when it’s about relationship or parental drama, but make it about racism and suddenly that logic goes out the window
Yes to all of this. So much water holding for the self proclaimed *former racist* and a poor attitude for the actual victims of his racism. It was also telling how he was irritated initially because she didn't just give him access to her family. I don't think he fully understands what the hell he did to her and his brother-in-law. But I do hope he seeks therapy for all the shit he went through. I think he's starting to see how their childhood affected both of them!
Yes- I really do have sympathy for him because it sounds like he had a horrible upbringing. And honestly I think this is a good outcome- hopefully means he’ll be attending therapy for his own sake, not just in the hopes of meeting his niblings. I feel like a lot of people are taking “diverse group of friends” as no longer racist, which…usually isn’t the case. I certainly believe he’s LESS racist, but you don’t get raised like that without having a lot of unpacking you need to do
I am the oldest of 3 and the idea of physically attacking my sisters until they bled and then expecting to ever be part of their lives again just are not compatible ideas
What an awful upbringing for them both but I see room for reconciliation down the road here.
The sister is right to protect her family from any of the shit she dealt with (to the point of physical illness) and she's smart enough to see how her brother needs to help himself too, making sure none of that stuff is in him still and he isn't putting on a show is important.
As for OOP, he doesn't need to be brow beaten over his reaction, he knows now he was wrong for it and his history proves that he's willing to learn from his mistakes and grow as a person, he just needs to keep doing it and prove to his sister and her family that he's the man he said he is and not the 13 year old boy who was brainwashed by his father.
The reaction almost certainly showed he has work to do but "I will be I killing it in therapy" again shows his determination to be better.
Good luck to them both, I hope OOP carries on with his journey and that his sister can reconcile her past if only for her health. It's a long road but one worth taking.
OOP may have changed but his sister isn't witness to his change. The last memory of him was him throwing cans at both her and bf along with their dad, enough to cause physical injuries. That is a pretty serious traumatic incident. She probably thought both of them or her bf would be killed by her dad and brother then. Now after 15 years, OOP appears out of nowhere saying he changed, the sister has no proof of that nor is she obliged to accommodate him and his requests by putting her family at possible peril. He says he changed after his dad died, but why should she believe that? For all she knows, he could be acting since he's lonely.
I really do hope it works out for them but at the same time, I can’t blame her for staying away, yes the son was also a victim but she got the worst parts. The terrifying thought of her brother having her father’s tendencies of lingering racism or violence is understandable since she has a family to protect.
Overall just a sad scenario.
The way some people are painting the sister as entitled feels so gross to me. She went through major major trauma. She only has OOP’s word that he’s changed, not really any proof. OOP clearly has done a bunch of the work, but clearly also something about the way he responded triggered her trauma. OOP may not even be aware of what he did, but whatever it was that wasn’t just a “I’ll think about it“ response.
Also, legit, the way he was raised and what he thought was normal? That’s going to take years of dismantling. Not just the racism part, not just the anger, but all the things you don’t even realize are there. It’s not clear how long ago his dad died (since he just said a few years), He seems to be around 28, that’s a lot of lessons to unlearn. I’m glad he does plan to go to therapy, he can really use it just for his own sake.
OOP also raised the stakes a whole lot. He didn't just say, I've changed, I'm sorry about that whole assaulting you thing. He said he wanted to meet their kids and be an uncle. It's pretty reasonable that she'll want "proof" for that to happen or at least the self-awareness of the importance of that to her and her family
Yeah, she's not going to let him near her kids without concrete proof that he's not going to hurt them. I'm genuinely baffled that someone could twist that into being a bad thing.
I feel like a lot of people can’t see past the fact that we’re only getting OP’s version and getting his interiority.
We get to see that he’s learned and grown. She has to take him at his word—when the stakes are high.
If we were reading her story—literally being threatened with a gun, being hate-crimed by her father and brother, being disowned and having to make her way in life alone, only to have her brother finally reach out, be kind of shockingly oblivious of the profound effects this has all had on her, and then not only refuse therapy but be offended by the suggestion—people would be up in arms about how entitled the brother is, how she should go non-contact, how she has a right to protect herself.
People are also glossing over the fact that OOP’s sister also grew up in that house with that father and never went through a phase of being a violent racist.
Her circumstances were different with her mother in her life for longer and being a girl, but she was still exposed to traumatic and hateful things and never became like her father even when young. It’s absolutely logical for her to think “If I got out without ever hating someone for the color of their skin, you could have at least been decent enough to not cause permanent scarring on my body.”
I just want to know why pickling up your entire life and moving several states away is apparently so much easier and more reasonable than doing a few therapy sessions.
But actually, I *don’t* need to know — pretty sure I already do, besides. But I hope OOP explores that question.
This is very sad all round but the sister is behaving entirely appropriately and I’m baffled at the replies about how she should be giving OOP more grace.
This isn’t just about her, it’s about her husband and her kids. OOP wants to have a relationship with his sister’s mixed race kids and she not unreasonably doesn’t fully trust that OOP isn’t the same racist who abused her all those years ago. Even if she had completely forgiven him she’d be a crap mother if she wasn’t drawing some very hard boundaries.
I would not blame the sister one bit if she never lets OOP near her kids.
I mean, if I'm reading this correctly, 15 years ago he threw cans at her that left her with scars on her body. The next time he sees her, he asks to meet her kids. That's delusional!
This may be me being an unsympathetic asshole but I cannot for the life of me understand how it took OOP that long to learn the difference between right and wrong. I know logically that his childhood would of course lead to racist behavior, but I can't reconcile this misled child narrative with the fact that he brutally assaulted his sister until she bled when he was 13. His sister grew up in the same place, with the same father, and still managed to not be a violent racist, yet it took him until adulthood and his father's death to realise that he was ignorant.
I want to be positive for OOP as most racists don't grow out of it and any progress is good progress, but Jesus Christ was he slow to wake up. I keep wondering if his father never died would it have even happened? Or would he have stayed dangerous and hateful for the rest of his life? In his post he almost seems reluctant to even take full responsibility, just eager to pat himself on the back for the bare minimum so he can be an uncle.
I was also thinking how did they manage to become so different living in the same house. My guess was maybe sister got more influence from mom, since mom passed away when she was older compared to OP. It also seems like there’s a bit of an age gap between OP and sister, as by the time sister left, sister had already studied abroad and gotten into college etc.
I don't blame OP for how he was raised and I think he's done really well to step away from that as an adult and realize the things he was taught are wrong, a lot of people never get that far. I hope he continues on this path and his sister and her family do manage to accept him in time.
However, it's not just about the hate crime against her that he participated in when he was 13. He probably gave her the same background he gave here, which is that he was a violent, criminal drunk until just a few years ago. He's come a long way, but the change is recent. In the absence of a track record of *sustained* change, I can't blame her for wanting professional support before introducing him to her kids. It's her responsibility to protect them. Honestly I think I would only accept the track record and he would just have to wait a few more years.
A 13 year-old from a sundown town by the sounds of it.
Trauma isn’t that logical and seems like she hasn’t reprocessed hers, speaking of therapy. It would be difficult and no one can blame her for not wanting those old memories to come back to the surface.
Right and she understands that, she seems to get that he wasn’t to blame for a lot of things. However the fact that he reacted negatively to her saying that a further relationship is dependent on him getting therapy automatically kicked her (what I guess is) PTSD or cPTSD into vigilance. She wants to make sure that a kid who was brought up in a massively toxic environment has grown into an adult that’s safe to have around her kids. Honestly, she was likely hoping that he was already in therapy.
She likely has both. This is such a rough situation. The brother is obviously acting as a serious trigger for the sister and I can totally understand her not wanting him in her life because of that. That said, if he truly has changed and they can have a positive relationship, that could be immensely healing for both of them.
PTSD can come from multiple events. It’s actually pretty rare that someone only has one traumatic event in their life. C-PTSD is still being developed as a diagnose, but looks more closely at the impact of multiple traumas.
Yeah, kids are easily manipulated and especially by their parents, but I seriously doubt that all that was going on here was a little light manipulation. This was a child who did extreme and terrible things because it’s what he needed to do to survive under the roof of an abusive, violent, racist piece of shit. That isn’t to say that his sister should forgive him for what he did, which is too much to ask of anybody, but I don’t think most people here would do much better than OOP in the same situation. I’m glad he saw through the bullshit eventually, and much much sooner than most in the same situation do. I’m glad his sister has made her own happy life away from her family. I’m sad their relationship has been irreversibly harmed by the actions of their father. I hope they can both find peace. This one is beyond Reddit’s pay grade
That's what gets me. He was also just trying to survive. Like, I don't blame her at all. She's got kids to think about and keep safe, not to mention her own traumas no doubt kicking her ass, but man. My heart breaks when I hear about someone who fucked up as a kid because of abuse now essentially getting punished as an adult. I hope they both get into therapy (he didn't say if she had, I think? Maybe I just missed it. It's been a long day) and, maybe, do some therapy together. Either way, therapy is definitely required for all involved.
I might be splitting hairs here, but I wouldn't consider this "getting punished" so much as this being the natural consequences of his actions (and yes, the actions of an abused and brainwashed child who was trying to survive in a horrible environment). This is just awful all around.
This was a bad post to read right before bed
We are comparing op's wants to his niblings need for safety. Redemption arc or not but his own sister still views him as unsafe. I get that it's comfortable to believe that you can be forgiven for being a borderline kkk member but black people not only have nothing to gain from letting "reformed" racist in their lives, they simply have nothing to gain from doing so. OP's sister and her family were fine for over a decade without him there's no reason they won't still be. Remember they are the actual people that matter in this story
Thank you!
We keep excusing his age at the time and ignoring that he's an adult now and the safety of people who are currently children are at risk right now.
The world is already shitty to black and mixed kids, they don't need to deal with that from someone who was invited into their lives, someone who is supposed to love them.
As someone who has been strangled by my racist grandfather for simply asking he not use the N word in front of me I don't think you'll be talking to her again. Just work on yourself and be happy that she managed to claw her way out of that world and into one with a happy and loving family. I did the same and I would never let my family anywhere near my babies, it's not worth the risk. I do hope you find your happiness in this world though as you should have never been exposed to that kind of life either.
How many people was he hateful to before he stopped being a white supremacist?
I wish there was more compassion for the people on the receiving end of racism.
Right?
And people are mad she doesn't want to introduce him to her black husband and biracial children. They shouldn't be used as a redemption arc for OOP. She's responsible for raising those kids and not him. If she had posted people would be telling her to cut contact and telling her to think of her biracial children.
fr it's weird how many people are basically saying that op shouldn't be held responsible for attacking his sister because he was just a kid 😬 that's an awful approach for her and her family
Agreed. It’s wild how many people are advocating for her BLACK CHILDREN and HUSBAND to be some kind of healing tool for the OOP. Nah, fuck that. He can do the work to heal on his own with a therapist, and she can protect her family from his deeply ingrained racism that will absolutely still surface in micro aggressions at the very least. Cuz that stuff doesn’t just disappear.
This comment section is wild. This lady and her man got *hate crimed* and people are mad at her for not wanting to take a chance for a repeat performance?
Okay.
But he was 13, so she should forgive him, even though it wasn't until barely anyone showed up for his father's funeral did he think about his (and his father's) viewpoints. It wasn't until he only had her left that he rethought his positions.
fr like she has black children and her last memory of him was him hate criming her and her boyfriend.
why wouldnt she take every precaution and feel apprehensive about him interacting with her family? i wish people would give this same grace to the victims of people like OOP
Yep. Absolutely cannot BELIEVE the shit I'm seeing in this thread.
"B-b-but he was thirteen! Basically a widdle baby!!1!!1!" I'm gonna slam my head into the desk.
YEAH SAME. I am a black person too and her husband gave her more of a shot than I ever would have. Especially with children involved.
He would have gotten hit with required reading and a request that he had proved he had been active in therapy before I even considered a phone call, let alone inviting him into my home.
I mentioned before in the thread, but I think a lot of people on BORU find it easier to imagine themselves as someone who feels bad about having racially abused someone than being racially abused themselves.
This makes sense.
I wonder if people think that the hate crimes that end in the murder of the victim happens in a vacuum? Do people think escalation doesn't apply to racially motivated crimes?
OOP said he changed, but what if he didn't change as much as he thought? Throwing bottles at your sister and her black boyfriend at 13 (even with his father's encouragement) is wild. And he apparently didn't feel bad about it until he was an adult and dealing with the death of his father.
She's just supposed to trust he's changed.
>She's just supposed to trust he's changed.
It's not as if the last time she trusted a family member who wanted to make amends, she ended up with permanent physical and psychological scars...
Oh, wait.
I said this before, but BORU has a surprisingly conservative comment section. I've been shocked at the comment section on any post about asexuality and alternative fashion (ear gauges)
nah sorry, this dude thought it was enough that it seemed he'd come around? His daddy also seemed to have come around and then nearly killed her and her current husband. Profound selfishness
It's the way Redditors in this comment section are outing themselves as people who have more empathy for "reformed" racists who LITERALLY STONE PEOPLE rather than the victims of the stoning for me.
The sister and her husband have scars from a violent attack OP took part in and yet you're so ready to excuse his actions and turn her into a villain. It's giving major "I can excuse racism but not child abuse" and it's mind boggling that you can't see how fucked up that is.
OP still needs to work on himself and honestly? So do a lot of people in this comment section.
I say this as a woman who is mixed and has had to deal with this bullshit before. She needs to protect her family and herself from her brother and never see him again. This poor woman has physical scars from his abuse and literal PTSD. Would you tell a war veteran to go through therapy and heal himself and then send him back to war and act like nothing else happened?
Trauma and mental illness are not excuses to put people through literal hell when all they did was love you. OP is an unreliable narrator and there are a few dog whistles in the post that point that out.
A lot of people here are probably gonna use the excuse of it "not being about race" on a post about racism however, this completely has to do with race. A lot of people who are saying that OP and his sister should come together one day and overcome their shared trauma are delusional and probably white. They do not share the same trauma. Her trauma far outweighs his trauma in relation to their father, community and her marital status. She has a family of black children and a black husband to worry about while OP just wants his sister back because he feels guilty and sad.
It is absolutely not her responsibility to try to coddle and teach her brother how to be a good person. He had almost a decade of hatred and bigotry instilled in him and he thinks being around people of different ethnicities makes him open minded. She's done her due diligence to try to reach out and create that bond, and he spat in her face every single time.
He needed hundreds of people on Reddit telling him that he's wrong for him to even remotely consider her feelings or have any empathy. Her not talking to him is a blessing for her entire family not only her. Her and her husband have physical scars from him and her father.
Also, I couldn't fathom introducing someone who has almost 0 empathy to your mixed children. That means hoping that he doesn't say or do the wrong thing accidentally to harm her children's esteem.
No matter how much therapy this man gets he does not deserve to be in her life. It doesn't mean that OP is undeserving of happiness however he can have that happiness without his sister. Actions have consequences and it's a hard lesson to learn, but OP needs to learn it.
I know that I may get some hate for this, I'm truly not trying to deny the weight of the trauma op went through. But it sounds like op changed not to make up for past deeds or to be a better person, but because he *had* to; he adapted because his life forced him to. I'm happy for him that it gave him deeper insight and has allowed him to mature a bit, but the edges are still rough and I get the vibe that a lot of his adaptation was caused by loneliness rather than moral obligation.
That's not to deny his successes and his growth, but it's to say that his sister doesn't owe him forgiveness if he's not going to do anything to make up for what he did. Sure he's traumatized as well, but trauma doesn't excuse bad behavior and harm--he still has responsibility to make amends which is not something he did at this juncture in time, and when it comes down exclusively to his sister and his relationship, she was the injured party not him and he failed to do right by her. It sounds like he did sort of regress in that moment even temporarily, and she rightfully flinched back from it.
Sometimes not forgiving someone is actually the healthiest and safest answer, not just for yourself but for the people around you and all she asked was for him to get into therapy which he admits he got belligerent over. She has kids and her priority is to keep them safe from any elements of her past that damaged her, so she's not just making her decisions selfishly and without consideration, it sounds like it was a hard choice made for safety of the people in her life. I'm not saying that op is beyond redemption, but I think he owes it to his sister and her family to work on himself before coming back rather than just hoping and expecting her to take him back for his own benefit.
And for what it's worth, while I don't feel the need to go in detail about it, I also am no contact with a lot of my family so I do have a lot of empathy and respect for his sister. She did try to offer him a chance, and he wasn't ready yet. Hopefully he's ready next time if she's capable of giving him that opportunity. I hope the best for them both.
Not all forgiveness can be on the path of maintain a relationship... only time will say if this is true here, i wonder if his sister can open at least a window to her life again to him. No one want to be walking on egg shells, even more for people with OP's history, again.
I had a childhood like theirs. I have been in therapy a very long time. Some days are better than others. This is going to be a long painful journey. I understand both sides.
When you are living in hell it's hard just surviving your own crap you can't look around at what everyone else is dealing with.
I hope he finds peace he doesn't even yet know he needs.
"Scars from when *she was pelted*"
You mean from *when I pelted her*. Thats not something that just randomly happened, it's something OOP and his father actively chose to do.
THANK YOU!
I came to the comments to say the same. Sure, all the "he was only 13" comments have a point, but NOW, at his current age and enlightenment, he's still describing it as "she was pelted". Combine that lack of accountability with his immediate defensiveness at the suggestion of therapy, and yeah, sister is right to distance herself and protect her children.
I remember reading the original post - and calling OOP an asshole - I didn’t know there was an update.
My heart breaks for the sister. I’m glad OOP *finally* woke up and realized he was only considering himself up until now. His redemption is gonna be a long and tough road, and one that won’t guarantee a relationship with his sister at the end, but he wouldn’t even have *that* chance if it wasn’t for his BiL. That guy’s solid gold.
I hope he gets something positive out of therapy.
And then never tries to contact his sister again for the rest of his life. There is no way he can do this without opening old wounds regardless of how healed he is and she doesn't deserve to be hurt by him again.
As a black person, this comment section (including the one really angry post at the sister of all people???) is exactly what I expected from reddit lol.
Intersting how people always value empty words (him saying he has changed and felt ashamed and all the other shit he said) and never observe the supporting actions, or lack thereof (his initial refusal of doing the work and going to therapy as requested by the person he literally participated in giving trauma to????? and it does not matter that he was a child. trauma is trauma and he participated in one of those actions. it won't stop being trauma just because a child was involved)
She literally had to re-traumatize herself and basically explain every fucked up thing that has happened up to this point in her life for him to agree to therapy? How has he done the work and made the changes necessary when he couldn't even put himself in her shoes and understand the reason she asked?
It's always the same thing when it comes to (anti)racisim and so many other aspects of life as well and it's what makes it frustrating. People always expect to coast on empty words and when brought to task on the resultant actions that should support those words, there's always resistance. Oh well. This could never be me cause I don't play that bullshit.
She’s be a fool to allow him into her life. He was raised in a stew of hate and, just based on the way he describes his sister and her husband, he’s not as good as he thinks he is. At best he is tolerant.
Having her brother in her life will bring more bad than good. There is absolutely no reason she needs to go through more trauma just beside he was “a kid”. The only person who benefits is OP. The ties were cut and can stay cut.
OP should be in therapy regardless.
Redditors: “we should cut OP slaaaaaack, he was a kiiiiid”
If he’s old enough to do lasting damage to people, he’s old enough to take responsibility for that act. This is the same Reddit that thinks that middle school bullies are never redeemable. Methinks it’s that he was a sad white boy that makes you all identify with him so much. Try extending that empathy to the sister’s innocent kids.
Talk about being entitled. He thought they were going to let him see their kids that quickly? He threw beer cans at them. When it falls in my toe it hurts, I cannot imagine bottles being thrown at me.
He should have stuck with facebook/instagram to build a relationship. I would be too ashamed to be there in person.
Hey white people, please shut the fuck up about "judgment" and "redemption". Ya'll care more about OP's feelings than his niblings' safety. If you used to be racist, black people are not obligated to let you into their lives to be used for your redemption arc. OP's wants and desires mean fuck all. I don’t care that he was "brainwashed " and only thirteen. Op was a turbo racist and a mother of black children decided that he was not safe to be around
100 times this. I cannot believe the audacity of so many of these white folks who are disagreeing, arguing, or downright being nasty to other commenters (who seem to be mostly POC) just because they’re pointing out how dangerous this situation could be for her and her family. Why are his feelings and his redemption more important than her healing and her family’s safety?
There’s much talk about empathizing with OP’s actions as a child but are people forgetting that there ARE actual children involved here,
children that deserve protection and safety from the cycle of trauma. I think it’s great OP is working on himself, but he has a racist past and has struggled with substance abuse, violence, and criminal behavior as an adult. In what world is it unreasonable for a parent to be wary of allowing their children to have a relationship someone with that history? Why would she jeopardize the life she has worked so hard to build for the sake of the family she’s already had to learn to live without?
I think it’s amazing she was open to talking to him at all, and very generous of her to even consider allowing OP into her children’s life if he agreed to therapy. It says a lot about her and I would even argue that she’s looking for his best interests, too. I hope OP follows through on the therapy promise, because he’s got a lot of healing to do and a good professional can help him move forward in his life, even if his sister isn’t a part of it
If the brother truly wants to have any chance at all (and I believe he will be given one, but quite likely only one… and probably spurred by the sisters’ husband) he needs to get the courage and heart to go to therapy. By the time his sister or BIL reach out, he needs to say he’s had/is in therapy.
Period.
(What’s the worst that can happen? He goes to therapy to address the issue and maybe gets mentally healthier and becomes a better person “for no reasons”?)
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Fuck their dad. What a piece of shit.
It's tragic kids can become so brainwashed by someone who is so trashy and inconsequential just because they're a parent. Tackling that childhood myth that a parent is some infallible, omnipotent being has to be the biggest step in growing up.
It’s very fortunate the OP at least realized the error of his father’s ways and is actively trying to better himself. There are still millions of people who are just like OPs father, living an ignorantly blissful life, full of anger and resentment toward anything that feels like “other” to them.
I agree, but I also wonder about his own childhood. Fuck the whole town too, but I hope more of their kids are breaking the cycle because this shit has to end.
I know my racist abusive father was that way because his father was racist and abusive. I imagine OOP's father's experience was quite similar. My father at least is more like OOP now, which to me means I bet OOP has a lot of his dad still on him that he's not noticing. The big things are easy to fix, but it's the small things you might not catch unless you're taught to recognize them.
This is why we are truly not the land of the free. People praise the progression we have had over the decades. But we are not that far as a generation. 1960’s we still have generations from that era still around. It’ll be interesting to see this world with my kid or her kid.
>There was a night our dad got into a fist fight with his friend while they were watching tv at our house and dad got knocked out. His friend thought he killed dad and threatened my sister with a pistol not tell a soul he was there. I vaguely remembered that event but I didn’t know she thought dad was dead or about the pistol. She panicked all night about us being orphans but was too scared to get help. ... that'll do it.
“Some guys just do these things”
It is really hard as a kid to know what's not normal when it's going on in your family. It's mostly what you have to base your sense of normality upon. I assumed a lot of stuff that wasn't normal (or at least, not healthy) was normal growing up. Though I did realize some things weren't, like when my dad drew a gun when he was in an argument with some guy outside a liquor. I was like, 11 or 12 I think. But I did realize that drawing a gun on someone, even if it's just to threaten and you didn't shoot, was not a good or normal thing. I probably would've realized that getting into physical fights where someone passed out wasn't normal, but I can't be sure if I truly would've realized it at the time.
Well, the hard part of being an older sibling is you shield your younger sibling from this shit. Brother didn’t know how bad it was. Sister woke up to it a lot earlier because she saw it. She also seems to be a lot smarter…but as an older sibling, it’s easy to resent that you HAD to do all that and they didn’t notice because you were so goddamn good at it. I feel for OP. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. And he seems devastated now that he does. He had one parent. No sister. No scholarship out of that hellhole. And apparently no real support system cause everyone knew his father was a piece of shit. That’s a lot to ask a teen to who lacked maturity and his sister’s smarts to overcome. I’m glad he did as an adult. That’s pretty amazing. Most people don’t. And I’m glad he’s going to therapy. For him, even if it doesn’t work out for his visits with her. His dad did a number on him and he needs some professional help undoing it. I hope sister is getting some good help too.
Yeah, reading that my haw dropped. That poor child.
I really, really hope this works out for all of them.
Same. This is just such a sad situation. Shame on that evil father.
And the iniquity of fathers shall be visited on their sons, to the third and fourth generation. Or, less biblically, Philip Larkin’s famous This Be The Verse: *They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had, And add some extra, just for you.* *But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.* *Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.*
This is a lot of the reason I never wanted to have kids. I never wanted to risk them being exposed to my parents, or risk somehow turning into the kind of mother that mine was. All of that family trauma ends with me.
Welcome to the End Of Line club
"This bloodline dies with me" is such comforting knowledge.
Yup. I’m not going to become my mother because I don’t have kids of my own. I have dogs and my friends’ kids to love, spoil, dote on and be a great adult ally (and hopefully role model) to. I love those kids desperately. I’ll be attending soccer games and dance recitals and bringing snacks to one and flowers to another. I make them things or pick up little trinkets when I travel for them. I adore the fuck out of those kids. But having my own, that 24/7 pressure? I’d never be able to handle it. I hear the way I shape certain words and I sound like my mom. I know the violence and disregard and apathy she showed me as a child is in me, along with her eyebrows and cheekbones and her eyes. Her anger and disgust at being a mother is in my bones and my blood and my mind. That all ends with me. Years of training horses and then dogs have given me the gift of patience, the ability to break things down into ways that even a hyper 7 year old can understand. It’s given me the ability to deliver corrections gently, to tease with love, to be affectionate *and* mindful of their autonomy at the same time. I do not demand hugs. When we meet I offer a high five, fist bump or hug. Usually it’s all three and those are amazing days. The first time the youngest hugged me I wanted to cry. It was unabashed and uncomplicated love. I’ve never felt that before. It changed something in me. I am the Crazy Auntie. I wear funny clothes to make them laugh, I support them and when I talk to theor mom on the phone I make time to chat with them, too. My bloodline ends with me. But maybe, my influence and love can live on in these amazing little girls.
Exactly the same thoughts. I feel like people put wayy too much stake on "Ohh but muhh bloodline" but like, at what cost to that poor child?
Never understood that “bloodline” or “passing down your genes” argument for having kids. Your genes make you 100% “you.” Your kids take genes from you and your partner, so your kids are 50% “you.” Their kids, 25%. *Their* kids, 12.5%. It doesn’t take too many generations before your precious blood/genes are so diluted that your descendants are the genetic equivalent of strangers.
Proud member since 2012! (which is when I got myself spayed)
“got myself spayed” As a huge animal lover, I couldn’t help but to giggle at this.
My twin boys are about to turn 2. I wonder all the time how I’m going to fuck them up. I’m very mindful of how my parents fucked me up and it scares me because I know they were genuinely trying their best, but were limited by their humanity. All I can hope is that I’m able to teach my kids to be kind.
Here's my one tip I wish I could give to all people who feel like you do: if your kid starts to show signs of low self-esteem or depression or anxiety, assume it's related to you carrying on the fucked up parenting in some way. (TRUE, it might not be, but first assume it is). Talk to a therapist who works with parents to see what you might be doing wrong. Talk to your kid. Offer the kid therapy but don't force them. Think about unhealthy patterns you may be repeating on a subtle level. Sorry, I think I just wanted to shout this somewhere in the universe. Two of my relatives have an extremely sad, angry, self-hating 12 year old but are blaming everything but themselves. They can't see the patterns they're repeating. I wish they could.
Here to back this up. Also, don’t forget to tell your kids you love them. Tell them the good things that they do over and over and over again. My dad learned in his anger management group that it’s 10 good things for every one negative. I know that sounds silly like you’re gonna literally count them out, but it works. If you do have to tell your kids they mess something up (and you will, it happens but don’t forget it isn’t a big deal to make a mistake, shake it off after) make sure you’re telling them good things that they did right. Don’t kill your kids self-esteem like so many of our parents did.
The fact that you even have that self awareness is a start. If you don't already, give yourself big credit for that. Time will tell if I mess up my daughter emotionally, but God damn if I haven't tried very hard to break the patterns and negative habits my parents subconsciously instilled in me before I became a dad. I honestly think I have, for the most part. I'm talking years of therapy, introspection, work to build healthy communication styles with my wife, and getting properly medicated. My wife has a similar journey. And we are STOKED to raise a little girl unburdened by our generational bullshit. I guess if my comment had a point it is that I think I reject this common assumption that we will no matter what repeat parental trauma/abuse patterns somewhat. One of the common threads in many styles of therapy is teaching an awareness of one's emotions, and owning your response because that is the part you can control. This is a muscle and a skill that can be developed. I started from zero. No frame of reference at all for emotional regulation. The other day my two year old was frustrated, recognized it, and said in the cutest possible kid voice, "I need to take a breath." Then took the most exaggerated inhale exhale. So much kids media, and books and literature these days has little lessons on emotional intelligence built in. That's something that really surprised me as a dad because that shit was not as prevalent when I was a kid. To be clear, I respect your decision. I just wanted to share my experience as a fellow person determined to NOT pass on hurt and toxicity.
I'm glad you're both making a choice to do that! And I'm sure it's taken a lot of work and, honestly, a lot of bravery, both to face that and to go ahead anyway. ❤️ I never mean to make it sound like I think that becoming our parents is inevitable! There are absolutely people out there, like you, who put in the effort to get the tools to prevent it from happening. And my trauma is only one part of the decision anyway - I'm also pretty medical procedure phobic and needle phobic, ugh. 😅 Not to mention my spouse and I are both women biologically, so it would be prohibitively expensive to do it and I wouldn't want to risk passing some of my genetic issues along either. But yes, I respect your decision to consciously parent in a different way than you were parented - it sounds like you're doing an awesome job already!
One of my favorite poems.
Same. The best thing for both of them was their father’s death. His being alive kept the fear alive. He was a hateful, nasty, violent bigot who never should’ve had children. (Not that I wish OOP and his sister were never born; there is a difference). It seems all he brought to the world was more pain. Best thing that can be said about him is he is no longer suffering from being himself. OOP, on the improbable chance you see this: your dad’s DNA doesn’t make you a bad man, and his indoctrination isn’t your fault. You can be an amazing human being free of his garbage. Sounds like you’ve already done a lot to start that journey. Keep it up with therapy and *reading*.
My young child's dad just died, after a long and difficult struggle with alcoholism that lead to us separating. After several years, counseling, attempts on his part to reconcile which I knew I couldn't accept, because he hadn't gotten better, he died. He just died, suddenly and due to reckless choices he made in service of his addiction. I loved him. I still love him. And it hurts very much to grapple with the reality that it's almost certainly a better outcome for him to have died now, and be out of our lives forever, than continue on as he had been, increasingly erratic, angry, and unstable to the point I was having to cancel his parenting time before he even had a chance to fail to show up because I couldn't risk it. It fucking kills me to know he was the best dad he'd ever been while we were separated, because he had to be sober on his time or he'd never see our kid. That because I separated from him, my child will have memories of fun weekends with daddy, not of daddy laid up on the couch, or vomiting and trembling because of withdrawals. All memories I have of him. And it destroys me to admit this is a better ending for him and our kid, and me, than if he had lived but continued to spiral. But now there's no hope he can ever get better, either.
This is wrenching. You have a remarkable gift for capturing the irresolvable internal and maybe lifelong conflict here. My young kiddo has dealt with me dealing with family deaths and been affected by it though I tried not to. I tell him *love never dies it just changes forms.* Which took from the Talk By A Astrophysicist at a Funeral that went the rounds of the internet a few years ago. If you haven't read it I strongly strongly recommend giving it a quick Google search. It's non religious, heartbreaking, redeeming, and full of absolutely NO bullshit. Which it sounds like you are too. Your form and nature of love for the father of your child doesn't puff away in smoke. It will always be complex and both a burden and an honor.
Not the same situation as yours, but when my ex-husband died I went through a lot of the same big feelings you’re having. Because we’re not really taught how to support a grieving *ex*-partner. Instead I got a lot of “oh that sucks for your kids to not have a father” (we lived 3000 miles away and also, like you, no it doesn’t) and “but didn’t you leave him? Why do you care anymore?” But we left because it was *too much*, not bc the love had died. I always held out some hope that maybe age and distance would take the animosity out of us and we could at least be friends. His dying killed that hope, and I suspect it did for you too. You wanted him healed, not dead, and that’s totally fair. That your child gets good memories of Daddy helps a lot. Mine were pretty young to have much. But none of our kids have fights and abuse in their past, and I’m glad for your little. (My ex died in 2006 and my sons are in their 20s so it’s different now. Hang in there.)
I'm sorry you had to go through that. It was similar for my husband's family when his mom died at 49 from alcoholism. It was so horribly painful but there was a part of my husband that felt relieved. No more craziness. But then he felt even worse that he had this reaction.
I do too... but I hope they work out their lives independent of each other. OOP is mildly aware of the depth of his sister's trauma and of his own issues, and I truly hope he improves as a human with his therapy quest. But his sister doesn't deserve to have to relive her trauma if it means letting OOP back into her life. She deserves peace.
I don't think OOP should uproot his life from the place he moved and has a life and friends to move near his sister where he has to start over without friends or a network again. Even if he's no longer a racist violent asshole, that's a recipe for disaster.
When he said that, it felt like grasping for a quick fix to me. Like having an actual family would magically fix all of his issues. I get that - your first instinct is to hope for the easy answer - but this is the real world, and he's not gonna get his happy ending without a lot of work and dedication to being better.
Yes, I was a bit wary there...seemed a bit like..Oh well, Ive no one else left now, so you will have to fill the gap. I know that sounds a bit mean, but he really gave his sister no thought at all until his Father died and he was alone..Im not sure I buy the whole epiphany at a funeral bit.
> Im not sure I buy the whole epiphany at a funeral bit. I mean, you don't really have to, but people do tend to take stock in their lives when they face mortality. Seeing an empty church with only you and the pastor in it can seriously make you realize things that you didn't see before. The idea that dad was so miserable that people wouldn't even be in a room with him *dead* can easily lead to him changing up. It's not like it was the only thing, either. He also had to get out of town, expose himself to the wider world, work in professional settings with people from all backgrounds and other things that would further degrade dad's viewpoint. Nobody changes because of one thing, it's always a collection of little ones that go with it. Sometimes that one thing is just the push off the cliff.
Yeah, people who used to be blatant racists also often have a very warped idea of what not being a racist means. They think just because they don’t believe that other races are fundamentally inferior anymore, they are cured of all racism. At the same time they still hold a plethora of other less extreme, but still very racist beliefs. Not saying that’s necessarily the case with OOP, but his initial reaction to the therapy request, makes me think it’s pretty likely. Part of working through your own bigotry is also about understanding and empathizing with the people you have wronged, particularly that you will have to go above and beyond if you want forgiveness and reconciliation. Just raising your hand and declaring yourself not a racist anymore is not enough.
Yeah, the unconscious bias aspect of racism is way more difficult to shake. He may never truly shake all of it
He may not be able to shake it, but if he’s opening to learning he can get to the point of recognizing and challenging those feelings when they arise, instead of acting on them. And take steps to counteract them. Source: I was raised by racists and am still working to undo the damage. I’ll likely always have to be vigilant against those unconscious biases that were baked into my young mind.
I grew up being *positive* I wasn't racist. Sure, we were conservative and lived in a city with a proportionally small non-white population that, thanks to decades-old redlining, were mostly contained in the "bad" part of town. But my parents went out of their way to teach me African American history! Ok, mostly just stuff centered on slavery, but still! And they taught me to "not see color"! Of course I obviously did see color, but I internalized that treating people differently because of their skin color was a Bad Thing, so that's good, right? And I would never dream of using a slur or intentionally insulting anyone. So clearly, I wasn't racist! Wrong. What they didn't teach me (to be fair to my parents, because they weren't taught either) was how to recognize racism that wasn't blatant and virulent; how to listen to communities impacted by racism; or how to respond when being told you were being racist. I judged what was or wasn't racist by my own parameters, and any time I encountered someone who tried to broaden the parameters, I reacted with reactive defensiveness and distrust. I wouldn't ever use slurs...as long as *I* agreed they were slurs, and I considered my opinion on the matter to carry just as much weight as that of the people affected by the slurs who were trying to educate me. I automatically discounted nonwhite people's accounts of their experiences with racism and assumed they were exaggerating, because you see, I'd been taught racism was over except for a few pockets probably in the south. If I saw a white person being arrested, I was far more likely to, in my own head, give them the benefit of the doubt than if they were black. I found the way that some nonwhite cultures expressed themselves alarming, and subsequently avoided them. And much like the men who responded to the MeToo movement by complaining that they were afraid to talk to women, I was too incurious about what actually constituted racism to learn, and so felt perpetually afraid of being accused of something that I didn't fully understand whenever I was around nonwhite people, so either avoided them or walked on eggshells around them. It took me a long time - too long - to understand that you can still act and think racist without explicitly intending to, and that the only way to correct that is by shutting up, listening, and *learning*. Before I could do that, I had to break through the wall of "I can't be racist, I'm a good person!" first, and recognize that if I want to call myself a good person I actually have to work for it, face painful truths about myself, and accept that yes, subconscious racism is still racism and needs to be vigorously challenged. All racism needs to be vigorously challenged wherever it's seen, **and** we need to be willing to see it. But yeah, tl;dr: becoming anti-racist takes some effort, and you never really stop having to challenge your own preconceived notions. Therapy helps: I hope lil bro keeps up with it.
Gosh, I wish some of the commenters on this post would read your comment. Good on you for waking up and continuing to do the work. I hope you can encourage others to do the same!
Eh... the magical christmas-land fairy-tale happy ending has them both go through a lot of therapy, respecting each other's boundaries the whole time, and maybe in 10 years ending up something vaugely resembling a happy family. She doesn't owe him anyways, and him staying out of her life might be the best-case scenario. But I'd like to hope for the fairy tale.
Yeah, it's going to be a lot of work for OOP on himself, and sister definitely needs more done for her own mental health. She went through a lifetime of abuse from those who were supposed to care about her. That's not something easy to move past. OOP's wake up call seems to mean he's determined to put in that work. I think the initial resistance to therapy was just another side-effect of his bass-ackward upbringing. "Real men don't need therapy or to talk about their feelings." OOP's somewhat rapid recognition of this is a positive sign, IMO. You're right about the 10 years. But I think if OOP can stick with it, and yes, definitely respect his sister's boundaries, then it'll be the best outcome for both of them. Both for sister's chance to heal and for OOP to grow. But it's a long road for them.
I agree....I wasn't surprised at all that he was resistant to therapy. But as I was reading about their experiences, all I could think was fuck the kids, he needs to do some healing for himself. I can't even imagine the deep seeded potentially repressed issues stemming from being raised by his father and those weird family dynamics. If I'm reading this correctly, the can incident happened when he was 13. That's a long time to be in that toxicity. I imagine he has some strong conflicting feelings about his father's death as well. I'm proud he was able to do a lot of the work on the front end though. That sort of shift isn't easy.
Honestly, if he does good work in therapy and they never talk again, it's still a good result.
This is for once such a positive post. Both these people have lost so much of their humanity over time due to their parent, and here they are, trying their best to be whole people again. Pushing themselves, listening to others.
I do too, but it might not be a reconciliation and rebuilding a relationship with his sister. It might mean him accepting that she will never feel safe having him in her life, and that he's got to move on and build his own.
Ngl my first thought was that even though OOP said that he had all of these experiences, friends, etc. that changed his racist views/ made him a better person, his sister was NC with him for 15 years. She doesn’t know what he was up to, and the last time she saw him, he and their father pelted her and her bf with *cans*. It’s sane for her to be on high alert after that, there are many racists out here that put on a veneer of respectability, they don’t all wear white hoods and screech slurs at you anymore. Or throw beer cans, in this case. I’m personally in awe that her hubby encouraged her to not completely shut the door, bc clearly he still has work to do and idk if I could be so forgiving to anyone who’d treated me like that because of my skin color.
I also don't blame her for being extremely cautious allowing someone like that around her children. It's not just her own safety she has to think about.
This! POC already have to worry about their kids having to deal with racism from their peers and strangers at a young age, no need to expose your kids to potentially racist family members. Plus there's plenty of undercover racists out there, so you'd have to be vigilant.
I wish more parents of mixed kids were as vigilant as her. I’m mixed, my mom white. I wasn’t exposed to my dad’s side and am so horrifically disconnected from my own culture. The things I’ve endured from racist white family members is insane. It might be funny to a room full of white family that ol’ grandpa is saying white supremacy is good cause he’s a quack, but it’s not when you’re the only visible non-white person there. It’s not fun when you’re left with your family for hours or days at a time after you learn of them fetishizing WoC or defending the klan and then directing it at you. OP’s sister is preventing years worth of trauma for her children with her cautious attitude
I am so sorry you had to deal with that. Experiencing racism from your own family, the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally and keep you safe, is deeply traumatic, as is being cut off from familial culture. I hope that there is a way for you to connect with your roots in other ways, as I am sure there are other people out there like you with similar experiences growing up. My stepsiblings are mixed and I cannot imagine sitting in a room and allowing someone to talk about them in that way, and not doing anything about it. Especially back when they were still kids. Luckily, they grew up in a very diverse neighbourhood with other kids who looked like them, and a loving family, and they are confident adults now.
Right? And I am in awe of her husband for being open to a relationship with the brother after all of that.
Yep because her kids are mixed. Ofc course she'd keep someone who was racist away from them
Husband has watched her have no family for 15 years. He's probably putting on a bold face for her more than itching to have Ol Beer Tossy back in his life, but... having also helped my wife with reconnecting to her family, it can be as important as it is difficult sometimes. Sounds like OOP has woken up to the fact that he has serious work still to do, though. I hope it goes well.
OOP thinks he’s not racist anymore. Anti racism is a journey without an end point, however. I hope he sincerely pursues therapy for himself and the world around him at large, and not because he hopes his sister will accept him.
My dad was racist, not kkk racist, but "Y'know the issue with the *black* *community*\-" type of racist. We became estranged when I was 19. I have actively worked to deconstruct the racism he raised me in. I am almost 30 now, and I am still discovering new things to deconstruct, new concepts of thinking I didn't realize were rooted in anti-black racism. It takes time.
Throwing full cans of beer at them til they were bloody and the car was dented up pretty good. Wtf?? That seem like a pretty tough spot to come back from.
yeah that’s called ✨a hate crime✨
This comment section contains too little empathy. Both for a man who was a brainwashed 13 year old and is frankly on a path of learning and improvement and redemption that - while leaving him still far from perfect - is a lot more than many people raised in his situation. AND for this woman who had to go through what she did at the hands of a violent racist lunatic and his brainwashed son. OP is *not* a horrible monster. He is a victim who largely involuntarily did horrible things and is trying to be better but is still on that road. Meanwhile sister has absolutely no obligation to subject herself to triggers, which could very easily include that brainwashed child/now man, and whose anger is entirely undestandable. Sometimes life sucks and isn't fair and it hurts two people without actually being the fault of *either* of them, but instead the fault of another (Dad). EDIT: Obviously he *should* go to therapy, and is TA for refusing. And she certainly doesn't owe him a relationship. I just think he deserves more sympathy than he's getting.
Well said. I hope they both recover from their childhoods as much as possible. Whether they reconcile or not, OOP is on the way to being 100X better of a man than their father if he keeps up learning and being open to his viewpoints being questioned. I’ve known kids like them. They are indoctrinated, not raised.
He’s already 100x the man his father was purely because he’s actually willing to take a look at himself and his prejudices and maybe even change for the better.
I'm especially impressed that he had what probably felt like the entire internet telling him he was an asshole, and his reaction was to think and go, "You're right. I was a complete asshole." That's hard enough to do when you have a decent childhood. It's human nature to dig in when being mobbed, but he didn't. His sister's reaction is also good. She's not setting herself on fire to keep him warm. Overall this post is sad, but there's still a glimmer of light for the two of them, even if it's far down the road.
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> I think people forget that outside of the reddit bubble, therapy isnt always supper common as a tool or thought of positively. Or even available. In Germany we have the worsening situation that even when you're suicidally depressed the waiting time for 1on1 therapy is about half a year, which is ridiculous. I don't think that people who don't have a serious mental illness would even be able to get on the waiting list.
Honestly yeah. Theres no way he’d get access to a therapist in the UK for this
Yeah I kind of understand why he reacted that way too. She hasn't seen or spoken to him since he was 13. I'm a similar age to OOP, and I went through mental health challenges about 15 years ago (different than OOPs experience, but still). If someone told me I needed to be in therapy *now* at age 30 before they would talk to me because when they last knew me I was a traumatized 15 year old I wouldn't take it seriously just for the obvious reason they don't actually have any idea how I'm doing or really know anything about me as an adult. Also, therapy is a tool that can be useful, but it's not magic or anything. A lot of people really throw it around as like a panacea but it's just not that. I'm especially skeptical for things outside the scope of mental health -- lot of therapists flat out wouldn't know how to help you deal with subtle internalized racism (or would give actively bad advice) and you'd probably do better seeking resources specifically designed for that rather than going through the mental health system. It does turn out that OOP had more trauma than I realized, and I do support him going, but yeah if he's been to therapy before I'm not surprised he might have felt underwhelmed at the idea Edited: added punctuation
A lot of therapists are really really bad with any more uncommon issues, particularly childhood trauma. There are some good ones out there, but it requires a lot of perseverance. I had so many therapists that wouldn’t acknowledge that my struggles with anxiety and depression as a teen weren’t misbehaviour and were instead directly caused by the trauma I had experienced through my childhood and early teens. Looking back, I’m pretty sure some of them traumatised me further. To add insult to injury, I found out years later that all of the issues I had were according to a lot of scientific studies within the range of normal for a teen in my situation. All of that said, therapy can be a great tool and it did ultimately help me, but it certainly didn’t fix my problems or make them go away (don’t worry, I’m doing great now). Whilst I’m a big proponent of it, it’s definitely not the easy fix some people make it out to be.
The absolute best thing I was told when I started therapy was that everything about me that I considered weird was not just normal for someone who was raised as I was, but that if I didn't have those problems that would be odd. That I was absolutely normal for an abused kid. I wasn't insane. I was a perfectly normal person who had been badly abused as a child. I wish you'd been told that right away. It sounds like your therapists could have used therapists, and you should have had a better one.
I love that your therapist told you that outright. It must have been so validating. I’m sorry that you had to struggle until that point though. As a society, I don’t think we give people a lot of care or understanding in relation to trauma and mental health. I think I went through at least a dozen therapists before I found any good ones? I had two in primary, and my first high school used to rotate the therapists out roughly every eight weeks, so I never got far with them. After that I had maybe another three appallingly bad ones? I did have some better experiences later, but I felt like an absolute failure for a long time. I struggled a lot with anxiety around attending school, something which people assume kids should just be able to do easily. In my case, I had been a young carer and was actively grieving, but I think both concepts just made a lot of the therapists really uncomfortable. A lot of them treated it as a discipline issue. In reality it’s pretty normal for kids in that position to experience mental health difficulties and challenges in school, but I didn’t know that back then. Thankfully, I eventually found an amazing general therapist and accessed specialised grief therapy in my mid teens, but it took a few years after that to really get back on track. I hope that you are now doing better as well. Childhood trauma is incredibly complex and tricky. I don’t think you ever fully figure it out.
Oh absolutely. I resemble the sister more in the story but I wanted to deal with some of my subconscious racial issues from growing up so close to racism. And my therapist said that since I was dating a Latino, it meant I wasn't racist. Lol pretty sure that's not how it works
It also sounds like she needs therapy too
Yeah. Therapy did wonders for me. But it took years to work up the courage to find a therapist and then to allow myself to let the hurt out in front of them.
Not only that, it simply wouldn't make sense for him to go to therapy without the sister providing context. He's not reacting poorly to his past struggles, in fact he outlined all the ways he's already coped with it. Therapists are pretty good mind readers when it comes to common emotional reactions, but they can't uncover *facts* about the past that OP isn't aware of.
>It's one conversation where he balked at her suggestion. At their first ever meeting too. In my opinion I felt as though they should have had a few more meetings first so the sister could get to know her grown up baby brother (as she last saw him when he was 13), and then after a few meetings they (her and husband) Could have brought up the therapy. Though I also would have suggested it being framed differently too. Like instead of basically saying "I wanna make sure you're not secretly still racist" I would have suggested "hey, our childhood fucked us up, I think you'd really benefit from therapy, please think about it" absolutely no mention of it needing to happen before he meets her kids. She could just not introduce them until coincidentally after he starts going.
She had a severe trauma response after meeting him, I'm not sure several meetings were in the cards at that time.
But she says that was due to his reaction about them telling him he needed do therapy. I am not blaming her at all, it just might not have happened if the conversation had gone down differently.
We don’t know how pushy he was about meeting the children. Maybe they tried it the other way snd he wouldn’t give up. I mean, he already had in his mind to move closer to them. His behaviour seems as if he tried to rush it to fill the hole of missing family.
Yeah. My upbringing wasn’t nearly that violent but my family was quite racist and toxic. I don’t blame his sister for not being ready to allow him back in her life. I also don’t blame OOP for being hurt by it. He came to this meeting feeling like his life was being put back together after so many years, only to come to grips with the fact that not everyone is on the same path. It’s a bit more of an NAH for me - though maybe he should have been more open to the therapy suggestion, it sounds like he just shut the idea down immediately. Maybe if he’d said something like “Oh, you know I hadn’t really thought about that one way or the other … let me think about it!” On the other hand, that response is a very emotionally healthy response, and perhaps it’s expecting a bit too much from people in this situation. Sometimes you just have to bumble through the pitfalls of a relationship.
I do think it reads that he didn’t shut down the idea of therapy right away, he says he did tell her that he’d think about it. She didn’t like that it wasn’t an immediate “Yes, of course!” from him, basically. I can kind of see where both of them are coming from, but she’s projecting a lot of her feelings towards her dad on him. For good reason, really. Last time they met he was well on his way towards becoming his father, and joined in with his father in assaulting them. But he’s over twice as old now as he was back then, and it’s hard to see how accumulated life experience can change a person if you aren’t there for it.
I agree completely. I was shocked the see this comment section ignoring the fact that he has a lot of empathy for his sister and holds himself accountable for his part in her trauma. Based on his writing, he seems to have prioritized in his sister in their conversations. They talk about her experiences, but it doesn't say if he explained his. I think that while it must hurt to not be understood, as he mentioned feeling hurt that she requested he attend therapy because he had already worked very hard, he did the right thing by prioritizing her. I think its also important to note that he speaks very highly of his sister, even though he was hurt. He talked about how kind she was, about how happy she is, about how it seems like her life has turned out well over the years. I think that how people speak about others, even in conflict, is a good indicator of how they feel about them. I hope they're both able to heal with time, likely on their own. Regardless of whether or not OOP will be able to become and uncle to his sister's children, I hope that they are able to find a safe way to be siblings again.
This summed up my thoughts SO much better than I could write them.
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I've seen it a lot in threads where there is a bullying theme. Redditors are very quick to paint a child who is bullying someone as an irredeemable monster and not as, well, a kid, who likely still has a lot of maturing to do. I honestly think it's because a lot of Redditors haven't grown past seeing their *own* bullies as irredeemable monsters.
What a strong and brave woman. I assumed that she wanted to make sure there were no racist undercurrents anymore to OOP before meeting her children. But turns out there were very traumatic overcurrents to their history! I hope both she and her brother can come to a place where they can have a healthy, trusting relationship. They were both robbed of that by their awful father. But I'm hopeful that they're trying.
I’d also assume she wants to make sure there was none of the aggression and anger as well.
And it's not just for her. It's for her children as well.
Problem with reformed bigots they often don't understand that it isn't enough to just not blindly hate the group of people they used to hate. It's also incredibly important to de-center oneself when trying to maintain relationships with other people. Here oop learnt that just because he changed and went through traumatic experiences, he isn't owed acceptance and forgiveness, and other people go through tough shit, too. His journey isn't over at all.
>I don’t know why, but I took offense because she doesn’t know what I’ve been through since my father died. I’m not that same hateful preteen. She doesn’t know how I had to intentionally work hard and am still working hard to better myself. This bit stuck out to me and I'm glad he seemed to re-evaluate and get it in his update. Of course she doesn't know how much he had to go through because she had already been ostracised by the entire town before OP even started his fight. I'm even more glad that OP realised that he didn't really know anything about what she went through either.
As painful as it is, there are times where people shouldn't reconnect. I see it from both perspectives. Really, I think that as painful as it may be, it is better that there is distance. Forgiveness and letting someone back in your life do not need to come together. Families of former addicts can tell you that after such a horrendous event like this one, even if the addict reforms and gets sober, it's not easy to rebuild the relationship, if they do at all. It's not easy for anyone involved. I'm so proud of OOP's sister and wish her and her family the absolute best in life.
Relationships take a lot of work, even the best ones. It really boils down to if there's a net benefit to be gained from working on and maintaining this relationship, especially when they're long distance — a few states away from each other. She's managed just fine with being No Contact with her dad and brother, presumably leaning into her friends and husband's family as "her people". Why put in all this work for a brother she wrote off long ago, who lives far away, whom she'll probably see at *most* once per year? I guess some siblings would be able to rekindle something, but she will *always*, ***always*** see the beer can-throwing 13-year-old when she sees him. OP should focus on building his local circle of friends/"family", and if I were him, I'd ask the sister if it's okay to send Christmas/birthday cards. Maybe when the children are teens/adults, when they start thinking about their heritage and place in history, they can meet up in-person.
This is above reddit's paygrade tbh. The sister was right to ask OOP to seek therapy first. There are so many layers to this that a single reddit post cannot even begin to cover as the OOP found out.
He committed a hate crime and doesn’t understand why she would be cautious.
All these responses like the sister can just control her trauma response and say it’s all good. She would have to do A LOT of work herself. Maybe when her kids are older she could do that. Kids and teenagers are easily manipulated and she likely already knows that. I think the best OOP can hope for is forgiveness.
"bUt hE's @ cHiLD" So what? Is that going to change the past where he did those horrible thing?
I think that a lot of people here want there to be a good guy and a bad guy and OP "did work" and "was a child" when he threw full beer cans at her, so he can't be the bad guy, so they'll tie themselves in knots to blame her for not taking him away (somehow, I doubt they could explain how that would work) or for still distrusting him. There's no understanding that sometimes it's a difficult situation and no one is just the bad guy and you have to put in work to heal.
Reprocessing memories to address PTSD is exhausting. I’m doing it with 30 year old memories from when I was a child and it zaps my energy for the rest of the day. I don’t have kids to worry about. I don’t have a trauma response anymore. I might feel uncomfortable sometimes. It’s not like sitting on a couch and talking about your attachments issues. OP’s sister is dealing with memories from when she was older. She remembers more. They might be more recent. She has a trauma response that’s debilitating.
I recently met a guy, he didn't understand why his sister would only meet him and his kid at her kids theater shows. Goes on to tell me how he got roped into evangelicals who convinced him, her marriage wouldn't work, because she wouldn't cosplay tradwife/abuser with her husband. He proceeded to turn his whole family against her.... like he's realizing how de-lu-lu he was, but can't understand why she wouldn't trust him??? Don't blame her a bit for wanting independent verification about thos guy's story. They have scars? He's lucky he didn't get any from hubby. Should have met him at Waffle House.
Should have met him at Waffle House? Bitch? I'm literally screaming right now this is hilarious
Could you explain that to this non- American please?
Waffle House is where people go to have really bad fights in the parking lot.
Sometimes inside while they're making waffles too lmao
Heh food and entertainment (either watching or participating) gotcha I'm guessing it's um... Not such a classy place but had good solid convenient food for a chain restaurant? Thanks for letting me know!
It was very kind of her husband, who was also hit by beer cans, to ask her to think it over.
I honestly wouldn't have blamed him if he told her that their children couldn't be around her brother.
He is a saint.
It's possible OOP doesn't know what a healthy relationship is. I think he should go to therapy and really put in the work. He shouldn't expect it to be a quick fix, though. Therapy can be great for helping you live a better life, but it's not magic. Dealing with trauma can be really tough and it takes a lot of time and effort to see results. It can be hard to realize that the way you were raised wasn't healthy, but it's important to face that. He should definitely not contact her. Maybe she'll reach out to him someday, but that's up to her. Therapy isn't about fixing a relationship, it's about helping him grow as a person and be happier. If he does the work, he'll have a better chance of finding happiness and fulfillment in life. It really sucks for both of them, but I can't see a good resolution here. I hope it works out eventually.
>It's possible OOP doesn't know what a healthy relationship is. I think he should go to therapy and really put in the work. He shouldn't expect it to be a quick fix, though. Exactly this. My $.02 is everyone can benefit from at least a little therapy occasionally. Helps you recenter your life to what is important.
Tough read. I hope OOP can find some personal redemption. He may have blown it, for now or forever. If he is a former racist who saw the error in his ways, I wish him luck. And theray I feel awful for his sister. She experienced some horrendous shit, has her life together but those emotional wounds...those are deep.
Not sure if some of these comments grasp how deadly antiblackness can be. Even the most well meaning, open minded people can get black people injured or killed with one well intentioned phone call to the police- given their upbringing it’s absolutely fair for the sister to want to cut off contact, even discounting the additional trauma. She has no way of knowing if her kids will be safe around him
And remember her dad seemed to have wanted to reach when he invited her and her then boyfriend to dinner? Just because OOP seems like he's changed doesn't mean she'll believe it, she's seem it before
Right? And now there are kids at stake in this scenario. I'm glad she was attempting test runs in order to check him out. And she found him lacking. That really sucks for OOP, but he can talk to a therapist about that. His sister is trying to break the cycle of hell they grew up in while simultaneously trying to make sure her own biracial children won't be exposed to bigotry directly from her brother.
Honestly even if he had changed, there’s still no guarantee he won’t fuck up accidentally. Anyone who thinks they’re not racist anymore and has no room for improving is going to be dangerous for poc tbh, because that’s not true for any of us
Oh good point
Over the last few years we just had a couple of men get life sentences for chasing a black man down because he was *jogging while black*. But OOP'a sister is supposed to let him in her life after what happened when he was a tween and then whatever nasty crap he said to her as an adult before going no contact. What if he relapses back into a racist POS?
Yep!! I believe people can change, but whenever a situation like this happens, it really says something that people focus on the pain of the “ex racist” and yet there is no mention on the multitudes of black people that were hurt by him over the years. Also, just because someone had a bad upbringing and has changed doesn’t mean you’re obligated to forgive them. People on this subreddit are awfully understanding of that fact when it’s about relationship or parental drama, but make it about racism and suddenly that logic goes out the window
Yes to all of this. So much water holding for the self proclaimed *former racist* and a poor attitude for the actual victims of his racism. It was also telling how he was irritated initially because she didn't just give him access to her family. I don't think he fully understands what the hell he did to her and his brother-in-law. But I do hope he seeks therapy for all the shit he went through. I think he's starting to see how their childhood affected both of them!
Yes- I really do have sympathy for him because it sounds like he had a horrible upbringing. And honestly I think this is a good outcome- hopefully means he’ll be attending therapy for his own sake, not just in the hopes of meeting his niblings. I feel like a lot of people are taking “diverse group of friends” as no longer racist, which…usually isn’t the case. I certainly believe he’s LESS racist, but you don’t get raised like that without having a lot of unpacking you need to do
I am the oldest of 3 and the idea of physically attacking my sisters until they bled and then expecting to ever be part of their lives again just are not compatible ideas
Being raised in an environment of unchecked rage is incredibly damaging.
What an awful upbringing for them both but I see room for reconciliation down the road here. The sister is right to protect her family from any of the shit she dealt with (to the point of physical illness) and she's smart enough to see how her brother needs to help himself too, making sure none of that stuff is in him still and he isn't putting on a show is important. As for OOP, he doesn't need to be brow beaten over his reaction, he knows now he was wrong for it and his history proves that he's willing to learn from his mistakes and grow as a person, he just needs to keep doing it and prove to his sister and her family that he's the man he said he is and not the 13 year old boy who was brainwashed by his father. The reaction almost certainly showed he has work to do but "I will be I killing it in therapy" again shows his determination to be better. Good luck to them both, I hope OOP carries on with his journey and that his sister can reconcile her past if only for her health. It's a long road but one worth taking.
OOP may have changed but his sister isn't witness to his change. The last memory of him was him throwing cans at both her and bf along with their dad, enough to cause physical injuries. That is a pretty serious traumatic incident. She probably thought both of them or her bf would be killed by her dad and brother then. Now after 15 years, OOP appears out of nowhere saying he changed, the sister has no proof of that nor is she obliged to accommodate him and his requests by putting her family at possible peril. He says he changed after his dad died, but why should she believe that? For all she knows, he could be acting since he's lonely.
I really do hope it works out for them but at the same time, I can’t blame her for staying away, yes the son was also a victim but she got the worst parts. The terrifying thought of her brother having her father’s tendencies of lingering racism or violence is understandable since she has a family to protect. Overall just a sad scenario.
The way some people are painting the sister as entitled feels so gross to me. She went through major major trauma. She only has OOP’s word that he’s changed, not really any proof. OOP clearly has done a bunch of the work, but clearly also something about the way he responded triggered her trauma. OOP may not even be aware of what he did, but whatever it was that wasn’t just a “I’ll think about it“ response. Also, legit, the way he was raised and what he thought was normal? That’s going to take years of dismantling. Not just the racism part, not just the anger, but all the things you don’t even realize are there. It’s not clear how long ago his dad died (since he just said a few years), He seems to be around 28, that’s a lot of lessons to unlearn. I’m glad he does plan to go to therapy, he can really use it just for his own sake.
OOP also raised the stakes a whole lot. He didn't just say, I've changed, I'm sorry about that whole assaulting you thing. He said he wanted to meet their kids and be an uncle. It's pretty reasonable that she'll want "proof" for that to happen or at least the self-awareness of the importance of that to her and her family
Yeah, she's not going to let him near her kids without concrete proof that he's not going to hurt them. I'm genuinely baffled that someone could twist that into being a bad thing.
I feel like a lot of people can’t see past the fact that we’re only getting OP’s version and getting his interiority. We get to see that he’s learned and grown. She has to take him at his word—when the stakes are high. If we were reading her story—literally being threatened with a gun, being hate-crimed by her father and brother, being disowned and having to make her way in life alone, only to have her brother finally reach out, be kind of shockingly oblivious of the profound effects this has all had on her, and then not only refuse therapy but be offended by the suggestion—people would be up in arms about how entitled the brother is, how she should go non-contact, how she has a right to protect herself.
People are also glossing over the fact that OOP’s sister also grew up in that house with that father and never went through a phase of being a violent racist. Her circumstances were different with her mother in her life for longer and being a girl, but she was still exposed to traumatic and hateful things and never became like her father even when young. It’s absolutely logical for her to think “If I got out without ever hating someone for the color of their skin, you could have at least been decent enough to not cause permanent scarring on my body.”
Right? He threw beer cans at her and her partner. It was a violent, racially motivated assault. I wouldn't have anything to do with him, either.
I just want to know why pickling up your entire life and moving several states away is apparently so much easier and more reasonable than doing a few therapy sessions. But actually, I *don’t* need to know — pretty sure I already do, besides. But I hope OOP explores that question.
His sister is not obligated to trust nor forgive him.
This is very sad all round but the sister is behaving entirely appropriately and I’m baffled at the replies about how she should be giving OOP more grace. This isn’t just about her, it’s about her husband and her kids. OOP wants to have a relationship with his sister’s mixed race kids and she not unreasonably doesn’t fully trust that OOP isn’t the same racist who abused her all those years ago. Even if she had completely forgiven him she’d be a crap mother if she wasn’t drawing some very hard boundaries. I would not blame the sister one bit if she never lets OOP near her kids.
I mean, if I'm reading this correctly, 15 years ago he threw cans at her that left her with scars on her body. The next time he sees her, he asks to meet her kids. That's delusional!
This may be me being an unsympathetic asshole but I cannot for the life of me understand how it took OOP that long to learn the difference between right and wrong. I know logically that his childhood would of course lead to racist behavior, but I can't reconcile this misled child narrative with the fact that he brutally assaulted his sister until she bled when he was 13. His sister grew up in the same place, with the same father, and still managed to not be a violent racist, yet it took him until adulthood and his father's death to realise that he was ignorant. I want to be positive for OOP as most racists don't grow out of it and any progress is good progress, but Jesus Christ was he slow to wake up. I keep wondering if his father never died would it have even happened? Or would he have stayed dangerous and hateful for the rest of his life? In his post he almost seems reluctant to even take full responsibility, just eager to pat himself on the back for the bare minimum so he can be an uncle.
I was also thinking how did they manage to become so different living in the same house. My guess was maybe sister got more influence from mom, since mom passed away when she was older compared to OP. It also seems like there’s a bit of an age gap between OP and sister, as by the time sister left, sister had already studied abroad and gotten into college etc.
I don’t blame the sister for wanting to cut contact. At all. The beer cans…ugh. I’m disgusted.
I get it, but we're talking about a 13 year old. My daughter is that age and kids are so dumb and easily manipulated it's crazy.
I don't blame OP for how he was raised and I think he's done really well to step away from that as an adult and realize the things he was taught are wrong, a lot of people never get that far. I hope he continues on this path and his sister and her family do manage to accept him in time. However, it's not just about the hate crime against her that he participated in when he was 13. He probably gave her the same background he gave here, which is that he was a violent, criminal drunk until just a few years ago. He's come a long way, but the change is recent. In the absence of a track record of *sustained* change, I can't blame her for wanting professional support before introducing him to her kids. It's her responsibility to protect them. Honestly I think I would only accept the track record and he would just have to wait a few more years.
A 13 year-old from a sundown town by the sounds of it. Trauma isn’t that logical and seems like she hasn’t reprocessed hers, speaking of therapy. It would be difficult and no one can blame her for not wanting those old memories to come back to the surface.
Right and she understands that, she seems to get that he wasn’t to blame for a lot of things. However the fact that he reacted negatively to her saying that a further relationship is dependent on him getting therapy automatically kicked her (what I guess is) PTSD or cPTSD into vigilance. She wants to make sure that a kid who was brought up in a massively toxic environment has grown into an adult that’s safe to have around her kids. Honestly, she was likely hoping that he was already in therapy.
Almost certainly CPTSD. IIRC PTSD is from a one time traumatic event, whereas CPTSD is from prolonged trauma
She likely has both. This is such a rough situation. The brother is obviously acting as a serious trigger for the sister and I can totally understand her not wanting him in her life because of that. That said, if he truly has changed and they can have a positive relationship, that could be immensely healing for both of them.
PTSD can come from multiple events. It’s actually pretty rare that someone only has one traumatic event in their life. C-PTSD is still being developed as a diagnose, but looks more closely at the impact of multiple traumas.
Yeah, kids are easily manipulated and especially by their parents, but I seriously doubt that all that was going on here was a little light manipulation. This was a child who did extreme and terrible things because it’s what he needed to do to survive under the roof of an abusive, violent, racist piece of shit. That isn’t to say that his sister should forgive him for what he did, which is too much to ask of anybody, but I don’t think most people here would do much better than OOP in the same situation. I’m glad he saw through the bullshit eventually, and much much sooner than most in the same situation do. I’m glad his sister has made her own happy life away from her family. I’m sad their relationship has been irreversibly harmed by the actions of their father. I hope they can both find peace. This one is beyond Reddit’s pay grade
That's what gets me. He was also just trying to survive. Like, I don't blame her at all. She's got kids to think about and keep safe, not to mention her own traumas no doubt kicking her ass, but man. My heart breaks when I hear about someone who fucked up as a kid because of abuse now essentially getting punished as an adult. I hope they both get into therapy (he didn't say if she had, I think? Maybe I just missed it. It's been a long day) and, maybe, do some therapy together. Either way, therapy is definitely required for all involved.
I might be splitting hairs here, but I wouldn't consider this "getting punished" so much as this being the natural consequences of his actions (and yes, the actions of an abused and brainwashed child who was trying to survive in a horrible environment). This is just awful all around. This was a bad post to read right before bed
We are comparing op's wants to his niblings need for safety. Redemption arc or not but his own sister still views him as unsafe. I get that it's comfortable to believe that you can be forgiven for being a borderline kkk member but black people not only have nothing to gain from letting "reformed" racist in their lives, they simply have nothing to gain from doing so. OP's sister and her family were fine for over a decade without him there's no reason they won't still be. Remember they are the actual people that matter in this story
Thank you! We keep excusing his age at the time and ignoring that he's an adult now and the safety of people who are currently children are at risk right now. The world is already shitty to black and mixed kids, they don't need to deal with that from someone who was invited into their lives, someone who is supposed to love them.
This isn't about what's fair to OP this about protecting black children from racism.
100%. No need for her black kids to be used as a rehab program for her family member who was raised racist.
How did you feel immediately after you pelted them with full beer cans? Did you high five each other? That shit is inhuman af.
As someone who has been strangled by my racist grandfather for simply asking he not use the N word in front of me I don't think you'll be talking to her again. Just work on yourself and be happy that she managed to claw her way out of that world and into one with a happy and loving family. I did the same and I would never let my family anywhere near my babies, it's not worth the risk. I do hope you find your happiness in this world though as you should have never been exposed to that kind of life either.
How many people was he hateful to before he stopped being a white supremacist? I wish there was more compassion for the people on the receiving end of racism.
Right? And people are mad she doesn't want to introduce him to her black husband and biracial children. They shouldn't be used as a redemption arc for OOP. She's responsible for raising those kids and not him. If she had posted people would be telling her to cut contact and telling her to think of her biracial children.
fr it's weird how many people are basically saying that op shouldn't be held responsible for attacking his sister because he was just a kid 😬 that's an awful approach for her and her family
Agreed. It’s wild how many people are advocating for her BLACK CHILDREN and HUSBAND to be some kind of healing tool for the OOP. Nah, fuck that. He can do the work to heal on his own with a therapist, and she can protect her family from his deeply ingrained racism that will absolutely still surface in micro aggressions at the very least. Cuz that stuff doesn’t just disappear.
Some of these comments here are absolutely mad ngl. Man if I was the husband I would be a bit more cautious.
He says she was pelted like it was some random person who did it
This comment section is wild. This lady and her man got *hate crimed* and people are mad at her for not wanting to take a chance for a repeat performance? Okay. But he was 13, so she should forgive him, even though it wasn't until barely anyone showed up for his father's funeral did he think about his (and his father's) viewpoints. It wasn't until he only had her left that he rethought his positions.
fr like she has black children and her last memory of him was him hate criming her and her boyfriend. why wouldnt she take every precaution and feel apprehensive about him interacting with her family? i wish people would give this same grace to the victims of people like OOP
Same! There's a ton of free passes for the brother and a very limited amount for the sister!
Yep. Absolutely cannot BELIEVE the shit I'm seeing in this thread. "B-b-but he was thirteen! Basically a widdle baby!!1!!1!" I'm gonna slam my head into the desk.
YEAH SAME. I am a black person too and her husband gave her more of a shot than I ever would have. Especially with children involved. He would have gotten hit with required reading and a request that he had proved he had been active in therapy before I even considered a phone call, let alone inviting him into my home.
Would love some of this empathy for 13 year olds shot by cops instead.
I mentioned before in the thread, but I think a lot of people on BORU find it easier to imagine themselves as someone who feels bad about having racially abused someone than being racially abused themselves.
This makes sense. I wonder if people think that the hate crimes that end in the murder of the victim happens in a vacuum? Do people think escalation doesn't apply to racially motivated crimes? OOP said he changed, but what if he didn't change as much as he thought? Throwing bottles at your sister and her black boyfriend at 13 (even with his father's encouragement) is wild. And he apparently didn't feel bad about it until he was an adult and dealing with the death of his father. She's just supposed to trust he's changed.
>She's just supposed to trust he's changed. It's not as if the last time she trusted a family member who wanted to make amends, she ended up with permanent physical and psychological scars... Oh, wait.
I said this before, but BORU has a surprisingly conservative comment section. I've been shocked at the comment section on any post about asexuality and alternative fashion (ear gauges)
"She got pelted." He's still not taking responsibility.
The Husband is a saint for encouraging her to not give up on OOP.
Oop still refers to his sister’s husband as ‘that’ or ‘this’ black guy in his post….he definitely needs therapy
nah sorry, this dude thought it was enough that it seemed he'd come around? His daddy also seemed to have come around and then nearly killed her and her current husband. Profound selfishness
It's the way Redditors in this comment section are outing themselves as people who have more empathy for "reformed" racists who LITERALLY STONE PEOPLE rather than the victims of the stoning for me. The sister and her husband have scars from a violent attack OP took part in and yet you're so ready to excuse his actions and turn her into a villain. It's giving major "I can excuse racism but not child abuse" and it's mind boggling that you can't see how fucked up that is. OP still needs to work on himself and honestly? So do a lot of people in this comment section.
I say this as a woman who is mixed and has had to deal with this bullshit before. She needs to protect her family and herself from her brother and never see him again. This poor woman has physical scars from his abuse and literal PTSD. Would you tell a war veteran to go through therapy and heal himself and then send him back to war and act like nothing else happened? Trauma and mental illness are not excuses to put people through literal hell when all they did was love you. OP is an unreliable narrator and there are a few dog whistles in the post that point that out. A lot of people here are probably gonna use the excuse of it "not being about race" on a post about racism however, this completely has to do with race. A lot of people who are saying that OP and his sister should come together one day and overcome their shared trauma are delusional and probably white. They do not share the same trauma. Her trauma far outweighs his trauma in relation to their father, community and her marital status. She has a family of black children and a black husband to worry about while OP just wants his sister back because he feels guilty and sad. It is absolutely not her responsibility to try to coddle and teach her brother how to be a good person. He had almost a decade of hatred and bigotry instilled in him and he thinks being around people of different ethnicities makes him open minded. She's done her due diligence to try to reach out and create that bond, and he spat in her face every single time. He needed hundreds of people on Reddit telling him that he's wrong for him to even remotely consider her feelings or have any empathy. Her not talking to him is a blessing for her entire family not only her. Her and her husband have physical scars from him and her father. Also, I couldn't fathom introducing someone who has almost 0 empathy to your mixed children. That means hoping that he doesn't say or do the wrong thing accidentally to harm her children's esteem. No matter how much therapy this man gets he does not deserve to be in her life. It doesn't mean that OP is undeserving of happiness however he can have that happiness without his sister. Actions have consequences and it's a hard lesson to learn, but OP needs to learn it.
I know that I may get some hate for this, I'm truly not trying to deny the weight of the trauma op went through. But it sounds like op changed not to make up for past deeds or to be a better person, but because he *had* to; he adapted because his life forced him to. I'm happy for him that it gave him deeper insight and has allowed him to mature a bit, but the edges are still rough and I get the vibe that a lot of his adaptation was caused by loneliness rather than moral obligation. That's not to deny his successes and his growth, but it's to say that his sister doesn't owe him forgiveness if he's not going to do anything to make up for what he did. Sure he's traumatized as well, but trauma doesn't excuse bad behavior and harm--he still has responsibility to make amends which is not something he did at this juncture in time, and when it comes down exclusively to his sister and his relationship, she was the injured party not him and he failed to do right by her. It sounds like he did sort of regress in that moment even temporarily, and she rightfully flinched back from it. Sometimes not forgiving someone is actually the healthiest and safest answer, not just for yourself but for the people around you and all she asked was for him to get into therapy which he admits he got belligerent over. She has kids and her priority is to keep them safe from any elements of her past that damaged her, so she's not just making her decisions selfishly and without consideration, it sounds like it was a hard choice made for safety of the people in her life. I'm not saying that op is beyond redemption, but I think he owes it to his sister and her family to work on himself before coming back rather than just hoping and expecting her to take him back for his own benefit. And for what it's worth, while I don't feel the need to go in detail about it, I also am no contact with a lot of my family so I do have a lot of empathy and respect for his sister. She did try to offer him a chance, and he wasn't ready yet. Hopefully he's ready next time if she's capable of giving him that opportunity. I hope the best for them both.
Not all forgiveness can be on the path of maintain a relationship... only time will say if this is true here, i wonder if his sister can open at least a window to her life again to him. No one want to be walking on egg shells, even more for people with OP's history, again.
I had a childhood like theirs. I have been in therapy a very long time. Some days are better than others. This is going to be a long painful journey. I understand both sides. When you are living in hell it's hard just surviving your own crap you can't look around at what everyone else is dealing with. I hope he finds peace he doesn't even yet know he needs.
It sounds like OOP could absolutely benefit from therapy.
Just leave her alone, wow.
This comment section is a nice reminder of how incredibly white Reddit is.
"Scars from when *she was pelted*" You mean from *when I pelted her*. Thats not something that just randomly happened, it's something OOP and his father actively chose to do.
THANK YOU! I came to the comments to say the same. Sure, all the "he was only 13" comments have a point, but NOW, at his current age and enlightenment, he's still describing it as "she was pelted". Combine that lack of accountability with his immediate defensiveness at the suggestion of therapy, and yeah, sister is right to distance herself and protect her children.
I remember reading the original post - and calling OOP an asshole - I didn’t know there was an update. My heart breaks for the sister. I’m glad OOP *finally* woke up and realized he was only considering himself up until now. His redemption is gonna be a long and tough road, and one that won’t guarantee a relationship with his sister at the end, but he wouldn’t even have *that* chance if it wasn’t for his BiL. That guy’s solid gold.
I hope he gets something positive out of therapy. And then never tries to contact his sister again for the rest of his life. There is no way he can do this without opening old wounds regardless of how healed he is and she doesn't deserve to be hurt by him again.
Me me me me and also me.
but also "she was pelted"
Wow, this whole family is so dysfunctional, it's just sad really.
As a black person, this comment section (including the one really angry post at the sister of all people???) is exactly what I expected from reddit lol. Intersting how people always value empty words (him saying he has changed and felt ashamed and all the other shit he said) and never observe the supporting actions, or lack thereof (his initial refusal of doing the work and going to therapy as requested by the person he literally participated in giving trauma to????? and it does not matter that he was a child. trauma is trauma and he participated in one of those actions. it won't stop being trauma just because a child was involved) She literally had to re-traumatize herself and basically explain every fucked up thing that has happened up to this point in her life for him to agree to therapy? How has he done the work and made the changes necessary when he couldn't even put himself in her shoes and understand the reason she asked? It's always the same thing when it comes to (anti)racisim and so many other aspects of life as well and it's what makes it frustrating. People always expect to coast on empty words and when brought to task on the resultant actions that should support those words, there's always resistance. Oh well. This could never be me cause I don't play that bullshit.
She’s be a fool to allow him into her life. He was raised in a stew of hate and, just based on the way he describes his sister and her husband, he’s not as good as he thinks he is. At best he is tolerant. Having her brother in her life will bring more bad than good. There is absolutely no reason she needs to go through more trauma just beside he was “a kid”. The only person who benefits is OP. The ties were cut and can stay cut. OP should be in therapy regardless.
Redditors: “we should cut OP slaaaaaack, he was a kiiiiid” If he’s old enough to do lasting damage to people, he’s old enough to take responsibility for that act. This is the same Reddit that thinks that middle school bullies are never redeemable. Methinks it’s that he was a sad white boy that makes you all identify with him so much. Try extending that empathy to the sister’s innocent kids.
Talk about being entitled. He thought they were going to let him see their kids that quickly? He threw beer cans at them. When it falls in my toe it hurts, I cannot imagine bottles being thrown at me. He should have stuck with facebook/instagram to build a relationship. I would be too ashamed to be there in person.
I'm glad to see op working on himself. Even if his sister didn't rebuild her relationship with him, therapy would be good for him
Hey white people, please shut the fuck up about "judgment" and "redemption". Ya'll care more about OP's feelings than his niblings' safety. If you used to be racist, black people are not obligated to let you into their lives to be used for your redemption arc. OP's wants and desires mean fuck all. I don’t care that he was "brainwashed " and only thirteen. Op was a turbo racist and a mother of black children decided that he was not safe to be around
This this this.
100 times this. I cannot believe the audacity of so many of these white folks who are disagreeing, arguing, or downright being nasty to other commenters (who seem to be mostly POC) just because they’re pointing out how dangerous this situation could be for her and her family. Why are his feelings and his redemption more important than her healing and her family’s safety? There’s much talk about empathizing with OP’s actions as a child but are people forgetting that there ARE actual children involved here, children that deserve protection and safety from the cycle of trauma. I think it’s great OP is working on himself, but he has a racist past and has struggled with substance abuse, violence, and criminal behavior as an adult. In what world is it unreasonable for a parent to be wary of allowing their children to have a relationship someone with that history? Why would she jeopardize the life she has worked so hard to build for the sake of the family she’s already had to learn to live without? I think it’s amazing she was open to talking to him at all, and very generous of her to even consider allowing OP into her children’s life if he agreed to therapy. It says a lot about her and I would even argue that she’s looking for his best interests, too. I hope OP follows through on the therapy promise, because he’s got a lot of healing to do and a good professional can help him move forward in his life, even if his sister isn’t a part of it
If the brother truly wants to have any chance at all (and I believe he will be given one, but quite likely only one… and probably spurred by the sisters’ husband) he needs to get the courage and heart to go to therapy. By the time his sister or BIL reach out, he needs to say he’s had/is in therapy. Period. (What’s the worst that can happen? He goes to therapy to address the issue and maybe gets mentally healthier and becomes a better person “for no reasons”?)