Can't change her

"if my own mother cant love me for who I am, who in the world can?"

Lots of ppl, Em. Our moms are people too, and sometimes their judgement is as flawed as anyone's. It can hurt like hell, but there it is. In your post, it sounds like -you're- ok w/how you look- and that's the important part. You're right, you're an adult- you can live for You. Living well, triumphing- if your mom can't see that's good for you, then trust your own judgement and not hers. (And that's all hard. God knows I'm not the best at it myself, and I've had years of practice since 21!)

*strength*

Contre tout le monde, je me defendrai...je suis le dernier homme, je le resterai jusqu'au bout! Je ne capitule pas!
- Ionesco, Le Rhinoceros

It's fascinating to me how mothers seem to project their own body issues onto their daughters. My mother sounds like she was the opposite of yours, insofar as she always compared me favorably to herself: "Oh, you're so much skinnier than I am. You have much bigger boobs," etc, but hearing that and seeing her constant weight loss led me to believe that the older I got, the more I should be dissatisfied with my body.

It's taken me a long time to even begin looking at my body more positively, and it sounds like you have made your own great start, even if your mother is projecting these awful standards onto you.

Sure your mother never hit you and as you say she is a "good person". But what she is doing to you has been just as damaging as any other form of abuse. She has convinced you that your not good enough for her standards and made you question if your even good enough for everyone else, instead of giving you the confidence that she should have. You have to do more then to just simply ignore your mother. You need to confront her and tell her how you feel.

I'm right with Brooke on this one.

Emotional abuse is abuse. It creates scars no less deep than physical abuse, and this sort of body pressure is always an even bigger hit for childhood sexual abuse survivors, who have had their bodies objectified from an apalling age already.

(That isn't to say there is any age at which being objectified is somehow acceptable. Rather, it is to say that when it happens at the youngest ages, when we have no way to contextualize it, or recognize it for what it is, we merely internalize it and assume it's about something wrong with us, rather than something wrong with the people doing the objectifying.)

I also have to chime in and say that if, before you leave for canada, you could find a way to call your mother out on this, it might be of real value to you. Alternately, it might feel safer to simoply write her a letter and send it once you're out of NZ.

What can you say? Well, "The way you treat me is hurtful and harmful," might be a good start. If you're feeling more ballsy, "Don't project your problems or fixations unto me," might be another. But ultimately, "That hurts," really should be enough, and if it isn't, all you can do is accept that she doesn't get it, protect yourself accordingly, seek support and make a better family than the one you;ve got out of friends. But in that, you might also want to make sure you're telling yourself, and knowing, clearly, that your mother isn't in the right here, nor are her barriers to really accepting and caring about you or anyone else about your failings: they're about hers.

On friday at dinner, we all had to meet up for dinner, my mum, my sister, my aunts and my sisters friends, because my sister is getting married in a few weeks. Her and my aunts starting saying things over the dinner table about how they wouldnt like me to be in the wedding party anymore because one of my sisters friends is prettier. I ended up getting up and leaving, which upset my mother a lot, which in turn upset my sister, so I ended up apoligizing. I dont like calling her out on it because she cries and says how I am never there for her like when her mother died etc (I was 12, and on school camp) And I just dont like upsetting her, or anyone.

I think some of the stuff she says is true because other people in my family say it to me too, so it cant be just her.

Heather, I think the letter from Canada could be a good idea because I can hide afterward lol. But if it upsets her there will be noone to look after her because I will be all the way over in Canada, so I just dont know what to do.

I think it might be helpful to you to remember that this is a grown woman, a whole person, and it doesn't benefit any whole, grown person to try and shield them from their own issues and the way they hurt the people around them. And this is a grown woman with FAR less crud to have to get over and work through than you, and a lot more privilege and means to do it.

Doesn't help them and sure doesn't help anyone else to take responsibility for their behaviour or totry and keep them from facing up to its effects. Imagine, if you will, if others had not made those sorts of allowances for these dynamics, and so your whole family had been supportive of you in your childhood and teens, to the point where you would have known, unquestionably, that if you had told about your abuse the very first time it happened, you would have been believed. Imagine how different -- how much better -- your life could have been.

I hope I'm not overstepping in this particular venue, but you and I both know that your mother sure hasn't done what IS her job of protecting you, of looking after you, of being supportive for you in the way a mother owes her child. You're not the mother here: that's supposed to be her. Clearly, she still hasn't figured that out, which is really tragic for you.

And your Mom is a pretty good manipulator: crying about you telling her not to say hurtful things to you is nothing more than very skilled deflection. That's textbook emotional manipulation: it's worked on you before, she knows it works, so that's what she does.

And girl, you have a dysfunctional family, in a dysfunctional environment: you know better than to presume that if they say something it must be true. (You also have a family and community which practices silencing of what is difficult or forces them to confront problems as a rule.) To put any stock in that sort of heinous conversation? Lordisa. Sounds like the stepsisters in Cinderella: when women talk that way about other women -- even when they're mothers and aunts, women who should be working hard to suppoort and care for their daughters and nieces -- they're just projecting their stuff unto you. So, the only truth in it is a) they clearly have low esteem themselves they're looking to build up by putting you down and b) they clearly don't care enough about anyone else to even take a minute to honestly examine that.

I don't know if you can bring yourself to be assertive enough to do this, but if you can, one approach I can suggest which I've found to be helpful over time when this sort of thing happens to me in my family (and it still does, now and then) is that rather than even talking about how it makes me feel, or trying to appeal to compassion that just isn't there, I will say, very firmly and clearly, "You may not speak to/about me or anyone else that way in my presence." Nothing more, nothing less. I've found it tends to work very well, especially if you can have a good poker face and look very clearly like you simply are not going to take that kind of crap, no matter what tricks someone might pull.

We haven't really talked about this much, Em, because for obvious reasons, when we talk, we talk far more about you than we do about me.

But one really cool effect that's started to come out of me really being the first person in my family to be very vocal about abuse where it existed, and about refusing to be victim to any of it, is that as the oldest of my generation of cousins, every time I go to a family function, more and more of them will pull me aside to ask about this stuff. It appears that I have begun to leave a legacy in a family that was generation after generation of abuse, that has started to bring that abuse to light, has provided at least one person everyone can look to and say, "Well SHE seems to be a really awesome person who is really happy doing her own thing she SHE told this family to shove it." More and more, the history of abuse in my mother's family is becoming less and less hidden, and from what I can gather, a lot of that is due to the very real power of just one person putting their foot down.

Not saying it's easy: it's anything but, and IME, it takes a LONG time for this process to bear fruit. But I think it's worth it, not just for you/me, but for everyone.

The trouble is on my Mum's side of the family there was no other abuse. That was all on my Dad's side. Also on mums side my sister and I are the only girls out of all of th cousins, all the rest (and there a lot) are boys, who dont really talk to my sister and I and were never expected to, we sat at different tables at christmas and we were not allowed to play in their games and stuff as kids, so getting any sort of support from anyone if I stood up to them is pretty unlikely. My sister doesnt like to get involved, she doesnt know what happened and she doesnt really talk to me that much.

I wasnt scared of my mum when the abuse first started, when he hurt me that first time, thats not why I didnt tell her, I was scared because he was going to hurt her and I didnt want that. But I wasnt scared to tell her. She was a good mother to me and she still is but she just has had a rough time and i think she gets disappointed with me about how I am and everything.

The thing I dont understand is how this can be about mums own issues about the way she looks and she is projecting them on to me, because she is beautiful, everyone always tells her she is good looking and she seems pretty confident in herself, which is why I find ithard to believe that this is about her and not about me and what I look like and that she is just not liking it.

(And Heather, Im sorry we talk about me so much when we talk, I will be more mindful of that when we talk next time)

One thing to keep in mind, Em, is that what that man did to you is not the only abuse in your family. The way your mom and aunts are treating you now is absolutely, no question about it, abusive. There is no call for your mom to treat you like that EVER, or for her to manipulate you like she has (and I'll second Heather--your mom is engaging in classic techniques of manipulation).

Why is your mom projecting things onto you? I can't tell you, and it might take years for you to figure that out, if ever, but she clearly has issues and is taking those issues out on you. Breaking from unhealthy family is difficult--I've been there too--but setting boundaries is crucial to your health. Heather's suggestion of simply saying "No, I will not stand for you talking like that in front of me" and then leaving the room or the house when it happens might well be a good idea.

You are most definitely in my thoughts, Em. Your mom might not be able to see what an amazing girl you are, but please know that you have an entire community here that thinks you rock!

(Em, per us talking, I've been here to counsel you all these years. You're who we're SUPPOSED to be talking about, sugar. No need for apologies!)

The thing I dont understand is how this can be about mums own issues about the way she looks and she is projecting them on to me, because she is beautiful, everyone always tells her she is good looking and she seems pretty confident in herself, which is why I find ithard to believe that this is about her and not about me and what I look like and that she is just not liking it.

I think you know enough by now to know that what women look like, and who tells women they're beuatiful often has all of nada to do with self-image. How any girls with EDs who can't get skinny enough are beautiful? How many women convinced they're ugly are beautiful? I've seen images of you, I've seen images of your mother. You're both beautiful, and for possibly different -- or maybe the same, how did her mother treat her? -- reasons, it's very clear both of you have self-image issues. Again, this is textbook: these issues aren't about what someone looks like.

Jenny already said it, but all of this IS abuse. Emotional abuse is real, and things like you're talking about herem and other things your mother has said and done over the years we've discussed are abuses.

And let's go ahead and face facts: your mother still refuses to believe you. Her disbelief of you, her lack of faith in you, respect for you and putting your word first -- over some man she isn't even related to, no less -- her daughter's word first are NOT the actions of a good mother. Most of us over the course of our lives, especially women, will have had a "rough time." That doesn't impede us from treating others with care, and there is no "how you are" to excuse her behaviour.

Again, you need to stop taking responsibility for other people's behaviour. I know it's hard, especially when you're reared with clear messages that you should do exactly that, but again, adults giving children those messages are again, enacting an abuse, because THEY are the adults, not you. I also know it's hard because you're so uncomfortable getting angry, and so long as you don't hold THEM accountable, it's easier to stay sad (and self-blame) instead of getting mad (and put the blame where it belongs).