“At some point I came to realize that my parents did not really love me, but rather the person they imagined me to be, or the person they wanted me to be. I came to this conclusion when I realized they did not really know me. Not only that, they did not care to know me. They refused to listen, truly listen, preferring only to lecture and to deny. And if they did not know me, did not care to know me, how could they love me? No, what they loved was a mold they created in their own minds, and then sought to press me into.”
CC image courtesy of Flickr, Jackie.
HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Libby Anne’s blog Love Joy Feminism. It was originally published on Patheos on July 16, 2015.
Love. Love. Love. It seems to be all I hear about.
I was raised in an evangelical home. Between five and ten years ago I went through a time of incredible pain at the hands of my parents. They believed I was bound by God to obey them even as an adult, they freaked out when my beliefs began diverging from theirs, and they cracked down, hard. Their efforts to control and manipulate me can be safely termed emotional abuse. I cried so much during that time. I was still so young, and out on my own for the first time. I needed their love and support, not their rejection and their anger.
But they…
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whoeverwander 