This is the response I sent to SD20 after her involvement with CPS coming to our house about SD15 (see previous blog), and her years of blaming me for every possible thing that could possibly go wrong in her life. I'm tired of being the whipping boy, so I was trying to get her off my back. I have no hope of this meaning anything to her, but I sent it anyway.

SD20,

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to decide how to handle this. What is the right thing to do and can I say just the right thing? I’ve come to the realization that there is no right answer. Responding to your email really accomplishes nothing, it doesn’t make me feel better and I doubt that anything I can say will really make a difference to you.

I wish that I could say just the right thing that will make you understand, but I can’t. No matter what I say, I’m sure I will offend you, and you’ll go running to everyone and tell them “OMG JWSP said this”(or some version of this designed to make me look bad). That’s what I expect of you, because that’s all I’ve ever gotten. I wish I could tell you how disappointed I am in what you sent me, how it only made me more angry and showed me how little you understood and were affected by this. I hope, since some time has passed, that you would say it differently, but I don’t know.

What I do know, is that this situation has become all about me. All of the issues for the past three years have been about me. And none of this is REALLY about me, it’s about YOU. You think it’s about me, but that’s because it is easier to make it about me than to deal with your own issues and dysfunction. Your father shared your list from the other night with me, and what struck me about it was while it was a list of your issues with me, virtually none of them had anything to do with me. Your feelings about your mom, and feeling like you were raising your siblings are your issues and they need to be dealt with.

I’ve said from the beginning of this incident in January, that I am not willing to “work” on a relationship with you until you’ve worked on yourself in therapy and can address the real reasons behind your feelings and behavior. There really isn’t any point, until you’ve dealt with these things, nothing between us will ever improve.

I don’t think you understand where my anger comes from. First, I am angry at myself for allowing you to treat me this way for so long. You teach people how to treat you, and I have taught you poorly. I have too much self respect to allow it to continue. If we are going to have a relationship, it needs to be an adult/adult relationship, not a parent/child relationship. You are no longer a child, and I don’t have the same responsibility for you as I did when you were, or I have towards your siblings. An adult relationship has to be built on trust, honesty and respect, and at this point, I have none of those things for you, and you have demonstrated repeatedly that you have none of those things for me.

Secondly, I am angry at what you have done to my husband. This all seems to be swept under the rug and forgotten. You tried to have him arrested and his children taken away from him. If you knew him at all, you would know the severity of what you have done. You couldn’t have done anything that would hurt him more. You basically said, “I don’t love and trust you enough Dad, even though you’ve been there for me my entire life.” You can justify it by saying how scared you were at her age, or however you want, but you did what you did. You played the part you played, no one on this planet is responsible for that but you. Stop trying to excuse it away, there is no excuse.

Before this happened, you also have no idea how much you’ve hurt him. He loves me and I am his wife. He loves you and you are his daughter. Has it ever occurred to you the position you have put him in by the way you’ve treated me? Again, you were telling him “I don’t love and trust you enough, Dad that you have brought this woman into my life, your judgment isn’t good enough, I know better”.

I am the one that holds him when he cries because of what you’ve done, I was the one who was here defending him to the social worker and I am the one who will be here for him forever, no matter how hard you and your mother have tried to tear us apart. I have never asked him to choose between me and his children, and I never will. The person who asks him to choose will lose, I hope you remember that.

This is the short version, I’m not going to discuss your siblings or the extended families (I include my own) now. I don’t think you’re in a place that you can even begin to comprehend the impact you’ve made.

If there is anything you’re going to take away from this, let it be these things:

1.) Stop making this about me, I’m tired of it. It’s not about me it’s about you.

2.) Please continue to work on your relationship with your father. He loves you.

3.) Address your issues in therapy. I know it’s hard, it’s supposed to be. If it wasn’t you wouldn’t need it. People in a healthy mental place welcome it, they don’t hide from it.

I guess I’ve said what I needed to. I am going to share this with your father. I would ask that you don’t share this with anyone but your therapist, but you’re going to do what you’re going to do and I can’t control it. I’ve written this knowing that, and I haven’t said anything here I wouldn’t say to anyone else.

ME