The Home I Know: Ideology
Chapter 14
Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.
“We cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care. An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught that we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad.”1
~ bell hooks
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Losing everyone in my family all at once was too much, so I decided to soften my boundaries. As the distance between my mother, father, and me grew, my brothers began to reach out, especially the youngest, Patrick. I was like a second mother to him and he, like my only son. He began to fight for me, to invite me back into relationship.
“I miss you, Annie,” he said.
I chose to reconnect with him once I felt strong enough to hold all of his complexities — his doubts, his disbelief, his questions — under two conditions: one, he must respect my boundaries that he can’t share my address or my phone number with anyone, and two, that he needed to accept my choice that I would never return to the family. We talked on the phone every once in a while and then eventually met up here and there. I attempted to connect with other family members as well: aunts, uncles, cousins. The same rules applied.
When I heard the news that Pops was dying soon, my brothers and I met up with him in a restaurant near his home in Escondido, CA. My brothers had told me that the contents of the handwritten letter I mailed to my mother with my incest abuse disclosure had not been shared with my grandfather. I felt clear that I couldn’t tell him what happened now, not right before he died. Pops rolled in, now dependent on a wheelchair and oxygen, me towering over the mountain of this man who I used to climb up on the grass of the golf course just outside his house.
“Oh, Annie,” he said to me in a voice that surrendered gratitude. “Hi, Pops,” I bent over and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. We held each other for a good long time and cried. We caught up about more trivial things: what life had been like for the both of us, the friends I found, the career I chased. Nearing the end of the meal he requested:
“Annie, will you sing at my funeral?” He always loved it when I sang to him.
“Grandpa,” I said honestly, “You know I can’t attend, but I will find a way to sing for you.”
“Okay,” he grabbed my hand in pain-filled understanding.
Pops passed not long after. For his funeral, I recorded myself singing one of his favorite songs, “Panis Angelicus,” (The Bread of Angels), and sent it to Patrick to play on the day of the celebration. He did.
Easter approached, so Patrick and I planned a weekend away together in Whistler, Canada, where my father had a ski condo we used to spend holidays at as children. I wanted to reclaim this space as an adult without my dad, so we found a weekend to go and met up there. As the holiday approached, I felt Patrick’s anger rising on the other side of the phone line. His questions met me with a crisp tightness, his answers caught in his throat. I could hear how much emotion he kept buried in his body.
More and more, it was becoming clear that my family was requesting that he play the intermediary between them and me. I wasn’t just answering his questions, I was answering their questions. He was their representative, which wasn’t fair to him nor me. But in this case, it was his job to set boundaries and I knew he wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t. So my body once again became the receiver of my family’s energy passed down now through the portal of this little brother, now 6’3” tall and built like a tree. I knew he would never hurt me physically, but my body began to tremble thinking about spending time with him.
We enjoyed the first few days exploring the mountains, skiing, and revisiting all of our favorite restaurants. Then we returned home. Patrick sat on one sofa, while I sat on the lounge chairs across from him. His arms folded tightly across his chest.
“You know, I thought about bringing mom with me this weekend?”
Oh, no, here we go. I thought as my body tightened.
“Why would you do that, Patrick? You know my boundaries. I don’t want to see her.”
“Why not, Annie?!” His voice began to rise. “What did she ever do to you?! You need to just forgive Dad and come home or else — ”
“Or else what?” I interrupted.
“You don’t understand how much Mom’s suffering! You have hurt her so much, you have hurt us all so much.”
“Mom knows my boundaries too,” I stated stoically. “I will consider coming home when she leaves Dad.”
“How can you expect her to break up the family?!” His voice crescendoed.
“She’s not breaking up the family, Patrick. Dad did that when he decided to sexually abuse his only daughter.”
I began to lose myself in his blame. My empathy had limits. At 23, he was an adult now and so accountable for his actions. I stood up, my voice escalating to a pitch I had never heard before, as I shook.
“I left so that I could be safe!” I began. “Patrick, don’t you understand that love is safety and our family can’t even offer me that?! Why would I want to come back when you’re all just a bunch of bullies who justify the rape of children?! Your anger and shame should be directed at Dad not me!”
“How can you be so heartless?!” He raged back.
“Oh, fuck you!” I replied.
“You’re so selfish!” He rebutted.
“No!” I couldn’t take it anymore. My knees went weak with his projections, “I’m leaving. I don’t have to listen to this.” My body began to collapse.
“No, I’ll go.” He walked past me, “You’re staying here, you don’t need to leave.”
I watched him walk out the door and followed behind, then froze. Suddenly, it felt like time stopped, like everything was moving in slow motion. He walked away from me. As the distance between us grew, the reality that I would likely never see him again expanded within me at each step. The shadow of grief followed.
“I…” I began to stutter. “I love you.”
It turned out many of my family members and their friends who I had been in contact with were all strategizing to get me to return to my family. Another brother began to reach out:.
“The Catholic Church teaches forgiveness. It’s the foundation of the church. Jesus forgave those who crucified him, forgave those who turned him in, forgave those who beat him and hurt him far more than you have ever been hurt. He still forgave no matter what. More of us, including myself, need to forgive more. If you ever come back, it would be very very hard for me to forgive you for what you have done to our mother. [...]
Is my brother both demanding that I forgive my father for raping me serially, while also acknowledging how hard it would be for him to forgive me for setting a safety boundary?
The Rite of Reconciliation sacrament is supposed to heal the distance between God and the sinner, and the sinner and the one they harmed. The church is the intermediary, and a priest, the one whose words and hands complete the process. But all too frequently, the rite is abused to absolve people of issues so they believe they are free from culpability, without any apology, accountability, or assurance that the harm would end toward the person or community who suffer from the consequences of their sins — in my case, crimes.
In many states, clergy aren’t mandated reporters, so people who sexually harm children can disclose within those small wooden boxes in the corners of churches and be forgiven. Or victims are sent to priests to disclose instead of counselors because clergy are not legally required to report. Even the Pope Benedict after retirement weaponized forgiveness when he demanded that survivors of clergy child sexual abuse forgive him for his role in mishandling specific cases when he was an archbishop, while simultaneously denying any wrongdoing or responsibility.2
The stories of the prevalent child sexual abuse crisis by clergy still flooded media outlets. When the Boston Globe published the investigative piece in 2002, I had received group emails from family about the “the holy crusade” of defending the church in this time of crisis. One of the Dames of Malta, who I met in Lourdes, had been funding an organization in Haiti run by a perpetrating priest. She, like the Catholic hierarchy, tried to cover it up instead of centering the protection of children. The monsignor who had encouraged me to accept my own interpretation of Jesus on the same trip had pleaded guilty to buying a video and sex-toy shop to launder methamphetamine money and has served years in prison. And so sexual abuse continues through spiritual bypassing. My brother wrote:
“Incest in a family is a very real thing, Anne, and you are right, it’s not right. It’s horrible! I was also touched as a child by someone in our family. You will never know who it was, and I will never tell you. I decided to not let it define me. I decided to look past it and to live a life different from those who live in hate and want to see death and blood on the streets. [... Another family member] also had someone touch her as well, and she could have raised hell, but also chose a life different than that. You sadly are embracing a life full of hate and anger and now small lies to justify all of it. It’s terribly sad and a complete waste of a life.”
Is my brother validating the frequent sexual harm against children in my family system, justifying it, then blaming me for the pain of incest abuse in my family?
In my family’s mind, I was the perpetrator and they were the ones perpetrated against: the victims of family estrangement by their only beloved daughter. Coined by Dr. Freyd, a frequently used tactic by those who abuse and the bystanders who choose to support them is referred to as: (D)eny, (A)ttack, (R)everse (V)ictim and (O)ffender. DARVO. I committed from this point on to only surrounding myself with upstanders: or those who choose to side with survivors and do the work to ensure the safety of others. My brother went on:
“You know what love is, Anne? Love is having a Wall Street prick for a husband [my father] and still staying together. Love is having a husband who lies and steals and still stays together. Love is having a husband that very well could have hurt his children in multiple ways and still stays together. Love is coming within inches of divorce because the son [my brother referring to himself] pushed it so hard and still stays together. Love is the ability in seeing that there is still good in a person. True love is making sure you stand by that person no matter what and you fucking figure it out. [...] None of us will ever be our father. We have half our mother in us so we know how to love deeper and stronger and with respect and honor.”
Sadly, it seems as if my brother internalized my mother’s understanding of love. To stay always.
My mother’s situation pained me most because she too had been victimized. My father, though still abusive, was safer than her father and her mother. With my dad by her side, she had achieved so many of her dreams: class comfort, a car full of kids, saintly status in her spiritual community. I don’t blame her for not leaving because I understand the complexity of giving all that up to support me. But I do hold her accountable to the ways her choices contributed to the abusive environment I was raised in as a child; the one she continuously called me back to as an adult. I do set boundaries to ensure my experience of love evolves to hold the truth of safety. My brother admitted:
“[... Dad] was a lying, miserable cheat. He destroyed our family business, he destroyed our family inheritance, he destroyed relationships, he destroyed my name in the business finance sector [...]. He destroyed a lot of things and he did it for years. [...] It was horrible and all of us hated him. […] I coulda killed him easily right there on the spot. I wanted to so bad! I went to therapy for years and nothing helped my hate. [...] I wanted him dead, I wanted him in a car accident, I wanted him stripped down naked and beaten in the middle of town.”
How does my brother both acknowledge what my father has done and excuse him simultaneously?
The responses of my mother, my father, my brothers, and my community all reflected what Dr. Freyd refers to as “Betrayal Blindness.” This can include repressed memories by victims, but she also finds that “perpetrators and witnesses may display betrayal blindness in order to preserve relationships, institutions, and social systems upon which they depend.”3 In my case, my family privileged their relationship with my father and their financial provider, the institution of family, and the social belonging that accompanies the silencing of the victim. My brother wrote:
“I woke up one day and asked myself if this is how I wanted to live my life? I asked myself if this is how I wanted my relationship to be with my father? I asked myself, is this the story I am going to tell to my kids? The hate was eating me inside and I could feel it. I started hating everything. I had turned into him and hate was to blame. It was so hard but I made the decision in one instant that I wasn’t going to live like that. [...] If that’s a life you want to live, go for it. You have a lonely path ahead of you.”
I accepted his choice to stay, could he not respect my choice to walk away?
Devotion to the family system often keeps people from understanding how safe and intimate chosen community can be for those of us who choose to leave. Some sociologists agree that the nuclear family, isolated from deeper community ties, always reflected hierarchy and property. The root of family derives from the Latin word, “Famulus,” which means “Domestic Slave.”4
Practiced in the United States, the patriarchal family has allowed men to own their wives and children. The government forced Native communities into nuclear families intentionally to break the tribal bonds that kept the populations strong. Today, the institution of the nuclear family puts so much pressure on one or a number of caregivers to earn economically, while also raising children. This failing social system carries so many symptoms of chronic stress, which is one of the many risks that increase rates of incest. For some the family is a safe haven, for others it’s a trap. My brother admitted:
“Anne, I moved on a while ago. With all due respect, and I mean this in no way to hurt you, but just as a point of reality, there isn’t much to miss about you. Talking to you is awful and negative [...], you are telling lies about our family publicly and to other women who have also been hurt, and you have unforgivable hate deeply rooted in your soul. Over the years people asking about Anne at family events has diminished. You cross my mind here and there and it does make me very sad. [...] I would take you back in a heartbeat now or in the future, but I hope that you can see, you have made moving on from you pretty easy. If that was your goal, then you hit it right on the mark.”
My head is spinning with the mixed messages, my heart is hurting.
“The only person that hasn’t moved on is our mother. She’ll never move on. She continues to cry herself to sleep at night because her own daughter blames her for something she didn’t even do. A mother’s love for her child is the strongest love this world knows. It’s a healing type of love, the type of love you so desperately need right now. You will be judged some day for your actions towards your mother and your choice of abandonment, Anne, and [Dad] will be judged someday for his actions towards you and to others as well.”
Am I supposed to center my mother’s needs above my own safety?
“I do love you and I would love with all my heart to see you back in the family you were born into, but hate, which you absolutely do have, consumes you. When you are unwilling to forgive and mend, hate and anger is normally the reason. God asks us to forgive and in that process maybe we have to live in a state that is abusive.”
The cycle of violence has completed. The tension, the explosion, and the honeymoon phases all present in this one conversation. I see it so clearly. He has no idea.
It was all there. The justifications of ideology, incest, and illness used by white supremacist patriarchs to transubstantiate family, religion, and love into cycles of violence. I felt deeply sorry for my brothers. For the father who continues to abuse, and the mother who keeps them bound to her constraints and calls her commitment love, calls her dependency forgiveness, calls her covert incest mutual support, calls her source of inspiration God. Uses the name of Jesus to condone violence against children, her own children. The glorification of suffering. The theology of sacrifice, salvation through mortification.
In an instant, I received validation in writing from my brother’s testimony: my family believed that love, defined by God the Father, meant to live in an abusive environment eternally. Now, my job was to end it. To finally break the cycles of violence against my body that began between the circular constancy of Bunya St. I was ready to end this generational acceptance of incest abusers and the spiritual allowance offered by God the Father to child rape apologists. I divorced myself from my family completely. It was finished, finally.
bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions.
“Retired Pope Benedict asks ‘forgiveness’ for abuse, but accepts no blame”.
Freyd, “What is a Betrayal Trauma? What is Betrayal Trauma Theory?”.
Manoukian, Marina. “On the Etymologies and Linguistic Evolutions of ‘Family.’”
Powerful! Clear! Informative! Moving! Especially, "I felt deeply sorry for my brothers. For the father who continues to abuse, and the mother who keeps them bound to her constraints and calls her commitment love, calls her dependency forgiveness, calls her covert incest mutual support, calls her source of inspiration God...