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This is my little black box…
The Little Black Box™ is intended to become a landmark for change. It represents every silenced child’s pain they carry with them always.
From home, to every new placement and into adulthood, always. Sometimes they tuck it deep and away for decades.
Sometimes, like today.. they open it.
I want to give a voice to all of these children who fall through the cracks. I want to educate the public on the abuse going on behind closed doors in the bio family units, within the system and how easily someone can hide their true intentions behind a kind smile or a friendly message.
The damage is insurmountable for some. Something needs to change.
But most of all, I want to say that I hope this message brings some form of peace or strength or courage to someone else just like me who may never otherwise know they’re not the crazy one and you’re not alone.
No matter how old you are, or how many years have passed. You are not alone.
This letter is for every single child whose voice was silenced at the hand of their abuser. Especially when the abuser was a parent. For every single child whose voice will never be heard. For every single battered woman never believed and blamed for the abuse they suffered. It has taken me days to work through composing this and I wrote it in one shot, so please bear with me.
My pain and the abuse I endured will never be in vain.
You are going to read things that are very disturbing and that any normal, stable person wouldn’t do to another human being, let alone their own child.
**Trigger warnings for absolutely everything. Descriptive abuse. You know yourself, use your best judgment.**
The evidence is damning. Evidence she never thought I’d get my hands on.
This moment is truly my mother’s worst nightmare.
This letter is very long overdue. However, a message like this is better late than never.
At least I’d like to think so.
I’m so glad I could gather you all here today. I say “you all” because this was sent to many a pair of eyes. As I think is most important when sharing the kind of abuse and neglect allegations that will be detailed below. I’ve learned that when an abusive narcissist needs control, it’s much harder to hurt their victim and lie with more eyes on the situation for safety and accountability. The sheer depravity in what has happened is quite sickening.
Don’t forget, stick around for the direct quotes from some of my mother’s personal circle at the end. It’s my favorite part.
Now, I do not care about how many years have passed or the societal expectations to take abuse and trauma in secret as if it’s shameful. I hold no shame here. I want no sympathy or pity, just truth and accountability.
I also will never reveal how many people this was sent to. Hell, I may post it on a blog, for the world. So it is impossible for you to cover your tracks anymore.
Your heart must be pounding in your ears right now.
I never thought that I would ever get here. To have this chance.
I assume you’re thinking I mean some extraordinary display of God only knows what, in regards to my tragic and horrifically debilitating mental illnesses… because I’ve seen and heard the things my mother says about me.
That I have never been clinically diagnosed with.
Not once. Yes, really.
No matter how many places my mother tried to churn me through and despite all of the insane storytelling, my horrific excuse of a mother and completely vile absent father have done all of my life.
Not once.
You may be asking why on Earth I would want to send such a sensitive correspondence to so many (or any) people. Because my voice mattered. My life mattered. If no one was willing to stand up for me then, I will stand up for me now. My childhood self deserves that if nothing else. Without proper context, you will not be able to see the magnitude of what has happened.
I was denied a childhood and a family. It’s quite crazy that I was never allowed the privilege of knowing or being loved by family. Not even as a child. Not a single grandparent, aunt, uncle or cousin. Nothing. We were intentionally kept away while being told everyone on the outside was bad. She constantly ranted about my father and his family. I understand they follow a religion? My mother does not. They used to send us cards with money as a gift for special occasions (thank you, by the way).
My mother thought it was hilarious to use that money to buy Harry Potter books (witchcraft) to then have us write thank you letters detailing what was bought and telling us what to say to rub it in their faces and upset them. We were little kids. She laughed and laughed. We never really heard from anyone on that side of the family again after that. I would like to apologize, on behalf of my mother, for that abhorrent display of disrespect while we were used as pawns.
The only people I know of who exist on my mother’s? Her brother Paul and my mother liked to call his wife “Aunt Maggot.” I know of no one else. I know nothing about either of them. I don’t even know how to contact them.
I only recently joined Ancestry and learned my maternal grandfather’s brother was a prominent psychiatrist and neurosurgeon. He attended Yale. Chief of psychiatry at Travis Air Force base in California, retiring at the rank of Colonel. He served as a consult for psychiatry for the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington D.C. He became the assistant clinical professor for the psychiatry department of University of California in Los Angeles. Was assistant dean of medical education and professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University. He also served as chief of psychiatry service at the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Last but not least holding multiple private practices before retiring. Also, a daughter who too was a doctor in Paris, France. A son with a Doctorate. I’m sure there’s plenty more great things about this family buried in the silence.
All of that was mentioned in his obituary. Are you seriously telling me, that kind of exceptionally accomplished genetical makeup. In psychiatry no less. Was just right over there all along and I wasn’t ever to know they existed and vice versa? That is insane to me. Can you imagine the person I could have become if I had been loved and supported. The sheer potential.
Now that I know that, it makes me wonder if there’s secrets long buried for why you’ve hidden yourself from that side for over 30 years. You’re mentally unstable. I wonder…
My paternal grandfather was a well loved and accomplished Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. He could have totally been an incredible grandfather. I’d never know. My father’s new wife’s kids would know though. He threw us away and loves her kids and grandkids dearly. My poor children. I feel so bad that this is the reality of their “grandparents” on my side. I am so embarrassed.
“I am so embarrassed” that was one of her favorite lines to say about me within my earshot. I can still hear it in her voice all these years later. I can still see her face, how she’d look at me. It was this volatile look of disgust. Like she was always holding back an explosion.
Every single adult who had a hand in my life failed me. Allowing this to take place. Especially those of you who were closest to Kris and Scott. No one stood up for me or tried to save me. Knowing how longwinded and chatty my mother is, I’m sure many of you have heard plenty. But I also know there are those of you who may never have been told much of anything or at all. That’s intentional here today. And truly, I don’t care if anyone in the world knew these words because at least they would have heard the truth. Finally.
Accountability. That is the word of the day, folks. I have been spending the past handful of years enjoying a quiet, peaceful and happy life with my husband and beautiful family right outside of San Francisco. My husband is a United States Marine Corps Veteran and worked as a Corporal Deputy Sheriff before we relocated to the sunshine state. He is the kindest, and most gentle, loving person I have ever met and he changed my life. We have children who are incredible human beings. They are so very loved. A great dane, 3 mini doxies, a cat and a partridge in a pear tree.
I had otherwise moved on with my life. But this is like a tumor..
But alas, we’re here to talk about Kris and Scott. Shall we? And I know there’s a lot to say about Kris, but we’ll get to Scott too, I promise. And the encore? It’s a duzy. I’m going to paint who she was as a mother first as a necessary personal character reference. Scott’s is brief, I have no experience of him in my life until I was 17 and I quote “You stupid bitch, I’ll stand on your head. If you weren’t my daughter, I would punch you in the face.” Even Tanner says you’re a monster, that’s saying a lot. But that’s one for later…
..and mom.. wow. You almost got away with this. You really did. I had spent the past decade grieving the loss of my mother. By choice. Because I couldn’t take anymore pain and disappointment for who you turned out to be as a mother. I had buried that pain quite deep and it no longer affected my daily life. Until you reopened that wound in October, sending me a rogue Facebook friend request. To which I accepted, under the expressed expectation that you could be honest and respectful. To which you never replied, deleting me. This wasn’t new to you. You poke at me every few years. Usually through another person like your ex husband every 3 or so years. It’s weird, what happens in your life that you need a dose from me. Like an addict? Couldn’t bear to see me happy?
So I’ve spent the past 7 months processing that trauma all over again. Thank you so much for that. It all just kept eating at me.
Then I saw that wild story about the Gypsy Rose girl. I made a comment to my husband in passing about how it reminded me of my mom. He agreed. So, I decided to do some digging.
Oh boy… I finally have some tangible, damning proof.
I’ve been through enough therapy to learn you are a narcissist and so is Scott. You are both different types. The word people often use for Tanner is a sociopath, though psychopath has been used. Including one of his ex girlfriends. The tremendously kind hearted, little girl who lived behind George and Evelyn’s house in Burlington. Who he raped and abused (she told you) and when they split up, you never acknowledged what he had done to her. You just begged her over and over to convince Tanner to come back to be with her. Knowing everything he had done. Yes, you all read that correctly. Yes, I actually have proof of that.
It has been so difficult my entire life to prove what you were doing. You were the adult, I was the child. No one wanted to listen to me. You were very good at manipulating people. When people ask me about you, I tell them you’re incredibly intelligent, creative and taught me how to be a good and productive person forward facing out in the world.
But that you are also like a snake in lambskin. No one should underestimate the lengths you will go to make sure you get what you want. You will maintain rapport and keep someone in your pocket so long as they have the ability to give you something at some point should you need it. I’ve watched you manipulate people my entire life. It’s unsettling.
I guess you thought emails and messages weren’t forever either because I have it all. Including when you described, in detail, how you committed welfare and tax fraud, gloating about how you prevented me from being able to sign up for medical and food stamps when I was 19 years old, almost 30 weeks pregnant and working full time. Trying to explain it all away. Saying how much you hated me. Gloating about hanging up on me. While you lied to everyone else, saying I was nuts, impatient and throwing a “hissy fit” to discredit me before I could talk to anyone about what you’d done.
My god, the emails I’ve had forwarded to me… you should be in prison. If for nothing else, for intentional abandonment.
I want to show everyone a clear example. Did you know that on 1/31/11 you forwarded my email (this exchange is shown in full in my photos) respectfully letting you know that I’d reported the tax fraud and pointing out it wasn’t wise because you’d already been caught for the welfare fraud and you said…
“Hannah has grown up to become a monster. I actually laughed when I read this, but in truth she’s literally dangerous to me. I don’t want her to know where I end up moving. Which is awful. I’ve read about people, whole families, who run away, move away, while, say, their child is incarcerated or hospitalized. It’s like she’s the jeckell/hyde person who can be so nice and so thoughtful, and then so diabolically evil. She scares me.”
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here. But first I just want to point out that you actually did do that when I was in that very first placement. You disappeared unannounced for months when they weren’t going to let you abandon me. Picked up and moved to a famous touristy coastal beach town 1,000 miles away.
Congratulations, you just told on yourself. Because everyone watched you do it and perceived it as such. Even my social workers.
Now, you have expressed this furthered intent while acting completely mentally unstable. Who on Earth responds like that..
During the same time you were hiding psych diagnostic books and baggies with unnamed pills. Insisting to another human being, that wasn’t me, that I be diagnosed by you and medicated with these unknown, unnamed pills against my will and unbeknownst to me.
So yes, I was absolutely viewed through your eyes as a danger. Because I wasn’t stupid. I could see right through you. Reporting your fraud and abuse was absolutely a danger to your ability to maintain the charade. You were always telling on yourself when you thought you were amongst like-minded abusers (my brother). The only one scary here, is you…
Kris never wanted kids. She had Tanner and myself after multiple terminations to please her father. At the age of 40, this was no 17 year old oops. So she was never a present parent. She didn’t want to be involved as a mother. She didn’t work and her time was spent sitting in her room chain smoking and watching daytime television. Lots of marijuana. Is that why you never worked? You blamed it on me, but was it that and I was the cop out? I’ve always wondered. Because when I wasn’t in school, you sent me outside to roam the entire town unsupervised and did not care what happened to me or what kind of trouble we could have gotten into. So long as we were out of your way.
I was standing on a chair cooking for myself over the stove before I could even see over it. I had to wash my own laundry as a young child so I wouldn’t be bullied for wearing the same clothes because she wouldn’t buy them and we reeked of cigarette smoke. We asked many times for her not to smoke in the car with us or in the house because it burned our eyes and noses. It burned our lungs. She didn’t care. In 6th grade, she was required to pick me up before school let out daily because of the hazing I was experiencing at school because of those clothes.
She was always so angry and disgusted with my existence. Some of my most earliest memories as a child go back to early elementary years where she would regularly rage and drone on and on about how she hated me and was so disappointed because I reminded her so much of my father and her father. She said I was a spitting image.
Wendy, you said he was her greatest nemesis. Whom she most despised. Now imagine, she’s comparing the child she is screaming at on a daily basis, to this person. Imagine how she must treat this child behind closed doors. Where there is no one to see and hold her accountable.
This is very important for later. I’ve recently learned she wasn’t as good at keeping a pokerface as she thought.
I remember finding some journals her therapist had instructed her to log and she was supposed to detail her day. She wrote horrible things, only about me and written in red ink. Everything else was black and monotone. Only positive things written about my brother. I saw these same journals along with letters much later in life, but that’s a detail to remember for a much darker story mentioned later.
So because we weren’t being supervised, she didn’t pay any mind to what we did or what happened to us.
You may be wondering, but how? Because Tanner was there. Surely he would stand up and say something?! You would, sadly, be wrong. This isn’t just my mother and father.. my brother has been exceptionally cruel to me. He finds great enjoyment out of being cruel to others. Every single one of his ex girlfriends has given me detailed written accounts of the mental torture and abuse he subjected them to. As well as the list of lies he enjoys telling at my expense.
One of his exes studies psychology as a hobby. She identified a possible “Sociopath-Apath-Empath Triad” in our family unit. Tanner being the sociopath, my mother the apath and I, the empath. That I have always been the target. It is spot on..
oh, before I forget… somewhere in all of these screenshots is mention from an ex of Tanner and an accusation of Scott being a pedophile prior to having children. Hmm.. Tanner says so much. So, is that one true too guys or which is a lie? How do we decide?
That is probably one of the most hurtful parts of this. My mother and brother have spent my entire life telling horrible, horrific stories of me to anyone who will listen. If you won’t listen and pity her, she moves on to the next person and the next. Until she has a perfect echo chamber. I have screenshots of multiple detailed accounts from people whom she holds in high regard confirming this for the both of them. I also saw this myself when I logged into her Facebook account to help her fix her privacy settings. I couldn’t help myself, I looked in her inbox because I had always felt like she was playing a horrific game and tricking me. That she was being kind to my face as an adult but spoke of me to others like I was a diseased pest. Especially to Wendy.. you were her biggest ally and enabler. I remember I had done some gardening and happily showed her in an email. She was elated to me directly, but her messages to you were filled with judgment and gossip. Speculating that I was recreating some weird fetish fantasy of my childhood home. Nope. So sorry to disappoint with the anticlimactic truth, they were just flowers. A normal, healthy individual would have been able to see that and maybe also take it as a compliment that I appreciated your gardening enough as a child to want to try my hand at it. Not twisted into some asinine manipulation. That’s insane…
Or the time the poor bunny died. I was a young child and I found a super tiny baby bunny outside and I wanted to keep it. She told me no. But I snuck the bunny inside anyway and put it to sleep next to me. At some point in the night it died and I woke up the next day horrified and so sad. Blaming myself and not knowing what to do because my mother was terrifying. So I hid it, because I was scared and sad. She found it and they have both since accused me of keeping dead animals in my dresser drawers for sick, twisted fun.
Or this one.. this is a kicker.. my mother has always liked to blame me, heavily, for her and Tanner’s problems. When Tanner bought an old truck for a high rate with crap credit, it somehow became my fault because I used to sell and I should have known better. When I had meningitis and was hospitalized, Tanner started experiencing the same symptoms. We took him in to be seen. My mother blamed me for his hospital bill from that, because I was the one who insisted he receive emergency care, like I needed. There was never any mention of my letting him live with me, buying all of his food, getting up in the middle of the night in winter to pick him up from work and drive him home so he wouldn’t have to walk etc.
When they fled Iowa after she dumped me as a ward of the state, they had no money. She claims her bank accounts were drained, that I had spent all of her money. Thousands of dollars. (she admits in emails that these thousands from her inheritence were paid to the state for my medicaid while a ward of the state. Not that I stole it. What a thoughtful lie, mom. How nice.
I did spend money, but I would bet she has never admitted the truth of why. Can you spot the reason?
When I was around 10-12, the man across the street molested me. He’d sit on my mother’s porch when the street lights would come on and pull me onto his lap against my will to grope me while he looked at pornographic material on his little flip phone. His name was Ryan. He explained to me what pornographic websites were and taught me how to sign up for them. Instructing me how to use her debit card. So that I could watch and learn for him. When I told her, she never acknowledged that I ever spoke. She never has. You’ll see a trend of this here shortly
Oh, and let us not forget about when I was in 6th grade, I’d use the aol chat rooms while at home and at the library. No child should ever be in a chat room, first off. But it wasn’t my fault that I was groomed by a predator. Someone pretending to be a cool older teen guy that I wanted the approval of. I sure as hell wasn’t getting any love or positive attention at home. So I fell right into his traps. He asked me many inappropriate questions. I answered with lies because I was a child and hadn’t done these things, but I wanted the approval. I told this person things that have never happened. Answering their yes or no questions. I went home and wrote about it in my diary. My mother read it and flipped out, on me. Not on the adult who groomed me or preyed on me. She was angry at me. I was held responsible for my own abuse at every turn, while never actually having it acknowledged. No concern.
So, this information made it to Tanner. Who has then spread it to every single person he talks to for amusement. I found this out because my own friends would tell me what he was saying about me. People I went to school with. People I worked with. He told everyone. Just like my mother. She has reached out to gossip about me to every single person who could possibly listen and give her a pity pat on the back.
So when I called out an ex of his for telling me my child should die of SIDS, she publicly blasted this information in Facebook comments as an attack. Mocking me. Forcing me to very quickly expose the detailed truth and my trauma for the world to see to defend myself from a very shameful accusation that wasn’t even true. She mentioned my mother had also shared it. I civilly confronted my mother. She sent me a red heart emoji and not another word.
This happened again when Tanner cheated on his last ex with his now wife. This ex was a wonderful person who never deserved what they did to her. He is a monster for what he did to her. I stood up for her. I called them both out for what they did, getting pregnant while cheating and rubbing it publicly all in her face. His wife threw out the same story. Same mocking. Again, leaving me to have to face that and expose it for the world to see to defend myself. Who knows how many people sit and look at me differently or have left my life or avoided me because of the intentional efforts of my mother and brother to sabotage anyone getting anywhere near me in my life. Isolating me. Was it just for fun or to make sure I didn’t have anyone who could see what you were doing and help me?
I still continued on fighting for her and fighting against the mockery Tanner made of her public humiliation, despite what was said. I have done the same when this happened with a former childhood classmate who he was cheating with. She threw in my face that my own flesh and blood tells horrible things of me to people. She proudly boasted about breaking the mother of my nephew down for her tremendously painful sacrifice to give her child up for adoption. Saying things like “You look like the idiot, your own brother is talking shit about you. Your own brother doesn’t even know how he puts up with you. I broke -redacted- down to the point of blocking me. She couldn’t even tell me what drove her in life. She couldn’t tell me how it felt to have to give her child up to another family because she didn’t have the financial means to take care of her child.”
The mother of that child is one of the best human beings I’ve ever met in my entire life. She is my sister by choice. She is who I turn to when I’m off balance because her heart is a true well intended positive/neutral. I would trust her with absolutely anything in my life. She has saved my life more than once. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without her in it.
Now, let’s go back..
Right before my 13th birthday, she left me as an inpatient at a pediatric medical institute for children. I spent 22 months in that program. Many of those months were spent sitting, waiting to go home because my mother fled the state without warning and couldn’t be found. I graduated that program, highest level, flying colors. They said I was ready to go home. My mother said no. The staff told me you refused. It was absolutely soul crushing to work so hard and face that rejection from my own mother. Who never visited me in those 2 years, by the way. Even though it was a couple hours away.
I found out why later. I’ve recently discovered she refused to accept anything the professionals in this situation said about me. Every staff member, every licensed medical professional. Social workers. Lawyers. Judges. Everyone. She had spent years trying to diagnose me herself. She has always had this bookshelf filled with psychology and law books. I’m not talking self-help books. I’m talking the kind of clinical diagnostic books practicing and licensed psychiatrists use that are not meant for the common person. Law books on practicing law. So she’s playing doctor on me, my entire life. She has law books helping to make sure she never steps wrong. Remember these points for later…this screams some weird mental health munchausen by proxy crap..
So while I am in this system, unable to go home. She’s pushing and pushing to have me recycled into a new facility. She’s absolutely convinced that I cheated. Tricked my way through and memorized worksheets, figuring out the right answers. I will not even begin to insult the intelligence of everyone reading this to explain why that isn’t possible.
The system is pushing for foster care so that I do not become institutionalized. So that I may be able to live life with a family in a proper setting since she didn’t want me. She did everything in her power to stop this. It took the lawyer appointed for my best interest communicating on behalf of all the professionals who had spent the last 2 years with me, to see that I did not get recycled.
But this was soul crushing and at almost 15, I took up a big “if my own mother doesn’t even want me, what is the point” attitude and it showed heavily from this point forward. I did not care. About anything. My behavior showed it. I no longer cared at all about following any rules expected of me.
So I ended up going through over 20 foster homes, multiple group homes and shelters.
I’ve been sexually abused by foster parents. I was the child and victim in a child porn arrest leading to a sex offender registrant while a foster child. She never acknowledged either of those.
I have witnessed physical abuse of a severely mentally handicapped child. This is a child who can barely speak or care for herself and this woman had her on the ground screaming at her and beating her.
I’ve experienced and witnessed ample abuse in a group home that a social worker witnessed and remarked on to me privately. This is backed by reviews from staff members left online for this facility you could find today, right now.
Employee review Indeed: “Management seemed too set on their own ego’s and not qualified to train some of the direct care workers in how to provide treatment services to the kids working with. Advancement only to those who fit into the “good ole boys” scheme of things. Lots of unethical practices done behind the scenes so they can make money and not get in trouble for providing poor quality of work since management aren’t even qualified to help treat kids. Direct care workers do want to help and make a difference but are paid poorly and aren’t trained to do things!” – LPHA/Clinical Therapist
So many things over the years.. I reported so much and was never heard or believed because my mother made sure I was always to be discredited. That woman was allowed to adopt her, by the way. I watched her beat this poor girl and they allowed her to adopt her. Maybe I could have saved her if they’d have believed me. My mother never acknowledged not one thing I reported. Ever.
What she would do, was call every single one of my foster homes and tell the person horrific things about me to sabotage the placements. I was candidly told this by a foster parent who believed my mother. She was having me removed the next morning because of it. She’d said my mother had called to warn her, that I would rob her blind in her sleep and I’d do terrible things.
At one point I was almost adopted. I found a family who actually wanted me and wanted to include me in their family forever. They offered to adopt me. When they petitioned the court, it was blocked. I wasn’t allowed to know why until I was an adult. I thought they’d changed their minds and didn’t want me. I was devastated. The foster mother informed me that my mother blocked it. She refused to terminate her rights and allow me to experience being wanted and loved by anyone. She could have washed her hands of me. If she hated me so badly like she said. My mother didn’t want me though.. and remember, she didn’t want me in a real home. She wanted me in a facility, for the rest of my life. Can I spoil it and tell you why?
In my research for this letter, I found that the custodial parent may still claim the dependent child on their taxes for refund credits. So long as the placement is not permanent for inpatient or facilities. For foster care, the home must house the child for less than 6 months. As long as those criteria are met, the parent may still claim and be paid out all credits as if the child was still in their home.
Now.. doesn’t it seem awfully suspicious.. much later on in life, you mentioned an intentional plan to do what you’d done to me as a child because I reported you for tax fraud. Like you intended to do it again.. and you were trying to diagnose me and medicate me.. as if you planned to find a way to commit me as an adult and flee.. to continue to commit fraud? Am I getting warmer?
While I’d be locked away, for the rest of my life. Silenced. While you cashed in. Filing for SSDI. Welfare. Tax refunds. Anything and everything for the rest of my life. Like it was a whole scheme all along. Is that why you showed your authentic self in that email? Because I challenged your entire structure of abuse?
How utterly fascinating..
Is your heartbeat deafening?
Eventually, I’m going to age out and my mother begrudgingly took me into her home in Georgia where she had fled to. I have messages from my brother’s ex who lived with us then stating how when we (Kris, Tanner, his now ex and myself) were all living in the same house in Georgia, my mother would speak terribly about me. Always with a look of disgust.
She had this bookshelf filled with medical and law books. But now she had been caught by this ex girlfriend with her hidden DSM book and a gallon baggy of assorted pills she somehow acquired. She snatched it behind her back and told her that I had multiple diagnosis she diagnosed me with but no one would give me a formal diagnosis and treatment. That she had obsessively researched it for years and she planned to medicate me with these hidden prescription pills she had in this bag. Saying she needed to find a way to sneak them into me.
My mother tried to diagnose me against the clinical decisions of god only knows how many professionals for so many years who told her no. Somehow acquired the medications one would use to treat these conditions she thought I had. Planned to medicate me against my knowledge and against my will. While simultaneously telling this same girl to her face that she was elated that I was going to live with my dad. She said “all the crazies would be in one place and away from her then.” The same dad she has spent my entire life screaming from the roof tops is an abusive narcissist who used to beat her. Mother of the year goes to..
That reminds me, when I was living there I found out my boyfriend at the time had cheated on me and I was really hurt and upset. I approached her in the living room, tears streaming down my cheeks, just wanting to talk to someone and she wouldn’t even look in my direction. She aggressively shooed me away with her hand while making the most irritated expression and continued staring down her television.
Speaking of ill mannered boys, we have come to another important point from a previous mention. Where I have pointed out how my mother ignores all abuse I am subjected to.
I was brutally raped in a back stairwell of the high school I was presently attending my Junior year. This was in Iowa, right before I was sent to live with my mother. I was taken to the Emergency Room. I was taken to have an extremely invasive child forensic interview done. I had to give testimony to law enforcement. This boy was well loved at this school. I was harassed for accusing the class favorite. A staff member working at the group home I was living in told me I had better not be lying as I would ruin his life. He pled guilty and was registered as a sex offender. He was even arrested for attempting to do the same thing to another girl within the weeks before my trial. I say all this to remark that when I told my mother about this experience, she didn’t acknowledge that I had spoken. As if I were invisible right in front of her. She went on about her business. Later, I heard her from the next room, sitting around the coffee table, discussing with my brother and his then girlfriend how much I must be lying. So I decided I wouldn’t bother telling her about the other times.
Speaking of my father, it’s Scott’s turn. But, we will be back for the encore with Kris, it’s a hell of an encore…
All I’d heard my whole life was what a terrible person my father was. From both my mother, and brother as we got older. But I wanted to give him a chance. I wanted to find out for myself.
It was arranged for me to spend the summer at his house a couple states away. Maybe stay for the following school year. What would have been my senior year. He seemed okay at first but did something that rang red alarm bells. He tried to trick me into convincing my mother to give up her parental rights so he could enroll me in school there. Saying it was required.
Now, I’m no dummy, clearly.
So I know something is up. Not to mention after also attending well over a dozen different high schools while both parents still had their respective rights, I knew what he claimed was false. So I quietly contacted my mother. I explained the situation and she agreed, he’s up to something. As usual, per her stories.
As he kept inquiring on the status of my mother, I kept stalling. I knew I needed to protect myself.
Then things took a very dangerous turn.
I really think he had this elaborate plan to get sole custody and have me committed for the rest of my life. Just like I described above. He watched my mother try. Looked easy enough, right? I was just shy of 18, and if he could have me committed, he could petition for guardianship over me as an adult (think Britney Spears and her conservatorship). This is the ultimate power seat for an abuser. Especially one of his magnitude.
So while I was there, my mother contacted my father about something stolen. I did take something. I had gone snooping through her filing cabinet looking at random papers. I stumbled across those old previously mentioned journals/logs and now with all these letters from my teen years she had written to her therapists about me. Detailing the utter disdain she felt for me and my existence. I was absolutely devastated to read these again all these year later.
So, I did take a few pieces of sentimental jewelry of my grandmother’s and hid them in my mother’s house. I didn’t take them with me to my dad’s house.
But they didn’t know that.
So when he got the call, he demanded to search my belongings. He wouldn’t tell me why, other than that my mother had accused me of stealing something. I told him he was welcome to check my things, but I needed to watch. That I didn’t trust him. I was worried for my safety and what he might try after watching him try to trick me into tricking my mother to give up her rights on some crap. He didn’t know we had caught on..
So this exchange becomes heated. We’re both yelling at each other. He starts trying to grab me and chases me around his house. I am terrified. Imagine a modular double wide, that wall in the middle. Going round and round. I cleared the counter behind me at one point to slow him down.
You guys. This is solely because I wouldn’t allow this man to search my things without my viewing. That’s all I asked. Which now it almost seems like some terrible orchestrated charade for what happened next..
He tackled me to the ground outside of my room, screaming at me.
All while I’m panicking because this man who is realistically a stranger to me, has me tackled on the ground a few months after I was held down and brutally raped. Demanding he get off of me for that reason. He did not care. He screams in my ear “You stupid bitch, I’ll stand on your head. If you weren’t my daughter, I would punch you in the face.” amongst other vile things.
I’ve never forgotten those words. I can still see his blood red face.
I’m screaming at his girlfriend to call the police. She was present for this entire exchange. I am screaming at her does she see what’s happening right now. Does she see what he’s doing.
She was frozen. She looked horrified, hypnotized..eyes wide. I kept screaming for her to call the police. Finally he chimes in yes, to call. She snaps out of it and dials.
Deputies arrive and he immediately tries to declare I’m out of control, insane, a danger etc.. etc.. The deputies interview me and declare I am none of the above. My father insists and insists. Demands for me to be taken to be evaluated and committed in the ER. How convenient. I agree to go to show my full cooperation and speak with a doctor to confirm I am indeed fine. We go and God only knows what horrific story Scott and his girlfriend made up. I spoke with my nurse who was like a big G.I. Joe looking guy and he was so kind. He believed me. He believed me when I told him I truly felt my safety and life were in danger if I went back to that house. The doctors didn’t listen to me, but they didn’t believe my father either. Back home we went. He was so angry.. like irrationally angry that I wasn’t kept there. Not concerned. Not worried. Angry. I was terrified and believed he was going to kill me that night. I did not sleep. Late that night I spoke with her son outside and told him what happened. He was appalled. By the next morning, whatever lies they had said to him overpowered that. He was also now extremely angry with me.
They showed me her son was armed with knives to drive me back down to my mother’s house. They refused to allow me any of my possessions. Not even my clothes. The only clothes I owned. Eventually they mailed me back a few things, but kept the rest.
It’s so weird.. so many of these situations, if you encountered them, you wouldn’t treat another human being in this way. Why would you do it to a child, your own child? Questions with no answers..
When I got home and my mother and I discussed the events, there was no concern for what had happened to me. Nor what he did to me. She was only concerned with the fact he tried to pull one over on her and failed. She thought this was magnificent and hilarious. She “won” some weird power conquest over him in that moment at my expense. She thought it was so amusing that he had failed at whatever insane plan he had.
Even she could see it. Fascinating how they could all see and acknowledge when each other did something bad or wrong if they were to be affected, but not acknowledge the part where I was targeted in the first place. I wasn’t even allowed that basic human decency. Not even as a child.
Now, I don’t know my father well enough to know how he’s going to react to that exposure. I can only imagine the lying and damage control that will result will get ugly. I make that point because I saw the anger and evil in his eyes when he said those things to me when he had me on the ground and if anything were to happen to me after this is published, he should be addressed. We grew up hearing the stories of his abusive outrage. This man makes me fear for my own safety. He’s the kind of guy that walks into the room and is loud and proud and thinks he’s super hot shit and that everyone loves him and envies him etc. But he’s putting on the show for himself. Because no one else sees it like that. The view from the outside is like watching an unpredictable, arrogant man stroke his own ego every chance possible. It’s gross.
I called him out for his actions after the fact and he tried to blame me. I didn’t allow it. His then girlfriend now wife reached out to Tanner about it and he held Scott accountable while all she had to say was “we tried to help her, you know. But she refused. But he loves her no less…..just too much time apart made it difficult. For all involved.” Notice they didn’t deny, just try to excuse away.
I still have this conversation saved. The expression on my husband’s face when I read that to him after describing the events..
So, I’ve not had anything to do with my father past this experience. I can’t think of any reason I’d ever want to.
So, now that we’ve gotten through most of this, there’s only a couple more things to add before I wish you all a wonderful adieu.. Remember, this is the encore.
I bring you back to my mother’s house, post assault by father. I immediately got a job so I could save and get out of her house. She demanded a quarter of every check I received even though she was receiving welfare for my presence in the house. None of this money was spent for me. Not on any food I was allowed to touch. Nothing. She actually admitted to this in an email. That authentic self. Let me tell ya, it gets you every time.
I remember asking my mom if I could just pick a few things, not even go and spend it. She said no. Let me make sure I spell this out. My mother was receiving state aid for me while I was a minor living in her house. None of that was spent on necessities for me. Not even food for me, just for her. I wasn’t allowed food. So I got a job and was immediately expected to hand her 25% of every check I worked for. As a minor.
For a short time, I dated an ex of my brother’s friend. He was odd. I stayed in his little studio apartment a few blocks away. He kept me locked in from the outside. I wasn’t allowed to get my phone to call for help. He’d force me to fry foods standing right in front of the stove for him, naked, to be burned and then proceed to rape me, tears silently streaming down my face as to not make a sound or risk being choked.
I started doing everything I could to annoy this man so he would want me to leave. Eventually that worked. Back to mother’s.. I told my mother about this. Not. One. Word.
I met my first and late husband James and moved out to stay with him in his mother’s house.
Young and broke and in love, what a dream. But at least I was free, right? Wrong.
James.. there are going to be a lot of mixed opinions of my choice to speak on this because James is dead.
James committed suicide the week before our 6 year anniversary, our daughter’s birthday and our son was just a baby. You’re probably thinking “Oh, my god, that’s so sad. Poor family, so tragic.” You’d almost be right…
I had a panic attack in the middle of reviewing his old messages. It brought me right back to those moments. Even on Christmas Eve.
James was abusive from very early on in the relationship. He liked to torment me like someone sadistic would torture a puppy they’ve locked up in a cage. The first time he admitted this to me was after an argument on our way into the city. He was driving and started some crazy fight. I got very upset and we’re both arguing. Suddenly, he’s like “I’m not going anymore.” To the plans we had for the next day. He said it was because he couldn’t stand to be around me after that argument. He later told me he’d orchestrated the entire thing because he just didn’t want to go and he thought it was an amusing way to get out of it. After he started choking me, he’d told me about his ex. That he’d choked her up against the fridge for messing with his computer and that he’d almost killed her. That felt like a warning.
And after all of this, I spoke to another ex of his recently. She had this to say…
“Yeah I remember him.. we dated long distance for years and he would tell me to kill myself almost daily and I would. I ended up in a mental institute. He told me how lucky I was that he even found interest in me.. his friends at the end would laugh over the phone at me.. He is evil. He was and is. His body and soul.. that whole family..”
I was very ashamed of this man and didn’t want to disappoint my mom and brother with such a failure of a pick that I never spoke up. I just carried it. Until I got arrested. The police were called on my behalf to help me. That day, I still have the emails where she asked:
“Hannah are you still in Jail? What the hell in going on?”
I replied..
“No, I’m not still in jail. I’ve been in an abusive relationship for over a year..I kept trying to tell myself it would get better. and I didn’t want to tell you about it because I was embarrassed about it all..because I apparently picked another shitty guy…
I was arrested on simple battery and criminal trespass (property damage). I was holding his computer mouse when he tackled me into his entertainment stand so the cord ripped out of it and his monitor crashed to the floor breaking. There for when the police did come, the fact that his property was damaged in the dispute made me the ‘main aggressor’. He had scratch marks on his face from me clawing him to get off of me..even though he tackled me several times, choked me, took me down right next to the baby on the bed….all of that made him the victim? way to go system…He told me before the cops were even called that if I pressed charges on him he would start a whole bunch of crap with them in retaliation…then when they came he said he didn’t want to press charges and he didn’t want them to take me to jail..then when I called him while I tried to post bond he wanted nothing to do with me and said he thought it was the officer calling to let him know I was released…that if he had known it was me he wouldn’t have answered..”
She replied with “Where are you? Where is -redacted child’s name- ?
I replied “we are both at his mother’s house until I can figure out what to do.”
Again, she said “where is he?”
I said “Here. He is being civil right now. He knows everything is very very touchy.”
Can anyone spot the most hurtful flaw in this conversation to my pain? She never once expressed any concern for me. Not for what happened. Not for what was done to me. No acknowledgment of admitting in embarrassment that I was being abused. Nothing. There never was anything said either. Ever. I shit you not. This is my mother.
Did you also catch that she failed to ask about the baby? I’d like to think if someone heard those words, they’d really want to know if the baby was okay? Or is that just me? Maybe even in the first email.. big sigh
It gets even better. I’m proof reading this right now and I got to this point and I just sighed so deeply in tears.. it hurts so badly to recall some of these. They were so traumatic..
I left him. But I was now homeless on a park bench with a 3 month old baby. A literal park bench right outside my job. I called my mother who resided nearby. She told me to call some churches and hung up. She proudly boasted about this in the emails. With smiley faces and everything. I called every shelter within hours of me. I didn’t find an opening until the middle of the night.. It was hours away. Someone I worked with gave me a ride. I am forever grateful for his kindness. I thanked him again years later. He’s a musician who makes music to uplift the youth in the rap sphere. To get their minds in the right direction with positivity.
We traveled between battered women’s shelters. Traveled across the country and I got my child and I into an apartment. I was able to get a job and childcare. I got it all together. Then I let him come back… he said it was okay, we could be a family.
This is where the tears just roll these memories are so painful.
So he and I were in a very, very rough marriage for years. I was subjected to mental torture that he admitted he did to get out of things or for fun to get an angry, emotional rise out of me. Battering me. He was never a present father. He spent all of his time on the computer, playing video games. Not one diaper. Not one bottle. Not one dish. Not even when I’d just had a baby. I was screamed at and berated for failing to successfully breastfeed our son. Because the formula would cost him money. “Why can’t you just stop being a lazy bitch and just do your job.” I also was not allowed anything.. Not a job, not my own bank account, no car. I wasn’t allowed to buy anything I needed and was berated for spending money on groceries and bills while he bought video games. Several examples of those conversations are shown.
Toxic is an understatement but I was very trapped and as it’s pretty easy to see, I didn’t have any sort of a support system. So I stayed. Getting more and more and more depressed. More and more battered. At one point I’d done something that angered him and he chased me into the kitchen while I was very pregnant, wrapped his hands around my neck choking me to the floor. He wouldn’t stop. Like he was entranced. Our daughter was just in the other room.
That second time the police were called, he’d strangled me on the stairs. Ripped my ear open. Bruises around my neck. Rug burns on my face and back. He wore his usual scratches from my struggle. The neighbors called the police because they could hear the struggle. Someone is going to jail, it was state law. I refused to press charges because stay at home mom. Now we’re on the street? Can’t let that happen. Yes, I had to sacrifice myself so the household wouldn’t fall apart. I went to jail. He regrets this immediately. No matter how hard he pushed, the DA wouldn’t drop the charges. They don’t care. He told me she was out for blood and he’s upset because look no more free stay at home mom childcare. Like what did you think was going to happen?
After this happened, he played a sadistic game of keeping my daughter away from me. I was always her sole caretaker. I had never been away from her. He told me he’d see to it I never saw my child again.
He turned all of our mutual friends and his family against me.
At one point, my mother sent a message to a mutual friend of mine and my brother and said “Can you imagine being Jim. Living with Hannah, taking care of -redacted child’s name-, working and trying to move Hannah, all at the same time? I feel bad for him. Because he’s such a good person and not disappearing on everyone. A lot of men would just disappear on her.”
That message was sent around the time I tried to take my own life. I couldn’t carry any of it anymore.
I almost succeeded. Full liver failure. I was put on a transplant list. The paramedics gave me the talk on the way to the University Hospital.. they had said my panels were the worst they had ever personally seen and to be prepared to not survive my attempt. You could see the pain in their eyes.
This is how my mother talks about the man I had already told her was choking me, torturing me, beating me and controlling me. Multiple times I told her. Multiple times she pretended like I’d never spoken. This is how she talks about me. To one of my peers. About my abusive marriage where she knew I was being battered and tortured. Remember, she didn’t care her son was a rapist either.
I did everything I could for James. I kept house. I raised our children. Even during holidays and birthdays, you can see him in the background of the pictures, on the computer. Not present. I did all errands including trash and mowing. I did all cooking and bookkeeping. I made sure he had lunches packed for work daily. Fresh coffee when I would wake him up for work. (yep, even that. I have messages of him telling me to do so) Everything to try to make him happy.. All while he’d leave for work and like clockwork within a few hours I’d receive a barrage of harassing text messages from him. Saying horrific, demeaning things to me. Some I still have. It was like clockwork to the point where I’d start to have panic attacks when my phone would ping while he was at work.
I was very close to attempting to commit suicide during this time. It was the beginning of 2016.
I vividly remember sitting on my living room floor with my son. Stroking his cheek, crying. Thinking about how truly sad it was going to be that he was going to grow up without a mother. This man tortured me so badly that I wanted to die every time I woke up and opened my eyes. I had no one to turn to. If it wasn’t James, it was my mother. Isolating me from the entire world so I was never heard.
Well, one day he never came home from work. Instead, I was greeted at my door by a sheriff’s deputy informing me he’d been found. That was exactly 8 years ago. That day was one of the most traumatic in my entire life. But it set me free.. I was heavily blamed for his suicide. From all directions. What must I have done to upset him so badly he’d do that. What horrible wife I must have been to drive him to it. His family was exceptionally cruel in that department. To no surprise.
When I was reviewing old messages for this letter, I read our old conversations and watched how I tip toed around upsetting him while he was so cruel to me. There were no messages of me being hateful or belligerent. Nothing. Just watching myself try to make him happy but it was never good enough.
His sister once told him “Hannah is a fat psycho whore bag. I hope your daughter survives her. Have a nice day. :) hahahahahahahahahahahaha”
This is the same woman who screamed at me “Get ready bitch, they’re gonna take your baby away. Get ready. They’re gonna take your baby away bitch!!” While her husband (while holding their newborn) got in my face screaming, calling me a cunt and that I’m just like his ex wife and that he should slam me and choke me up against the wall because I deserved it like she did.
This is the same woman who threatened my former sister in law that she’d somehow find a way to get her children taken away if she reported the eldest brother for possession of child porn to warn other families that could have been directly harmed by him. **Side note update, that brother is currently serving a prison sentence for possession of child sexual assault material amongst other things. But his sister I guess was okay with that? That’s… awfully concerning.
But all the while, my mother gossiped a lot about his death to everyone around me, never once acknowledging it to me. When someone asked if she had, she’d once again act like she’d never been spoken to. I was shown the message never left “seen.” My mother has never once acknowledged my being widowed at 24 years old as a battered stay at home mom with nothing and no support system. Literally nothing.
He drained the bank account on the night of his death. I couldn’t even access it because it wasn’t in my name, so his next check I couldn’t touch. The police had his debit card in evidence. His aunt wired me $60 for diapers and food. She later threw that in my face that I was so happy to take her money. She threw that in my face because I wouldn’t be the shoulder for his family to grieve on. I very politely asked for space. Apparently that was the rudest and most selfish thing I could have done to them at that time because they have treated me like the scum of the Earth since. Blaming me for his suicide.
Heather apologized once, in a voicemail I didn’t see in my blocked until years later. That was nice. Thank you, Heather.
But that’s where my mother’s presence in my life ended. Shortly before his death, I cut her off completely after many attempts to respectfully and civilly address all of the aforementioned (and soon to be) concerns in this letter. I’ve apologized to her and owned my actions and mistakes. I’ve actually apologized to a lot of people in my life for being the villain and any harm or pain I caused. Looking back, I really was such a hurt and angry person. I can’t say I blame myself for that mentality though. So, I thought she was capable of the same. No..
When asked if she had ever done anything during my life that she needed to apologize for or take accountability for, the answer to me was “No. I did the best I could.”
Then silence. Every time, it’s silence.
That’s where it will always be. Because my mother is incapable of seeing any fault in herself or her actions. She has created this unbelievable delusional world that she lives in and she’s convinced herself so hard that her thoughts are everyone’s reality. That she does not see how anything she’s done is wrong or bad because in her mind, I somehow deserve it for existing and upsetting her so much as that little spitting image.
You read that correctly.
Imagine the justification a mother must have to make to deem their own child unworthy of any acknowledgement of pain or harm done to them. Even by other people. To never even mention an expression of concern to anything, ever. Imagine how that child feels every day of their life. Then to never be believed when they stand up with their own voice.. all while that parent gossips about their pain any chance they can.
To say such nasty and hateful things about them with so much pride.. you were so proud of every single word..
So this letter.. this letter holds a big cup from the bucket of an entire life filled with pain and trauma.
Pain and trauma I have carried alone my entire life while being isolated from anyone who could help me. From anyone who could show me kindness or love.. compassion.
I have lived a very hurt and angry life. I really do apologize for any pain or harm I caused anyone. I didn’t have the best role models to learn how to function in the relationships side of life.
You’d never know looking at my present happiness, intellect or eloquence what I carry, so I just seemed like a complete asshole or really clingy to a lot of people most of my life. I hope this clears up a lot.. and honestly, this is why I am almost obnoxiously positive and kind to people. I sprinkle it absolutely everywhere. Maybe subconsciously because I know so many people carry so much hidden pain and the world is already cruel enough…
But I am still alive. There were days I almost didn’t make it from the cruelty of my own mother and the sheer torture of my late husband. Facing the reality of these things has made me feel like I’m going to throw up and I’m free falling all at the same time. Reading those words again.
It’s unbearable.
And it’s so crazy… I have so many emails saved that I sent her, being so kind and offering to help her. Offering to take her places when my daughter was first born and buy my mom things she needed. I never held any of the past against her, I was just trying to move on and live my life and build a relationship with her. She never wanted that. I even offered to help move her and fund moving her back up to Iowa to get her 45 feet worth of storage units that contained her whole life and my childhood, so she could get back on her feet. I told her she could live with me for free until she got on her feet. I really tried. Those units were liquidated by the way. Because my mother and brother stopped paying. I wasn’t allowed because I was not to be trusted. All of my baby pictures and everything are gone. I do not have a childhood home or any of my childhood possessions. Everything is gone. I have what I have now.
Her response was to message Wendy and rant about how I was trying to trick her to get free childcare…. Again, devastated at her response to my efforts. I realized all efforts and attempts on my end were futile. I would never have a mother, she would never love me and there was nothing I could do to change that. She hated me. She said it herself. So I let her die inside of me. I grieved that for a decade before she reopened this deep, deep wound.
You really should have just left me alone. I healed myself. I’m not the little sprout you used to smash every time I popped up with life.
I am an immovable force you will never torment again.
The moment I “woke up.” Think Matrix. Was the day she couldn’t apologize to me when I could to her. That set in motion that I knew I wasn’t the problem. How could I be, if you can’t do something so basic for human decency. That’s where you messed up. You shouldn’t have broken character. In that moment you were as clear as glass. I never spoke to her again. I removed myself entirely. I didn’t even touch social media for several years at one point. Intentionally, to heal.
I cannot fathom doing something like this to any one of my children.
I have children from 13 down to 1 right now and when I look at them, sometimes I imagine how I would have looked at that age and how hurt I must have felt being so unloved. It makes me cry because imagining my child feeling that pain is unbearable to me. The thought of them experiencing that hurt.
I refuse to carry this anymore. I refuse to suffer in silence anymore at your hands.
This is my “I’m not 7 years old anymore, aunt Trunchbull.”
My mom did always say my dad reminded her of Danny DeVito in that story.
Well, to that I share one of my most favorite quotes…
“You were born into a family that doesn’t always appreciate you. But one day, things are going to be very different.” – Ms. Honey from the 1996 adaption of Roald Dahl’s “Matilda.”
Indeed they are different and I am grateful for the love and peace I have now. I received a package from London today. The timing couldn’t have been better. Oh my goodness, I’ve waited weeks for it…
A First Edition, First Print of Matilda. Printed in London. A prized piece added to my collection I will forever hold dear to my heart because it showed me there could be a light at the end of the tunnel.
I have nothing but the biggest thank you to give to my husband. He has stood faithfully and lovingly by my side for 6 years showing me what love is supposed to feel like. Never wavering for even a second to show me that I am loved, wanted and valued. That I am more than worthy. He’s never made me question that. I wish every heart out there could find a love like this.
He’s truly changed my life.
I am a good person with a tremendously deep heart who still tries to find the beauty and happiness in every single day. I fell off the face of the Earth after James died. I found real love and we have lived happily ever after. I am an artist. An up and coming author and children’s literature illustrator. I am an advocate for at-risk foster youth. I am in the process of spearheading and sitting on the founding board of a non-profit for at-risk foster youth.
To my mother:
I’m shaking as I type this. With tears stinging my eyes. You were so calculated in your actions. I’d told you in black and white I was being beaten and abused and you turned around and spread the story as if I was the abuser. When I was beaten down so badly I tried to take my own life, you put on the biggest show for my former counselor while simultaneously telling my friends:
“(Jim’s mom) probably thinks I’m the devil because I produced Hannah”
she even referenced talking to the counselor. In that same message.
“I can understand everyone being mad at Hannah.”
And the lovely… “can you imagine being Jim. Living with Hannah. Taking care of -redacted-, working, and trying to move Hannah all at the same time.? I feel bad for him because he’s been such a good person and not disappearing on everyone. A lot of men would just disappear on her.” This is shown to me within a few days and weeks of the screenshots where I show I was being abused at that time. You knew and you spoke like that.
The only person you feigned any sort of actual concern, when you knew I wanted to die, because I was so broken down, was to my former counselor from childhood who you found on the internet. You proceeded to put on the works. The biggest show of a loving concerned mother worried for her poor baby. While you simultaneously messaged my friends telling them all of the bad going on in my life. Like hot gossip, except it was about your own child drowning in life. And then asking if they knew anything going on about it or us because you were “out of the loop”. As if my life was a new season of reality tv for your entertainment. Don’t forget to throw in the innocent “because I’m just so worried!” At the end to try to excuse your intentions.
This was all intentional. Done with malice. You were too intentionally careful with who what when where how and why for there to be any excuse of you believing your own delusion.
Intent. You are SICK. I wanted to die… and all you did was speak horribly of me… while you boasted about how wonderful my abusive husband was, to all of these people, even after you knew from the very beginning what he was doing to me. I told you how depressed I was. To the point of saying I should just give my daughter to better parents because I couldn’t carry the pain. To which you then gossiped about it to my peers and spoke poorly of me.
You went through so much trouble to make sure I was as isolated and discredited as possible while you spent my entire life mentally torturing me.
I recently had a conversation where I compared you to how a cheating partner will find cheating in their spouse, when there is none, due to a guilty conscious. How you see evil and crazy. The response of this person? “Absolutely. Exactly, same premise.”
When I closed my business almost immediately after I’d opened it, I didn’t tell not one person the truth of why except my husband. Because he watched me suffer through it. I was too ashamed to face the world with your rejection and how badly it consumed me. I couldn’t admit that to anyone.
It was so shameful, it knocked the wind out of me. It knocked down every bit of self love and confidence I’d built over the past decade. Like a house of cards. Poof. You stole the last 7 months from me. I closed my business because of it. I have barely spoken to any of my friends in months. I couldn’t focus on anything but that I still wasn’t enough. Why I would never, ever be enough.
I realized enough was enough when I became self conscious of sharing my art because “oh god, how will she twist this one.. what crazy delusion will it represent..” And it was poisoning one of my greatest hobbies. Or how I am collecting vintage first edition first prints of stories I loved when I was little. I can hear the sick twisted fantasy in her head now. It ruins everything for me.
The switch has flipped. I was never the problem. I am the child of a narcissistic abusive mother. Who was so good at putting on her show that I slipped through the cracks. The moment I realized it was never me, it felt like the entire world got up off my chest all at the same time.
You no longer hold any power over me.
Over my dead body, not for one more second will you steal anymore happiness or peace from my life. This has freed me from a prison I didn’t even realize I was so deeply buried in… It’s like someone finally turned on the light and I can see the bright, beautiful world around me with so many possibilities for happiness. I am finally free.
Also, the audacity for you to have convinced one of your ex husband’s that I’m some terrible daughter who needed to calm down, be more understanding and give you a chance and some credit. I wonder what he thinks now. Does he know you only reached out because you were worried about being homeless? (No one can tell me they’re surprised by that right now. Yep, there’s an email for that one too.) He left me on read when I tried to speak up for myself. He wouldn’t listen. No one listened to me. Any time I tried to scream to the world for help, everyone turned away in complete silence.
Every. Single. Time.
I wonder if there is any other way I can hold you accountable. Does anyone know if I can sue this woman, like criminal charges… I will have to inquire..
I don’t forgive you. I will never forgive you. I can’t tell you how many times I approached you with my pain and you turned away. How many times I apologized for existing in any capacity and you turned away. To know you made that choice all the while detesting me to the core of who I was to you as a person. You’d beaten me down so badly I was willing to accept just an apology. To forget it ever happened. When I still believed the words you said about me. That I was somehow such a terrible monster. That’s mind blowing to me now. You don’t deserve forgiveness. You are evil…
God have mercy on your soul.
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Congratulations everyone! You’ve reached the aforementioned wall of quotes. (If you want to read her emails, you gotta look at the pictures. You have to see it with your own eyes.) Where I have compiled a lovely array of things that were such a relief to hear after all these years. Even from some people whom my mother holds in high regard herself. I guess she never thought her circle could disagree with her. This wasn’t easy for any of us at any point.
**conversations have all been recorded, copied, screenshots etc. and filed for the integrity of these allegations**
Enjoy.
“She seemed to want to tell everyone, desperately, like she’s trying to make sure we believed her narrative before you had a chance to speak for yourself.”
“I remember thinking it was weird. I remember her telling me and I was like omg what the fuck. It was honestly the craziest thing I’d ever heard. She was just hell bent. She was so sure. She had books, like 20 books including on old DSM. And she like freaked out and was like ‘do not touch them. And she needs these meds’ it was in a gallon bag. She was hiding it, she had hid it with the DSM she had. She said they were yours but I didn’t see any names on anything. But she whipped the bag out and then stashed it behind her again like she was making sure I didn’t see it fully. She never gave enough details for me to be able to do something about it legally and she still had all her lawyer books she bought, I assume she was watching her wording but it was crazy. She quickly covered herself by being like Hannah’s crazy so I have to find a sneaky way to get her to take her meds because she needs to take her meds and she has this diagnosis. So she was trying to find a way to trick you into taking them. She didn’t share what she had planned. Everything she did was a trick to manipulate you..”
“If that happened to me. The guilt I would rain down upon her would be insurmountable. I can’t ever imagine doing that to my child.”
“I just feel like if she had such a problem with me, she shouldn’t have been so nice to my face. I don’t want her to poison other people’s opinions of me. She always seems to have a motive.”
“I’m sure she was careful with most actual professionals. I never felt like she didn’t know what she was doing. Just that she was doing it poorly. The only thing she was good at was getting to them first and attempting to sway people so they couldn’t hear from you or believe you if they did. If she didn’t get to them first, she was much more careful. She’s trying to make sure she looks like she cares, while really making sure her narrative is in tact.”
“I remember she told you she’d had an abortion and you got upset at that because you thought you were pregnant and she was implying you to do the same. But the way she said it made it sound like she’d wished she’d had abortions for you and Tanner. Like she’s never mourned the life she could have had and she blames you kids for missing out on it. She thought she was good at hiding what she really meant, but the hyper vigilance in me felt there was more sometimes. And that was one time I really felt she meant in general she wished she’d just never had kids.”
“Your mom had said her dad was worse than him but I have a hard time believing anything she says.”
“She said she felt trapped that you moved in down there. But had no other choice but to take you. She was elated when you tried to go live with your dad. She said all the crazies would be in one place and away from her then.”
-She was thrilled for me to go live with someone she called a crazy abusive narcissist? And for all of the crazies to be together? What kind of mother says that…-
Yep. I was like what do you even say to something like that.”
“Regarding you and them, it seemed a lot of like a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ situation. If I asked, I got those same stories. Nothing more. Like they were rehearsed because they never changed. If I pushed the subject would get changed immediately or I’d just be blatantly ignored.”
“She thinks everyone around her, if they don’t agree with her, are insane. Are crazy. Are abusive to her.”
“You know who I feel bad for? -Redacted ex-. I can’t imagine how damaged he made her. My soul goes out to her.”
“It kills me to think of how amused he was while I was in so much pain through our entire relationship. Shaming me. He was making me crazy. Saying or doing one thing then saying the opposite. Deleting comments or hiding photos of us on fb. Saying it was a glitch and unhiding them and being like what are you talking about. Going ‘to his mom’s’ and then saying he had to stay late because she was sad and she needed him.”
“I can’t believe my parent’s gave him a gun. How scary. Like this is insane. All of the lies upon lies. My mom (*competent surgeon of 38 years at this point*) said your mom seems traumatized. Maybe if Tanner didn’t feel obligated to take care of her emotionally he would have some of that energy to sustain his own relationships. He idolizes her or something. But I’ve always felt weird about her. Just like she’s judgmental and also maybe not so mentally sound.”
“He said he wanted to talk to a therapist though. He said he thinks his dad did it too. Apparently Scott told your mom all sorts of shit. The only thing I know for sure is they didn’t start to come to light until after she had kids. And that once he said he was a pedophile.”
“He tries to make you out to be this awful person. From the very beginning. Made it sound like you were a little kid trying to kill yourself. That was one of the first things he told me about his life. That he tried to save you from jumping out of a window with a knife. You didn’t need to defend yourself, honestly. We both know who the monster is.”
“Obviously your egg donor will be like ‘oh look she’s crazy again’ but honestly whatever. how else will you be heard by people who will listen?”
“Ironically, I do remember my mom thinking she was crazy. I also remember her being relieved when you moved. Thinking I wouldn’t wanna hang out after you moved. She wasn’t happy when I still wanted to spend time with you because of your mom.”
“Tanner did seem to have this unspoken hatred of you. The stories he shared never seemed to line up exactly with how much loathing filled the words. If he wasn’t a manipulative psychopath, maybe I’d think he was mad at how much grief your mom portrayed that you caused her. But I feel like he knew your mom was hyping everything up more than it really was.”
She stopped communicating with me the second I asked about why she didn’t reach out to you after Jim was gone. That was the last time she messaged me. The last time she shared anything with me on Facebook or anything like that. I guess how dare I ask about why she hasn’t checked in on her own daughter.”
“I wondered if someone was on to her after she committed you to the state and that’s the real reason she fled Iowa.”
“It’s clear she just hated being a parent.”
“I think, aside from Tanner doing his part to pit us against each other, she did the same. That’s why you were told she loved me so much or whatever and she told me how evil you are. Tanner just abused that set up she already made for him. She was doing her ‘best’ to make sure we wouldn’t get close so her delusion wouldn’t unravel.”
“She was initially super upset with me and was like ‘you can’t keep him, he’ll be too loud and upset the downstairs neighbor. I can’t deal with that’. She was super mad for awhile. Big time made it about her. Like she gives a fuck about being a grandmother.
I told you that she told me to warn -redacted’s- parents that he could end up psycho like her dad, your dad and you right? She said they should keep a close eye on him and if he acts out at all to take him to a therapist to get on meds asap. I found it off, and didn’t do it. There’s that saying that ‘if everyone around you is an asshole, you might actually be the asshole and that totally fits her.”
“None of the things she said made sense but it does seem like she used the Munchausen by proxy issue to get you set up as a ward of the state. She said she put you in the mental health care institutes but you were in foster care? So that never made sense. She said she sent you to a mental health care facility but that you escaped and ended up in foster care somehow. The details were probably intentionally vague. Clearly she was trying to prove you were mentally unstable as fuck.”
“She said you mastered those worksheets and that you knew the right things to say to get out of the program fast without telling the truth. When she was telling me I was like hmm, I sniff some bs here. But I didn’t have the tactical understanding at the time to really get more information. But it was definitely like what in the absolute fuck did you do to your daughter even with the vague details she provided. Something was insanely off.”
“He was clearly the golden child to her. She also clearly didn’t want to be a parent at all and resented both of you for making her one. That was B L A T A N T.”
“She said you ran away from them because you were crazy, the usual default response from her.”
“She hates you and has no capacity for how humans change.”
“Good god. I think I knew some of this but jesus christ. Evil is an understatement. But that’s fucking insane. Some people really shouldn’t procreate.”
“I always thought he was exaggerating when he talked about you. Maybe not at the beginning. But as I was with him longer and you moved down here and I talked to you everything he said lost value. It didn’t add up. I’m pretty sure he’s trying the same with me now but my family is prominent here.”
“I can still see my mom’s face when she’d be seething angry at me with a mix of disappointment and disgust. -I know exactly the face, because she’d use it when talking about you.”
“The first time I met you, I know that how your mom and brother made you out to be was crap. That’s why I tried to be there for you. Your mom didn’t like that. They made you out to be uncontrollable.”
“I study psychology as a hobby and I was catching him in his lies. He needed to make me look crazy. It’s kind of sad to think someone could be born without the capability to love.”
“Honestly, Hannah, Do you consider yourself an empath at all? Because I low key think he’s been trying to fuck with you for years. There is this thing called the sociopath-apath-empath triad where a sociopath uses someone with lower empathy than the empath but not as little as the sociopath to help destroy their target. The sociopath manipulates the apath to help do their bidding. I think you are his target. Maybe his first. It sounds crazy. I feel like I have PTSD from this.”
“After I found out he legit went through every picture on my instagram and unliked them. He liked them all at one time. I have 1,104 posts. That’s psycho. I think it’s a game.”
“Hannah, your mom and brother are basically the same person. You’ve built your own family. You don’t need them and you know it’s not you. It’s them.”
“When she came up after your attempt she didn’t even go see you. I asked her over and over if she wanted to visit you in the hospital but she always said no with no explanation. She just sat outside my apartment smoking all day. It had to be some kind of social pressure. Because she sure didn’t do shit and didn’t visit you so it seemed super pointless.”
“She seems blissfully unaware of how her actions, and lack there of, are truly viewed by others.”
“She doesn’t give two shits about any of her grandkids. I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing but she doesn’t care. I’m sorry if that hurts, but that’s just my personal experience and perspective. She won’t have anything to do with Tanner’s family because of who he married. She’s never met her grandchildren.”
“When you came to live with us, Tanner and your mom were PISSED. I was the one that agreed. When I bailed you out they were PISSED. But I was like, I can’t just. Leave her.. I with that we’d been closer then. I would do anything for you.”
“Those social workers were seemingly definitely trying to reassure you that you aren’t crazy.”
“That’s why she wouldn’t remove her parental rights.. Even though you were in Iowa in the system she still got to claim you on her taxes. Holy shit, it’s always been about money. That’s why she lost her shit over her brother and his wife ‘convincing her dad to change the will’. That same dad she said was crazy and she hated him…she just wanted the fucking money.”
“She also got mad at me for giving you a picture of -redacted child’s name-. She said you’d just use it against me. Even with the fights we had, it wasn’t what your mom said or what Tanner said. None of their stories seemed real, and it wasn’t my experience. Nothing lined up”
-That’s a word everyone uses a lot I’ve noticed when referring to me and my mom. Evil. Did she use that word to describe me?-
“You, her dad and your dad. Evil. She’d fail to find any other descriptor and would do that sigh and say evil at the end of her sentence, when talking about you three. Any time she talked badly about you.”
“The embarrassed was only ever when she talked about others ‘seeing how you acted’. She wanted to make perfectly clear how much of a mistake she thought you were.”
“She was a literal master at stonewalling. She did it to me any time she was confronted with information she didn’t want to hear. That blank stare, folded up on the couch, smoking and staring at the tv. Complete shut down, full stonewall. Like grow up and talk to people. She told me she shut down because of how her dad treated her. It was her default state when stressed, she said. But it didn’t feel like that. To me it just felt like she was intentionally stonewalling, using it as an excuse to not handle things that upset her. You had to regulate her instead, and when you didn’t she’d just shut off from you.”
“She said something about she got money from her dad still, but it wasn’t what she was supposed to get because of her brother. And she lived on that money and could have lived on it longer but you used her credit cards. However she did act like she got NOTHING and was raging mad at her brother and his wife. She’d just conveniently forget she said she got money and you’d wasted it.”
“Fled the state when they wanted her to take her child back because nothing was wrong with you.”
“She found an opportunity to make you a worse person to others, by taking your trauma. Literal trauma she should have called the police over and twisting it to her narrative. Putting the pieces together just… even reactionary as they made you, you never EVER deserved any of that bullshit. Like ever. At all. Not even close.”
“She made such a mess of her lies that once looked at under a microscope it’s very easy to pick apart. It’s really just appalling. She deserves to rot.”
“Feeling silenced is the same as feeling helpless. And it’s the worst feeling in the world. I genuinely understand and if telling the world about your trauma would make you feel like you aren’t silenced then I say fucking go for it. Sink their ships and throw them to the kraken! Fuck them and ANYONE who doesn’t support you, love you, cherish you, care about you. You are a strong STRONG woman who shouldn’t have to have been SO STRONG for ALL YOUR LIFE. So fuck both your parents, who don’t even deserve to be called such anyway. Because they failed in every regard. Fuck them. Fuck anyone who listens and believes them. Fuck anything to do with them. Sink the ship, do what heals little you. You don’t deserve to spiral in doom over shit you had no control over, that shouldn’t have happened to you at all, when all you needed was love.”
That last one is why this was my favorite part.
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Bonus stories I didn’t feel like elaborating on because this was already exhausting and I really just wanted to be done… but for accountability sake:
When I was pregnant with my first daughter and I was super young and poor, I worked. I earned enough to actually get money back on my taxes, without being married or having dependents. I really needed that measly like $300 compared to what she got claiming me. She fraudulently claimed me on her taxes that year despite knowing I needed to file. I really needed the money I’d worked for. She didn’t care. I offered to just take the money I would have gotten if I filed and she could just keep the rest of the credits etc. She refused. She claimed me and when I couldn’t file, I reported her for fraud to the IRS so I could finally file. She cussed me up and down on the phone for that one.
Just like she cussed me up and down on the phone after I had to do the same thing with welfare so I could get medicaid and food stamps. While I was 19 and pregnant. She refused to remove me from her case, while I was sitting in the DHS office 1,000 miles away applying. She didn’t care. She told me I was so ungrateful when I did that. “After everything I’ve done for you!!” she screamed. Thanks, mom.. There’s a gem here. This office was my home office from my childhood home. Some of my social workers still worked there. I bumped into two of them and had a candid conversation about my time in the system. They told me they were really sorry and that my mother was a bad mom who had absolutely abandoned me. Can you imagine what they must have known to feel compelled to tell me that in this setting?
When I was 17 and I’d just lost over 50 lbs. while living in her house living off my one employee meal per day I worked. Trying to just save and save to get out. I put on a pair of shorts to wear out in public for the first time since I was a child and the first thing she had me do was spin for her in the living room. She told me how bad the back of my thighs looked. I haven’t been able to un-hear that in 15 years.
I found this exchange between James and my mother after I’d cut her off:
“Hi Jim hoping everyone is well? Haven’t hear a peep from Hannah… can you please ask her if she’s ever sent me my books (about teeth) that she said she would about a month ago? I’d really appreciate it (can’t afford to replace them). It’s hot and sticky here, so you haven’t missed anything, but it sure would be nice if you’d come back and visit someday :) love to you all :)”
To which he replied:
“She blocked you, because she finally accepted what kind of person you are. It took her a long time to accept and realize that you’re selfish to the extreme. You ruined her young life, caused her many mental problems, and essentially abandoned her. You don’t just push your child off into the system because they are “bad”. She realized that she doesn’t know why she would even want to have anything to do with you. Same thing goes for Tanner. His meek and mild facade only held up for so long. He showed what an asshole he really is and on top of that is dating young girls. She’s not talking to him either. Don’t think I had anything to do with her blocking you. I’ve been asking her why she has had anything to do with you from the beginning. She took all of this time to figure it out for herself.”
Knowing what you know about him now, after this letter, that message is profound.
With how he spoke to me and how he reacted, for him to be able to see it and say something to her…
There was this one time, back when James and I first got together. My mom tried to message his mom and say she wanted a place to chat privately where “the kids” wouldn’t see. (She wanted to pull her usual) and when his mom did not reciprocate and refused to speak with her, my mother reached out to me and lost it on me. Screaming at me what I must have done and said something to make her not like her. But I hadn’t. I hadn’t said anything to her. I was too ashamed of who my mother was and how she treated me. I’d never willingly expose that back then. She did that all on her own.
**I received an email post writing this entire letter, showing how my mother admitted that she’d received an inheritance from her father’s will. Unlike what she told absolutely everyone. That she lived off of that money for years until she had to pay it to the state for my care. She tells everyone I stole it all. Draining her bank accounts and that’s why she had to flee in a car with nothing… Flee all the way down to a high cost of living, famous coastal town. Huh… interesting…
On a whim just now, in the middle of the night buying this website domain, I reached out to a friend I value, who knows me personally and has since middle school, at random, just who was right there when I opened Facebook and I asked them:
“Can you tell me what you think of me as a person. Like inside, what makes me the human being I am. What kind of person am I, in your eyes and experience?”
You know what they said? they said…
“So the Hannah I know is extremely kind and thoughtful, you’re very determined and driven, you exude confidence and give an air of authority like you know exactly what you’re doing even if maybe you don’t. When I’m talking to you and interacting with you, you gave me all the attention I wanted to feel engaged. You’re just a genuine good person and I’ve always enjoyed our friendship.”
The best part? I receive kind words like that often. Because I am a good person.
But I’m the monster? I’m evil? Right… okay.
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**I have all the proof/receipts/screenshots/emails etc. of absolutely everything. If not shown, available per any formal legal subpoena to contest the validity of what’s been stated here today. Yep. That’s how confidently I stand to say all of this. Sue me. I would love nothing more than to stand up in front of a court of law to expose this truth. I want to look you in your eyes and say it to your face. And if you want to come for me for libel, I will make sure there’s a scene of this so the world sees these words next to your face as you lie. If any one of you who abused me contests, I will make sure every single person gets pulled in with a subpoena. Everyone. I own this site domain, it’s not going anywhere. I tried my hardest to respect the privacy of all the victims in this letter. With redacted names and quotations as anonymous and randomized as possible. Even though this is my trauma and my story, they suffered too and deserve that respect and to be left alone. I wish them all so much healing.** 04/29/2024 edited for context and clarity 05/03/2024
xoxo Hannah
Below is an article linked to an accurate depiction of what it was like to grow up as my mother’s daughter. It is spot on. My mother is quite literally textbook.