Presence/absence

[Omo]

Hello everyone. I'm new to this site. I have a question i've been wanting to ask others physically abandoned by a parent with PDs: what has helped you reconcile the void(s)?

My mother physically abandoned my sister and I when we were in elementary school, though the emotional distancing was always in play as far back as I can remember. When we were home with her she would rarely interact with us, locking herself away in her bedroom (she also had a severe case of Excoriation disorder). My father won custody of us. The day she left she told us she would be back to see us. That never happened. Fast forward ten years later without a word and I receive a disturbing letter from her wondering how I am. Almost half the letter is written in abbreviations. Ten years or so after that, another letter would appear as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Prior to marrying my father and conceiving us, she was married twice before, and had daughters she also abandoned when they were the same age we were. I wondered for years if a definitive diagnosis would put closure on it, as if knowing meant you could intervene. Reading about personality disorders for the first time in college psychology was the A-HA moment, yet it all still remains a distressing, open ended "why?" Knowing she was the textbook definition of every cluster-B PD, and according to one therapist, an 'As-if'
type, helped to frame it all,  but it hasn't helped me move on from it.

My estranged mother passed away in 2011, before I could seek her out to ask her how she could have serially abandoned several daughters. I tell myself that her answer would not have been one I would have recognized nor understood.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hello and welcome,

To answer your question, I would share that learning about NPD definitely helped. When I was younger, and still today, it seems thst getting a PD parent fully properly disgnosed is a rarity. Even though I've never been told there was no diagnosos of PD for either parent, the behaviours were all there and lifelong like yours sound like they were.

It helped me to see PD as a lifelong chronic persist condition so that I knew there was nothing I could have done to fix it.

I personally think the book by Pete Walker gives a gentle guide for how to build our self after PD parenting. I learned more from that book than from most others and from a lot of counsellors who were not skilled with C-PTSD.

Trees

[Omo]

Thank you, ill look for the book. Sounds like it could be helpful.