Kids go NC with PD Family

[BeautifulCrazy]

My three teens (13, 15, 16) have now gone No Contact with their entire family on the PD side.

Some of the backstory is in a different thread, but I will summarize.
I am divorced 10 years and have sole custody of my three kids. Their dad has an order for Every- Other- Weekend visitation. (That was a years long, hard fight. Initially we were nearly 50/50) Their relationship with dad and that side of the family has always been difficult.
They went NC with their father first. There was an incident last August where conflict arose between one of the kids and their dad's girlfriend. The other kids sided with their brother (the scapegoat) and dad sided with the girlfriend. Dad called the kids a lot of derogatory names and told them they were not worth his time or his effort or worth the money he spends on them. He also told them that his girlfriend (they are no longer together) was more important to him than they were. And brought them all home crying.
That was the final straw for my kids.
They blocked him on all media. They have kept completely NC except for one kid checking for messages from dad at Christmas (there were none).

Since Christmas, the PD matriarch of that part of the family (kids' paternal grandmother) has been in contact with my kids by text and FaceBook messages and they have had a couple of in-person visits.
Needless to say, despite starting off okay, that has not gone well...
Grandmother attempted some manipulations. The kids saw through them. Grandmother tried bigger, flashier tactics (she offered to take the kids on a family cruise vacation with "select" family members).
The kids declined.
Grandmother, who almost ALWAYS gets her way, did NOT take it gracefully and a full-on PD $#!tstorm has been going on since. She has been working her way through the PD playbook and it has been a horrible few weeks for the kids who have only ever been observers of her horrible behavior before. Now they are targets.
I think Grandmother sincerely thought she was going to be able to get what she wanted: she would be able to take her (current) Golden Child Son and his wife and kid, and my three kids on a cruise vacation. Even after my kids turned her down, she still tried to pressure or guilt them into going. She sent texts and social media messages about how gloriously fun it was going to be, how they might never have this kind of chance again, how they were making their brothers (or cousin) miss out on this wonderful opportunity, how lucky they were to be invited, how special they were to her, how much it was costing her, how it was a chance to make nice family memories that they would have forever, how she (or grandpa) might die soon and they would feel terrible...
Also the flying monkeys. GC son (their uncle) and wife begging the kids by text to change their minds, repeating grandmother's content. (The kids found this invasive. Rightly so. They hadn't given their contact info to uncle, or given permission for him to have it.)
My kids chose the path of least resistance with uncle and aunt and blocked them from contact without any comment or warning.
Grandmother found out that her flying monkeys had been neutralized and went scorched earth.
The texts to the children began to get nasty, telling them that they were being controlled by their mother (me), that they were ungrateful and spoiled, that they were selfish and were being mean to an old woman because they were not raised right, that they were raised by crazy people and they were turning out just like their father.
Around that time, the social media comments also began. Initially, the online smearing was focused on myself and my ex husband. Mostly attacks on our parenting, but also accusations of being controlling, evil and child abusers!  It degenerated further until she was also smearing the children and then got downright victim-y and pathetic.
It was pretty messy. The kids got caught up in JADEing for a day or two, then kept reading the online comments for another day or so out of disbelief before blocking completely.
It has been very very very hard on them.
I don't have any way to help make sense of this for them. I wonder just like they do, how someone can treat others (that they claim to love) so poorly. There IS no way that this behavior makes any kind of sense in the reality my kids and I inhabit. It's just sh***y and I hate that they have (had) these people in their lives. I feel guilty for having procreated with such a messed up person with such a dysfunctional family. I feel sad for them, that they had to experience this. I feel SUPER ANGRY at this family for messing with my kids. I feel relieved that maybe we are once and for all finished with this kind of thing. I worry maybe we are not. I feel angry and exhausted that I am dealing with this alone because there is no other parent or parent figure to help them process. I feel sorry for myself because I'm all alone and it is unfair that this family keeps upsetting my kids and I'm the one who has to deal with it. I wish I could hide from all the feely feelings in my house right now because I honestly do find it a bit triggering. I am okay. I am able to be stable and calm and dispassionate, but my heart is just in pieces for them!!

(I also just now remembered that my youngest gave grandmother a pair of tickets to his graduation because he is valedictorian. Hopefully she will have the decency to just stay away. But I don't think I can count on that.)

Anyway, the kids are now NC with that whole side of the family, but the damage done is huge. I worry, can kids recover from this? Are they going to be carrying this with them their whole lives? Is there anything that helps get past this? Does anyone has a time machine or memory reset we can borrow?

[Call Me Cordelia]

Yes they can recover. Yes they may be affected. Yes they will accumulate more experiences and positive relationships that will have a greater cumulative effect on them that this crap with their PD family members. They are making great choices for boys so young. The PD antics are strongly validating those choices.

Can you/they speak to a school counselor maybe? Vice principal or trusted teacher? It does seem unfair that their only resource is you, both to you and them. And maybe the counselor can advocate for keeping grandma out of graduation, too. It's in the school's interest to avoid a scene, too. Congratulations, valedictorian!

[moglow]

What they've faced and how they've handled it is incredibly brave. They'll get past it, but it'll take time and effort to depersonalize it and see those people for who they are. It's hard to grasp even for adults that it's *nothing* they did but who others have chosen to be.

Personally I'd suggest keeping what messages they can/will, to refer back to later when doubts set in, if they made the right decision etc. With time and silence, somehow we come to believe it's safe to get back in that water. I had to remind myself for a long time that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. I found it handy to fire some of those type messaged back at mine, whether in actuality or just quoting what was said to me. My mindset was: THIS, this is why we are where we are!

It shouldn't have to be all for one and one for all, but I'm so glad they aren't alone in this. My brothers and I were pretty close growing up but never really talked about what we went through [our mother is your MIL incarnate, scorched earth and all, take no prisoners mentality]. Encourage them to talk it out and put it down, not hold it in and blame themselves. To me that's where the most harm came from, feeling isolated and that no one cared. I bottled it all up and made it my stuff instead of putting it back where it all belonged, in HER lap.

Wishing all of you continued strength as you work through this!