Letters: Introduction

I've been reading books recommended by my therapist and other sources. We talk about them in my sessions. One recent book was "Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life" by Dr. Susan Forward and Craig Buck. In it, the author has exercises targeted toward those dealing with incest, but I felt that the exercises would be useful for me as well, obviously with a slight difference in focus.

One of these exercises is to write a letter to the 'main' abuser (in the book, which ever perpetrated the incest) and the other parent. Although in my case there wasn't incest, I do feel there was one parent who carried out the majority of the abuse, and one who effectively enabled it. In that respect, I'm going to post the letters I've written to each of them.

I don't expect my parents to ever see these letters. I'm not even sure I want them to unless I were about to cut off contact and burn those bridges. They're not nice, happy, 'thanks for the great childhood' letters, which you've probably guessed from the tenor of my previous posts' content. They are, however, what I feel, think, and remember.