Woman tells mom, 'how DARE you take my son to the grave of your lost child.' AITA?
When this mom is furious with her mother for potentially trauma dumping on her 5 yo son, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for telling my mom she can’t talk to my kid about her miscarriage and take him to the grave?'
I (28F) have a son (5M). I was adopted and grew up the consolation prize for the miscarriage my mom (68F) had at 20 weeks. We had to go to this fetuses’ grave every year.
One of my earliest memories was her forcing me to give my favorite stuffed rabbit to the grave. I grew up with her venting about how hard the miscarriage was to me, and I honestly think it was super inappropriate and it made me feel like a second option to what she actually wanted. I obviously was never good enough.
I recently found out that she took my son to the fetuses grave and told him about it. I told her that’s an off-limits topic and he has no business hearing about her miscarriage at five years old.
Now some people in my life are saying I am an ah for telling my mom she couldn’t tell my son about his dead aunt, but I think I’m justified in not wanting him to have to hear about it too. It was literally 30 years ago. Am I the asshole?
Let's see what readers had to say. Needless to say, they were VERY divided.
rightspecialist07 writes:
I would say that yes, YTA. Where is the difference between visiting this grave and one for someone who lived for 1/5/10/20 years? Either way it is a loss to those that loved them, regardless of how long they were there to be loved for.
Having carried a child and undoubtedly loved him from the moment you knew of his existence surely you can understand how devastating it would be for him to have died? Is visiting a grave once a year really all that much to ask for?
It sounds to me like you really should seek help/counselling for this bitterness and resentment you feel towards your mum - her only crime being to have her child die and wanting to mourn their loss. What right do you have to say how she should grieve?
Would you expect a time limit on your grief if it was your son who passed? If he lived for 5 years you can mourn him for 8 years, but only if you don't mention it to anyone or visit his grave unless you are completely alone? That's not how grief works!
Honestly, your mum gave you a home, a family, a life and unconditional love, despite her grief, and yet you seem to feel unjustly treated because she loved a child before you and didn't just immediately forget all about it when she adopted you?! This whole 'consolation prize' issue is yours, I would bet she feels nothing of the sort.
If you weren't good enough she never would have adopted you in the first place, let alone raised you your whole life.
Tbh it sounds very much like you set an opinion as a child, seeing the situation through a child's perspective ('I must be second best because her first child died and she's obviously still sad about it so I will never be good enough for her')
- ie, a very simplified, black and white, version by an immature and not yet developed mind, as is normal from a child.
However, instead of growing and maturing and seeing the situation from an adult point of view, empathising at how awful it must be to lose a child and how, rightly or wrongly she was just trying to figure out how to grieve and live with that grief;
you've just stuck to this idea that it's about you not being as good as her unborn child and let that resentment and anger fester. Stop trying to compete in a situation where there was never any competition.
jaredkitty responded:
EXCUSE ME? NTA! Wow you typed all that out and didn't realize that grieving this for 30 years is COMPLETELY unnatural and needs to be let go??
Miscarriages are terrible but OPs mom isn't handling this correctly. You are placing all the blame on OP and not looking at how fu&^ed up the moms actions are at taking a 5yo to a fetus' grave. Take your awful, judgemental, and WRONG opinion somewhere else troll
fantasticbag8 completely disagrees:
NTA. Trauma dumping on a child is super inappropriate. It's OP's responsibility to protect her child from her mom's self-centredness (I called her self-centred because she's thinking just about her pain and then sending flying monkeys when she couldn't have her way).
Mom needs serious mental health if she isn't over a miscarriage which happened 30 years ago. Infact mom shouldn't even be left alone with OP's son.
OP probably also spent her childhood living in her unborn sister's shadow, always being compared to her and never being enough.
OP limit your contact with mom. You and your son aren't mom's coping mechanism. Some people shouldn't have kids if they can't look after themselves first. Hugs OP.
OP then provides this update:
Thank you so much everyone for the support, I was somewhat gaslit for my whole childhood and this thread has really helped me to see how messed up it really was that she consistently trauma dumped on me...
and put her grief on me during my childhood. I’m definitely going to consider going LC, and if my son tells me she’s brought it up again likely NC.