I was talking with an LGBT counsellor a couple of weeks ago about the ratio of grandparents who are not permitted in their grandchildren's lives. I assumed that the numbers would probably be higher for grandparents whose lives do not meet what we still, in this country at least, regard as social, familial and cultural norms within the context of sexuality.
What she told me, however, took me outside the boundaries of sexuality and into a world I have known all too well myself.
Adults who, as children, were sexually or psychologically abused and emotionally and physically abandoned, carry with them the added burden and stigma of the scapegoated individual who, because they were deemed throwaway when they were young, are too often perpetually abused in repeating patterns that permit people to deem these once-abused children dispensable. Does that run-on attempt at an explanation make any sense? Let me try again:
People who were dumped on as kids are seen as garbage containers by those family members -- and sometimes by friends (especially by friends who themselves were abused) -- who are badly behaved and looking for excuses to blame someone else. You might know an adult, for example, who has spent a lot of her life in silent or overt apology -- which is apparently what a large proportion of abused children grow up and do -- who is the first person her family members blame because, after all, if this woman had any true worth, would she have been treated so badly when she was a child? (Mind you, in some instances, I think the whole thing can be relegated to laziness and lack of imagination: "I'll choose her, because everyone knows she was hated when she was a kid" sort of thing.)
I suppose it's similar to that pecking order things, a hierarchy we all know if we have ever joined a group midway in its evolution, or gone to school, or belonged to a moderately-sized family. Someone always wants to be head cheese, but in order to do that they need baby cheeses who are willing to fall in line behind them.
I have written elsewhere about hierarchies and scapegoating, but I had not heard it spoken of in this pervasive child-to-parent pattern way -- a way that can repeat itself eternally, like falling dominoes, among family members, and is often used by adult children against parents when those adult children are clearly aware of the abandonment issues their parents have dealt with and might still be dealing with -- even and sometimes especially when those parents do not speak about their childhood abuse.
What scapegoated adults need to learn to do in these situations, in order to reclaim their own place and role among their larger family, is decide whether they are capable of confronting the people who are continuing to abuse them. In some cases, this will mean taking a trip to visit those family members; in others, it could mean hiring a lawyer. In still others, a person will have to decide whether she is capable of enduring any further trauma; whether she has already had too much.
I suggest to anyone who is trying to deal with children-to-grandchildren issues that they find a way to combat ostracization. It isn't just because you have a right to know your grandchildren, it is that they have a right to know you. By the way, if you happen to be gay and are living with a same-sex partner, your partner has grandparental rights, too. And if you're fortunate enough to have a compassionate lawyer, this can be made affordable for you and, more important, made safe for your grandchildren. I always hear that the cycle of abuse has to stop somewhere, but I think a more insidious problem exists when we don't understand the myriad ways abuse can, and does, replicate itself.
And go round and round and round in the circle game.
