Do I wish my mother could have married someone else?
Do I wish she could have seen through his manipulations and left him?
Do I wish she could have had options, fought back, or protected me?
Do I wish she had been able to take on the fury of my father’s mental torture and survive?
Yes, to all of the above. But I have grown to understand, especially with all the things I have learned as I write, that she couldn’t do that. She was ambushed, abandoned, and battered. She did the best she could.
I can also take comfort that there are strong women who have been able to fight, help, and bring more awareness to this topic.
The strong women
I have a folder of articles about strong women. One is a Washington Post article about a Mom facing jail because she was fighting court-ordered “reunification therapy” with her husband who sexually assaulted their daughters. Other women became fugitives, running from spouses and the law, to keep their children safe from a sexually abusive parent. And even nuns joined the fight.
Sister Sally Butler was an early fighter for justice for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, starting when almost no one knew about it. As she grew to learn the extent of it, including a student of hers, and saw the destruction it caused in the lives of those victims, she fought back. Fueled by a kind of “holy outrage,” as one person noted, she spent decades working with victims, lawyers, legal authorities, and church authorities, trying to have the known abusers defrocked. Despite being evicted from her home, being ignored by other sisters in her order, and other repercussions, she, along with other nuns and priests, fearlessly kept fighting for all victims, including those of color who were often overlooked in these situations. And they went on to form an advocacy organization, Catholic Whistleblowers.
As a former priest and an abuse survivor, Robert Hoatson said of her: “Sally didn’t have a fear in the world about standing up to anybody who stood in the way of justice. She had a deep faith that God would take care of everything, but we had to do the work.”
(New York Times, 10/20/2024, “Sister Sally Butler, Nun Who Blew the Whistle on Sex Abuse, Dies at 93”)
Another sister cut from the same mold was Sister Maureen Paul Turlish. She became an advocate to support victims and demand justice, going so far as to write letters to outlets such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer, demanding that abusers be brought to trial while denouncing the Catholic bishops for their lack of moral leadership. She wrote under a pen name at first and incurred the wrath of Church leadership, who desperately tried to find out who she was and shut her down.
A turning point occurred when she went public with a grand jury report from Philadelphia that found church leaders had concealed decades-long abuse of hundreds of children by many priests. By going public, she was reprimanded by members of her order and pressured to stop. She refused, saying this was now part of her vocation.
She and others then went on to found the support group for survivors, the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, and the Catholic Whistleblowers. Also, she made it a mission to get statute of limitations laws changed in Delaware, and she spent the rest of her life fighting to expand on that work elsewhere. As she said, “I am a Catholic sister,…I have been involved in the education of children for over 35 years and I love my faith, but I’m still waiting for church leadership to own up and take responsibility for their failures in protecting children.”
(The Washington Post, 7/31/2018 “Sister Maureen Paul Turlish, Advocate for Victims of Sexual Abuse, Dies at 79”)
I find these women all amazing. And I am grateful for them. They stood in the face of pressure, alienation, and sometimes, even the law itself, to protect children.
Would I have loved to have one of them around when I was a child? Yes. But even though they weren’t, I am grateful for their efforts on behalf of other victims. They are amazing role models to all of us. Their very courage was an inspiration to all of us, and a catalyst for advocacy work that continues to today.
Surrogate Moms – the role models all around us
While I cannot and will not blame my mother for who she was…and wasn’t, or for what she couldn’t do or give, I would be a liar if I denied wishing that she could have been more. But she just didn’t have it.
She didn’t know about mental abuse. She thought she was a failure. She had no helpers, so she just had to survive. Thus, she was not going to be the one to break the cycle of what was handed down to her from previous generations. That job would come down to me, even though I didn’t know it until later.
One thing I learned over my decades of struggle to escape and then come back from my abuse is that even though I did not have a mother who could fight for me, role models were still all around me. And they saved me.
There were women who entered politics and fought to break down barriers for the rights of all. Others, including Gloria Steinem, fought to get women the support they needed and became catalysts for women’s advocacy, shelters, and crisis hotlines.
Even some women right around me — those strong old Slovak women in my culture who couldn’t directly help me — still gave me hope and an example of what inner strength was.
And most especially, a teacher, one of those underpaid, under-respected saviors. Terry Doyle, my freshman high school English teacher, was one of the most amazingly powerful influences in my life, at the most critical time – early teens. She became the person I modeled myself after. I absorbed the framework of how she approached life with power and intelligence, and then added on my own personal touches.
Another was the singer Madonna. Like her or hate her, SHE is an amazing, self-made woman who took charge and never let anyone stop her. I “grew up” alongside her career, and watched her enter a male-dominated world, reject any criticism, and chart her own life journey.
Alice Walker’s words about her own mother, in her essay: “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” gave me some rich “mother inspiration” to feed my soul:
“…our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see….no song or poem will bear my mother’s name. Yet so many of the stories that I write …are my mother’s stories…She has handed down respect for the possibilities — and the will to grasp them. For her, so hindered and intruded upon in so many ways, being an artist has still been a daily part of her life. This ability to hold on, even in very simple ways, is work black women have done for a very long time.”
Seeing the power of her mother’s openness to possibilities, especially from someone so DENIED them, I hear the request, the expectation, that one should never give up. Rest sometimes. But never give up.
There were many others; some were close friends, others, strangers. None of these people knew at the time that they were saving my life by giving me a future and a persona to shoot for. But they did.
But there is one mother….
Are there any mothers I consider unforgivable? While I try not to go there, there is one that comes VERY close to that for me:
Alice Munro.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Renowned storyteller. Famous personality.
And … passive. Self-absorbed. Willing to sacrifice her daughter for her needs and fame.
Her daughter, Andrea Skinner, was a 9-year-old when Munro’s second husband, Gerard Fremlin, began molesting her. His abuse would continue until Skinner was in her teens, at which point he lost interest.
Skinner kept the secret, despite the emotional and physical effects the secrets were causing her… until age 25. On a visit to her mother that time, there was an exchange that prompted Skinner to tell her mother what happened.
The two were discussing a short story Munro had read, about a girl who commits suicide after being abused by her father. An emotional Munro blurted out, “Why didn’t she tell her mother?” Hearing this, Skinner decided to write her mother.
She expressed her intense relief to hear her mother’s words as she had been so afraid to tell Munro the truth because Skinner feared Munro would blame her. Which was exactly what happened.
Munro told her daughter that “she had been told too late…that she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children and make up for the failings of men.” Skinner went on to relate that her mother felt that “whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her.”
(New York Times, Elizabeth A. Harris, July 7, 2024, “Weeks After Alice Munro’s Death, Daughter Tells of Dark Family Secret.”)
In addition to this repulsive response, Munro also was upset because if this got out, this would be all people would remember about her. It would ruin her fame and reputation, things she had worked for a long time to attain.
At first, Munro fled and stayed away from Fremlin for a short time. But it was not to support her daughter, but more for her own emotional needs. She acted as if it was an “affair,” and she had been betrayed by both. It was all self-pity, not recognition of the fact that her daughter was a child taken advantage of. And within a few months, unable to live without Fremlin, she went back to him.
In fact, at one point, during the police investigation of Fremlin, Munro exploded in rage and accused her daughter of lying. The detective later remarked that he could not understand her reaction and that, if he’d had any of Munro’s books at home, he would have tossed them in a trash can.
Fremlin, for his part, continued to lay the blame on Andrea, saying that she, as a young child, sought him out and seduced him. In addition, he had a history of being “involved with” a number of other young girls, something Munro was aware of.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Munro continued to use these things as fodder for her own writing. Many stories revolved around passive responses to sexual abuse. Early on, Skinner thought perhaps this was her mother trying to process things. Later she concluded it was simply Munro using life for her craft.
For a long time Skinner tried to connect with her mother, understand, and even reassure her mother that she did not expect her mother to sacrifice her happiness for her daughter. But when Skinner became a mother, she finally started to see much more clearly how toxic all of this was.
Skinner told Munro that Fremlin was not allowed to be near her young children. Munro became upset and hung up. Then called the next day, not to apologize but to “forgive her daughter” for what she had said. That ended their relationship. Skinner would not see her again. And for Munro, she felt her daughter just never got over her need to hurt people.
Maybe this wasn’t a surprise. There was a character in one of Munro’s stories, “The Children Stay,” about a mother who abandons her kids to be with another man. And one of the lines sums up her attitude about the pain of giving up your children for a man:
“You won’t get free of it, but you won’t die of it. You won’t feel it every minute, but you won’t spend many days without it. And you’ll learn some tricks to dull it or banish it, trying not to end up destroying what you incurred this pain to get.”
And my mother?
Alice Munro had fame, money, friends. My mother had none of these. There was no financial trap for Alice Munro. Her trap was emotional neediness, self-pity, and self-absorption.
Did my mother feel the same unwillingness to give up her needs for our safety? I can’t say. She never said that.
Maybe there was — I won’t whitewash her. Yes, my mother was emotionally needy. And some of the glue that bonded my mother to my father was that intermittent reinforcement of wanting his love.
But there was fear – of how she would survive, that her kids would move on but she would need to find a way to live, and of course, the threats of physical abuse. Add in decades of mental manipulation inflicted on her, religious beliefs, and a lack of awareness at that time about what abuse even was, and it became such a complex soup of ingredients.
As I say, she was not blameless. She made a Faustian Bargain to survive and get love. She failed me. But I can hold both that reality alongside what she was put through. She was ill-equipped to fight my father, and she was worn down as a battered wife. And…at the end of the day, she was “mommy” for me, and mothers are primal. So I can never rule out my bias toward her.
None of that applied to Alice Munro….
And then, there was her father…
Andrea Skinner had another parent…her father. And I despise what he did to her. James Munro not only learned what was happening to Skinner, but would not confront Munro about it. In fact, he forbade his second wife and Skinner’s sisters from telling Munro what was happening. He would not allow anyone to speak about it.
His reasons? It’s not like he feared for his life in an abusive household, like my mother. He just felt Alice couldn’t handle it. He was afraid that Munro might fall apart emotionally, and felt her needs were greater than those of his daughter.
In addition, he felt that if Munro did come apart and it destroyed her new relationship, she would blame him. Also, as his second wife noted, for James Munro, everything was about his bookstore. Given Alice Munro’s popularity as a writer, it helped his business. And of course, there would be a scandal.
So he continued to send Skinner to visit her mother, though one time he did send along an older sister to “protect” Skinner. His second wife told Skinner she did not have to go, but understandably, the girl wanted to see her mother.
But to my mind, worst of all, at times he even implied that Skinner was exaggerating, made the story up, or was partly to blame. And then, later, surprised that Skinner was still upset, telling her that time heals all wounds.
Bottom line, nowhere in any of this did James Munro protect his own daughter.
What of Munro’s friends?
Of the many who say they didn’t know…I don’t know that I buy that. As Skinner noted at one point, many people, including influential ones, came to know the story but didn’t speak. Instead, they continued to support the accepted “story line,” that her mother wanted known.
And there were those who admitted knowing and did nothing. The author of Munro’s biography, academic Robert Thacker, was contacted by Skinner and told about this family situation. She had been working with the police investigating Fremlin, and Thacker’s book was going to press soon.
While she may have wanted him to update his book with this important information about the nature of Alice Munro and her choices, he wouldn’t do it. He said, “It wasn’t that kind of book.”
(Washington Post, Sophia Nguven, July 9, 2024, “I Knew This Day Was Going to Come”)
Meanwhile, Munro’s Canadian editor and publisher Douglas Gibson offered no comment of any substance on the “tragic family story.”
For sure, a lot of that is exactly that attitude of “it’s a family problem, not a crime,” which was so prevalent in my childhood during the 1960s and 70s. But this was in the 1990s. And yet the reaction to just look the other way was still so strong in so many of her associates.
Her daughter’s thoughts
I read the New York Times article by Elizabeth A. Harris (July 7, 2024, “Weeks After Alice Munro’s Death, Daughter Tells of Dark Family Secret”). Andrea Skinner’s bottom line resonated with me, and I honor her:
“What I wanted was some record of the truth, some public proof that I hadn’t deserved what had happened to me….I also wanted this story, my story, to become part of the stories people tell about my mother…I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”
My thoughts
Just as I know my father was abused as a child, and Alice Munro also had an abusive childhood, at the same time, I don’t care.
My father made a specific choice to abuse – he admitted it. He fought tooth and nail for a career and money. Many people are abused and don’t harm others. But confronted more than once by me, he still refused to get help. He CHOSE to harm. I do not excuse him.
Munro chose to be complicit and to abandon her daughter for her own gains. She knew it. She could afford to be on her own. She CHOSE to be complicit. As far as I’m concerned, she might have gotten a Nobel Prize for Literature. She was a terrible mother. And I will never read her work.
I’ve seen that tired old discussion applied to her – do you still love the art even if the artist did something terrible? For her? No. Frankly, I consider her a parasite. She sucked off her daughter’s pain to write abysmal stories. I don’t even consider her a good artist.
Instead, I concur with opinions I’ve seen written that describe her praised works as insipid or empty. To me, any artist who can write something on such an emotional topic, yet remain untouched by it, is not one I want to read. They have nothing to teach me because they never learned anything from the story themselves. Their soul is empty, and so is any writing they would create. For me, she is not just a weak woman and mother, but the unforgivable one. Maybe someone else can forgive her. I just can’t.
And about my mother? I know at the end of her life she was haunted “by something” that drove her to Confession weekly at 89 and 90. At the very least, she was WRESTLING with something, which means she ADMITTED something to herself. She made that deal with the devil for her survival. But her circumstances were not those of Munro’s. And toward her end, she thanked me for caring. Showed love. And was different than she was when younger. I saw evidence of a woman who was changing toward her end. And again, she was mommy. Bias. So, I leave her to God. And on her deathbed, I told her I forgave her.
As for me, I agree with Andrea Skinner. I, too, write because I want a record of the truth…proof I didn’t deserve what happened to me… And I want this topic raised publicly so people stop turning away, stop leaving it in silence, and instead wrestle with its ugly realities and impacts.
I don’t ever want to hear some biographer say, “It’s not that kind of story.” So, I write…
Up next
First, what does all this do to the survivors of incest…and to that family system?
And then, can you resist? Who are the “Cycle Breakers?”
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
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