I decided to do a bit of digging into my parents' past. Upon checking with the provincial archives, I discovered two things; divorce records are public domain, and secondly, anyone can order a copy. So I did. I received 123 pages of legal documents (some duplicates, so about 115 unique pages), including a hand-written letter my mother (the narc) wrote, which was entered into the record as an affidavit, and which became the basis of questions in a later deposition.
Nothing in that letter surprised me necessarily; she has harped on about her divorce for more than 50 years.... However, what DID come as completely new information was that it was SHE who brought the divorce action. She has always claimed my father "abandoned" us. Completely false. I also didn't know she had threatened several times both in the letter and the deposition to leave the city with us to prevent our dad from seeing us. This was at odds with the fact she wouldn't acknowledge she was divorced and continued for years to call my dad her husband, even after he had remarried. It was so, so weird. It wasn't "I am divorced, and my former spouse is remarried," it was "My husband is living with another woman, and they don't have a real marriage."
It should be noted here while she was carrying on about my dad and "his women," (the only woman being someone who became my stepmother and was for 33 years), my mother was herself dating someone - she the Sunday school teacher and he the deacon - and this resulted in her falling pregnant and them having to marry very quickly. She will have become pregnant slightly before she got her decree absolute, I believe. I have to revisit the dates in those documents. She's a very skilled hypocrite....
The other revelation, which makes sense of her relationship with me and with my two sibs, is the clarification of our roles to her, and the clarification - like crystal clear - she at no point saw us as humans separate from her, but as the means of expression and means to whatever ends. We were pawns.
She has always scapegoated me, but these documents confirmed she has done so at least since I was seven (when all the custody proceedings were in full swing), and likely before that. I don't have any particular memories but a younger-than-seven-year-old child wouldn't recognize scapegoating or gaslighting.
The hand-written letter and the later deposition are fascinating with respect to scapegoating, though; my mother put words in my mouth: she made claims - numerous times - about what I was saying to her or telling her. For instance, she claimed I told her, and I quote, "Daddy says you're sick, sick, sick in the head and we don't have to listen to you." This. Never. Happened. She makes this statement three times in the deposition as something I allegedly told her, and curiously, it is always in exactly the same format: three "sicks" followed by "in the head, and "we don't have to listen to you." It's weird. She claimed I told her my dad said this to us. I know this is a full lie. Anytime - up to and including when we were married adults with children of our own - we'd ask our dad what went on, his reply was always "It's a long story." He never said anything more than that.
My mother makes several statements about things I supposedly said to her, including that I (specifically me) wish to see less of my dad - absolutely false - and that I (again, specifically me, not my sibling and I) am disturbed by my father's "lovemaking in the front seat of the car and in the pool." This specificity is so, so weird. My dad was a preacher's kid who struggled very much to find a path to remarriage, as he'd been told since birth he'd burn in hell if he committed adultery - and in Baptist world, a marriage after divorce is adultery. The idea he'd engage in "lovemaking" in front of his children is ridiculous. None of what she claims happened, and she contradicts herself several times between the letter and the deposition.
The short form is she has always used me to voice what she will not say herself. Where it concerned my dad and my stepmother, my mother would claim I said terrible things about them, when it was she doing it. She put words in my mouth to my teachers, to a couple pastors, to people we knew. I spent most of my pre-teen and teen years being utterly confused about what was going on, because people would confront me about what I'd "said," when I hadn't said. It took me ages to understand she was lying to everyone. For the record, I haven't seen her in years, but until at least 7 years ago, she still claims I'm somehow wrecking her computer... or her life. It varies.
My next-youngest sibling is mentioned but once by name in the entirety of those documents, and not at all in the hand-written letter. I'm not sure whether this was due to her being invisible to my mother, or because she was the "golden child" so my mother protected her. Predictably, though, as I have anything to do with our mother, the golden child is now the unfortunate recipient of our mother's wrath and abuse.
I'm after my mother's counselling records now. I'm almost certain I won't be able to find any records of her therapy sessions with my dad prior to their divorce, but I know I will find family counselling records and can access them because I was there. I've read some of them. I'm going to get copies so I can re-read.
Fascinating shit.
UPDATE, November 2025
I have discovered our province requires psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists keep documents for 10 years, after which they can be destroyed. As such, although I have read the records of our family "counselling," those documents no longer exist. I think I took notes at the time, but it was before cell phones (1986), so no photos of the pages. Obviously, any counselling records that might have existed in the late 60s are long gone.
I went looking for other documents which would date from 1945 - 46, but the facility, the Ideal Maternity Home in Chester NS, where they would have been housed, or where they could have been acquired from, burned down. Nothing remained; no furniture, photos, or documents.
UPDATE, November 2025
I have discovered our province requires psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors, therapists keep documents for 10 years, after which they can be destroyed. As such, although I have read the records of our family "counselling," those documents no longer exist. I think I took notes at the time, but it was before cell phones (1986), so no photos of the pages. Obviously, any counselling records that might have existed in the late 60s are long gone.
I went looking for other documents which would date from 1945 - 46, but the facility, the Ideal Maternity Home in Chester NS, where they would have been housed, or where they could have been acquired from, burned down. Nothing remained; no furniture, photos, or documents.
