Therapeutic Letter to My Mother

Mom. What the ever-loving fuck? WERE YOU ON CRACK????

I'm a mom myself now. I hired a babysitter once. She was bonded and certified. She worked for a reputable agency that did background checks. She stayed with the kids at our house one day while I attended a conference for CEUs back when my license was still active. My oldest son started having nightmares about hands shortly afterwards. Hands touching him, hurting him. I did what any good mom would do, I talked to him. He said he didn't want to talk about it, that he was ashamed. 

I waited. I swallowed my panic. That night, I picked him up and cuddled him in our rocking chair, the one he'd nursed in since he came home from the hospital. He'd had a warm bath with epsom salts. He was relaxed. No one else was around. He was in his comfy jammies. I said "Son, I love you. No matter what happened with the baby sitter, you can tell me about it and I will believe you and I will help you." Slowly at first, scared and shaking, he told me the whole story.

She held him down and tickled him. She wouldn't stop when he asked. She called him "chicken" when he ran away from her. On the inside I took a huge breath of relief. So that was "all". But I didn't let him see that. I told him that it was not his fault. I told him that decent people stop if someone says stop. I told him that if someone bullies him, it's because they are making a choice to do wrong, not because he did anything to deserve it. I told him firmly that I would deal with it. That he was safe, and that she would never come into our house again. He went to bed. He trusted me.

I called her agency. I demanded to talk to her supervisor. I told her the whole story, the way I learned it. I didn't want them to minimize it. I knew it wasn't "the bad thing" even though every alarm bell in any normal person's head would be going off like crazy, but it also was really fucking inappropriate. And it was Not. Okay. 

They listened. They heard me. They disciplined her. She didn't come back to our house. And my son knew he could count on me. He knew that I had his back. He knew he could come to me with troubles that were too big for him, and I would help him. The nightmares went away. That's what you DO when you learn that someone is hurting your child. You fix it. You make it stop. 

So, I ask you again: what the ever-loving fuck?? WERE YOU ON CRACK????? 

You knew I was being molested. You had a doctor look you in the eye and tell you that your baby girl was being molested. That a sexual predator had wormed his way into your life and that your baby was being hurt. And you did what? You told my dad?? **MY** DAD??? The useless asshole with a known criminal record because he had already had sex with underage girls? You trusted HIM to come up with an appropriate response?

Mom, that was worse than useless. 

There were other failures. There were failures of boundaries, there were failures of knowledge, there were failures of developmentally-appropriate expectations. But none of them come quite to the breathtaking level of fail of you turning over the task of "What do we do about the sexual predator taking advantage of our daughter?" to the even-worse sexual predator you lived with. 

"What else could I do?" you asked me once, a decade and a half later. You could have left. You could have called the fucking cops. You could have shot the bastard for all I care. YOU COULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING BESIDES TURN YOUR BACK AND IGNORE ME WHILE YOUR HUSBAND RAPED ME BECAUSE I WAS OBVIOUSLY A WHORE WHO WAS ASKING FOR IT ANYWAY.

What the ever-loving fuck, Mom? Were you on crack?