Exercise 92

Letters to My Perpetrators


This exercise takes you a step further into healing from your abuses and/or neglects that you may have experienced. Much like you have already done in creating letters to help you resolve some of the family of origin issues, you must now write a letter to help heal these areas of abuse and neglect.


This letter to each of your perpetrators is for therapeutic purposes, not to be sent to the perpetrators. These letters are for your recovery, not theirs. It is important for you to confront the issues and not necessarily the person, especially not at this point of your healing and recovery.


In this exercise, write a letter you would read to your perpetrator. Imagine they are strapped to a chair and can't say anything back to you. You can say anything and everything you want to say. This letter can be full of hate, anger, disgust and many other powerful emotions. You can use any language necessary to express yourself. These events should have never happened, so your feelings are totally appropriate.


After you write your letter, you may want to do an empty chair exercise and read your letter to the perpetrator.



Dear D,


I know you have bad memories of me as your sister, but let me just say, I did try to be good to you.

From the moment I knew mom was pregnant with you, I couldn't wait to meet you. I really wished I could be a wonderful big sister to you, but I wasn't allowed to be. You already know that, as a child, I was chronically ill with bronchitis. So, from the second you arrived in the house, we were kept apart.


I remember the day mom and dad brought you home from the hospital, I wasn't even allowed to look at you. I kept trying to get a peek, but was told I had germs and could pass them on to you and get you sick. That was pretty much all I heard until you were almost a year old. Ever wonder why there are no pictures of us together?


I remember standing next to your high chair while D was feeding you. I asked if I could help and she said, "Get out of here. He doesn't like you." So I pulled back, but I still liked to watch you do things like roll across the floor, or crawl around. When you started talking, D taught you how to say "psycho." Once that happened, I knew there was no hope for the two of us being friends.


At the time, when you were D's "mini me," I hated you. I hated you for believing her, for imitating her, everything. All the cruel things she did, you did too.


Now, you're the only one who understands me when I talk about living under D's regime, the manipulation and the mind games. Finally, years later, validation. Thank you.


Love,
D

Dear Grandma,

I know you were only trying to make people laugh, but all of the things you said really hurt me. I always felt fat and ugly and the things you said just reinforced everything I knew to be true about myself. Now I know where mom and D got that from.

I'm really glad to say, too, that mom is alive and well. I don't know how I would have carried around all of the guilt you heaped on if she died when I was young.

Everyone remembers you as someone who loved to laugh. I remember you as liking to laugh at the expense of others.

Dear Grandpa,

Maybe if you took your head out of the blackberry brandy or the whiskey once in a while, you'd have seen that we weren't troublesome children, but that you were just a nasty drunk that didn't like kids making noise. But why clean up your act for us? You couldn't even do it for your own sons.

B,

You suck! You're one of the worst of them all! If you were here right now, I'd kick your stupid ass around the block, til you begged me for mercy. You didn't even know me, you jackass - you're the one who deserves a beating - not me! F--- you, you lousy bastard!

B,

You think I don't remember. You think you got away with everything just because I don't mention it. Well I do mention it. Only now, I say it to people who matter, people who can do something. Not weak people, like my mother. You're not so big anymore. One false move with a child, and I'll blow the whistle on you. I'll tell my story faster than you can say "molester."

D,

WTF did I ever do to you? Why did you hate me so much?

And let me ask you...how does it feel to have everyone think you're a lesbian? Because that's what everyone thinks, D. Whether or not it's true, that's what they think of you. You "couldn't afford" Christmas gifts for your own sister and brother for the past five years, but you can afford to buy Deb the loaded up iPod for Christmas? The two of you can together afford to go gambling at the casino every other weekend. Or the trips to Cape May, or Las Vegas, or Nova Scotia. But you can't kick in twenty bucks for the two people that share your DNA? Or maybe it's just that you have no interest in either one of us.

I guess it makes sense that you would turn D against me as a child. More strength for your side in the war you were waging on me. Gain support for the theory that I was "psycho." If I was, you made me that way.

And the lies you would tell...I'm sure you told them so many times that you actually believe them. Well let me clarify for you...those things never happened, you asshole! The scaffolding, the frisbee on the roof, and all of the other BS stories you told your friends with me as the butt of the joke...they never happened! No matter how much people laughed, D, they never happened.

At least, at this point in our lives, I can tolerate being in the same room with you for an evening. But that's about all I do. I tolerate you. Even that, I don't always do well. D has given up on you ever being a sister to him again. Do you care that you have alienated both of your siblings? I guess not because you have Deb for that. I guess she can be the sister you always wished you had. Well screw her too. She's just an idiot for believing all of your BS stories.

Dear Mom,

I didn't write anything else to dad because I addressed most of the stuff in my first letter to him. With you, on the other hand, I've got a little more work to do.

For one thing, why didn't you ever protect me from that beast of a child that you bore? She was an animal and, today, you are willing to admit that. So where the hell were you when she was torturing me? Why was she never told to knock it off? I know I tattled on her on countless occasions. It's not like you didn't know what was going on.

And, why didn't you tell dad what was going on with B? I remember you said, "Your father would kill him if he knew." So? Why would you protect him? You wouldn't rescue me and you wouldn't let anyone else rescue me either. And you still continue to have that bastard to your house when I am there. I guess I just have to "suck it up," right?

Finally, you let that son of a bitch, B, beat my ass. You stood right there and wouldn't tell him to take his hands off of me. Your own daughter, you let someone else beat while you stood and watched. F--- you, lady! You never protected me from any of my abusers, frankly, you offered me in effigy! Thanks a lot, mom!