Should I sit shiva for abusive parents (who are still alive)?
If you are an incest survivor and needed to end your relationship with your parents, did you ever consider sitting shiva for them?
What do you think about the following article?
Should I sit shiva for abusive parents (who are still alive)?
What do you think about the following article?
Should I sit shiva for abusive parents (who are still alive)?
posted by Jewish Survivors at Saturday, February 19, 2005
5 Comments:
This is not in response to your question directly, but wanted to ask this somewhere.
It seems like it would be helpful to include, in discussions of childhood sexual abuse survivors, survivors of chronic violence in their childhoods. So many of the struggles and difficulties are so similar, for survivors of both.
Thanks.
I think you're right. The problem with all forms of child abuse is not the physical or sexual abuse. It's the emotional abuse that goes along with it.
I think we should encourage all survivors of hurtful childhoods to speak out. Did you ever read the book called "Out Growing The Pain? I'm forgetting the name of the author. It's an old book.
I think the question of sitting shiva for an abusive parent is an important question.
I had to seperate myself from my family. I've been in mourning ever since. I think if I had some sort of ritual or ceremony like sitting shiva would be helpful.
I'm not orthodox, so I don't think it would be such a big deal to do it. But I don't have any idea how to do it. Maybe others who read this blog can help me come up with something. I'm sure I'm not the only survivor out here who has to deal with these issues.
I need to emotionally sit shiva for my family. I think having a ritual would be healing for me.
when I remembered and started to work through feelings about the ual abuse by my father, I felt increasingly like my parents had died and no one even knew. I wished they had realy died so I could sit shiva and have people come and comfort me to validate and acknowledge my huge loss. The grief I felt was overwhelming. It was made worse by the fact that no one knew of my loss. It was a very lonely grief.
It's been just about 10 years since I've seen anyone in my family. I started to look into being more observant then I had been, but it became way to painful for me.
In the orthodox world it is all family orientated. People always asking me about mine. I didn't feel comfortable telling them about my past, or my family. If I did, I would have been shunned. It would have been easier for me if there was some sort of traumatic event and they all died. I wish there was some sort of shiva, just as you said, so people would have come around and shown me their support. Instead, I just gave up on being observant. It was just way to painful, way to shaming.
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