And she might have been one. It was scary.
Was your mother traumatized as a kid as well?
Usually you can follow the abuse right back up the family tree pretty easy.
My brother told me one time he wanted to go chew our grandmother out for passing on the addiction/alcoholic gene (like it was her fault) until I explained she had an extremely difficult/abusive childhood, as did her mother from what she told me, so he can keep going up the family tree with the blame, because it isn’t going to help him or change his situation by blame alone.
Time to stop the blaming and break the cycle starting with yourself.
If you don’t like the way you were treated, make a note not to further the cycle by treating others (including yourself) the way you would have wanted to have been treated instead of prolonging the cycle.
Once an abuser gets into your head they can step back and relax, because the “victim” (and I hate that word) can take over and do it in place of them. They don’t even need to be present for the abuse to continue.
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the only thing I know for sure about my mothers childhood was that grandmother used her and her sister, making them cook, clean and take care of a younger sister. As well as whipping her if her grades weren’t tops. Grandmother was a nurse and I know mother heard a lot about gore. She was also very Puritanical, teaching mother to be ashamed when she was pregnant. She also wouldn’t let her have a roommate when she was in college because she thought mother would not study if she had a roommate. Yes, mother was very deprived. All of this has nothing to do with WW2 and marrying a German immigrant, but it might be why a red flag didn’t go up when she met Dad, thinking there might be trouble. The war was already brewing at the time.
She must have saw a man she loved, rather than a country he had no control over. Not all Germans were a fan of WW2, especially the solders.
Well. my paternal grandmother was forced to write glowing letters about Hitler which didn’t help any.
Yes, I have spoken to Germans Who detested that war. One couple refused to have children because they could not see the point in having any in such an ugly situation.
Our German friend told us about his father who fought in the war, and was captured by the Americans and sent to a prisoner of war camp. He was quite happy to be there because he was treated better there than while in the German military.
Well, I wouldn’t be too complementary toward the US about it. War is ugly no matter whose side one is on. One just has to remember how badly German Americans and Japanese Americans were treated.
War is ugly, it turns people into things they are not by nature.
Thinking about my first hospitalization where I lost 30 pounds, I thought I looked like a member of a concentration camp. This of course was a gross exaggeration. A mental ill person’s imagination is on fire. We like to think of ourselves as exceptional people.
Between my 1st and 6th hospitalization i had lost close to 40 lbs in less than 6 months, I weighed in at 94lbs, at 5feet 3inches. The Dr’s weren’t happy, but I couldn’t understand I was too skinny. The last time I weighed that little, I was in grade school.