Omg. I woke up thinking about exactly this. How holding a clear and healthy boundary, within my family of origin(and marriage) gets labelled “holding a grudge”. Hellooo ??? It’s not at all, magnanimous to be willing to move on from abuse by your own mouth or hand without willingness to acknowledge and amend. I can honestly say that in my entire family and marriage experience, not one conflict was ever openly engaged in a way that was mutually aimed at genuine peace, connection, resolution. The only explanation I find anywhere for a person to punish a plea for resolution is the narcissist personality disorder-which prohibits any sort of rigorous self reflection. The ego is so large and fragile and will crack if forced to consider any wrongness or fallibility and so they lash out–to punish and reduce those who challenge their sense of rightness. I continue to try to understand my part in this and I recognize beyond doubt, that I do not cause others to say or do bad things. I am just not that powerful.
At my mother’s service, it was said a few times how “she never held a grudge”. She was quite good at pretending that hurtful things had not been said or done. It was the expectation that I do the same. That ability/value was not passed to me genetically, as it was my sister. We differ in this way. And my need to work together to heal and reconcile is labelled and judged as grudge holding. By refusing to gather with a person(or people) who feels free and right to verbally assault me publicly, privately, passively, and repeatedly is not a grudge. It is a fair and sane boundary.
I presented my self a million ways to Tuesday, for healing and reconciliation. Requests denied. Repeatedly screwing someone over, while insisting you are free from bad feelings and would gladly welcome/allow them “back” into the fold (for more of the same) may not be a “grudge”, but, it is something foul.
Is shunning grudge holding? Is triangulation grudge holding? I think that malevolent behaviors are in fact proof of grudge holding(just without the courage of transparency). Knowingly imposing harm, no matter how smiley while doing it, is egregious non-benevolence.??♀️
Yes, I cry, get angry, hurt and need to resolve conflict to reconcile, even and especially when I have a hand in it. This, this is maturity and mental wellness, according sources I trust. Ugh, Grief is messy. My boys asked how they could be so loved that destroying their mother and father co-parenting was called for, yet mentioning them by name at the service was not. The mixed messages continue, even from the grave. They also asked why only my sister was mentioned as caring for her in illness, we relocated cross country and showed up day after day and week after week to serve and love on her–until… Feels like shit, to share with my boys that the lack of mention could be for one of two reasons: Either, they were not thought of at all…or they were, and then were intentionally excluded. And much of the service was written/scripted by her, in advance. If she had wanted, she could have said one healing thing. In true Ghoneim fashion, she offered a passive middle finger which, I could only have imagined or earned. This brand of love is as unsafe as it is unwholesome.
