There’s No Place Like Home: Creating New Horizons When You’ve Been Ejected From The Scapegoat Family

“I am lucky to have good neighbours. We’ve become close-ish. Hopefully, our friendship will continue to grow. It’s a small mercy, given I uprooted my life, and departed all my nearest and dearest friends to be closer to ‘family’.”

Mishka sits across from me in my small downtown office. She is visibly shaken. We’ve been meeting together for only a few short weeks and are still wading through her story. We take our time; trauma needn’t be rushed. Today she shares with me her fear that she no longer has an “anchor” to call “home”. She has given me permission to share her story anonymously. I have used the notes I took from our interviews and, with her permission, have crafted her narrative as true to her words as possible. Please note small details – including her name – have been changed to protect her privacy and conceal her identity.

She continues:

“We bought a home down the street from my parents. We left everything behind and traversed the country to be nearer. We would all be together. It would be so great. A community to raise my 3 kiddos in. The ocean. The lake. The vast yard. Boating, beaches, barbeques. 

I envisioned my kiddos running wild with their cousins. The family sharing meals, helping each other out when cars broke down, or just enjoying birthdays, holidays and random brunches on weekends. 

My brothers live on either side of my parents. My aunts and uncles are down the street a little ways. I always enjoyed an open-door policy and thrived on the concept of family as a connected community. It’s part of our culture; Big families under one roof (or close enough) is a way we kept our heritage alive after my grandparents immigrated here.

When I went away to college my goal was always to come back “home”. It took me 27 years longer than anticipated to move back, but when I finally was able to, my heart swelled with excitement.

But what I came home to wasn’t what I envisioned. It was more like a cult. We joked, calling it “the clubhouse”. But the truth is, this dysfunction junction had a clear leader, had very rigid, rigged (yet entirely disguised) rules, and even had its own sacrificial lamb (me).

Growing up was no picnic, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think returning home was going to be smooth sailing. I was particularly nervous about my relationship with my mother, but figured we had both grown since my tumultuous teen years. And as a kid, there was enough brainwashing, manipulations, guilt trips, smear campaigns, triangulations and isolation that I didn’t really realize that my family was so toxic until I left. And then when I left, all I possessed were rose-coloured glasses that made me yearn to come home again. Afterall, I had been told any problems were my fault…and so I got myself into therapy and I worked on becoming better. I didn’t realize the harm that had been caused to me until well after getting ejected. That’s how covert and ingrained in our family system it was. 

Now I live as an island. Close enough to touch, but entirely disconnected from any concept of community or connection. Our little family hasn’t had a single support in almost 1.5 years. And aside from the last hate email I received from my sister telling me I was a monster that didn’t deserve love or family, I haven’t had anyone reach out to me at all. None of the people who claimed to love and support me the most — the people I chose over everyone else in my life that did actually love me — have made any single attempt at repair, reconciliation, or amends. 

I came home, but in doing so I lost what was actually home. 

Abusive Narcissism And Compassion. Is There Room For Empathy In Our Pain?

After 27 years away, I returned but forgot to factor in my mother’s illness. That is if traits of abusive covert and malignant narcissism** can be considered an illness. Surely she wouldn’t have chosen to be this way if she could do it over. Surely she wouldn’t have decided to feel so much self-loathing and fear that she needed to manipulate, lie, possess, threaten and harm those around her just to feel secure enough that she won’t be abandoned herself. I choose to see this as an illness because I do not see her as evil, as is so common in the current social media (and not backed by science) portrayals of narcissistic people. 

Abusive narcissism seems like a curse on those who suffer (but in no way diminishes or excuses the impact on those they harm deeply). To be devoid of the empathy and self-awareness that allows us to connect, repair, heal, and grow must make one feel incredibly trapped. Being unable to control their own recovery, means perpetually relying on others to do the emotional repair for them. I have compassion for her because it must be a miserable existence to live in such fear that everything is a slight against you. To be so desperate to fill an insatiable void that you turn your own children against each other; that you discard one (and grandchildren) entirely. That you create, and live in a world of falsehoods, push-pull relationships, and cannot even say a kind thing about your supposed closest friends behind their backs. Compassion is hard, don’t get me wrong. What she has done — and gotten away with — is agonizing and unconscionable. But I do not hate her. I hold space for needed accountability (that will likely never come), but I hold it in tandem with an understanding of the impact of her own trauma and intergenerational wounding. I know when her parents landed here it was hard. The poverty. The racism. As such, I do not extend blame. I genuinely am saddened by her pain, and therefore I extend understanding towards the methods and coping strategies she employs to help her feel safe and wanted. Because, I believe, these are feelings she deserves too. And had she felt them, things would have been different.

But I know now it was not my responsibility, as her child, to create those feelings. And certainly not at the expense of my own safety, well-being and sense of being wanted.

I know I can’t heal her, or the ripple effects it had on my family and siblings, no matter how hard I tried to. I just wish I had known what scapegoating was before I let everything go for them. 

It wasn’t until everything in my life shattered into a million small parts on the ground in front of me, that I was able to see the individual pieces for what they were, and put them back together in a way that made abundantly clear the truth of our family. 

The beloved Leonard Cohen said it wisely when he chimed that, “The cracks are where the light gets in”. 

My mother was all too happy to let me slip through those cracks (and in one of her more bold (or uncareful) moments, even said so outright to a friend who shared it with me later). Oh, there is ample evidence in words, behaviour, and writing. But I never thought to collect them along the way to support my case. I didn’t realize I was going to be prosecuted and wrongly convicted. 

What she didn’t bet on was me finding the light in those cracks, and shining it like a spotlight on the truth. 

My Island: Learning To Survive In A Barren Wilderness

Home has taken on a different quality these days. We live in our fortress, where behind closed doors our space is our own. We can’t keep up with the demands of domestic life, childcare, and working multiple jobs each to make ends meet but we take shifts. It’s exhausting and I feel I am failing my kiddos every day by not offering them the life I had envisioned. The trade-off is we feel safe when we walk around. There aren’t any eggshells lining our floors. I feel I can be myself without censure, contortion or emotional gymnastics. 

Community means something deeper too: Our small town is not a well-off town. It’s isolated, lacks almost all amenities and social resources, and you truly need to get to know your neighbours because you need to look out for each other. The people around me are struggling the way we are. I show up for my neighbours who lack support and resources. They check in with me. They drop off cookies and toys. We trade baby clothes. We honk and wave. I know who people are now. 

I’m ashamed to say that while I semi-grew up in this town, I didn’t venture out into it or get to know it beyond the local snack shop which has since closed its doors. My “family” lives in a very private oasis tucked away from the one main street. I am fully integrated into the town now. Or I will be as soon as I start attending Thursday night Bingo at the community hall…

But it isn’t home. 

The ocean isn’t my sanctuary anymore. The sound of seagulls and the smell of seaweed aren’t comforts letting me know I can breathe deeply and fully now. These, like my family, are things that exist around me, but that I can’t touch or access. No matter how close I am. 

The Concept Of Home Is Built Into Our Life Journeys And Identity

When you lose ‘home’, you lose your past, present and future. 

My past is no longer accessible to me. 

My childhood, my memories, my memorabilia, my third son’s photos from their first year of life (when we lived with my parents briefly), my own photos from growing up — they are all triggers now. 

Any mementos I have that didn’t get left behind when we were discarded and barred from re-entry are things my mom unceremoniously dumped in a pile to rid the house of any reminder of me. The pile included spices I had touched. Gifts I had lovingly given her. She told others how kind it was of her to “return” these items to me. 

And, yet, when I tried to return items to my siblings (that I was told were borrowed and important to get back), I was screamed at for “rejecting their love”.

My present is a matter of survival. Of reputation management. 

To them, I only exist in certain contexts. My name was erased from the family email list (though my mom still sends out Happy Birthday reminders to select relatives and is careful not to include me or anyone who is aware I am estranged on these email blasts. She wouldn’t want people asking questions; She still has to keep up the illusion of a loving mother). 

I exist as her daughter to the people she hasn’t extended her narrative to yet. And to others, I exist as the “cause” of her cruelty and the reason for the family’s pain and dysfunction. The source of all wounds, and the dumping ground for all shame. My name shows up in stories told — things I “said” about others behind their backs, which are things that only she has ever said or thought and never things that were ever uttered from my heart or mouth. But when she needs to hurt someone to control them, I am a convenient way for her to say what she thinks about them, without taking responsibility for the words. A way to ensure others don’t wise up, and start showing up, for me. 

She has made clear to others how much of a victim she is of our estrangement. I exist as a prop for her to receive more love and care and support and adoration. “Oh, how she must be suffering as a parent. What bad luck to have such an unloving child.” She makes certain not to mention that she forced us out and has gone to great length to keep us away.

Yes, my present is a matter of survival. 

And yet, it is also an experience of immense freedom, autonomy, authenticity, and growing fulfillment and purpose. Things I never would have been able to have when I was still stuck in the rigged game, everything set up to be used against me, with no way to win. 

But what plagues me most these days is that my future is so uncertain. My future always included Home with a capital H. It included moving back to my home State, settling down and raising a family of my own close to my family of origin. The West Coast blood used to run through my veins. And now looking at the ocean and the palm trees brings pain.

If we move away — which is a wise thing to do — I will have nowhere to “go home to”. This thing that always defined my direction is gone. My horizon is bare now. 

I don’t know what grounds me anymore. I will have no reason to return to a town, or even State, that once was my pride and joy. I don’t know what to look forward to. I don’t know what “planning the future” means anymore. Who am I? Who will I be?

These need to be liberating thoughts rather than sorrowful ones. 

I used to stare down the tunnel of possibilities for me: written on the walls were the words Someday I will finally come home. Someday I will return. Someday we will be all together. I built everything on this “someday”. Now it’s all gone and all I have as a parting gift is an expansive well of trauma, that on my dark days, makes me worry there isn’t actually a way out of. “

She falls silent. Being a witness to Mishka’s experience is profound. We sit in companionate quiet as the weight of her words land and settle around us.

Helping Myself and Helping Others

I share with Mishka that I believe one of the greatest ways to heal from betrayal and injustice is to help others and give back. This is a philosophy she has adopted in her work as well.

Mishka has had the good fortune of having worked clinically in the field of family, relational, and attachment trauma for years as a caseworker and fellow researcher. Well before she understood what had happened to her and was happening in her family, she had been collecting data and guiding clients along their own life journeys; grieving the past, connecting to the present, and having hope for the future. 

And so she knows for a fact this isn’t the end of her story.

Nor is it yours.

But everyone, at some time or another, will struggle to use their best knowledge and strategies to pull themselves upright again. Mishka has more data than I do. And we both know all too well that data doesn’t automatically lead to transformation. Because we are only human and this is an inexplicably hard and excruciating type of trauma.

Abandonment is a soul trauma. It’s not a moment in time. It’s not something you can compartmentalize. It’s your entire, immersive experience and its tendrils reach onto every single relationship, interaction, thought, feeling, and behaviour. Because your survival as a species has ingrained in you at a cellular level that abandonment is the ultimate danger. 

There’s a lot to untangle. 

But Mishka is not afraid of that work. Her tenacity and fortitude astounds me more and more each time we meet up to flesh out her story in more detail.

She continues:

“Was I the crack that kept letting light in, that kept blinding my family, for all they had known for so long was the darkness of fear in their hearts? The darkness of intergenerational trauma that they couldn’t work their way through or out of?

My future feels uncertain, but it is also now a blank slate. And one thing I know for a fact is that I have rescued my own children from being swept up in the toxicity, of being carried away from me on a wave of false narratives. Of being drowned by lies. I know not all of your readers have been this lucky. My heart aches daily at the thought of it, of what they have lost to injustice and betrayal too. I guess I am sharing this because I want to show up for them and be beside them in this pain so they are not alone. 

New Horizons: Creating Your Future And A Home Worth Having

I lost ‘home’, but I have gained an identity; one that isn’t dependent on, or distorted for others. 

I am suffering with no structural support (something my “family” was generous with and good at provided you could manage the hefty strings and conditions attached). Yes, I have cut the strings and floated into space, but in this terrifying vastness, I have found myself, my voice, my strength. 

I have discovered my light and my gifts. I recognize my brightness and no longer need to dim it to shield others’ eyes. 

Recovery is about gaining autonomy, agency and embodiment. And while I have trauma that frightens me, I finally have potential that can’t be squashed. I lost dear family and friends, but I gained truth. 

I now see my former dream of “coming home” as having a glass ceiling and glass walls. It looked amazing, but there was very little room for movement. I have stepped into the unknown, but it is an expansive unknown. 

I wouldn’t have chosen to find my freedom this way. I would 100% have opted for a safe, loving family even if it meant a mundane and contained life. But I feel lucky that freedom chose me. And I hope that I am using this freedom in ways to unshackle other people’s burdens, lighten hearts, create community and connection, and let more light in.”

End (or should I say beginning??) of Mishka’s Story.

**Disclaimer: Dear readers. I have placed an asterisk here because neither Mishka nor I can diagnose. In suggesting her mother may have covert narcissistic traits, Mishka is not labelling or diagnosing, but merely offering an umbrella term that she feels makes sense for her to explore and understand what happened to her. In her words, she says “I’m certain there is so much I don’t know about my mother’s experience and existence. I can only comment on the impact of specific traits and behaviours on me from my perspective. Everyone deserves a fair trial.”