Dear Lailah,
Last Monday there was a situation where Justin had set a limit with you, he told you that you had to come home because I sent him to go pick you up. You were begging him to call me and Noel was tantruming and he got overwhelmed. When he got overwhelmed he said, "No Lailah, you do not need to call your mom because we are going home. Your mom sent me to pick you up and that's what I'm doing." He was not wrong in setting this limit with you but you persisted and he let you call me. When you called me I told you you had to come home because you had softball... Then we hung up and Justin called me. While we were on the phone I overheard your Mammee, my "mom", flipping out on Justin, screaming at him like a crazy person. She then told Justin to have me call her, which I did. During that call she was screaming at me that Justin is abusive to you (which he is not, he simply set a limit with you) and that I should leave him. I refused to leave him and reminded her that my dad used to beat me as a kid and that was acceptable but now limits are not? She got even more angry and she started threatening me. I hung up on her and she called back but I forwarded it. She left me a nasty message full of threats which she later followed through on.
I am telling you all this so that one day when you want to know why your grandmother isn't in your life you'll have this to look back on instead of me saying I don't remember. This isn't the first time she's been like this. The last time we cut contact with her for a while was when she locked us out of her house while we lived in the basement and you kept knocking on the door to eat and she ignored you for hours and hours until I finally left and took you with me and we moved in with Papa Doug. Before that she kicked me out when I was pregnant with Bennett and she kept you from me, threatening me that she would have DCYF take you away from me and give you to her if I tried to take you with me. I was so afraid of her back then... but I am NOT afraid of her anymore.
I have had to make the difficult decision to eliminate her from all of our lives. She is not healthy for any of us nor she is stable enough to attempt a relationship with. She does this with everyone in her life. She is a narcissist and she will never change. When you're an adult, if you want to, you can attempt a relationship with her yourself. But I want you to be fully warned on who she is and who she most likely always will be. I'm 26 and in all these years she hasn't changed... as her daughter I have never been important to her, I've never meant anything to her, and she has never loved me. Narcissists can't love... the only way they pretend to love anyone is if that person benefits them in some way. When I no longer was benefitting her she no longer needed me and so she wanted to tear Justin and I up so that I would need her and therefore she could use and manipulate me. I don't want this for you or your brother. As much as I don't want her to ever abuse me again - I couldn't live with myself if I allowed her to ever hurt you or your brother in the ways that she's hurt me.
She's done everything she could to hurt us. She's taken my van, she's turned off our phones, she's kicked us down.
But Justin and I are working our butts off for you and your brother and we're gonna make it work. We will figure it out.
I also let you know that everything that happened had NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with how unstable your grandmother is.. you were being a normal 8 year old and Justin was setting a healthy limit as your caretaker as he should. Neither of you were in the wrong. I let you know how important you are to me and our family and that we love you very very much.
We do, you are a piece to our puzzle and we can't imagine life without you.
I love you, my sweet girl. <3 to the moon and back.
