Hi, I am writing this in order to get it off my chest and to hopefully get some advice if anyone has been in a similar position. This post is probably going to be quite lengthy and I apologise for that.

I (currently 19f) met with some extended family recently who blamed me for my parents divorce and ever since I’ve felt incredibly guilty. The divorce happened when I was 16 but the reason for the divorce is that when visiting my mom side of the family (when I was 14) I opened up to them about how my mom had been treating me. •My mom used to tell me that she wishes that I was never born because I ”made her fat and stole all her beauty” and used to fat shame (still does) even though I am very thin. •She used to walk into my room when my younger sister was asleep (so that she wouldn’t hear) and trash my room, scream at me and force me to clean up the mess she made. When I finally cleaned up she would destroy it all over again, sometimes this went on for hours sometimes the whole night. •She used to lock me inside one of our walk in wardrobes that can only be opened from the outside for hours (my very first memory is scratching on the door to get out and this went on until I was about 11 years old). •My mom used to talk badly about me to her friends which snowballed into them telling their kids and me being ruthlessly bullied in school for years.

This is only some of the things that I told my moms side of the family (my grandma, aunt and uncle were present). They started yelling at me and my aunt threw a plate at my head. Luckily it didn’t hit me. I thought they would help me since my dad had previously intervened but it took a long time for me to speak up and tell him. He didn’t know because he travels for work and my mom would treat me completely normally when he was home. After he intervened things got a lot better but my mom would still find ways to torment me and after a while it got worse. My dad even changed jobs so he could be home when both me and my mom were home. He tried to divorce my mom multiple times but she always threatened him and the rest of his family into backing down.

After I told my moms side of the family they accused me of lying but my mom completely stopped being cruel to me. Then a few years later when I was 16 my dad picked me and my sister up from school and when we got home half of the furniture in our home was gone and my mom was sitting on the couch. She told us that she is divorcing dad and that she never wants to see the spawn of the devil (me) and my sister. It was all very sudden and very shocking. She also blamed me for the divorce and told me that it is my fault (which has weighed on me very heavily ever since). We didn’t hear from her for almost two months before she broke her leg and then she started tormenting us again by calling and texting non stop until her leg got better. Ever since then I have been meeting with her and my sister every two weeks for a few hours, I thought about not meeting with her anymore when I turned 18 but me and my dad were scared that she would harm my sister.

I haven’t been invited to any family functions for years so I was very happy when my extended family invited me to come visit them. But when I was there they berated me for being a bad daughter and that I shouldn’t have spoken up. I really thought that I had gotten over the divorce and everything but it all came flooding back to me. It has been a few weeks but I still feel incredibly guilty and the only person who doesn’t blame me is my dad. My mom has never harmed my sister and clearly favours her over me, which in turn has led to some arguments because my sister doesn’t believe all the stuff that my mom did to both my dad and me.

Does anyone know how to deal with this? Also I apologise if this is a bit incoherent, english is not my first language and I don’t know how to properly explain all of this.