Her Narcissistic Mother Tried To Unalive Her

Unfiltered Stories

In today's episode of Unfiltered Stories, Marnie Grubman courageously shares her journey of survival and resilience. From a young age, Marnie faced immense challenges growing up with a mother who exhibited highly manipulative and abusive behaviors. At one point, she experienced a profoundly traumatic event at the hands of her mother that left her fighting for her life.   When Marnie was later cared for by her grandparents, she encountered further betrayals of trust that no child should ever experience. Despite the traumas she endured, Marnie has channeled her experiences into a powerful commitment to protecting other children and breaking cycles of abuse. Join us in holding space for Marnie's inspiring story with respect and support for her resilience.   #unfilteredstories #survivorstories   Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.  Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.  By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.   🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅  Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB  Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT  Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN

Transcript

00:00I will always remember the day that she dropped me out of the two-story window.

00:05Hi, my name is Marnie Grunman. I'm 57 years old. I live in Montreal, Canada, and I'm going to be

00:12sharing my story of surviving a narcissistic family system and living on the streets at the

00:19age of 13. I'm also a survivor of child sexual abuse, SA, and domestic violence. As a child

00:28growing up in abuse, I had no idea that I was being abused because it was my normal. It wasn't

00:33until I got out of my family and had some contrast that I realized that the household that I came

00:40from wasn't like everybody else's. My earliest memory of abuse is when my mother dropped me out

00:47of a two-story window when I was five years old. I never even put together that she tried to

00:52unalive

00:53me because I walked away with two broken arms. It actually wasn't until this year that I

00:57figured out that it clicked for me that she was actually trying to unalive me. It wasn't just

01:03about hurting me. My growing up experience with my mother was always pins and needles. I don't have

01:10any memories with relationship to my mother in particular that were happy, that were peaceful,

01:18that were safe. Every moment with her was monitoring how she was reacting to me and trying to be a

01:29good

01:29enough little girl that she would be nice to me and love me because I knew that the abuse that

01:34she was

01:35perpetrating, which I didn't realize, of course, at the time was abuse, was because there was something

01:40wrong with me. My mother often told me I was damaged goods, that everybody knew I was a liar,

01:45and that I was sick in the head, and that I belonged in a psych ward, and people don't understand

01:51how she

01:51puts up with me. So she made it very clear to me that the way she treated me was my

01:57fault, which

01:58created an environment for me where I was constantly monitoring her and trying to please her. I didn't

02:05understand some of the words my mother was using. When I was around nine years old, she started to call

02:09me. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it didn't mean something good. I definitely knew that

02:17those words weren't good and that I wasn't good. My biological father and my mother divorced when I was

02:2314 months old, and from what I know, he left long before that, and I only saw him once after

02:30she dropped

02:31me out of the two-story window, and that's when he was signing documents, I'm assuming, to give me over

02:37to my grandparents. I came to know him in my adult life much, much later, after I was no longer

02:44in a

02:44relationship with my mother, and did form a really loving relationship with him, but I didn't have him

02:50growing up. I will always remember the day that she dropped me out of the two-story window.

02:55My brother, I was around five years old. My brother is 10, 11 years old, and they were arguing. She

03:03wanted him

03:03to go to the store and buy a pack of cigarettes. My brother was saying that it was raining, and

03:07my mother

03:08told me to put my hand out the window to see if it was raining. She didn't like my answer.

03:14It was raining.

03:15She came bounding up the stairs. My brother was coming up the stairs, and she goes, check again,

03:20lean out further. So I leaned out further with my one arm, and she said, no, check with both arms,

03:26and as I put both of my arms out the window, she lifted me up by the feet, and I

03:32felt her literally

03:33let go of my legs. It was the rain that actually broke my fall. I can remember the sensation of

03:39the

03:39fall to this day. I can remember the smell in the air. I don't remember, thankfully, impact, but because

03:45the ground was softened by the rain, that's probably why I survived. My next memory is of my mother

03:52putting me in my blankie into a taxi and taking me to the hospital. No ambulance, no police, no nothing,

03:59and then I woke up with casts, and the casts that were from the bottom of my, like in my

04:06armpit,

04:06all the way down. The only thing I had free fingers and my thumbs on both arms straight casted for

04:12about

04:12eight weeks. I didn't hear my brother have any reaction, and I don't know that he realized she

04:19actually let go of me. I came to find out years later that it was intentional more than I realized.

04:27Somebody who knew me from the time that I was born, a babysitter that we used to have,

04:31told me quite recently that she had sued or threatened to sue the landlords for there not

04:37being screens on the windows. So it seems that she actually set that up, and the rain maybe was an

04:44excuse for her. It was the right timing, but she set it up for financial gain, which was not unusual

04:50for my mother to engage in criminal activity for financial gain. I have three stepfathers that passed

04:56away out of five of her husbands, one of cancer, but still three dads. I don't remember what I thought

05:02at the time. I remember like I was woozy, so it would have been more after the fact, and I

05:08already was

05:09trained to be numb and say nothing. My mother was neglecting me from the time that I was really

05:14little. The babysitter that I had that used to take care of my brother and I when my mother was,

05:19for example, passed out, would come over every day after school and check on me, and she would find me

05:25in the crib, not changed, not fed, playing quietly. So I already was groomed to be this very silent,

05:32compliant, compliant, don't push back, little girl. I knew what I needed to do to survive my mother,

05:38even at that age. When I came back from running away, that was one. There were only a couple of

05:44times that my mother ever told me that she loved me. One was when I came back from running away

05:51from

05:51home. Social services actually sent me back to her, no questions asked, and when I arrived,

05:58she told me that she loved me and she missed me. And my reaction to that was really, like I

06:03was very

06:04surprised because I had always been told by her that if I ever disappeared, nobody would remember

06:10me. Everybody would forget about me and nobody would be looking for me. And then the next time

06:15that I can recall her telling me that she loved me was when my own daughter was having her babies

06:21and

06:22my mother and my daughter at that point in time had a relationship. And so my mother wanted to

06:27reunite with me so that she could be a part of my daughter's birth experience. And that time I was

06:33no contact with her for 17 years. And her telling me that she loved me after not seeing her for

06:3917

06:39years made me try to have a relationship with her again because I so desperately wanted my mother to

06:48love me. After my mother dropped me out of the two-story window, the way that I ended up with

06:54my

06:54grandparents was because they got involved. And as a child, I have no idea what was going on behind

07:00the scenes because nobody was holding her to account. My mother's story that she spun was that

07:08I was playing on a toy box, which didn't exist, by the way, that she had told me not to

07:14play on and

07:15that it was my fault that I fell out of the window. I ended up living with my grandparents as

07:21a result of

07:21that incident in one way or the other. And that marked the beginning of my grandfather

07:28having complete access to me. I think it's also important to note that my grandmother was a

07:34functional. So I had two very dysfunctional grandparents who I adored and who I didn't know

07:41weren't like everybody else's grandparents. And in one way, they were very good and loving to me.

07:48Right. But now, you know, fast forward all these years later, I realized the way in which they were

07:54loving to me was all about grooming. My grandmother used me as leverage against my mother as a, oh, look,

08:02I can love this little girl. Not like I can't love you because you're not a good little girl. Like

08:06my

08:07mother got it from somewhere. Right. My grandmother also was the person who lured me into the bed that my

08:14grandfather slept in and gave me to him. My grandmother would call me into the bedroom for

08:20a love up, which meant cuddles. And I loved cuddling with my grandmother without clothes on though. And

08:27of course, I don't know that that's not normal. She didn't have clothes on. My grandfather didn't

08:31have clothes on. I did not have clothes on. She would call me into the bed to give me a

08:36love up.

08:36She would cuddle me a little bit. I would nuzzle into her and then she would turn over and go

08:41to sleep

08:42and my grandfather would molest me. And when my grandmother would turn over and go to sleep,

08:48I would go somewhere else. And I wasn't there. You know, I know my grandfather was touching me.

08:53I have some specific memories, but I wasn't there because of the way that my mother was with me.

09:00I was already really efficient at numbing out, which I now know was disassociation, but I didn't know

09:07it at the time. And an interesting thing that all of my family members and even friends that

09:12I've crossed paths with now, like later in life, they all say the same thing that that Marnie used

09:18to live in an imaginary world. So I lived in that place of, you know, little pretend friends and

09:24singing songs and dancing around like that was my normal. And other people noticed it, but I guess

09:30it wasn't so normal, right? I didn't confront my mother until I was 26 years old and she never denied

09:38it. I confronted her in a phone call. And at this point in time, I had been in therapy. I

09:44was in a

09:45really bad place. I was dealing with a lot of memories and a lot of flashbacks specifically related

09:51to the sexual abuse with my grandfather. I told my mother what he had done. And she kept saying,

09:58my father, my father, a child molester, never said he's not or no, or that didn't happen.

10:06None of that, but also didn't acknowledge it. And eventually she hung up the phone.

10:12I lived in my grandparents' house from about the age of five to nine until my mother showed up with

10:17my new stepdaddy that she was already married to. So I was there consistently through those years.

10:24And then there were times where after we moved from Montreal to Miami, I would spend the weekend

10:31at my grandparents' house. It did diminish over time, maybe because I got older and I was, you know,

10:39less attractive to my grandfather, but it never stopped entirely until I ran away.

10:45Well, my grandmother brought me into the bed. So my grandmother was present. She would turn over and

10:50go to sleep, but she knew that I was still in the bed. And I didn't make that connection for

10:55a really,

10:56really long time. And interesting, my grandmother used to refer to my mother as my grandfather's

11:02favorite, and then would refer to me as my grandfather's favorite, which I think is a very

11:07telling way to identify the girls that he was definitely molesting. I mean, I can't prove he was

11:13molesting my mother, but it goes to follow that if he's doing it to me, he did it to his

11:19own daughters.

11:19And as far as telling anyone, I've been the family liar since I was four or five years old. When

11:25the

11:25window incident happened, I can remember my aunt, one of my aunts referring to me as that Marnie,

11:34she's always been a liar. To this day, she still refers to me that way. So I already knew that

11:39anything

11:40that I would say wasn't going to be believed. I knew that I was out of here starting way before

11:4713.

11:47So after my mother dropped me out of the two-story window, and I went to live with my grandparents,

11:53because I had seen and connected to my father, I started running away to try to find him.

11:59So I was constantly running away and most of the time not getting caught, because I would get home

12:06in time for dinner, I knew better than to stay out and end up being in trouble. My real running

12:13away,

12:13meaning I wasn't running to my father anymore, started when my mother brought me to Miami. And

12:19I'd say about nine or 10 years old, I started running away from home whenever my stepfather was

12:25gone. When my stepfather, my mother married really, really loving men. When my stepfather was around,

12:31I had some buffer and some protection. But when he wasn't, I frequently ran away. I was known by the

12:37police. I was a habitual runaway by 11. I was really on the radar. At 12 years old, one of

12:45the

12:45times that I ran away, I stayed out all night. And that's when the crossover began for me, because I

12:52survived a whole night. That night, I barely survived. I ended up with a guy who sexually assaulted me. I

12:59lost my virginity to him. And he kept me throughout the night. He stalked me afterwards. He actually brought

13:05me home and stalked me afterwards. I could have been dead. You know, he could have sold me. He could

13:11have done whatever he wanted to me. Fortunately for me, he didn't. After that 12 year old runaway,

13:17I ended up going to boarding school, not as a punishment, but because we moved to New York

13:22and having an entire year at boarding school or nine months with no abuse. That's when I started to

13:29figure out that not everybody lives the way I had been living. That was my first clue that,

13:34oh, you mean, people aren't mad at you all the time. People aren't calling you names. People

13:40aren't mean to you. People aren't violating your body. It was really like a huge aha for me.

13:46I come back from boarding school, and my mother plays a little game with me. She knows I have a

13:51boyfriend in boarding school. And she says to me, you know, we can't really afford to send you back

13:56to boarding school until you graduate. And your boyfriend is going off to university next year.

14:03So you'd only have one more year with him anyway, and then he's not going to be here. So why

14:07don't

14:07you stay home and go to school? So either you go to school, which we can't afford, and you stay

14:14there

14:14for four years and you're going to be without your boyfriend, or you come home and he's going to end

14:19up going to school in Miami anyway. Well, I chose going to boarding school. Not that I didn't want my

14:24boyfriend, but I wanted to be away for those four years. And she said, no, you're not going.

14:29She sent me to my grandparents' house that night. And that's the night I ran. And I was gone for

14:35three and a half years. Being on the streets was only better than being with my family in that

14:42the people who were abusing me on the streets weren't supposed to love me. So the abuse that my

14:49family, my mother in particular, was perpetrating was much more painful to me than anything anybody

14:57could do to my body because of the fact that those other people weren't supposed to love me.

15:02And after about a year and a half on the streets, so I was 14 and a half, I fell

15:07into a job as a

15:08cocktail waitress. Now, keeping in mind, this is in Miami in the 1980s during the cowboy era,

15:15the Mariel Boatlift. There was not a more dangerous time to be on the streets, let alone as a 14

15:22-year-old

15:22girl. I lived in houses. I know how to cut. I didn't do. That's why I'm alive today. And I

15:29fell

15:29into a job and I got my first apartment, which didn't stop me from being a victim of abuse. I

15:35ended up being trafficked for labor, but it did stop me from being a daily victim of abuse. It stopped

15:43me

15:43from, you know, ending up having sex so that I could eat and sleep somewhere after going days without

15:50food kind of thing. Life on the streets was horrific. My first month and a half or so,

15:56I spent living on a park bench. I probably weighed around 90 pounds from times that I went days on

16:03end

16:04without food. In order to bathe, I would just wash up as best I could in the bathroom sink in

16:11a public

16:11restroom that was adjacent to where my park bench was. I would sit outside 7-Eleven every day hoping

16:19that somebody would feed me. And lots of times nobody even gave me like any change or anything

16:24like that. I wasn't the kind of kid who was going to put her hand out or ask for help.

16:30I'm still not

16:31the kind of adult who puts her hands out or asks for help to some degree. So back then it

16:37was even worse.

16:38I ended up also living in abandoned buildings. A lot of times they were roach infested. Living in

16:44apartment complex saunas, those weren't so bad because they had showers in them. But I was alone

16:50and I was isolated and I had no one. And then on the days that nobody would even stop to

16:55give me any

16:56change, I knew I wasn't even worth feeding. So it was extremely isolating and at night terrifying.

17:03When I ran away, I was out. I didn't have any communication with anyone. I changed my name. I

17:09didn't want to be found. And then there was a point in time where I remembered my mother's words of

17:14nobody's going to look for you. Nobody's going to care. And there was actually a point in time

17:20where I was alone and I was trying to fall asleep and I was cold and I was hungry. And

17:24I thought to

17:25call home. Like for a split second there, I was like, I'm going to call home. I'm just going to

17:30do it.

17:30I'd probably been out there about a year at this point. And then I remembered that my mother told

17:35me that everybody would just forget about me. And I really, really genuinely felt that everybody had

17:41forgotten about me and they were better off without me. So I didn't call. I was living,

17:47living on the streets for about a year and a half, completely 100% of the time. I mean,

17:52other than every now and again, finding a place to crash for a day here or a day there, that

17:57sort of

17:57thing. And then when I was 14 and a half, I found the job as a cocktail waitress. And after

18:02that,

18:03I was never without a roof over my head again. I was numb more than anything else. When I got

18:10off

18:10of the streets, because I built this new identity for myself, I really put who I was or who I

18:17was born

18:17in another compartment and just didn't think about it. I had a whole story that my family had died and

18:24that I was on my own. And I lived that story to its fullest. I got pregnant with my little

18:31daughter,

18:32who's now 40 years old. And I was 17 years old. I had been living with somebody who didn't want

18:38to

18:38have a baby. And I knew that he was going to force me to not have my baby. And that

18:44wasn't an option

18:45for me. That was my choice at that time. And so I left him and I ended up working as

18:51a live-in nanny,

18:52which I was actually sexually assaulted during that time by the person who lived in that house.

18:58And I say this because even though I was off the streets, I think it's important to understand

19:03that I was still very vulnerable to predators. And predators look for girls, for children like me,

19:09not just girls. As I was going through this experience, I was also put in touch with family

19:15services, like I think it was Christian Family Services. And they put me in another house,

19:20which was a better situation to some degree. When I had my daughter, because I was 17 and living

19:26in the US, there was a requirement by law that they report to my parents. And the way that the

19:33social worker manipulated me was to make it seem like if I didn't give up the phone number and

19:39everything, they couldn't find a record of me missing, interestingly enough, that I was jeopardizing

19:44my keeping my baby. The social worker never asked me why I ran away from home. She just connected me

19:51to my mother who used those words, I love you. That was actually one of the three times. So there

19:56were three times. And I was ready to go home. I didn't see coming what was going to be coming

20:02next.

20:03When I got back, my daughter was 10 days old. And after my mother told me she loved me and

20:10she missed

20:10me. The standard statement that was made across the board by anyone who had an opinion was,

20:18how could you do this to the family? Do you know what you put everybody through? Nobody asked me how

20:25I survived. Nobody asked me if I was okay. Nobody was there for me. I wanted to stay living with

20:32one

20:32of my aunts who was actually really good to me as a little girl, not the one who called me

20:37the family

20:37liar. And my mother didn't want that to happen because that would have meant that I got to go to

20:42school, that I got therapy, that I got the help that I needed. And it was a threat to her

20:47narrative

20:47that I was the problem. I was made to go and live with my mother. Now get this, I'm living

20:53in my

20:53mother's house for a solid week. My belongings were given away nine months after I moved out with the

21:00exception of a small suitcase of items. My stepfather comes into my room, which is a den and

21:08says, you know, this isn't really going to work out. We're going to put you in one of your

21:12grandfather's apartments because your mother can't handle this. My mother didn't come out of her

21:17bedroom a solid week. Her daughter's missing three and a half years, comes home with her grandchild,

21:23and she doesn't come out of that bedroom to connect with either one of us that entire time. My turning

21:30point didn't happen for a very long time after that, with the exception of I went and got my GED.

21:38My

21:38mother tried to sabotage it, but I made it through. I brought my baby with me and I did it.

21:44I got a license

21:46to be a home health care aide so I could support my child, but I didn't actually separate

21:52truly from my mother until I was 23, and that's when my healing began. To this day, my mother has

21:59never said I'm sorry. My brother also calls me the family liar. Nobody in my family acknowledges

22:06anything that was done to me. My one aunt asked my son if he believed me that my grandfather did

22:15something to me, and at the time my son was only 13 years old, my son said to her, what

22:21do you think?

22:22And my aunt kind of said, I think something happened. That is the only acknowledgement I've

22:28ever received, and I didn't receive that acknowledgement. Nobody has once come to me

22:33and said, you know, we knew it was your mother, or we're sorry, or we're going to go to therapy,

22:39we're going to fix it. I begged my mother to go to therapy with me. I wanted to have a

22:45relationship

22:45with my mother. I was willing to never hear her say the words, I'm sorry, if she would at least

22:51show

22:51up and just treat me with kindness. That's all I ever wanted from her. It never happened. It's never

22:57going to happen. I used to be really angry. I walked around being really angry for a very long time,

23:03and there was a turning point for me where I realized that my mother didn't not care that I was

23:09angry, that she would love that I was angry, that she would love that she still had emotional control

23:15over me. And when I realized that, it's like a switch flipped, and I decided that I was not going

23:21to give her one more chunk of my life. So with regard to any feeling for my mother, I'm indifferent.

23:29My grandfather, I'm indifferent. My grandmother, I'm processing some emotions around that because I

23:36didn't put two and two together until like about a year ago. This is one of those things where I

23:41recognize I'll forever be on a healing journey. Because as memories become clearer, and my perspective

23:48becomes clearer, I'm tying events together. I want to make it also clear, it doesn't rule my life. It's

23:54not like I'm going to be healing and sad forever. I'm far from sad. Those things did not make me

24:00a better

24:00mother. I made me a better mother, because I decided that I was not going to expose my children

24:07to abuse, and that I was going to do things in the opposite of my mother, which by the way,

24:12is not the

24:13best idea. We need to find balance. But it was a better idea than what I had, which was doing

24:18what

24:18my mother did. I think a lot of my healing is due to the fact that I'm willing to talk

24:25about what

24:26happened to me. I'm willing to share it. And I'm willing to share it in a way that I no

24:32longer feel

24:33any shame attached to that. I'm not hiding in the dark anymore. And I don't carry responsibility for

24:39their emotions, and how they feel about it anymore. And I'm able to put my relationship with myself

24:46first. My daughter and my mother had a relationship because my daughter knew my mother up until the time

24:53she was six years old when I went no contact with my mother. So fast forward years later,

24:59my daughter had fond memories of my mother and of my grandmother. And so she formed a relationship with

25:05them both. At some point in time, my daughter started to recognize my mother's toxic behaviors

25:12and did not appreciate those behaviors. And during this time, I think it's important to mention that my

25:18daughter wasn't hiding that relationship. I knew she had it. We had some boundaries in place,

25:23that my daughter didn't share anything about my life with my mother. I didn't want to know about

25:28their relationship unless she needed to lean on me. And that was it. That was all. Eventually,

25:33my daughter ended up going no contact with my mother as well. The things that I'm doing now to help

25:39ensure that this doesn't happen to other children to break the cycle of abuse and to the children it is

25:46happening to that we provide correct intervention is speaking out. It's sharing my story. I do a lot of

25:53fundraising for Covenant House because they're a wonderful home for children who end up on the

25:59streets. They have programs that provide a family system for children to actually heal and be

26:05productive. And sharing my story in general, I'm also a therapist today. I work with survivors of

26:11narcissistic family systems specifically and exclusively. And I help people to be able to break the cycles of

26:21abuse, which doesn't always mean going no contact. Sometimes it means learning how to navigate certain

26:27relationships, but also having that power to decide in their own hands.

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended