As someone who didn’t grow up in the US, I don’t have a large family here, nor do we have any thanksgiving traditions outside of turkey or ham for dinner. But I wanted to learn some new traditions, specially some I can do with adults as my kids are in college.
My sister and brother and I are abandoning our large extended family thanksgiving this year to avoid our toxic mother. My sisters friend went missing and was found dead and my mother was being a bitch about it saying things like “if he was closer to his family that wouldn’t have happened. Things like that only ever happen to bad people.”
Mom told me it would be great if my siblings and I all lost our homes and jobs so we would have to live with her again.
My brother is going through a divorce and lives with her for now and he’s cutting her out as soon as he’s back on his feet.
We love our extended family but we can’t ask them to exclude my mother so we are just splitting off this year and I’m still super upset about it.