You usually talk about your father and sister when you talk about being abused as a child. What about your mother?
My mother was nowhere near the same level of a problem. My father was a terror because he took misbehavior and disrespect EXTREMELY personally, even when it was merely reactions to his own behavior. He told me on multiple occasions when I complained about his cruelty to just "put up with it." He wouldn't even contest that his behavior was completely out of line, he'd just say "tough shit, my house, so tolerate it."
I could spend years unpacking that attitude.
Anyway, my mother took it all way less personally, mostly because I just gave her way less shit because she instigated way less. She was fully aware that her children were just like her and she has to this day held no delusions about the kind of person she is.
My mother would even intervene on my behalf once in a while. Because my father had this "It's my house so basic manners don't apply to me" attitude, he'd often rile up his kids and make them angry just because he knew there wasn't shit they could do about it. He used to have this habit of coming into my room and screaming at me, leaving, turning around and coming back to scream some more over and over again.
He stopped when my mother pulled him aside and told him in no uncertain terms to stop berating her son for his own amusement.
Another attitude he had was that everything was a privilege. Including your birthday. So in his infinite wisdom he decided on my 12th birthday that he was going to give me a massive list of chores and if I didn't finish all of them then I wouldn't get anything for my birthday and it would be all thrown out.
This list was extremely long and extensive, basically scrub the entire house, clean the yard, and everything. The kind of thing my mother would spend two entire days doing, and I had to do them in six hours.
Three hours in I couldn't take it and collapsed because I was so exhausted. Father noticed this and started taunting me that if I didn't hurry up all my gifts would be thrown out.
That was when my mother had enough and laid into him for a solid 30 minutes because this was straight up sadistic. I wasn't watching, but I heard her tell him to "wipe the shit eating grin off your face." He was clearly enjoying stressing me out.
Unfortunately the damage was done. I was exhausted and in pain, so I threw the list in the garbage, said I didn't want anything and went to bed at 3 in the afternoon.
I did not ask for anything for my birthday, nor did I respond well to it being acknowledged, for the next three years. The only way to get him to stop weaponizing something was to stop caring about it in the first place.
Wow I'm actually getting choked up telling this story. I think this is actually the first time I ever talked about it.
The point is my mother was known to intervene in situations where my father was so very obviously the problem, especially when it was obvious he was being callous for fun.
The fundamental difference between my parents back then was that Dad liked having power over others and enjoyed inflicting stress on his children, and mocking them for being distressed. He thought it was funny. The number of times he would go out of his way to scare my very easily scared sister and laugh when she cried was absurd.
My mother could be terrifying when she wanted to be. Her anger was colder and harsher, and a lot less over the top than my father's tantrums. But she didn't enjoy scaring or stressing out children. She didn't take pleasure from it the way he did, so as a result there were just less fights with her.
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