He wants us to talk to his mom…

Gosh I can’t believe I’m typing this. Okay, my husband and I have been together since we were 14 (we are 28 now) when he moved back to his mom’s native city after his father and brother passed away. She never liked me. She would always tell her son that he could do better than me and made no effort to get to know me at all. When I was 16 she threw a desk chair at me. I always thought she was just grieving her losses but idk. We never really got along, and my husband, who was much closer to his dad, tried to talk to her so many times but she would always dismiss him.

When we moved out on our own over two hours away, we kept minimal contact with her, only really talking to his younger sister who was still living with her. We would see her maybe 2-3 times a year, and it always seems forced. There’s never and genuine happiness around her.

Fast forward a couple more years, we have our first child, her third grandchild. We allow her to come visit us at the hospital two days after she is born, she keeps saying things like “you two are way too young to be parents (I was 22), you don’t know how any of this works, you’ll never be a great mom, etc. We didn’t see her for a while after that. In September 2016 we got married and decided that we didn’t want her at our wedding. My husband went down alone to try to talk to her again, and she told him he was doing a big mistake, that I’m not the one for him, etc, so he told her she wasn’t invited.

A year later, we had our son, and she called and insisted she wanted to meet him. I had a very traumatic birth and he was admitted to the NICU for a couple weeks and so we weren’t comfortable with visitors for a bit, which she took as “we don’t want you in our son’s life” but a couple months later, in December 2017, we invited her for Christmas and she was unrecognizable. She was so happy, was even nice to me, had fun with the kids, we had such a great time honestly. She told us she had been seeing a therapist and was doing so much better. We kept contact more often and although we never really adressed anything that happened in the past, we were happy and decided to let go of everything and enjoy life with her in it.

Then someone shit on our rainbow.

((TRIGGER WARNING - CHILD ABUSE))

Before we got pregnant with our 3rd child in December of 2018, I had a miscarriage in September. We kept that to ourselves but when we found out on Christmas eve that we were expecting again, she was the first to know. Chloe was born on August 24th 2019 and we were so happy, she was so happy for us. We decided to take a trip for a few days just a few weeks before Christmas 2019 because we wanted her to meet her new granddaughter (she only saw her on Facetime) so our family of 5 made the drive to see her.

When we pulled in her driveway I had a weird feeling. I told my husband not to bring all our things in the house right away, get the kids in and say hello, baggage can wait.

She was in the kitchen cooking lasagna. When I got inside, I was holding Chloe in my arms, she was sleeping, and she took her from me, like literally snatched her from my arms. She immediately woke up and started crying of course, I took her back in my arms and didn’t say a word.

My husband went to the bathroom with our son so there was myself holding the baby, my 4 year old and her. My oldest is very curious and loves to watch us in the kitchen, where we live our oven is behind the island and she knows that she’s not allowed near.

There it’s all opened so she rushed to the oven to peek at the lasagna. MIL got mad; took her by the hood on her shirt and pulled her out of there. I told her that the same rule that we have at home applied, she knows she’s not allowed next to the oven. My husband got back from the bathroom and repeated the same thing to her. She asked MIL if she could be allowed to see the lasagna one more time, and she said “oh you want to see it, I’ll show you it” and opened the door and… and pushed her face against the hot oven door.

Whatever happens next is honestly all still a blur but we rushed to the hospital and I just remember I was holding her and crying. The healing took weeks. She still has a few noticeable scars if you look closely. We had to get her into therapy, she completely changed from a happy, curious, funny little girl to having extreme anxiety over everything, nightmares every night, and severe PTSD.

We filed charges and MIL (stands for monster-in-law) was arrested and got 7 years but was released after 11 months, in November 2020. We got a restraining order and moved and got new license plates so she couldn’t track us. We found out she lied and never went to therapy, and while in jail she was diagnosed with BPD.

A few months ago, she was visiting her oldest daughter, who lives about 15 mins from us, and asked to talk to my husband. I told him to go. She said to him that she regretted everything and that what happened that day wasn’t who she was, and she wanted to apologize to our daughter. I remember laughing when he told me what had happened. I promised myself I would never NEVER let her around my children again.

Now last week, we were just hanging out and our now 6 year old was playing with her brother and he was looking at her and pointed out the scar she has on her cheek. He asked her “what’s that?” and she looked at me and started crying. Later that night, I told my husband what had happened and he said he had been thinking about his mom a lot, and he wanted to try to talk to her again. He said that he wants to hear what she has to say, wants to know if she really feels remorse. They never had a chance to talk after they lost two family members and he said he wants closure for that, at least. And he wants me to be with him. I don’t know, y’all. I might strangle her if I have her face in front of me. But at the same time, I do understand my husband’s feelings and I want to be there for him.

What the fuck do I do?