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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Reverendbug on 2026-07-08 07:20:31+00:00.
Hopefully my mom doesn’t see this, but I don’t think she’s following my account, and I need to vent a bit. Sorry if the thoughts are a bit disjointed, I’m still raw from the interaction.
Some backstory (TRIGGER WARNING, very traumatic memory). This is also a very long backstory, so get some popcorn and settle in:
When I(39F) was around 3yo I watched my baby brother(36M, and technically my half brother) get taken forcefully out of our mother’s(57F) arms by his father, who then proceeded to lock himself, and my brother, in his bedroom and called the police to have our mom Baker Acted. For those who don’t know, the Baker Act is a law in Florida that says any family member or spouse can call the police and claim another family member or spouse is a danger to themselves or others. The person in question is then kept INVOLENTARILY in a mental health facility for a minimum 72 hours for psychological evaluation, and stays for a maximum of 3 weeks if no danger can be found. Why did my brother’s father do this? Because our mom wanted a divorce and was fighting for custody of my brother. He didn’t want to have to pay child support, and he wanted full custody. The easiest way to show our mom wasn’t a fit mother was to have her mental health come into question. She fought against the process the whole way, which lead her to be kept for the full 3 weeks. I’ve been in the hospital for suicidal thoughts before, but only for 3 days. I can only imagine the kind of terror and sadness she experienced for 3 weeks not knowing if her children were okay.
My other sibling(38NB and also my half sibling) and I went to stay with my siblings grandmother, not my mother’s mother, making the whole situation even more fucked up. My maternal grama was there when all this happened, so I’m not sure why we went with the other grandparent. Nobody has ever told me the whole story of that day, so while I remember the most traumatic part for me and some of the aftermath, I’ve mostly had to pull the pieces together over the years from disjointed stories and context clues. I do remember that after my mom got out of the hospital, the grandparents we were with tried to pack us up and leave before my mom showed up. Thankfully she made it in time because lord knows what kind of life we would have had with that stuck up bitch (not a story for this sub, but maybe another day somewhere else).
Anyway, the ploy worked. His father got full custody with supervised visitation. As a final final “fuck you” to my mom, he moved across the country to NY with my brother. My mom still technically got supervised visitation, but a 27 hour cross-country trip once every two weeks in the early 90s just wasn’t feasible, especially as my mom was living paycheck-to-paycheck with two young children. We went to visit him just once on his 3rd birthday and then lost contact. The days of the internet and social media were far off at that time, so it was easy for him to go dark.
Then, about 15 years ago, my mom found his Facebook account. She was too scared to contact him so I did. It took some convincing that we really didn’t want to lose contact, but eventually we started talking on a regular basis. I made friends with some of his friends. I lived in FL at the time, but I have since moved to NY, not because of my brother, just reasons (another story for another time). I got up the courage recently to ask him to come to my wedding. It’s at least a year or more off, but I really want him to be there and meet the family. We both decided our family should meet a few days ahead of time as to not distract much from the wedding.
Anyway, where I fucked up: I was telling my mom and her husband of 10+years about a reddit story I read recently and said that it reminded me of a story about me and my brother. It was a story about an ex-wife who got jealous of the groom’s sister, which is basically happened between him and his ex-wife. My mom FREAKED and ended the call almost immediately. I texted her to tell her the story over text, and she called me when she got the first one. She talked in a hushed tone:
Mom: “Never talk about your brother in front of (husband) ever again!”
Me: “Why not? I don’t understand?”
Mom: “I haven’t told him about it!”
Me: “WHAT?? Why??”
Mom: “He doesn’t need to know!”
Me: “Mom, you have to tell him. This is a conversation that needs to be had.”
Mom: “No it isn’t! I never have to talk about! It’s too hard and I don’t have the spoons for any of this!”
Me: “Mom, I’ve invited him to the wedding. He’s going to be there. He wants to meet all of us!”
Mom: “No it’s too traumatic! I don’t need to ever talk about it if I don’t want to!”
Me: “It was traumatic for me too! I was 3yo and I remember everything! There were some parts I didn’t understand because I was too young, but I had to piece everything together myself because no one talked to me about it!”
Mom: “…”
Mom: “…how’s he doing?”
I told her he was fine. He’s working, has his own place, was married at least once. Nothing too exciting, just normal. I emphasized that she needs to talk to her therapist about this because she needs to process this trauma. She told me she loved me and hung up. I feel bad because I had no idea she thought she was dealing with this on her own, like she thought it was some secret that no one knew about except the “adults.”
So yeah, I accidentally triggered a trauma response in my own mom because I had absolutely no idea she doesn’t talk to anyone about it.
TL;DR: I accidentally forced a trauma response in my mom when I mentioned my brother because his father snatched him from her arms, had her committed, and got custody as a result. She thought she was suffering alone, and I didn’t understand, until today, why no one openly talked with me about it.