As usual, new account just for this post. I will try to keep BG mostly recent and summarized, but if it gets TL;DR the letter will be posted at the bottom of this post for review and editing (or thumbs up to send).
BG:I have hung around and learned a lot from DWIL over the past few months due to PIL/DUH problems, and in working through those I did lots of eye opening reading. Husband and I sought counseling together and read Boundaries and started laying out boundaries with both my family and his.
After laying out some clear boundaries in an email to both of my parents before they visited us in December (they live 1000+ miles away), they showed up and stomped them with no cares given. This included boundaries regarding gifts for our son, that there would be no special grandparent birthday party for just them, and some others that were all completely ignored. Also an incident happened where I was verbally abused by my father in my own home, I told him to leave as my son was right there (mother was holding him and would not remove him from the room) father would not leave the house even when I grabbed the phone to call the police - at that point mother got him to leave but then proceeded to gaslight and guilt trip me "he didn't say that" "he didn't mean it that way" "we're just trying to help you" "we came all this way just to see you" all the while she was holding my child. That was my breaking point.
After they left I started reading Toxic Parents and realized I've been verbally and emotionally abused my entire life with this cycle of being verbally attacked by my father and when I try to escape the situation my mother comes behind and emotionally beats me down and makes it so either I feel so bad for her that I won't leave/kick them out or she physically keeps me from leaving by refusing to bring me to a safe house (one that isn't theirs) when I've lived with or visited them with no car of my own. My husband and I had discussed that this last visit was their one chance to show we could have a peaceful visit in front of our son. Since that did not happen we started to go limited contact aiming for a slow fade.
Slow fade failed as mother calls incessantly when we don't talk to her for 2 weeks to a month, she'll call every phone, text, call next day again, etc and it both frustrates me and makes me anxious. This mixed with her yet again violating boundaries with an Easter package (this time with a letter saying she knew she was violating our boundaries re: gifts but she could because she is "grammy"- which is not even her name to our LO and she knows this too.) Now we are ready to ITO and CO once we get through a couple of weddings we will see them (and ignore them as much as possible) at this summer.
Onto the email that has been burning a hole in my draft box for a week or so - I know from what I read of Toxic Parents that confronting abusers will solve nothing, but I felt the need to make it clear this is not all about "just a few presents" (which is what my mother says every single time she flaunts our one gift per holiday boundary or our no random boxes being sent to our house boundary) and that we are dead serious. Will this send the message and is it concise and clear enough to demonstrate they need to leave my nuclear family alone?
When we set boundaries for our family we expect them to be respected. DH and I feel you have been disrespectful to us as adults and as parents to LO by repeatedly disregarding our very clear and simple boundaries. After your winter visit we tried to maintain low contact due to the disrespectful way you blatantly disregarded the boundaries we set ahead of time by email, phone, and even in person once you arrived. Your Easter letter again made it clear the simple boundary you were blatantly ignoring with your package was well understood.