My In-laws Called Me Paranoid Until My Sil Almost Let My Baby Fall Out Of A Second-story Window. Now They’re Threatening To Sue Me For Cutting Her Off. What Do I Do?

Validation

That week I had my appointment with Elena. Her office was in a small building near the hospital and the waiting room had soft chairs and magazines nobody ever read. When she called my name I followed her into her office and sat down. She asked what brought me in, and I started explaining about Bridget and the accidents in the window.

I got about halfway through before I started crying and couldn’t stop. Elena handed me tissues and waited. When I finally got control of myself, I finished the story. I told her about feeling isolated, being cut off from Keith’s entire family even though I knew it was necessary.

Elena listened to everything and then said something that made me cry again. She said my maternal instincts had been correct all along. She said the family’s response to my concerns was a form of emotional abuse called gaslighting, where they made me doubt my own perception of reality. She said protecting Lily didn’t make me the villain, even though Keith’s family was trying to cast me in that role.

I went back the next week and Keith came with me. Elena asked him how he was doing and he said he felt guilty about not protecting us sooner. She asked him to explain and he talked about how he’d been conditioned his whole life to excuse Bridget’s behavior because of her fertility struggles. He said the family always centered everything around Bridget’s pain and he couldn’t see past that to recognize how dangerous she’d become. Elena helped him understand that his guilt was normal but that what mattered now was that he was choosing differently.

The Email

Two weeks after the window incident I got an email from Bridget. The subject line said “Please read this.” and I almost deleted it without opening it, but I clicked on it. The email was long, maybe eight paragraphs.

She wrote about how much she loved Lily and how her actions came from a place of love, not malice. She said she’d started seeing a therapist to work through her grief about not having children. She talked about how hard the past seven years had been and how seeing me get pregnant so easily had broken something in her.

The whole email felt wrong. It focused on her pain and her struggles, not on the danger she’d created. There was no real acknowledgement that she’d almost let Lily fall out a window or that she’d fed honey to a 2-month-old baby. It was more about making me understand her than about taking responsibility.

I showed the email to Keith and he read it twice. He said it felt manipulative and I agreed. I brought the email to our next therapy session. Elena read it slowly while Keith and I sat there waiting. When she finished, she put it down on the coffee table between us and asked what we thought about it. Keith said it seemed like Bridget was trying but something felt off.

I said the whole thing made my skin crawl because she spent eight paragraphs talking about her pain and maybe two sentences saying sorry. Elena nodded and explained that responding would be a mistake. She said Bridget had been told to stay away and sending this email was itself a boundary violation. If we replied, it would teach Bridget that violating our boundaries gets her what she wants, which is contact and attention.

Keith’s face fell and he said he felt terrible ignoring his sister when she was clearly suffering. Elena asked him if Bridget’s suffering made Lily safer, and he sat there quiet for a long time before saying no. She told him that guilt was a normal feeling but acting on it right now would put us back in the same pattern where Bridget’s emotions mattered more than Lily’s safety. Keith agreed not to respond but I could see how much it cost him.