Disowned by family

This is a long story so here goes. I have 2 children. 3 years ago, my eldest who was 17, was having some mental health issues. Admittedly, I did not handle this well. I didn’t know how to. My 17 year old went to stay with her childless, Uncle and Aunt, who have some experiences in MH for what was meant to be 1 week. She never came home and moved in permanently with them. They encouraged this and told her not to reconcile with me. She told them all sorts of things about her home life which weren’t true (she was 17)… things like I didn’t do any shopping so she went to school hungry and dirty and got bullied for this, she had to buy anything she needed herself, I didn’t clean the house and she had to do it, she never had clean clothes because I didn’t do the washing, there was no flushing toilet or running water in the house, the house was dirty. I can hand on heart say, none of this is true. Yes I was a single mum and worked full time however spent all my spare hours washing, cleaning, shopping etc. The house was not sparkling however was absolutely not dirty and I’m not even sure if my daughter knew where the hoover was kept. She did not work so where did she get her the money to buy essentials? She didn’t. It wasn’t true. 
She told her Uncle and Aunt who told the rest of the family and also social services. My family disowned me and even more alarmingly, my other daughter who is still at home who was 14 at the time. They did not check up on her, they did not visit the house. They did not get in touch with her at all.My mother sent me an email telling me to stay out of my eldest daughters life. My family have not spoken to me since. 
The school my 14 year old went to obviously had the call from social services and did some digging (without either of us knowing), they found no substance in the claims and said it was obviously ‘a family dispute’.

 I have since reconciled with my eldest daughter and have a great relationship with her. She is at university and has her own apartment however I have not reconciled with my family. I never bring this up with my eldest as I feel that at the time she was young, had MH issues that I should have handled better and what’s the point in going over it. 

I struggle with having no family.

I spoke to my Mother every single day prior to this and have had no contact for 3 years.

They have family gatherings and my youngest is not invited. I understand me not being invited, they want nothing to do with me, but to exclude my youngest seems horrible.

My youngest is now 17. We have an excellent relationship. She does often feel sad and tell me I’m all the family she has. I try to reassure her it’s not anything to do with her, it is my fault and they do love her. She finds it hard to get her head around the fact that if they thought all the things my eldest said where true, why did they not check up on her, get her out of the situation or just ask if we needed help. I can’t answer that because I don’t know why. 

I often feel lonely, I miss my family, my mother is now in her 80’s and I don’t think I’ll ever see her again. It breaks my heart. I have nightmares when I do sleep and all the while, I hide this from everyone. I tell people I am fine, I don’t tell them the situation. I go to work and smile, I have fun with both my daughters. But still, my heart breaks inside. I can’t move past it no matter how much I try. I have so much love for my family but will never see them again.