frances007.......as I said, very insightful. I, too, had a dreadful childhood. My father was a sober alcoholic, but a dry drunk, and that was a very tough thing to live with. I understand the "walking on glass", trust me. I loved my parents very much, but they were so absorbed with their own relationship troubles, and dragging me into it, they got me to a breaking point and I left home for a time at about 15 to live with my girlfriend and her family. It seemed to really shake them up, and I hoped that maybe it woke them up, but after a short time back home, everything went back to the same. On the positive side, I have often wondered if I ever would have become the empathetic and understanding person I am without the experiences of my childhood, which are many more that I have revealed here. And, when I was a young adult, with a child and a husband who actually died when he was 28, me just 23, and my daughter just 15 mos, they really had my back [and my husband's], and I don't know what I would have done without them. At their fiftieth anniversary, I told them that their being there for me and my daughter after my husband's death, seeing my parents as grandparents to my daughter, wiped the slate clean for me, and the past dysfunction in our family didn't really matter anymore. They showed me that they actually got their "s" together and showed me that they were good parents in the grandparenting they did with my granddaughter. Does that make sense? They really did make up for all the negatives in my life growing up by supporting me, and being my cheerleader, when I was in a terrible crisis situation. So, I think there is good and bad in many people's childhoods, and part of the experiences can give you a wisdom and understanding you may have never had if not for even the bad. I think you will get what I am saying here because I think you, too, are a very wise person.
P

As you do so well, you've identified key ingredients to a centered life - the art, the essential, instrumental mentors and guides you have had, in spite of the odds.

Thank you once again for sharing this - it is hopeful, even for those of us of a similar age (just turned 67!) that struggled along in silence, dismissed, unheard, unseen and under-the-thumb of the world (at the time).

If not for a key discussion with my maternal grandmother one time in my college years, who listened to me, "saw" me, and knew the players, I would likely not be here now. And that was only one person, but one who cared about me...and she is no longer with us, these 40+ years now.

Had one psychiatrist that was my "witness" for the better part of 20 years, but I still wonder sometimes if she ever really "saw" me, as I never felt things changed for the better, or that I could ever address - with the family members - the harm and dis-ease that characterized nearly every interaction.

My mother is still here, thank goodness of sound mind, and more or less functioning body, but I would never introduce any discussion of these injuries at this point in her life. All was denied / dismissed / minimized / ignored (probably denied by her for her survival - and, probably in her mind, for our own (2 sister's) survival). But it was, and still is, SO harmful to grow up with no external validation of my observations or life experience - just like any of us would naturally expect in a healthy (home or its substitute) environment.

Ah well, ...Onward to preparing presents and gifts for these remaining loved ones, and always, always, thinking there will one day be a sense of resolution, with a chance (somehow, I still don't know how) to move beyond a lifetime of dismissal to a much more authentic sense of self.

Warm wishes to all here.