I'm sorry to hear about the things you've had to deal with yourself - I wish some of us had had an easier time growing up.

It's amazing to me how much we assume that what's going on in our own family is normal. Then you're talking about something that happened to you as a kid and someone says basically says they're sorry ... and you start realizing that the behavior was actually abusive. And you had no clue growing up that not every parent did those things.

I try to hold some compassion for my adoptive mom, because I know some of her own childhood experiences growing up with an alcoholic mother and a tumultuous home life where she had to raise her two younger sisters. But at the same time I wish she'd worked on her own issues instead of taking things out on my bio-mom and later, me.