DesertEyes

Hi there dothi

Forgiveness is very much a part of recovery, whether as an ACOA or Al-anon or whichever fellowship meets our needs. Here's a bit of my story.

I was raised by violent alcoholics, with a few pedophiles thrown in for good measure. My father wasn't around much, and when he was it was bad for everybody. My mother stayed home, but it would have been better if she'd not. None of the adults did _anything_ to protect us kids, they were off in their own world.

I ran away from home when I was 12, and managed ok for a few days. When I was forced home out of hunger I had my first experience of hope. _Nobody_ had even noticed I was gone. That started a long series of running aways and living off the streets until I was finally able to _stay_ away at age 17. With a long history as a child sexual victim I don't need to tell you what I did to survive on the streets.

I did. I told my mother, my father, my aunts and uncles. In many ways. Got me _nowhere_. They did not give me the validation I was seeking from them. If they had been at a place in their lives where they _could_ give me that validation, they would have made ammends on their own, without _me_ having to start the process. My biological family was not _able_ to raise children, they never were, and me having little talks with them was not going to magically change them into some kind of normal person.

Yeah, I wanted to know for certain too. How could they _not_ have known that all the children were being raped from the day they were born? Were all the adults also victims of childhod rape? Is that why they didn't protect us?

In the end, it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is how _I_ protect myself and my kids _today_. My trying to get answers and validation from my parents was just an excuse to avoid working on _me_ and improving myself.

That's called "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder". All us kids of abuse have it in one form or another. I had it really bad. With me it was just that even as an adult I had not learned how to protect myself from other adults who were disrespectful or insulting. As therapy and 12 step work made me self confident and assertive I lost those old fears, and the PTSD just evaporated.

Perhaps you should trust your own feelings and give it that time. You already have an appointment with a counselor, why don't you give yourself a little time and space to heal. Time, space and respect you never received as a child. When I started giving _me_ the treatment I never got as a child, and stopped treating myself the way my parents treated me, that is when I started to heal.

Mike ((((( hugs ))))