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Old 11-21-2013, 12:45 PM
  # 51 (permalink)  
honeypig
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Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Midwest
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Just want to add on to Aeryn's post above--sounds very similar in many ways to my FOO. We didn't have alcoholism (that I know of) but we did have a stepfather who was abusive in many ways and a mom who had an AF of her own. As a kid, I saw her as a helpless victim w/no options. As an adult, I came to believe she DID have options but chose not to exercise them. We did not speak for a period of YEARS.

As I find myself working thru recovery now, I read the many, many stories of people here w/kids who don't leave for this reason or that one. I begin to see the other side of it, to some extent. I start to understand that, as an untreated ACOA herself, she was not capable of acting in a healthy way for herself OR us.

To those of you who fear that leaving a bad situation will damage your kids more than staying will, I will tell you that, in discussion with my siblings, we have ALL agreed that we would rather have lived any other place, any other way, than the way that we DID live as kids. Take that for whatever it's worth.
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