Thanks for this thread--it's the last bit of confirmation that I need in order to jump into the pool here! I know some of you from F&F of A's, and I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of you.
I definitely need to keep working on the "Alanoid" type of issues, but the further I move along in my recovery, the more I see that even though my FOO was not an alcoholic family, it was majorly dysfunctional--and my mom likely accepted that b/c SHE was an ACOA.
My stepfather was abusive in pretty much every way imaginable and yeah, I've been "guessing at normal" for nigh on 55 years now...