It’s a deeply perplexing problem for us. We have attempted to answer it for a life time. Were my parents good? Were they evil or deceptive or tricky or just plain wrong? Were they good for other people but not good for me/us? Were they good for us, and we just didn’t respond correctly to them? My mind goes around and around.

From an outside perspective my parents were practically perfect. They very rarely disagreed with each other and never said an unkind word about each other. Surely at a bare minimum they were good with and for each other – a great example of what a marriage should be.

They blew it sometimes when it came to parenting, not just me but for my siblings as well. But no parent is perfect. We all make decisions that seem right to us in the moment but the fall-out aftereffects prove that the judgement was off the mark. But I can’t let my parents off the hook that easily. There were too many times when I intentionally didn’t parent the same way as I was parented because of the harm I experienced. Too many big ticket items where they just didn’t see my need. Even though I am tempted to accredit that to my own account, I don’t think I would have missed the significance of the pain my child was feeling in the same way that they did.

I have to finish this later. Sorry about that. The med changes I wrote about last time are still unsettled and they are impacting me now. ) :