robnyt - I'm new here, but I was just talking with my son earlier today about this very subject because I'm very depressed & he acts like such a jerk sometimes & I know I haven't been a wonderful mother all the time & I wanted him to know how bad it can be because he always looks at the glass as half-empty.

My father is a pedophile. I told him in 1976 I didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore. (I'm 55 now & I think he's still alive - although he'd be 84 now.) I didn't know when I told him that what-all he had done to me as a small child; I just knew I couldn't stand the way he treated me as an adult. I moved to the East Coast, so I was 3000 miles away. About 5-6 years later, he found my mailing address & I got a strange letter from him: (the beginning part of it) "This long silence makes it look to my friends as if I've done something very wrong. Therefore, I want you to write me & tell me why so I can use the letter as the basis for an action for slander against you - EVEN IF YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING [my caps]". A few years later, in therapy, it came out that he had sexually abused me starting when I was quite young. Then I understood the letter - his underlying guilt & fear.

About 5-6 years after that, I got a very short note from him (this is the whole thing): Dear J------, Many years ago I formed a new political party called R.A.P. - the Retroactive Abortion Party - and I enrolled you as the first member. Dad.

It took completely separating myself from my family (& having my own children) to realize how truly bizarre everything about him is.

I put together my recollections of his parents & what I knew of his upbringing. I believe pedophilia ran in that family. From what I've heard, it wouldn't have been too surprising if his exceedingly strange & disconnected mother had sexually abused all 3 of her sons. & it was likely perverse-type sex, from what I've learned, including a bizarre letter my father wrote to my mother after they got divorced.

What I was talking about with my son today was that the small amount of understanding I gained about how my father came out to be the way he was didn't lessen the pain or the damage, but it did make it make sense in a weird way - that it didn't come completely out of left field. For some reason that helped. I even told my son that when I was imagining my father as a child & what he must have gone through, I felt some compassion. But not when I thought of him as an adult because then we become capable of making choices, & I know my son thinks I could've been a way-better mother, but I know that most people who grow up as I did don't even survive, much less raise children who, although resentful, know they are loved.

I would say, after many years of going through all kinds of stages of realization & feelings, that I am not so much mad AT my father, as I am mad FOR myself, on my behalf. Like that protective feeling I would get if a mountain lion charged at one of my kids - I would know the lion wasn't "evil", but I would feel FIERCELY protective.

It seems to me it - like most things - involves stages, & each one has to be honored (although I don't believe there's necessarily any certain order to be followed) to evolve psychologically to a comfortable place.

I hope this message coming from one who's had a lot of rage to deal with is helpful - JJ