After a lifelong struggle of trying to convince my mother to apologize for her abuse and neglect of me, I realized it wasn't going to happen, and I asked her not to contact me again.

My brother now tells me I had a "severe reaction to a normal upbringing," "couldn't absorb the everyday blows of life, the sometimes harsh realities" and I'm just "taking everything personally" and being "oversensitive."

If he thinks our childhood was normal, with all its alcoholism, its marriage, divorce, re-marriage, re-divorce, moving from place to place, being slapped and belted more because of the parent's stress level than because of the child's misbehavior, and yes, even sexual abuse, all of that is part of a NORMAL upbringing, he can have it. My final words to him were, "There is a word for that. It's called denial." Then I unfriended and blocked him and my mother on Facebook, where all of this conversation was happening. Furthermore, also filtered them out of Gmail so their messages won't get to me.