Well, Sannah, what we've done is "triangulate" back from (1) "normally" remembered things (i.e., after the age of 3), including my brothers' lives and our parents' (pretty much constant) characters, which didn't ever change much, and from (2) the pervasiveness of the terror, the dissociation, the schizoid withdrawal, etc., to an earlier time, really "attachment time," pretty much pre-verbal.

There seems to have been something quite wrong with our mother throughout her life, though T doesn't want to diagnose her now. Mom didn't really like closeness or intimacy with anyone whatsoever at any time in her life, babies and husband included. Get close to her, indicate a need, and she left, somewhere inside her head, she just wasn't there, except physically. You could see her "awayness" in her eyes. So even for tiny babies it was pretty much "knock, knock, no one's home!" She did this consistently with everyone until she died at age 86.

The emotions from those early days permeate my being all the time. I don't think I'll ever be able to "vent" them or get rid of them entirely. The best I can do is tamp them down and start separating them from present-day life, to which they're really not relevant. Thanks for asking!