Loved my stepmother, did not like her. No one is all of one thing. Yes, they were abusive in the extreme but that was not all they were, that's all we saw, thought, felt, imagined they were. But it is like when young children look at pictures of their grandparents as young children and can't see it. The mothers were once just like us. The children take things the wrong way (not literal, unequivocal abuse) and/or misunderstand and have a children's point of view and some of that sticks with us when we grow up; we stay who we are when we grow; I can still remember being lost, hopeless, and helpless when I was 2 and the adult me finds it amusing; no way would I be lost, much less hopeless and helpless? But I learned helplessness from that and if I feel similarly now, guess what my mind does?

How I feel now is not my stepmother's fault, just because I learned about some of the harder feelings when I was in her care. It is my job to "grow up" and work on recreating myself as I do; assimilating my feelings and making sense of my emotions and doing the reality testing to make sure what I do with what I'm feeling now is not a throwback to either what I did when I was feeling it, then, or the only information I take from now's situation. Because I'm supposed to be more sophisticated now, I have not just had those bad experiences anymore because I've lived that many more years.

My stepmother gradually became more and more senile before she died. I took her to a doctor's appointment one morning and took the time to bring us home made muffins, still warm from the oven and cartons of milk, it being so early and she so senile I knew she would not have thought to eat. She loved it as I knew she would, she was like the child I had been and it was like the thousands of mornings of her making a hot breakfast for my brothers and myself before school that I had taken for granted had come back to me.

We learn our good things from our parents too; we aren't born either bad or good particularly, although we are not shaped, as if we are blank slates, either. It's our life, our abilities and difficulties, our experiences, our emotions and thoughts. We take the easy way out, take things at face value, or we work to see the whole, larger picture. We learn stuff as children and hold onto that stuff like a favorite stuffed toy, not noticing when it gets too old, worn, moldy, and useless anymore or we thoughtfully deal with the stuff, pack away the good, throw away the useless, learn new lessons about past, present, and future. It's a choice. It's our choice. It's my life and I'm sticking to it :-)