Mouse,

That was a beautiful post. I identified with much of what you said. It is indeed so hard to form functional family connections when all of our experience and modeling was dysfunctional.

When I was a younger mother I thought that the cure for this was to just do the opposite of everything my mother did. Now i know it involves much more than that....building the connections we are all talking about, intimate connections that are so hard to make and maintain.

Thanks.