Sula B......EXACTLY!!!! Trying so hard to be nothing like my mom, every once in awhile I heard things come out like here, but she died 11 1/2 years ago & I have been able to get rid of all the things because my environment now is so totally different than what it had been all my life.

I loved my parents (can't say the same about my H). When my depression & anxiety cropped up (situational) when I was in my mid 50's, I defended my parents as they didn't possibly do anything to create my problems. It wasn't until I left my 33 year marriage & moved so far away & got really good therapy that I have been able to start integrating the pieces & really understanding & finding the words that really explained what I had gone through.

It's really strange not having anyone alive in my life any more from my past that knew my family & the only close family I have is my own daughter. Sometimes I wonder if I'm making up what I experienced, but I know & can self-validate it with facts that I remember about my parents....but it would be nice to have someone else who knew them well enough I felt comfortable talking to about what I had experienced. Seemed that everyone ends up in denial about the bad stuff after someone dies, but it's still the stuff that had an effect growing up & needs to be dealt with or at least analyzed, integrated & let go of.

From as young as I can remember, I was grinding my teeth & talking in my sleep. Back in those days, they didn't realize that it was caused by stress. The only thing I can remember otherwise about the same time frame was how embarrassed I was to be with my parents in public. I didn't want anyone to know they were my parents & even as a 5 year old, I would walk as far away from them as possible so that no one would know I belonged to them. I can't remember back to any one thing that made me feel like that, but someone must have said something about my parents that stuck in my head along with how helpless my mom came across to me because she didn't drive & depended on everyone. She had bad eye sight, but she could see enough to read a book normally & the eye doctor told her she could see well enough to get her drivers license but she chose NOT TO & she basically trapped me inside the home without a way to participate with anything the other kids were involved in & I definitely resented her for that all my growing up life.

My parents had no friends so I had no idea what it was like to be sociable with friends.....all these things I didn't figure out until just a few years ago. Today both my Dad & my Mom would have had a Dx I'm sure but know my Dad would have never accepted it even if he had one because he would argue that things weren't what they were.

Honestly, I'm surprised that I had any normal inside of me to come out after 60 years old......it's sure nice

I was an only child & so were my parents, so I was the only one alive to take care of my mom with the cancer that ended her life. In some ways it was good, but the trauma her poor choices forced me to live through made me resent my mom at the end of her life. More like it just reinforced what I had already known about her. Wrapped up in her own concerns because of her lack of self-confidence (that she swore didn't exist) & making very poor choices in her life trying so hard to be independent though her thought processes weren't wise enough for that.

It's taken me several years after my Mom died to forgive her for what she put me through & for the PTSD her choices caused me to deal with. I can't say that I truly miss her because of the stress she created in my life (along with my Dad) but it didn't mean that I didn't love my parents.