I was in my 30s when one of my dad's friends explained to me some things about him, and without ever trying to defend or justify any of the things he had ever or not said or done. I doubt anyone's criticism of my dad (including my own) has ever escaped him, and I am quite convinced he is incapable of ever truly digging into all of that to take a real look of his own. I have tried looking back even farther to see what might have been his own case as a child, but the best I have ever actually been able to do for my own sake and for the sake of my own children and grandchildren is to listen to what people with healthy families and lives have to say and to share...and I will spend the remainder of my life trying to learn from those people in place of anything else and trying to put those things into practice in place of however the negative effects of my childhood had left me.