I do not know many details about my parents' childhoods, but I do know each was traumatized. I will likely never understand why neither of them could later take a good look at their own errors, own up to them and try some corrective action, yet I do understand they were raised in settings where nothing from behind closed doors was ever discussed or shared with anyone. My grandmother had once told my mother she had something from the past she wanted to talk about, but she never came through on that even though my mother had later asked her about that more than once...and I think that silence was part of what kept my own mother quiet about her own stuff. When I was young, my dad used to call his father "Daddy" and almost never missed giving him a weekly phone call from a quiet corner of the house, but I have no idea what they might have been talking about. In my dad's case, however, I think the worst parts of his childhood took place in the streets and alleys where he was often bullied and abused quite badly by others his own age. Overall, I am no closer to perfect than either of them and I hold no grudges or complaints other than occasionally wishing someone before my own time had been the first (rather than myself) to begin trying to break our family's Dysfunction Syndrome (my term).