The way you write about your Mom, *Beth*---I almost felt I might have known her. You write so well. And your heart is so good, to try and see things through her eyes, to feel what she felt. I am also glad you've come to a kind of peace about it.

Sadly, the liars in my life were malignant narcissists. After years of trying to understand and even forgive them (because I had always believed that inside everybody, there was someone redeemable), I found I absolutely could not. Because with every moment of forgiveness and attempts to grasp where they were coming from were repaid with yet more scheming, more calculated manipulations, humiliations, and hate-filled lies. I simply could not win.

LOTS of damage was done. And no amount of diplomacy, and re-visiting the past, will ever make it right.