My T once pointed out when I was enamored of living in/as if in books that they don't go to the bathroom in books/stories or do any of that other, boring, day-to-day stuff :-) I think it is wonderful you're working all this through; wish it weren't so painful/difficult. Still, living with your T would have probably been better than your adopted mom, even the "mistakes" every mother makes beat the flat out disconnect of your adopted mum and my stepmum I figure.

Yesterday I was driving in the mountains where my grandmother was born and raised (her mother died when she was 1 and her father married her cousin when she was 6; the cousin was only 18-19 at the time! They didn't get along either) and today I realized she left there in 1905 or so and so spent a lot of her life without any plumbing, electricity, etc. I get so use to looking at things as they are now and forget or don't think how things use to be so very different and how I use to be different, etc.