Confusion

I have been raised by alcoholics. My father is a chronic alcoholic, my step mother is a chronic alcoholic and my biological mother and all of her various partners are alcoholics and drug addicts.

I love all three of my parents very much however I feel a lot of resentment of how I was raised. There was a lot of cruelty, a lot of anger and frusteration, very little communication. I felt like I was more a bother growing up than a positive and loved part of their lives. I know my parents love me however it has always been seldom shown.

I find myself pulling further and further away from my parents as I grow older. I stray away from their habbits because I know what not to do with my family because of them which is valuable information however I feel that they should have known better. Afterall they did not have the upbringing where they were raised by addicts like them. Because they never experienced it they still to this day cannot understand my feelings and I do not try to explain because that is a battle I feel I will lose.

I have made peace with the fact that they made a choice to live however they chose and there is little I can do to change it. My relationship with them has been severly tainted. I would like to find a way where I can still have my family without letting my feelings getting in the way. I would really like to find a happy medium and be more forgiving rather than just accepting. I have accepted their choices however I struggle with forgiving them for the mistakes I feel they made and will not account for.

Forgiveness is a process that you already have begun. There are many resources online that talk about forgiveness. Here is one I found at the Mayo Clinic:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/for...1/METHOD=print

Thank you for sharing and good luck.

Hello candragabel,

I know a lot about what you are talking about. I was "raised" by two alcoholic parents. We had one of those typical mother, father, kids, dog, midwestern, two-car garage picket fence households with an elephant sitting in the livingroom that everyone walked around and didn't speak about. That's a popular euphemism for the problem of alcoholism destroying a family from within but no one talking about it.

I felt like a liability. I felt like I was in the way and an obligation. The only time I was worth anything was when my drunk parents brought their drunk friends over and had me sing and play guitar to entertain them. It was the only time I felt I could do anything they liked. Otherwise, I was valueless. I left home never wanting to have children of my own because I saw children as a liability that only get in the way of living one's life.

There were a lot of extra stuff that came along with the alcohol but as far as dealing with it, Al-Anon is a good place to start. This is only my opinion, and I won't disagree that forgiving is really important to YOUR mental health. But so is getting really angry first. And getting really indignantly angry first, about how your life was screwed up by the people who were supposed to take care of you and see to it that you grew and matured into a healthy adult. If you have done that already, good. And yes, you have the right to keep those feelings if you want. But it is going to be hard to have some kind of relationship with your parents "without letting my feelings get in the way." I honestly don't think that you will be able to have both.

One can follow the other. I did end up being able to renew a relationship with my mother. It took a while. But I had to get rid of the resentment and everything else. And I did it with the help of the twelve steps.