[Soft*Silver]

its amazing to me how resilient children are, how courageous and strong and tenatious they can be, when forced into situations like these. Dear Gemme, not ever, ever would I have thought you went thru all that. This tells me what a fine job you have done raising yourself and being your own guardian of your Core. Damn all the bastards in the world....

I work with kids now. I am a children's therapist. It is not often that the kids have problems. It is the adults in their lives that are often the source of all problems...

Originally Posted by Gemme

Father: emotionally unavailable, apathetic. He gave my half brother to my grandparents to raise and once left me at an orphanage.

Mother: psychologically and emotionally unstable, uprooted me to travel half way across the country to visit someone that was un-visitable and causing me be held back a grade. She had at least one mental breakdown in front of me and forced me to be the one to call the police, who forcibly took me away from her.

One of mom's many husbands: my primary abuser, manipulative, psychopath. He took advantage of mom's fragile mental state and twisted the situation so she would marry him in order to get me back out of the system and designed a 'contract' between me--at age 8ish--and him that would keep my mother out of the mental health system in exchange for....things.

Reading back on this, I'm actually surprised I don't have more issues than I do.