“I am not a victim. I am an angry survivor.”

– Nina Bawden, English novelist and children's writer

“They did their best,” she said, “but they too were victims of victims.”

I was speaking with an acquaintance about the abusive, dysfunctional nature of her upbringing. She explained that the abuse she and her siblings experienced was generational. Her grandfather had been abusive, and her father carried on the family tradition. Her mother too had grown up in an abusive family and married a man who was equally as abusive as her father.

“An abusive father and a downtrodden mother don’t make the best role models.”

Fortunately, she was determined to transcend the negative impact of this early programming and was...

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