Shannon,

Years ago, when my parents were still alive, I was in a course for practitioners wishing to utilize/fine tune Group Therapy.

I thought it was going to be theoretical but in reality it was totally immersive. I had to deal with my stuff, in front of relative strangers.

Hard work indeed. I was the healer, the counsellor, I don't need no immersion therapy thank you very much.

Such hubris.

One point that repeatedly came up was my overarching duty to my parents.

How far will we go when dutiful expectations outweigh the needs of personal sanctity if not sanity, to say nothing if degradation, such as yours, was the familial de rigueur?

The leader, a wonderful Irish woman said this, 'Feck 'em. They've had their chances and for the most part blew it when it came to takin' care of you! I say, this here is your time, short as it is. So, 'Feck em!"

"Was it any wonder you didn't run out inta the street, screaming it's bloody madness in here?"

"Nope, they don't deserve any more of yer time, what you think, that you'll save 'em?"

"Feck em!"

Jolted me out of my filial obligation daydream...that somehow if I am 'really good' they'll see me for the son they always had but somehow didn't appreciate, nor have time for, when I was young and oh-so-impressionable.

Really prepared me for my parents' slide to the other side and spared me some but not all of the shame.

But most importantly, it prepared me to better see them as people, bungled and botched by The Depression and War and their traumatic childhoods.

And forgive not just them but also forgive myself...for the lessons I learned from them and enacted on people who just wanted to love me...hiding as I was under that blanket of suffocating shame.

Thank you for your writing.