Dear Ryan:

“I likely dodged what could have been a painful bullet down the road”- if her mother battled “some intense mental health issues” and her father was an alcoholic during the time that your coworker/ friend was a child– then she had a very rough start in life, and you may have dodged a bullet. But not every person with a rough start in life becomes a bullet to be dodged: some of us with rough starts do take on the difficult, long-term healing process in adulthood,  and become better and better people for it.

“While she let me in to some pieces of her life, I never felt like she really wanted to let me in to see the ‘real’ her (or her whole self)”- if you want to, if you see a possible benefit in it, you can elaborate on this sentence and maybe I can help you see more of the real/ whole self.

anita