Dear Healing Bear:

Good morning, and thank you again for sharing. I re-read your post and thoughtfully formed my questions below. I am hoping to learn MORE from you and will very much appreciate your thoughtful replies:
1) Are you a man or woman?
2) What form of sexual abuse did you suffer by your mother? (I don’t need details necessarily but some idea of what it means, how it affected you, length of time it happened…)
3) Do you have currently contact with your mother? Your father?
4) Did you consider ending contact with your mother? Your father? What were your thoughts (pros and cons perhaps) about it?
5) Given your mother sexually abused you, was there any “working through it” with her, confrontation of the issue, resolution, restitution?
6) You wrote that at 12 step meetings and on you learned, for the first time, how to have relationships based on honesty (not based on lies and manipulation) and integrity. If you still have a relationship with your mother, is she honest with you- did she change from the way she was? Did you change together? What is the nature of your relationship with her: is it based on honesty and integrity?
7) At this stage of your healing (you are 55 I figure, about my age), what are the “leftovers” of your troubled childhood and life still in operation in your mind? Do you get easily agitated, anxious, troubled, depressed… ? Or is it a “happily ever after” kind of existence at this point? I healing ongoing or are you in a maintenance stage?

anita