[quote Ticksallboxes]@JustLyra oh my gosh. That's really put things in perspective for me.
I really hope you're in a better place now. [/quote]
I have a good life now thankfully.
In some ways I was luckiest of my siblings as being the youngest I was only 7 when our GP’s took us. That is counterbalanced somewhat by the fact that there are no happy memories from my early childhood. My siblings (they are 10, 9 and 8 years older) have some happy memories from before the drugs really took hold. So “lucky” is a very loaded word.
I am the least damaged. I think a combination of my personality, my GP’s hard work and the fact I got very intense therapy when I was pregnant because I was terrified of repeating their behaviour.
I think in some ways you go one of two ways when you become a parent (though I know it’s massively, massively simplifying) - you either see your life as normal and repeat it, or you realise that the understanding you thought you’d get when you became a parent hadn’t happened. In fact you understand them less than ever and your determination to be different is strengthened.
My siblings are various degrees of fucked up by it. I don’t talk to any of them anymore.
It changes so quickly though. My mother’s parents were estranged from us from before I was born and when I finally spoke to my grandfather, just a few years ago, he was telling me about my mother getting an award in school when she was 14. She was bright, funny, chatty, helpful and kind by all accounts. By the time she was 19 she had two very young children and twice the children had been brought to my GP’s late at night by the police when her rows with my father had got so vicious the police had been called and them both arrested or taken to hospital. Both times it was shrugged off as a domestic and nothing noted or done.
I had at least 8 social workers talk to me that I can remember. There was no continuity then, and I suspect there is even less now because of the pressure they are under.