Thanks for your moving post, Emerald, and I'm sorry I didn't reply. To your last sentence - I feel we're drawn to triggers that raise questions we're ready to face: if not completely, perhaps somewhat. It's just happened to me. I'll post about it later. How are you feeling now? Did you work through some stuff, or put it aside for the time being?
Lots of what you've written resonate very strongly with me. I, too, realised my Mums role in our family dysfunction, as opposed to my Dad being the main abuser and my Mum a Saint for putting up with him decades after beginning to resolve my feelings about my dad (they never were fully resolved until 5 years after his death, however). Once I began to see how massively she failed us, it was more difficult to encompass than Dad's abuse. He was violent, cruel & nasty. He had his good points - the ones Mum loved more than she loved her children's wellbeing. I'd respected, loved, defended and modelled myself on a woman who preferred to ask what was wrong with me, her child, than to reject the man who hated me. It's a spaghetti-like mass of emotion, and that spaghetti is my own identity. It's taking time and a lot of depressing work to unravel; I'm irrationally scared I'll find nothing inside when I'm done!!
I, too, have nice aunts from whom I'm too distant to confide in (the other nice rellies are dead). My cousins may as well be strangers, for all the relationship I have with them. It feels much too late to bridge the gaps created by my bonkers parents :(
Your story about First Love and Aussie Husband is lovely! Funny how things come together sometimes, isn't it? The challenge in life for me now is to act to my values and principles - Yes, it's hard. I'm aware of having conflicting sets of values/principles/beliefs - the idealistic ones and the cynical ones - and that real balance actually lies between the two. I believe I'm getting closer to 'balance' but it's hard. It takes it out of me big time.