You are to be commended for surviving your trauma. My dad left in my 16th year. His choice was a self inflicted gunshot wound after several months of belligerent behavior towards our family. That it’s possible to survive and accomplish anything seems like a miracle now that I can look back on it. Blessings

Many people do not have the parental gene. It is shocking because the birth of my children was so emotionally life changing and such a blessing. My mother constantly told my siblings and me she wished she’d never had us among doing lots of terrible things. There is something mentally wrong with these people but knowing that does not help to recover/heal from the pain of abuse or abandonment.

My mother left my father when I was a baby and my brother was a toddler. Dad was granted custody early 80’s and remarried five years later. I didn’t realize what she did - leaving, moving states, having another baby out of wedlock, calling once a year at Christmas and talking to all of her family before she talks to her children, not coming to my graduation - were a childhood trauma. Why did she leave? My 16 yr self wrote a 10 page letter but never mailed it. And my 46 yr self refuses contact.