...being broken as a child...

"This part of who I am started long ago before my husband or my children, before my circumstances now when I had very little say about who I was and how I lived. I remember her from my childhood when my mother clearly disliked me and did little to hide that fact. I would try harder, reach farther and finally when that did not work I acted as if I did not care. That is when it all began for me really, this ugly piece of myself that for whatever reason helped to protect me when I was young. But the lessons left scars as it taught me to not trust, to act out for attention because after all negative attention was better than no attention at all. It taught me that there was no comfort to be found from the arms of another and that just because a woman could give birth did not make her a mother." ---cat

Wow, this brought me a lot of feelings.
this post from cat was amazing....she began:

"I am my own worst enemy"