I came to a deep understanding in my 20's 

an Epiphany if you will.

I was able to see how the abuse I had suffered at the hands of

my family was them working out their own troubles..

and I had to change my view and understand where they were

coming from.

I was overcome with a NURTURING LOVE for my parents.

My mother had suffered the loss of her dear loving kind mother

around the age of 7 

Her mother got breast cancer that metastasized to her brain.

My mother told me she would be chastised as a child to be quiet

because her mother was in pain upstairs- her head would be so painful

she would be screaming. 

After she passed away, her father sent her to live with relatives. 

Her father and new wife didnt have her in their new life.

She suffered sexual abuse, I suspect from an uncle who abused me and she had lived with.
 she later confessed she thought all children did and that it was normal.

( thus she sexually abused me and perhaps knew others did also(?)

My father had alcoholic parents but beyond that I do not know-

the only thing he ever said was that he was "made" to sleep in the 

attic and had snow on him. 

But I have a HUGE scrap book his mother made and it appears to me

that he was her golden child. He said she would be drunk sitting on the 

piano singing when he would be playing with his band 

and he disliked her intensely. I think she and he were narcissists.

He went to war and was captured by the Germans.

I attributed his insane anger to this, but he tortured my mother and all of us.

We were brought up by two horrible humans. 

My epiphany awoke a deeper understanding and I saw them from the inside.

I also saw how they effected my siblings and how they in turn took 

out their anger and loss of control

 upon the weakest human which was me being ten years younger.