What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given, and have used in your life?

While I think this is wise, I also think it is incorrect.  I have seen many a soul not give back what was given to them.   While it is a rare breed, the person who learns from other's mistakes rather than spitting back  the same lesson, has taken a higher step in evolution than those of us who just ape what we have been programmed to think by society.

I agree, but I think what my mom's friend wanted me to understand was how limited my mother was because of her own hard background.  My mother softened up over the years and her and I actually grew close in the end.  

It is true that there are many people born with all the love and material things they could ever ask for and they are people you would never want to be around.

Pea, I totally understand and I most totally agree with you.

It was a great answer.  I just started really thinking about it and I came up with that idea as well.  Most of us do what we know and it takes an amazing consciousness to go beyond that learned behavior. 

Very true!  I grew up in a very dysfunctional place, but was lucky to finally have an understanding of how it affected me.  I needed my fair share of help to make better choices in my life and gravitate to more healthy people.  This is why my sister and I are estranged.  She is still in that hole somewhere, blaming everyone and everything for her fate.  It's sad and these things from the past can haunt us for decades.

WOW.  I am going through the exact same thing.  Amazing.  I have a brother and people in Northlake, Illinois that are stuck.  What can I say?  It is so hard to be there or have a conversation with anyone without getting sucked in.

So, I will never go back there and see them ever again.  I learned my lesson.  I do not have the spiritual presence to lift up anyone in that hell hole. They only drag me down with them.

Thanks Pea, I am so glad you got away and by your lovely personna, it shows too.

My sister thinks I am a self centered bitch because I moved forward.  I never stopped having empathy.  I simply said I no longer wanted to blame my problems of today with what was done to me as a child.  Hate to say it, but she was a good deal younger and was spared a lot of the abuse.  She also was abandoned a lot younger though and I get that it really must have changed who she could be.  But at what point do we admit we hurt and stop lashing at others for it?  Anyway, I'm glad you get it.  It's been a tough year with my mom dying and then my sister announcing very publicly that she never loved me and didn't want to be "family", now that our parents are both dead.  I'm just working through all that, one day at a time.

People in pain that are stuck, want you stuck right along with them.  They try to heap guilt but guilt is a rope that wears very thin.  They never see that.  You will see her 10 years from now and see the exact same thing with the exact same hard luck stories and trying to heap the guilt on you. 

I pity them all, but not enough to engage them. 

The healthiest thing I have done was finally cut her out of my life completely.  But it sucks.  I miss her.  I miss the little sister I thought I knew.  Only a close sibling gets the nuances of your past and some of your jokes.  But something happened along the way and she turned into someone I don't know.  She has lashed at many close ties in the last few years and I agree, will likely still be doing it ten years from now.  This is why I grieve her.  She's gone.  She showed me a side I never wanted to see.

In the end, my own well being comes first.  

Life is just so freaking hard sometimes.

I see.   There is more to her than just this shriveled mental mess.  

You are more fortunate than I in a sense.  You can still see the good behind the dysfunction.  With my brother?  I cannot see the good any more.  I cannot even remember anything he has done in the last 2 decades that I care to even remember.  UGH.

Maybe some day you will reunite.  I will never do so.  He is too far gone to ever recover.  He practically has wet brain.  He can work but he cannot do anything that requires one scintilla of thought where he is not the focal point and the center of attention and he will lie steal and cheat anyone to be on top.  UGH.  Death is too good for him. 

I'm sorry my friend.  My sister is likely damaged by all her substance abuse too.  Damaged people like this are very toxic and hurtful.  You are absolutely right about the lengths they will go to be on top.  My sister always embellished a story, but what she does now is pathological.  It's frustrating because many mutual friends and extended family don't know how sick she is now.  They remember someone different.  Trying to even explain it only makes me look like the bad guy, so I gave up.  

I just have to trust that the ones that know us the best will figure out the truth.  

Nothing hurts like having family that isn't family.  :(

You are one of the most selfless people I know.  Your Mom raised a very capable and strong woman!  She would be very proud at how many lives you probably touched with that compassion and selflessness.

Thank you Peas!  I'm positive my mom would have loved both you and Lulu'sMom as much as I do.  Psssst.......she also told me to choose my friends carefully.  I did and look how many years the three of us have been so close.  :)

I'm honored to be in your's and Lulu's corner.  Someone is looking out for me.