I am curious as to why you never adopted a child?
I was a verbly abused child and it took a long time to heal and I am still healing!
My dear mother ruled by pride and jugdement and the word love was a commodity.
As I reflect back my mother trouble started when she was a child and it carried on to me.
I feel for the hell my mother's mind is living in, but it also effected my life because I took it to heart. I was not like her, but I did growning up received many uncalled for affections.
It is the foundation of my faith that has helped me to put things into perspective, to endure, to understand, to love, to pray for her, I still suffer an experience ups and downs and reel to and fro when she unleashes her tyraid.
I did bond with her as a child but even today the pain of knowing the differents when she is like this, does not disapear it just rekindles what could of, should of, would of been my life, had she lived more by faith, instead of ruling by pride!