All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped.
You've lived through a lot of wars, I said. "Yes." Do they ever make more sense? "No.
When you're rotten about yourself, you become rotten to everyone else, even those you love.
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away.
It's the thinking that gets you killed.
The truth is, when our mothers held us, rocked us, stroked our heads -none of us ever got enough of that. We all yearn in some way to return to those days when we were completely taken care of - unconditional love, unconditional attention. Most of us didn't get enough.