The more I learn about trauma and dig deep into my family history and genealogy, the more I realize that my parents were only living what they knew. Yes, the domestic violence in my home throughout my entire childhood has given me lifelong cptsd and wrecked me in many ways, but as I have gotten past middle age, I have realized that at no point were they doing anything at all to deliberately harm me. In fact, they loved me a lot. THEY were also traumatized, wounded, poorly partnered, unhealed, and devoid of adequate coping skills. This awareness has been so freeing for me, as I spent the first 45 years of my life marinating in a toxic ball of hatred and blame that wrecked my soul. Now, they are elderly and I seem to "see" them anew, through an increasingly compassionate lens. They still are quite toxic together and they trigger me sometimes, but when they do, I just go home and stay away until I am regulated again and ready to jump back into life with dysfunctional elderly parents in their last few years of life. I hope to bring some dignity to this whole situation and to take the most painful part of my life and bring some grace and peace to it after all these years. Is anyone else moving in this direction or on this journey also? Can anyone relate to wanting to bring compassion to the very home in which your trauma was born? And do you think this might be one way to stop the cycle of intergenerational trauma from getting worse, or am I deluding myself that this is even something to aspire toward? (going NC has never appealed to me, by the way).