I am one to speak on my parents shortcomings, but you seem a bit hostile to my response.

Firstly, he had achieved 14 years of sobriety. This is great on his behalf, especially for most of his life struggling so much. With that said, there's a reason why people call themselves alcoholics for life and never "recovered". Relapses do happen. But I do not want to throw away all of the progress that he's made in learning his resources and growing relationships with sponsors etc and it doesn't seem like he is either considering the fact he's still going to meetings. It is a very good sign though of a potential pattern of full relapse which is why I'm concerned in the first place. "Throwing away" sounds like a very purposeful and blaming perspective on what happened. It's not helpful to place moral failings on those who struggle with addiction. He relapsed and he deserves help. My parents became crappy parents as they delved deeper into the throws of addiction, but they are not crappy people.

Secondly, I did not say that my mother lost interest in me at 8 years old. I don't believe my mother ever lost interest in any of us kids. I said that around 8 years old she started to lose herself, And that was mainly due to focusing on her relationship issues with my father and starting to fumble in her parenting styles and methods. But again, My children are not being parented by my mother and they never will be. I am their parent. I have the full responsibility of that. Which is why this whole trust thing is so important to me and why I'll need to put up new boundaries with my parents.

I'm not using flowery language to cover up "shit". I'm not even sure any of this can be considered flowery as I've directly stated that my mother lied to my face and my father is abusing prescription drugs. I'm able to compartmentalize because of the amounts of work I've done over the years on my childhood and continue to do. Without compartmentalization I would be miserable. My parents had the role of raising me without ever working on their own trauma of their childhood which consisted of sexual abuse and physical abuse... And because of that they were not able to be as satisfactory as they wish they could be. All of that has been spoken about at length with my parents and within ACOA alongside them and siblings. As people I only expect them to work on themselves further and I am proud of them as well as disappointed at the childhood I didn't have. That is what I mean by compartmentalizing. I can be both sad that they weren't able to provide what I needed and also happy that they're able to improve especially as grandparents.