Broken Souls

Seems to be the subject at hand lately.  Family drama.  Every family is dysfunctional.  Every family has issues and drama.  Every family is touched by some damaging thing be it alcohol, drugs, abuse.
Luckily a lot of us are able to get past whatever it was.  We grow, we go to therapy, we live.
For a long time I have called it holes in souls.  I have watched people try all kind of things to fill it.  Booze, drugs, material objects, reinventing themselves over and over.  I don't believe any of that works.  Just exacerbates the damage.
I don't think any of us are immune.  I know my own particular demon.  And mostly I have dealt with it.  But not completely.  I know that running into the person everyone except me calls my cousin, brings forth that fear I felt when I was eight.  Hiding in a hay barn barely breathing.  I know where I got to be so good at playing hide and seek and shallow breathing so I couldn't be heard.
My mom is reliving a lot of her trials from her youth.  And her mom's.  We know we all do the best we can in the parenting department.  We hope to do better than our parents, but mostly we just do what we can.  We understand a lot of the holes in our family.  We feel sorry for the children that were damaged.  And really it is all of us.  Just different ways.
The proof of the pudding so to speak is how those children handle it when they grow up.  Numbness is not a cure or growth.  Shopping just leaves you broke with a bigger hole in your soul.  Alcohol and drugs also make the hole bigger. Placing blame doesn't cure anything.
That said.....I don't know where my own son's hole came from.  Unless it was just living with an alcoholic father.  And the genetics were there for addiction.
I know where the littles holes are from even though they don't know they have them yet.  Abandonment, loss, an ever shrinking family, addicted parents and a tired Nana.  I'm trying my best not to repeat the mistakes I know I made.  I am trying to find ways to heal those holes now so they hopefully don't have to go through some of the horrible things.  I want them to be responsible for their own behavior and own it.  I want them to be respectable and own it.  I want them to be reliable, dependable,  I want them to be able to grow and not be stagnated in life because they don't know how to ask for help.  Mostly I want them loved, able to love and to be happy.
So for now that is a success.  Let's hope we continue down this path.