I am very happy to have found this group because I am tired of feeling so alone in having a mother with bipolar disorder. I have loving compassionate friends, but I don't think anyone can understand what it is like growing up with a severly mentally ill parent, unless they themselves did.  I am 48 years old and my mother is 77. We use to live an hour away from one another and now she moved 15 minutes away from me and I find myself almost constantly in a state of being triggered and feeling traumatized by her.  I am just going to write a little of our story because I haven't before and the idea of connecting to others around these issues makes me hopeful.  My mother was never on medication when I was growing up.  My job from the time I was little was to babysit her while she was hypomanic or simply manic.  My stepfather, a very conflict avoidant man would just disappear when my mother became manic.  I have memories of sitting up with her all night when she was psychotic, starting at 5 years old.  There was no supportive extended family and my father lived across the us and wasn't in any better shape than my mother. I felt like she was all I had, and at times could be loving and comforting, as well as a lot of fun and then the other times she was scary, and physically as well as emotionally abusive, and often so depressed that she wouldn't come out of her room for weeks. I am sure many of you can relate to this experience.  I have so much anger, honestly fury towards her. She was so incredibly neglectful and narcissistic at times, putting me in dangerous situations over and over again.  I have a long history of sexual abuse and assault and it stems from her never protecting me. At four she left me with two teenage male babysitters who molested me.  When I was 9 my grandmother's boyfriend molested me.  I told my mother, who  continued to make me see him at family events.  I had blocked this out but when I was in my early 30's my mother was talking about how when she had come back from a European vacation when I was 10 years old, I had stopped eating. She reminded me that she had left me with her mother and her boyfriend while she and my step-father went on vacation.  I had totally blocked out the fact that she had left me with a man she knew had molested me so she could go on vacation. I became very upset asking her how she could have done that to me and her response was that she was very sick at that time of her life. Understand that when she said that she still wasn't taking medication. By the time I was a teen, I felt so worthless that I started putting myself in dangerous situations and was victimized more times then I want to think about.  When my mother is in a stable place, she is very charming, interesting, can be insightful and just enjoyable to be with but she always switches to the unstable, abusive individual with absolutely no boundaries.  A large part of me just wants nothing to do with her, but I feel like I should be able to hold both her "good" and "bad" parts. The other piece is she gives my family money which helps pay for my son's college tuition and my daughter's private school.  At times it feels as if I have sold my soul to continue to receive money from her.  She continues to trigger me left and right- the other night she was over and spent hours talking and crying about how she has always had to be the strong one and take care of everyone.  I just sat there listened, tried to be compassionate at times but inside I literally wanted to ask her what fucking universe she had been inhabiting since she had children, because not only did she not protect me but through me to the lions, so to speak. I am scared of her, not physically but psychologically- she can be so cruel and knows exactly where my vulnerabilities are. I am left not being able to say my truth for fear of her anger, and honestly her cutting me and my family off financially. I'll stop here. I am just so exhausted by trying to manage her. I am interested to hear if other people have had similar experiences and have found ways to both take care of themselves and have some type of relationship with their parent who has bi-polar.