Am sitting here waiting for my time to go to the group home.  Have been watching Animal Planet.  My heart is full when I watch this program.  I am in awe over the love I see when I watch Animal Cops.  I cry a lot when I watch this program. I love animals.  I see the helplessness of these animals.  I know I cry for them because they too need the care and love that an animal deserves. I just don't get it that a person or persons can hurt an animal.  At times I get so sad to see how these animals are treated.  Guess I get sad because I as a helpless little child was not loved and treated with care.  I was sitting watching how a dog was found with a litter of pups down in a basment.  She had 10 pups.  2 of them did not survive.  I am reminded of my cousin Steve who was a cousin of mine.  I might have been a teenager at the time.  A stray cat came into his house and his mother told him to bring the cat down to the creek where he lived and kill it.  I remember screaming that he not kill the cat at the top of the bridge.  Yep, this was a very abusive family.  Aunts, uncles, and their kids hurting animals and each other.  I am so glad I am not related by blood to this family I was raised in.  Being a foster child and coming into this family truly was like living in a concentration camp.  There was not 1 healthy person in this foster family and neither was there adult children.  Each and every one of my foster uncles, aunts all abused their own kids.  4 of them were alcoholics.  My second foster mother being an alcoholic.  I see how abuse trickles down thru generation after generation, until 1 person breaks that chain of abuse.  I know I am one of those people.   I thank God that I did not abuse my son.  I was just the opposite.  I never spanked him because I did not believe in spanking.  Might never makes right.  I remember crying one time when Sean, our son could not watch Frosty the Snowman.  He had been bad at school and had to be disciplined so he stayed in his room.  I was crying because he was crying in his room.  Always had that soft heart and felt his pain.  Today when Sean gives me a mother's day card or a birthday card  he and I cry.  He always buys me a card with a beautiful saying and we hold each other and cry.  He is 36 years old and still will cry.  I love his sensitivity.  I truly do.  I am certain while he was young that I might have neglected him by all the affairs I had and my acting out.  My prayer is that I did not damage him too much.  I did not know what I know now.  He will never have to go to therapy because he came from a verbally abusive, or physically abusive household.  Guess sometimes I go thru "mothers guilt" because I was not present even in my own life because of my own neediness.  Remember seeing a picture in one of John Bradshaw's books.  It was a pic of a man and inside that man's belly was a pic of a three year old.  John Bradshaw made the statement that as long as someone carries that wounded inner child how can they parent a child of their own.  That made sense to me.  I had no good role models of what a parent could be and I have carried that wounded child inside of me for a long time.  I so wish I knew what I know now.  I so wish I had the awareness that I have now.  I cry writing this.  If only.  But I guess saying if only does not help now.  All I can do is go forward and give my son the love and respect he deserves as the person he is. So sad that I did not have that awareness that I now have.  I know I would have a whole new perspective on how to be a parent.  But all in all I do believe I am a good parent to my son.