I am 38 years old, I am married and have two children. Both of my parents recently passed away. My father passed in May of 2012 (about a month before my daughter was born) and my mother passed in February of this year. There is a whole lot of family issues that I could go into, but I'll save it since I'm new to this group. I believe that my parents contributed heavily to my having very low self-esteem and finding social situations very challenging.
Even though my father apologized for his verbally and emotionally abusive parenting, even saying he was proud of me a few months before he died, my mother offered no such apology. She enabled him and stood by doing nothing when he or others bullied me.
So, now they're gone. They failed as parents. I have great things now (e.g. a wonderful wife, wonderful children, a great job and an awesome home), but I struggle with feelings of inferiority. Sometimes I feel angry with my parents even though they're gone. I wonder what they were thinking. No dentist until I went myself as an adult; no orthodontic work until I was an adult even though I needed it badly; one trip to an optometrist in my entire childhood and not so much as a "we're proud of you" for making it through college. So, now they're gone and I miss them, but I hate myself for missing them. They failed me. I deserved better. So, I’m not sure how to feel.
