It's a peculiar thing to have to think so many steps ahead when one is being haunted by the past. My dream has always been to be a celebrated and studied novelist. Since I have had my son, however, my priorities have changed. I want more than anything to see my son achieve his goals, which means there are some very important things I need to do to support him.

We are after all, products of our environments. What I've come to realize is that much of what I learned about parenting stems from the manner in which I was parented. It isn't that I am just now considering this rather obvious factoid, rather I have gone out of my way to leave my past behind me specifically for the purpose of moving forward with purpose. For decades that coping mechanism not only worked for me, but allowed me to excel. But last year I found myself in the middle of a proverbial $h!t storm, and suddenly my old reliable tactics didn't work.

What I am going to write is not for the faint of heart. But it is the truth as I know and lived it. When my mother returned to New York, leaving my father to fend for himself in Wilmington, NC, I had the rather strange experience of growing up in the same apartment my mother was raised in. Yet, our upbringings and our personalities could not have been more disparate.

To be continued....