I love these threads. It's really the moment that the light breaks through, awful as it is when it happens. It's a turning point.

With my dad, the enormity of the last straw took a while to sink in, but when it did, there was no going back. I gave up my child for adoption because I didn't want to raise her with the help of my family, and her father wasn't going to help. Unfortunately her adoptive parents are raging Ns though a different flavor than my Nrents, so I didn't recognize it at first.

Daughter's NMom closed the open adoption as soon as the ink was dry, then contacted me out of the blue 16 years later...she ran out of N supply. She wanted me to drive daughter around, and do her homework and write her papers for her (two biggest life skills needed for her to be independent.)

Long story short, I was being driven mad by this woman, her constant need for N supply had her calling me twice a day, hour at a time, on days when I wasn't driving daughter around. She would threaten daughter's suicide to manipulate me, knowing that my brother died this way...I could go on and on forever.

Since part of the reason for the adoption reunion was supposedly that daughter had no extended family from her adoptive parents (yeah she drove a lot of them away) and she wanted to be close with my family. Actually my dad is socially prominent and connected and they wanted to use him for professional services plus to get daughter into college. But they kissed up to my dad. I got closer to my parents specifically because I thought they wanted them in daughter's life.

So, a few things happened, daughter's adoptive mom had already started badmouthing me to daughter because I wasn't obeying every single order, which they had escalated to wanting me to move in with them. I refused to keep writing papers. Etc etc. I stopped taking N-adoptive-mom's daily calls and asked her to call my dad. I told my dad what was happening and that she would call.

She did call - my dad refused to pick up the phone. Immediately afterwards, daughter called me to say she couldn't have a relationship with me anymore because I wasn't doing enough of what her adoptive mother wanted.

My dad insisted that he shouldn't have to talk to her, and it wasn't his fault that daughter went NC with me. He was a big part of why she was given up for adoption, but he owns none of that. After it sunk in what happened, I decided he was absolutely dead to me.

With my mom, it was more subtle. She said, during that time period, "I guess as we get old you will have to be the one to help us, (GCsis) will be too busy with her kids." ...

Let that sink in: your child rejected you. Even though we have made no effort to know you, visit you, be there for you, you were an afterthought to us for your entire life, the child that we actually somewhat nurtured will be busy with her own kids. So you will have to serve us, not her. Since you don't have your own kid.

I was NC within 24 hours of that comment.

I was abused my entire childhood, was LC with them as an adult. I always minimized or joked about the abuse. I couldn't see what it had done to my life. It took that series of events to make me take it seriously.