It is one of the hardest things kids can face over the years. With my parents, specifically my father, it wasn’t abusive behavior per se, but there was a point where I had to set some firm boundaries with him to save my own family (long, tangled story, lot of it had to do with my dad not understanding how families work, how you seperate from your family of origin when you have your own family).
On the other hand with my wife, it is a very different story, with her parents it was really, really dark, I won’t go into the details,but it was horrible, and her mother was a piece of work in a different way, combination of mentally ill and a very warped perspective on things thanks to her religious beliefs…in any event, working through this the therapist told us that it was important to forgive, and they claim it is how you heal, you let it go and so forth. I don’t know if that helped my wife, but quite honestly, did nothing for me, I personally think that often is just the recycled religious idea of needing to forgive those who trespass against us. It depends on how you hold onto your anger, you can let it eat you up, or you can use it to drive yourself forward. Some people get a benefit of forgiving someone and moving on, I don’t work like that. I have to add that the worst at this are often clergy, especially more traditional ones, who will tell an abuse victim, I am talking horrible abuse, that their duty is to forgive the offending parent and then it is their duty to take care of them, the whole “sacred parent” stuff to me is crap, it isn’t about forgiveness helping the victim, it is about some crazy idea that the offending parents have to be forgiven because that is ordained or some such swill…(and yes, I am very emotional about this, if you saw the damage that was done, saw the wounds, that took a long time or in some ways never healed, you would be too). It is hard, because no matter how abusive the parent was,there is always natural emotions that tell you you should do something, that no matter how bad this was still mom or dad. I have to admit that I admire people who can forgive their abusers and even help them, because I cannot do that.