I hope these people are in therapy, that can help a great deal.
Ive struggled with mental illness and chronic depression, since childhood. Unfortunately, during my school years support was not available for those with disabilities, unless you were extremely disruptive to the class. I wasn’t, so I just kept getting passes along until I was old enough to drop out.
Then years of getting less than five hours of sleep a night with two special needs kids, made me almost psychotic, compounded with lenghty periods of being single mom and not having any outside help. At one point, I even entered a psychiatric hospital ( for just a weekend) because it was the only way to get their dad to help & so I could get some sleep! ( I was compelled to do that twice in a 3yr period- pretty sad that was the only thing I felt empowered to do)
Do you forgive people who have tried to make amends and have changed or do you turn your back?
Is the state getting involved in these abusive situations, and if not, why not?
There are so many mandated reporters out there, teachers, medical personnel, camp counsellors…, that there should be more than bare minimal supports out there for people.
What other resources would people support?
In my situation, I was attending weekly groups for women who had been in an abusive relationship.
( husband was also in treatment)
My youngest daughter was attending a children’s support group at the same time & place. ( my oldest declined to participate- she was about 16-17). Unfortunately, the shelter had a policy, that forbid getting rides from the abuser, even though it is common knowledge where the shelter is, and they knew I was living with him, so we were cut loose one day after we had accepted a ride from him even though we were dropped off several blocks away. It was difficult to explain to my youngest who was 9, that she no longer would have a safe place to talk about what she had witnessed. But since medical insurance does not cover such and there were no other affordable alternatives, she was stuck. Why don’t we have more resources for families? If I had chosen to become homeless with my children, it’s possible we would have had free counseling available, but I made the decision to stay, and to continue to try and keep my family together.
I think the level of contact and forgiveness with people in different for everyone, although I think everyone makes mistakes, but most people have grown and changed a great deal by the time they reach midlife. Most people are doing the best they can, hopefully each generation is able to learn from the preceding one and access more resources, to have a better life than their parents did.