My own trauma started at a very early age. Growing up with a volatile mother and an undiagnosed autistic father made for a chaotic childhood. My parents marriage was dysfunctional and my sister and I felt the repercussions throughout our entire childhood. Being born into a family with intergenerational trauma is challenging for any child. My mother, herself was brought up in a home with an alcoholic father, unfortunately she was never able to get the resources she needed to break the destructive cycle.

As a child, I always had a gut instinct that I was not in the right family. I'll call it an intuition. I would search for adoption papers when my parents were not home because I felt deep down inside that I did not belong in this family. 

Fast forward to much later in my life, I discovered that the man who raised me was not my biological father. My mother still could not be honest or truthful about even my own conception.  Learning I was an NPE (more information about NPE's on my Resource page) brought me a lot of mixed feelings, both relief that my father wasn't really my biological father but also pain, because my own biological father had already passed away when I made the discovery.