Adapted from a recent online discussion.

Carolyn: My father was an awful dad. He was the first person to ever call me a "bitch" (I was 9) and was absent when he wasn't antagonistic.

I've always said the very best about him publicly. I lied with a smile for decades and continue to now that his days and hours are numbered.

He's still so hurtful to me in every way and yet here I am, still being a sucker. How do I deal with this self-loathing for having essentially been complicit in his bad behavior? I can hear (the imagined?) tsk-tsking from your readers (and from you, Carolyn, because you lost a mom who was clearly amazing and devoted).

I've decided not to speak about any of this as my last gift to him, but it's costing me.

I wish him no ill will, I'm just torn up by the lack of justice. Not only will he never be held accountable for being so unrelentingly cruel, but now I'm burdened with these feelings that I fear would only make me sound petulant and ungrateful. He wouldn't know what I'm talking about because he is convinced he's blameless.

ANONYMOUS

You'll get no tsk-tsking from me. You have not been "complicit." A father who calls his 9-year-old a "bitch" is knocking her off the grow-and-thrive path and squarely onto the survival path. You didn't have any say; from an age before awareness, you have simply done what was necessary to get by, because that was the one choice he gave you.

Now that you are an adult, please see this and forgive yourself. Give yourself the one thing he couldn't or wouldn't give you: acceptance that you matter. You're entitled to dignity, civility and the freedom to be flawed without getting those flaws shoved back in your face every time you express them.

How you respond, and what you make of yourself now, are the priorities you've earned. Guide yourself onto the grow-and-thrive path. Look up your local hospice and find out what counseling they offer. Take your truth, your feelings, your self-loathing, and no doubt your anger at your fate in the parent lottery, and leave it all there. You're not petulant nor ungrateful; you're a survivor of systematic abuse.

Email tellme@washpost.com. Chat online at 10 a.m. Fridays at www.washingtonpost.com.