LF,

Because they are strong I am too? I don't know that it works that way. I'm doing my best. I don't feel strong at all. I feel clingy, scared, sometimes confident and not myself at all.

Yes, THAT is what I meant to convey, not that it's harder because it's you. Just that this is the stuff that lets us know how strong we need to be, and that-- itself-- is a huge motivator for reaching deeper to where the strength is already right there. I would bet that your antecednets found their strengths exactly the same way, and that by the time you came along they were living it and modeling it. Not all of our best mentors do it in words... (which becomes apparent when their young fly out of the nest, discarding whatever words did not work for them, and keeping instead the stuff that DID work).

BTW the all-caps part of your post looked exactly like that, to me. I think they did teach you well, whether it was in words-- or in just loving you exactly as you were.

~Susan