Life gets better

I'm new here. I just found out about this site. I feel inspired, somewhat, to share my story. 

My father was abusive to me, when I was young, in the 1960s and especially the 1970s--and even beyond that. My mother, whom I loved very deeply, didn't protect me from him. He lost his job teaching at Howard University in 1973, when I was 12 years old, after the assassinations of the Civil Rights movement--and that is when he became chronically abusive to me. She became \"SuperMom,\" going to work in the best job she could find--as a comptroller--having been home-schooled in the jungles of Puyo, Ecuador, to where her family had to flee to escape the Nazis, during WWII, AND doing most of the housework, cooking, and shopping, though I had chores, as well. Dad didn't do any of that, as he was chauvinistic and didn't consider household work to be his work. He and Mom were both Holocaust survivors--he had been a Gestapo prisoner, before his mother, who was born Catholic got him out after several months, before he was sent to Dachau death camp. His father had been abusive to him and my Uncle Felix, when they were growing up, too. I didn't marry or have children, partly because I was afraid I would marry someone like my father or become like he was to me, when I was growing up. I used to smoke, drink, and abuse drugs, but I am 28 years smoke-free and 27 years clean and sober. At 16, I ran away twice and was molested, repeatedly, by a man named Gary Phillips. That is the core of my trauma. I have schizoaffective disorder, partly due to the trauma and partly due to genetics, according to my holistic psychiatrist. I've had two nervous breakdowns in my lifetime, and I hope never to have another one. 

My parents are both gone, now--Mom died of recurring breast cancer, the day before Dad turned 90, in 2009, and he died of dementia a few years later. I always \"knew\" they would die within a few years of one another, as they were that close. I have largely forgiven them both for their transgressions, and I miss them both very much, especially Mom, to whom I was very close. 

I now live somewhere safe--in my own apartment in Northern California--and I cannot express enough how important that is, considering that was not always the case. It is my calling to seek enlightenment, which I got from my late Uncle Felix's spirit, the moment the Pentagon was hit on September 11, 2001, though he'd been gone nearly 5 years by then. I had just gotten off retreat with the Vietnamese, venerable Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, and his senior disciple, Sister Chan Khong, for the first time, where I took the Five Mindfulness Trainings, for the first time, at UC San Diego. To make a long story short, they became my spiritual teachers. I am now aspiring to be in Thay's Order of Interbeing, which is the core community in his tradition. We call Thich Nhat Hanh, Thay, which is short for \"teacher.\" Mindfulness helps me feel happier and more inner peace and stability than I would, otherwise.