Pound Pup Legacy

In a blog about child abuse recovery, the writer tries to explain the awakening phase she's been experiencing:

I have spent my life acting and reacting to what I wanted to believe about the life that I had built for myself. Because my perceptions of my life were so off base from my reality, the reactions I experienced from others did not mesh with what I thought they should be. This caused me to doubt my own intuition continuously. As I am awakening to the reality of my life today, I am understanding why I have experienced the reactions from others that I have.

The reality of my life is that I have chosen to nurture friendships with built-in distance. I have chosen to invest in people who would not see me for who I am, and then I have become frustrated because these people do not “see me.” Of course they don’t see me – I chose them because I did not want to be seen.

From "Blooming Lotus", http://faithallen.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/child-abuse-healing-process-awakening-to-your-own-life/

In many ways I can easily relate to the many child abuse recovery pages written these days.  What always kept me from posting a response on these abuse-blogs is this simple fact:  The life that was given to me was not chosen, but given through an adoption agency.  Abuse did not have to happen to me, had someone kept their promise to protect me.

Does that... should that... make a difference in grief and recovery?

For instance, Faith writes:

I am coming to recognize that many people that I have viewed as “friends” are really “pals.” While I still love them and there is a place for pals in my life, pals are very different from friends. I have been digging in dry wells and wondering why I cannot ever reach any water. I have been investing as a friend into relationships that simply are not friendship material. Awakening to this realization is painful and yet it is also freeing

When an adoptee is abused not by a family friend, but by a "parent" or a "family member", who is not at all that so-called blood-relation, does that change all future relationships in a way that's far more confusing and damaging?  What if that abuse took place by an aunt who became "mother", or uncle who became "father", how does a person's title change the abuse and recovery experience?

How does safe intimacy become a reality, if it was never experienced at home?