How cliche is it to say “my mom”?

Well, I’ll say it.

My mother was raised by addiction prone, abusive, racist alcoholics that taught their children that love was measured in how much money dad gave you (a lesson that would cause intense feuding at a funeral). She came from a poisoned family tree, full of cigarettes, whiskey and mental disease.

And somehow, in small steps, she realized she did not have to be a part of that. 

I don’t know if I would be the person I am if I had been raised in the presence of all that resentment, all that drug abuse, all that manipulation.

Nothing could impact my life greater than her decision to not follow the models of family she had grown up with.