“Almost immediately after my last call with my mother, I realized that I had finally done what we should all have license to do: We should all hold our family to the same standards that we hold our friends. I would never let a friend treat me for one week the way my mother treated me for forty years. None of us should be imprisoned by the cosmic lottery that placed us in an abusive home. We owe our abusers nothing. We didn’t ask to be born among them, and they did us no favor by conceiving us or sharing our genes. It is immoral for anyone—abusers, bystanders, institutions—to expect loyalty to family from anyone who has survived family abuse. The only way relatives can earn our loyalty is by treating us with love and empathy.”