“I did not feel finished with childhood,” Gemma confesses. “Forty years to this day and the flashbacks have come back to haunt me.” Gemma is living with the toxic legacy of a bad mother, my old childhood neighbour. After she was born, her paternal grandmother took to caring for her as her mother was suffering from post natal depression. Soon the grandmother decided that she was a better mother for the little baby girl than her daughter-in-law who was constantly listless, moody and suffering from insomnia. Grandmother was afraid that the daughter-in-law would be careless and harm baby Gemma. Gemma’s mother was desperate and felt guilty and blamed herself for “losing” her child. She became a weepy woman who would sleep during the day and stay up at nights. She had very poor appetite and became very ill physically. Everyone worried about her. It was years later that Gemma was finally reunited with her mother when Grandmother passed on. Her return to her family hom...