< ...stop focusing on the negatives and to "focus on the positives"...
One of the most common religious traditionalist memes of the past half century. (If I've heard it once...)
But, figure this, <em>The True Believer</em> cannot hear what is not already stuck in his mental headphones.
> ...church leaders... made it an issue about me and my unwillingness to forgive.
Get <strong>This Book</strong> (NOW). Here's why:
"Never before has world-renowned psychoanalyst Alice Miller examined so persuasively the long-range consequences of childhood abuse on the body. Using the experiences of her patients along with the biographical stories of literary giants such as Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, and Marcel Proust, Miller shows how a child's humiliation, impotence, and bottled rage will manifest itself as adult illness―be it cancer, stroke, or other debilitating diseases. Never one to shy away from controversy, Miller urges society as a whole to jettison its belief in the Fourth [Roman Catholic] Commandment and not to extend forgiveness to parents whose tyrannical childrearing methods have resulted in unhappy, and often ruined, adult lives."
And other academic research is available that serial killers cannot be good parents:
The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Hurtful Parenting https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393328635/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1247Y19VVK5QGHN8SC65
Suggested reading:
The Awful Cult of Two... And what one will have to do to get all the way OUT of it in not-moses’s reply to the OP on that Reddit thread
See ProcessFiend’s “Narcissist as Glutton. Codependent as The Next Meal.”
Alice Miller's The Body Never Lies
This is similar to what Alice Miller wrote about in "The Body Never Lies."