When you're abandon by a parent it makes you hard.  You learn how to feel miserable without showing it.  You learn how rejection hurts and that you're only conditionally loved by the first man that's ever really supposed to love you no matter what.  Humans all suffer, they all go through something profound.  That's how we become who we are, not by the very experience but by the response.  Instead of being miserable and rejected forever I turned into a real loving woman and decided I wasn't going to depend on any man to love me unconditionally.  I was going to love humanity no matter what they do or say, I'm going to be there for my son and family in a way that my father never could have been.  I've even forgiven my father, I've given him a hug and said my peace.  I think that makes me who I am.. My actions and my words are finally one.  My heart and my pain are finally in tune.  Denial is a hard thing to deal with, I learned by facing him and my own rejection I've overcome something maybe my mother never did.  Maybe that would explain her relationships with men, who were never good enough... Well she was exceptional so there weren't any real men who could or even can now match that.