I always want to look for the meaning behind the causality — on condition there is any meaning to be found, many would say.
You say here “ We put time, distance and experiences between us and our mother and we were all better for it. We still have our demons to wrestle with.”
“We are all better for it” — what if this IS the meaning? I’ll concede, of course, that there is much pain and much inner destruction in the world, as a direct result of abuse, of chaos and sometimes “evil” — that I read as “ignorance”. Many go through school and study, to “get good grades, to make a career”, they say, while in fact they go to school to discover the world and grow, become better beings than they would have been, had they not attended.
Many go to school, but not all succeed, and not all graduate, make a good life, a career. Can we say, then, “going to school is meaningless?”
I, on my part, look for and see meaning in everything, because everything is a continuity, or a network, rather, of past and present and future consequences, actions and reactions. All is a transformation — shouldn’t we, then, look to what, and how, we can transform what is and what has been, to improve or lighten the consequences, the future??
We are all better for it all, for the good and the bad — especially the bad, because it stimulates us to react more than the good does.