Life is hard; she probably did the best she could when dealt a less than enviable hand early in life.
Not my usual reading material, but a good read nevertheless.
A friend of mine, now over 50, still struggles with his mother's rejection throughout his childhood. He and his siblings have confirmed stories of malice (bleeding after being beaten by his mother with a whip, euthanising a much loved pet out of spite, etc).
Despite enduring years of torment, he still seeks his mother's affection. She died a long time ago and he never came to terms with the loss or the lack of love or the malice his mother frequently demonstrated.
It leaves me with a feeling of deep sadness when I see how cruel some parents are to their own children. It also leaves me even sadder when excuses are made for some of these abusers (she must have suffered depression, poor woman).
Having said that, as someone who is both an atheist, and someone who has had family members killed by another person, I have had both the time, and the rare circumstance to think about this a lot.
I've become aware of the fact that we need to forgive, despite whatever has wronged us. This is the only possible way to prevent the cycle of hate breeding hate.
I know it sounds like a defeatist point of view, but it's actually a multi-generational view. It's also a view of acceptance, and one that holds that no matter what has been done to you, you will hold true to the tenet of forgiveness.
Possibly the most important thing for humans of the modern age to realize is that life deals you a random hand. Any actions that perpetuate this unfairness to the next generation or beyond are wrong, despite how right they may feel.
This is probably the only path that conscious evolution can take that doesn't continue the current cycle of hatred breeding hatred.
Sorry to sound like a hippy, but it took me over a decade to arrive at this conclusion after a whole lot of nasty stuff happening. Hopefully you will never need to go through that process, and will take my viewpoint as a valid piece of anecdata.
TL;DR: despite what other people do to you, it's in the best interests of humanity if you show forgiveness, but do all you can that it never happens to another person.
As a generally calm person I think it is enough to just freeze your hate and forget about it until [maybe never happening] moment, when you'll bring revenge while losing nothing. Forgiveness is for you to go through it, not to let them go.
We then enter into the realms of how to deal with perpetrators. Isolation vs. rehabilitation vs. eradication.
I prefer rehabilitation over isolation, and both over eradication.
This is one of the roles of government, and thus we enter a whole new world of discussion.
People don't often deserve to be forgiven but the victim deserves to move on and through some weird irony of human psychology that often requires forgiving someone who has no right to be forgiven.
the people he or she has abused? nope