Cedar - you said:
"Power and control...but they know what they are doing, they know the lifetime hurt they are inflicting. It's like the Biblical blessing. It is a blessing, to be believed worthy of being blessed.
That is the statement the parent is making, and it can never be undone, through all the generations to come."
"That kind of wickedness spirals down the generations too, I think.
And our families become ever more unbalanced, and we don't know how to name what it is that is wrong, or how to make it right."
I think the *only* way to stop the legacy of ... spite, bitterness, power, control, whatever you want to call it.... is to not let it have power over you and, I think by extension, you put an end to the legacy for your kids and their kids and so on. At least I hope it works that way. 
My mother and I have never been close. She's just not, in my humble opinion, a very nice person, and I am a huge disappointment to her. Whatever - I'm 50 something, she's 80. Way past time to get the heck over it, you know? She started playing the estate game (who gets what) about 10 years ago. I refused to play. If it brings her comfort to "disown" me, okay. She never "owned" me in the first place. The only thing I ever really wanted from her can't be left to me in a will, and that ship sailed a couple of decades ago.
Interestingly, *her* mother was a real piece of work as well and spent the last 20 years of her life skewering every one of her descendants. Legacies are a bear!!
It's all good. My mother is just another person who made choices in her life. We are complete opposites, so obviously I don't get some of the choices she has made (and vice-versa, I'm sure, LOL), but... what do I know?
I get to make my own choices, and they will *always* be made with love for my husband and my kids. I've not got a whole lot more left to teach my kids, other than to continue to give them my unconditional love until the day I'm gone, and beyond.
