You could write a brilliant book Melissa. So many, as you point out, are so deluded they don't recognise gaslighting, and how pervasive it is. What an excellent analogy between your earlier life experience and present day societal injustice and inequality. The abusive relationship was just one part of the overall systematic abuse. Although I don't live in America, I can see how past institutional abusive system and denial of adoption rights in my country is ever present in other forms of societal injustice and politics. It's like the past systematic abuses and societal attitudes live on, even worse today (but hidden in plainsight). Gaslighting has worked and many don't even know what it is.

I once read a book about the injuries of class by Richard Sennet, and your story reminded me of this. Drawing a comparison between being gaslight and enduring abusive relationships, and government systematic abusive is profound. It surely is linked. I wish more people would be as brave as you to open their eyes to reality, instead of being gaslight and deluded.