There an old saying that you can choose your friends but not your family. Simply not true. Our birth families may be assigned, but our life families can be chosen. My mother is a very ill person with a great deal of negativity who convinced my small, extended family that I was worthless. When she tried to do the same with my children, and succeeded with one of them, I finally broke off all contact with her. I now have a wonderful family – my wife’s birth family. I go home to a city I have never lived in but which I love very much to see a family I never lived with but love very much.

If you have an unsatisfactory family relationship, I encourage you to create a new one. Family should be a group of loving, supportive people who care about one another. Biological relatedness is much less important than loving relatedness.