I believe that we carry our parents around in our heads and hearts. I think Freud called it something like the superego, but I'm not strong in psychology.

The Greeks captured this idea in a series of plays with the theme, "The sins of the fathers are visited on the heads of the children." One of the plays is about the queen who kills the king. Her son is either banished or grows up separately somehow. When they later meet, they marry, not knowing they are mother and son. They have children. When the son finds out, he plucks out his own eyes. I'm having a bit of trouble with memory, but I think this play is about Orestes, and the series of plays is called the Orestia.

This is a metaphor, I think, for this psychological/emotional heritage that can really us screw us up and screw us over. But growing past all this is the lessons we have to learn to grow into being mature human beings.

It doesn't seem to matter very much whether the dysfunctional family lives in poverty or in a mansion, the kids can grow up just as hurt, confused, angry, and injured.

I don't mean for this to sound hopeless or pessimistic.My point -- and I think I have one -- is that people have been struggling to overcome their pasts and themselves since the dawn of Western civilization.

You are not alone.