Who Am I? … And How Did I Get Here? (Psychology and Genealogy)
By Todd W. Neel
March 9, 1979
The following paper I wrote for a class I took at the University of Montana during winter quarter 1979 while working on my Bachelor's Degree of Psychology. I was 23 years old at the time I originally wrote this paper, and I'm now 59 years of age. (My, how times flies!) The class was called Roots A Psychological Analysis (Psychology 395-1), taught by Dr. Balfour Jefferies. I fondly remember this class. We watched video tapes of Alex Haley's Roots and the professor provided us a structure to interview our own family members and a framework to write a paper on our own families. He even taught us how to use Family Group Record sheets from the LDS Church. From this, I wrote the following paper (with apologies for the big psychological words that I was probably using to impress the professor).
Roots are an important need, as in Maslow's hierarchy of needs for an actualized life, and help to recognize and avoid maladaptive behaviors. The needs at the lowest, most basic level of the hierarchy must be at least partially satisfied before those at the next level become important determiners of action. (Need leads to motivation or drive.) He claims basic primary physiological needs such as food and water must be met, at least to the point of being out of danger before other needs are tackled. The next most basic need is safety, where explanation, order, and stability are found. Security in your environment is obtained in familiar surroundings, where you know what is expected of you, and you know what you can expect from your environment without being threatened. The next need that can be dealt with is belongingness and love need. To know you have a right to be, that you as an individual are of value. To be accepted. A need to be affiliated with something. When this is missing, depression, rejection, and rootlessness occur. To find your roots, your origins, is one way to attempt to satisfy this need, to know where you come from, to have something in common with the rest of the world.
This paper is a presentation of my own roots. Working on it has given me a feeling of belonging, of being closer to my parents where there was a gap before, because of a rebellious disrespect I had. Maybe bitterness on my part for their attempt to control my life, and not wanting to belong to them but to myself. Belonging to others means something different to me now.
To report where I come from entirely, genetically and psychologically, is practically impossible. The vast number of my ancestors, whose lives were each equally important for my existence, is impossible to accurately trace because of a lack of written record of who they were, and where they came from. And the vast number of peoples' actions and reactions that I have observed or have personally experienced are, obviously, not recorded except in my memory, which is not only imperfect in recall, but is victim of my perception, logic and previous conditioning.
I will begin with a presentation of my genetic roots, as far as I was able to gather from documents and interviews with my family. I was fortunate to have easy access to my father's mother, Agusta Estella (McCool) Neel, though for an unfortunately short period of time for interviewing. My grandmother, though 95 years old, has a very good memory, and I, being an inexperienced interviewer, was at the mercy of her direction of topics. She provided me with quite a few names of importance, and many interesting stories. Having time for only one formal interview, I was overwhelmed by writing names down, so placing people and stories together where I might attempt to apply learning principles and personality characteristics didn't succeed very well. I will try to apply examples of learning directly to the forming of my own personality with reference to my own experience.
The interview with my grandmother gave me names of ancestors four generations previous to me, and a document I obtained from my father confirmed her accuracy. That document is a syllabus of the Neel and allied families, written in 1940 by Doris Neel Groves, a cousin of my grandfather, William Franklin Neel. The author is obviously proud of her background, as illustrated by this quote "There are no lame nor halt nor blind in these generations; no bow legs, knock knees nor hunchbacks. No crooked eyes, no inebriates, no suicides, no epileptics, no insane; a heritage of parents with high ideals, and clean lives."
"The name Neal or Neil is believed to be of Irish origin, possibly coming from other spellings where ni means "daughter" and aille means "cliff", probably referring to a place of residence of the progenitor of the family name". The author of the syllabus (Doris Neel Groves) found different authorities give three different origins for the name - Normandy, Scotland, and Ireland - but she choose to favor Normandy. But who is to say where our real origins are? (Who can say who the first "human" was?) Bearers of some form of the name were among the first colonists in America, and the syllabus mentions some predecessors who have distinguished themselves as authors, educators, historians, painters (artists, I assume), a statistician, a biologist, a university president, and a U. S. Commissioner of Labor. The author reports many people who changed or dropped parts of the original name, but didn't give any reasons. (Maybe they weren't tuned in to how important their roots are, or maybe by changing their name they thought they could avoid being associated with any deviant predecessors.)
The few distinguishing physical characteristics I have observed in my family are mostly on my father's side of the family. His nose resembles his mothers only in being large, his more round while his mothers is more long. He has fairly large ears, as his mother does, with unattached ear lobes which his mother attributes to "Jack blood" of four generations before me (see pedigree chart). My mother's father had dark eyebrows, as my mother and I do. I have not observed any other distinctive physical traits in my family that may result from dominant genes, possibly the result of a lot of outbreeding preventing the accumulation of strong phenotypes. My sister has red hair as I do, and the only other red head we have found in the family is an aunt of my father's in Tacoma, Washington.
Having some facts about names and dates of births and deaths of my ancestors doesn't tell me much about their personalities, and how they might have influenced me in the long run. To get an idea of what my predecessors were like, I had a talk with my parents and asked them what their parents were like.
I found some characteristics of my grandparents that were similar to my parents, and some I found in myself. My mother describes her mother as demanding, strict, stubborn, and not very warm, but generous to people she cared for. She was neat, orderly, and meticulous, and valued doing things in her usual formal way (possibly a sign of compulsiveness). She also didn't like to wash the dishes - which she trained her children to do. All of these traits I see in my mother. Mom's father was community minded, loved kids, had a good sense of humor, was honest, and did not have strong political opinions. He was a career Army man, spending a total of 46 years in the service. My mother explained that military people of that time didn't normally vote in elections because they felt they owed loyalty to the commander-in-chief, whoever it was. I don't recall any occasion when either of my parents voted, but I recall plenty of occasions of complaints of the democrats in office. The other above mentioned traits of my grandfather I also see in my mother.
My father's mother didn't socialize much as he remembers but that may be because of the isolated conditions they grew up in, relative to today, because to me she seemed very open to visits and liked to talk. Other than that, Dad said it was hard to picture her as he was a child. His father was warm, quiet, enjoyed reading, didn't socialize with people outside the family much, and may have been slightly achievement oriented as far as his personal comforts went. He was the first in Holbrook, Nebraska to own an Edison record player, and my dad has said that he sees striving to better his comforts as worthwhile. Idealistically, I see striving for a constant rise in standards of living as ridiculous, but I still enjoy new material objects. I find that I am at a point of changing in my life where some of my own values are changing, and I find myself acquiring or accepting some values of my parents that I used to reject. I mentioned the above characteristics of my father's parents because I see them as part of his personality also.
My own parents' orientation towards physical and emotional nearness, or warmth, is not homogeneous, but maybe compatible. (I recall my mother said that a marriage should be made of two people who are opposites.) Neither of them showed much physical affection in front of the kids, except when friends of the family were visiting. Emotionally my parents are quite different from each other. Mom is controlling, dominating, possessive, and helpless at times. She seems to want to direct you to your goals, rather than to leave you to find your own way, as if she feels she is making it more convenient for us to learn from her experiences. She seems to try to control you with her helplessness and complaining, but this may be due to her poor health. She is very caring of her family, but expresses it by being directive. She wants you to be happy and healthy, but unfortunately, by her methods. My father is a well disciplined man, maybe partially a result of his 33-year Navy career, and seems to be innately warm and concerned of others. He shows his concern by showing respect for others, in allowing them to be and do as they wish, rarely asking for a favor or help. I learned a lesson from my father when, on several occasions when I was being insensitive and aggressive toward others in my family, he sternly told me that golden rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" to which he added "BEFORE they do unto you. Be kind to others, and they will be kind to you".
Neither of my parents freely express their emotions. Maybe that just comes about as a result of age, where they try to protect their vulnerable parts by not exposing it. I remember an occasion when we got a kitten for a mouse chaser, and it didn't survive even the first afternoon home because our dog killed it. We had been playing with the kitten while our dog expressed a jealous curiosity. Mom, who treats the dog like a child, told us to leave the cat alone and let the two get used to each other. We turned our backs for a short while, and the dog bit the cat, breaking its' neck. My younger brother was upset for awhile, trying to hear if the cat's heart was still beating. Mom was coldly upset, and told us to take the cat out to the garbage, and apologized for not showing much concern, because if she did she would start crying.
I consciously feel that I try to model after my father, as I admire his personality very much. I appreciate my mother very much also, for the concern she has for me, but I am not very fond of her dominating personality. I have had to acknowledge this conflict within myself when I was once living a distance from my parents, and I had received news that Mom had cancer. I felt very guilty for awhile, until I realized why. No one who is a big part of your life has only good or only bad feelings about you, and vice versa. (This is called ambivalence – you CAN love and hate someone at the same time.) When I am in control of myself, that is when I'm not under stress, I try to perform as my father does, that is take on his actions and attitudes. I feel I am most comfortable with myself when I have a calm, concerned attitude, as my father exhibits most of the time. But when I'm under stress, I see myself behaving like my mother, short tempered, easily frustrated, and uncomfortable with myself.
For observational learning and performance to take place, and for instrumentally learned behaviors to be performed and maintained in the absence of those primary rewards and punishments of parental sanctions there must be some internal, personal control, or motivation for your actions. You must see the behavior as attractive in itself, or you must be attracted to secondary rewards (or repelled by secondary punishments). I have tried to express here some examples of repulsive and attractive stimuli that effected my personality development. I did not show the whole picture of my personality, because I don't have a very good view of myself. It's like living on top of a mountain all of your life, and trying to determine how high the mountain is without being able to stand back to measure it. My own personality, as well as my genetically caused traits, come from a great many confounding sources. Many psychological influences are especially hard to find because of painful emotional barriers.
I feel the writing of this paper has been an important learning tool for me, and has sparked interest in the continued search, of the opening of my eyes, to the past and possible future influences that make me what I am.
Update
An update as of November 2015: Regarding Doris Neel Groves' comments on " … no lame nor halt nor blind in these generations … no inebriates, no suicides … no insane …", I wish to disclose some facts. I identify myself as a recovering alcoholic/addict with 34 years of sobriety as of 2015. I believe I have found others in my family who were alcoholic. I do not disclose this to embarrass or shame anyone, or to make moral judgments. It is better known these days that alcoholism is a disease, and it is sometimes passed on genetically. I tell my own children this, explaining it is like an "allergy". They have to make their own choices about consumption of alcohol later in their lives. I am grateful that I do not have to drink anymore, and my life is better for it.
I have found entries in "Neel Genealogy by Betty Thorson, Oakland, Calif, 1979, A Continuation of the Neel Genealogy prepared by Doris Neel Groves in 1940" of a family member who died in an institution, and this makes me wonder the cause of that. I have a recollection of my own mother having a "nervous breakdown" and going away (to a hospital?) in New Jersey when I was growing up. My adopted brother has had multiple serious problems in his life, and he still struggles. Because he may still be alive, out of respect for him I will not disclose the specifics of his issues here. (See chapters called “A Mother’s Story” and “A Brother’s Story” for more on my adopted brother).
Regarding my own developmental issues as it relates to this writing: As stated above, I was 23 years old when I wrote that paper. I am now 60 years old as of this re-edit in November 2015. I am now married (since 1989), have 2 boys (ages 21 and 23), have a stable career (25 years as a social worker for the state of Idaho), and I have completed 2 college degrees since I wrote that paper. I have lived another life time! Both of my parents and my grandmother are now deceased as well as other important relatives - Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ted Bergman, Aunt Babe and Uncle Bill Strickland, among others many of whom I haven't met but are no longer available to me to answer my nosy questions. I don't remember my grandfathers - my paternal grandfather died well before I was born, and my maternal grandfather died a few months after my birth, and I know they have effected my development.
I now have an active interest in my roots that I pursue voluntarily, and with a passionate appetite (my "family hunger"!), and I do this not to please a professor for a grade (although I wouldn't have signed up for that class if I hadn't had an interest in my roots).
I now recognize traits of my family of origin that are "dysfunctional" that I now have choices in (back then, I didn't have much insight). I do believe that the difficulties my older brother had growing up in our family created some dynamics in our family that caused us to be a "dysfunctional family" - (traits that negatively affected our development - not everybody likes this term, and this is just my opinion). There is the argument of the "chicken and the egg" - which came first - my brother's problems, or our problems? I could write another whole chapter or maybe another book on these issues, but I wonder sometimes if he could have just identified and addressed his issues related to his adoption and his genetic family of origin that he might possibly be able to resolve some of his problems instead of “puking” them on others.
This ability to survive - and most importantly, TO THRIVE - in spite of hardships, is also called "resiliency". There are many traits of “functional” healthy families that are within mine as well as dysfunctional traits.
I write about this not to blame anyone else. We all do the best we can with what tools and abilities we have at the moment. In spite of any dysfunction or disease that any of us have, it is balanced with healthy traits and survival skills - the ability to get up and do what we have to do, in spite of or because of the difficulties we encounter.
When I wrote the above paper at age 23, I was probably feeling the invincibility of adolescence and young adulthood at the time. Now I feel the signs of aging and my own mortality - my joints feel rusty at times, and sometimes I forget what I walked into a room for. Writing about these issues is my attempt to preserve my immortality, to take a snapshot of my life and dip it in lacquer for safekeeping (I know there is folly in this).
Roots are an important need, as in Maslow's hierarchy of needs for an actualized life, and help to recognize and avoid maladaptive behaviors. The needs at the lowest, most basic level of the hierarchy must be at least partially satisfied before those at the next level become important determiners of action. (Need leads to motivation or drive.) He claims basic primary physiological needs such as food and water must be met, at least to the point of being out of danger before other needs are tackled. The next most basic need is safety, where explanation, order, and stability are found. Security in your environment is obtained in familiar surroundings, where you know what is expected of you, and you know what you can expect from your environment without being threatened. The next need that can be dealt with is belongingness and love need. To know you have a right to be, that you as an individual are of value. To be accepted. A need to be affiliated with something. When this is missing, depression, rejection, and rootlessness occur. To find your roots, your origins, is one way to attempt to satisfy this need, to know where you come from, to have something in common with the rest of the world.
This paper is a presentation of my own roots. Working on it has given me a feeling of belonging, of being closer to my parents where there was a gap before, because of a rebellious disrespect I had. Maybe bitterness on my part for their attempt to control my life, and not wanting to belong to them but to myself. Belonging to others means something different to me now.
To report where I come from entirely, genetically and psychologically, is practically impossible. The vast number of my ancestors, whose lives were each equally important for my existence, is impossible to accurately trace because of a lack of written record of who they were, and where they came from. And the vast number of peoples' actions and reactions that I have observed or have personally experienced are, obviously, not recorded except in my memory, which is not only imperfect in recall, but is victim of my perception, logic and previous conditioning.
I will begin with a presentation of my genetic roots, as far as I was able to gather from documents and interviews with my family. I was fortunate to have easy access to my father's mother, Agusta Estella (McCool) Neel, though for an unfortunately short period of time for interviewing. My grandmother, though 95 years old, has a very good memory, and I, being an inexperienced interviewer, was at the mercy of her direction of topics. She provided me with quite a few names of importance, and many interesting stories. Having time for only one formal interview, I was overwhelmed by writing names down, so placing people and stories together where I might attempt to apply learning principles and personality characteristics didn't succeed very well. I will try to apply examples of learning directly to the forming of my own personality with reference to my own experience.
The interview with my grandmother gave me names of ancestors four generations previous to me, and a document I obtained from my father confirmed her accuracy. That document is a syllabus of the Neel and allied families, written in 1940 by Doris Neel Groves, a cousin of my grandfather, William Franklin Neel. The author is obviously proud of her background, as illustrated by this quote "There are no lame nor halt nor blind in these generations; no bow legs, knock knees nor hunchbacks. No crooked eyes, no inebriates, no suicides, no epileptics, no insane; a heritage of parents with high ideals, and clean lives."
"The name Neal or Neil is believed to be of Irish origin, possibly coming from other spellings where ni means "daughter" and aille means "cliff", probably referring to a place of residence of the progenitor of the family name". The author of the syllabus (Doris Neel Groves) found different authorities give three different origins for the name - Normandy, Scotland, and Ireland - but she choose to favor Normandy. But who is to say where our real origins are? (Who can say who the first "human" was?) Bearers of some form of the name were among the first colonists in America, and the syllabus mentions some predecessors who have distinguished themselves as authors, educators, historians, painters (artists, I assume), a statistician, a biologist, a university president, and a U. S. Commissioner of Labor. The author reports many people who changed or dropped parts of the original name, but didn't give any reasons. (Maybe they weren't tuned in to how important their roots are, or maybe by changing their name they thought they could avoid being associated with any deviant predecessors.)
The few distinguishing physical characteristics I have observed in my family are mostly on my father's side of the family. His nose resembles his mothers only in being large, his more round while his mothers is more long. He has fairly large ears, as his mother does, with unattached ear lobes which his mother attributes to "Jack blood" of four generations before me (see pedigree chart). My mother's father had dark eyebrows, as my mother and I do. I have not observed any other distinctive physical traits in my family that may result from dominant genes, possibly the result of a lot of outbreeding preventing the accumulation of strong phenotypes. My sister has red hair as I do, and the only other red head we have found in the family is an aunt of my father's in Tacoma, Washington.
Having some facts about names and dates of births and deaths of my ancestors doesn't tell me much about their personalities, and how they might have influenced me in the long run. To get an idea of what my predecessors were like, I had a talk with my parents and asked them what their parents were like.
I found some characteristics of my grandparents that were similar to my parents, and some I found in myself. My mother describes her mother as demanding, strict, stubborn, and not very warm, but generous to people she cared for. She was neat, orderly, and meticulous, and valued doing things in her usual formal way (possibly a sign of compulsiveness). She also didn't like to wash the dishes - which she trained her children to do. All of these traits I see in my mother. Mom's father was community minded, loved kids, had a good sense of humor, was honest, and did not have strong political opinions. He was a career Army man, spending a total of 46 years in the service. My mother explained that military people of that time didn't normally vote in elections because they felt they owed loyalty to the commander-in-chief, whoever it was. I don't recall any occasion when either of my parents voted, but I recall plenty of occasions of complaints of the democrats in office. The other above mentioned traits of my grandfather I also see in my mother.
My father's mother didn't socialize much as he remembers but that may be because of the isolated conditions they grew up in, relative to today, because to me she seemed very open to visits and liked to talk. Other than that, Dad said it was hard to picture her as he was a child. His father was warm, quiet, enjoyed reading, didn't socialize with people outside the family much, and may have been slightly achievement oriented as far as his personal comforts went. He was the first in Holbrook, Nebraska to own an Edison record player, and my dad has said that he sees striving to better his comforts as worthwhile. Idealistically, I see striving for a constant rise in standards of living as ridiculous, but I still enjoy new material objects. I find that I am at a point of changing in my life where some of my own values are changing, and I find myself acquiring or accepting some values of my parents that I used to reject. I mentioned the above characteristics of my father's parents because I see them as part of his personality also.
My own parents' orientation towards physical and emotional nearness, or warmth, is not homogeneous, but maybe compatible. (I recall my mother said that a marriage should be made of two people who are opposites.) Neither of them showed much physical affection in front of the kids, except when friends of the family were visiting. Emotionally my parents are quite different from each other. Mom is controlling, dominating, possessive, and helpless at times. She seems to want to direct you to your goals, rather than to leave you to find your own way, as if she feels she is making it more convenient for us to learn from her experiences. She seems to try to control you with her helplessness and complaining, but this may be due to her poor health. She is very caring of her family, but expresses it by being directive. She wants you to be happy and healthy, but unfortunately, by her methods. My father is a well disciplined man, maybe partially a result of his 33-year Navy career, and seems to be innately warm and concerned of others. He shows his concern by showing respect for others, in allowing them to be and do as they wish, rarely asking for a favor or help. I learned a lesson from my father when, on several occasions when I was being insensitive and aggressive toward others in my family, he sternly told me that golden rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" to which he added "BEFORE they do unto you. Be kind to others, and they will be kind to you".
Neither of my parents freely express their emotions. Maybe that just comes about as a result of age, where they try to protect their vulnerable parts by not exposing it. I remember an occasion when we got a kitten for a mouse chaser, and it didn't survive even the first afternoon home because our dog killed it. We had been playing with the kitten while our dog expressed a jealous curiosity. Mom, who treats the dog like a child, told us to leave the cat alone and let the two get used to each other. We turned our backs for a short while, and the dog bit the cat, breaking its' neck. My younger brother was upset for awhile, trying to hear if the cat's heart was still beating. Mom was coldly upset, and told us to take the cat out to the garbage, and apologized for not showing much concern, because if she did she would start crying.
I consciously feel that I try to model after my father, as I admire his personality very much. I appreciate my mother very much also, for the concern she has for me, but I am not very fond of her dominating personality. I have had to acknowledge this conflict within myself when I was once living a distance from my parents, and I had received news that Mom had cancer. I felt very guilty for awhile, until I realized why. No one who is a big part of your life has only good or only bad feelings about you, and vice versa. (This is called ambivalence – you CAN love and hate someone at the same time.) When I am in control of myself, that is when I'm not under stress, I try to perform as my father does, that is take on his actions and attitudes. I feel I am most comfortable with myself when I have a calm, concerned attitude, as my father exhibits most of the time. But when I'm under stress, I see myself behaving like my mother, short tempered, easily frustrated, and uncomfortable with myself.
For observational learning and performance to take place, and for instrumentally learned behaviors to be performed and maintained in the absence of those primary rewards and punishments of parental sanctions there must be some internal, personal control, or motivation for your actions. You must see the behavior as attractive in itself, or you must be attracted to secondary rewards (or repelled by secondary punishments). I have tried to express here some examples of repulsive and attractive stimuli that effected my personality development. I did not show the whole picture of my personality, because I don't have a very good view of myself. It's like living on top of a mountain all of your life, and trying to determine how high the mountain is without being able to stand back to measure it. My own personality, as well as my genetically caused traits, come from a great many confounding sources. Many psychological influences are especially hard to find because of painful emotional barriers.
I feel the writing of this paper has been an important learning tool for me, and has sparked interest in the continued search, of the opening of my eyes, to the past and possible future influences that make me what I am.
Update
An update as of November 2015: Regarding Doris Neel Groves' comments on " … no lame nor halt nor blind in these generations … no inebriates, no suicides … no insane …", I wish to disclose some facts. I identify myself as a recovering alcoholic/addict with 34 years of sobriety as of 2015. I believe I have found others in my family who were alcoholic. I do not disclose this to embarrass or shame anyone, or to make moral judgments. It is better known these days that alcoholism is a disease, and it is sometimes passed on genetically. I tell my own children this, explaining it is like an "allergy". They have to make their own choices about consumption of alcohol later in their lives. I am grateful that I do not have to drink anymore, and my life is better for it.
I have found entries in "Neel Genealogy by Betty Thorson, Oakland, Calif, 1979, A Continuation of the Neel Genealogy prepared by Doris Neel Groves in 1940" of a family member who died in an institution, and this makes me wonder the cause of that. I have a recollection of my own mother having a "nervous breakdown" and going away (to a hospital?) in New Jersey when I was growing up. My adopted brother has had multiple serious problems in his life, and he still struggles. Because he may still be alive, out of respect for him I will not disclose the specifics of his issues here. (See chapters called “A Mother’s Story” and “A Brother’s Story” for more on my adopted brother).
Regarding my own developmental issues as it relates to this writing: As stated above, I was 23 years old when I wrote that paper. I am now 60 years old as of this re-edit in November 2015. I am now married (since 1989), have 2 boys (ages 21 and 23), have a stable career (25 years as a social worker for the state of Idaho), and I have completed 2 college degrees since I wrote that paper. I have lived another life time! Both of my parents and my grandmother are now deceased as well as other important relatives - Aunt Sarah and Uncle Ted Bergman, Aunt Babe and Uncle Bill Strickland, among others many of whom I haven't met but are no longer available to me to answer my nosy questions. I don't remember my grandfathers - my paternal grandfather died well before I was born, and my maternal grandfather died a few months after my birth, and I know they have effected my development.
I now have an active interest in my roots that I pursue voluntarily, and with a passionate appetite (my "family hunger"!), and I do this not to please a professor for a grade (although I wouldn't have signed up for that class if I hadn't had an interest in my roots).
I now recognize traits of my family of origin that are "dysfunctional" that I now have choices in (back then, I didn't have much insight). I do believe that the difficulties my older brother had growing up in our family created some dynamics in our family that caused us to be a "dysfunctional family" - (traits that negatively affected our development - not everybody likes this term, and this is just my opinion). There is the argument of the "chicken and the egg" - which came first - my brother's problems, or our problems? I could write another whole chapter or maybe another book on these issues, but I wonder sometimes if he could have just identified and addressed his issues related to his adoption and his genetic family of origin that he might possibly be able to resolve some of his problems instead of “puking” them on others.
This ability to survive - and most importantly, TO THRIVE - in spite of hardships, is also called "resiliency". There are many traits of “functional” healthy families that are within mine as well as dysfunctional traits.
I write about this not to blame anyone else. We all do the best we can with what tools and abilities we have at the moment. In spite of any dysfunction or disease that any of us have, it is balanced with healthy traits and survival skills - the ability to get up and do what we have to do, in spite of or because of the difficulties we encounter.
When I wrote the above paper at age 23, I was probably feeling the invincibility of adolescence and young adulthood at the time. Now I feel the signs of aging and my own mortality - my joints feel rusty at times, and sometimes I forget what I walked into a room for. Writing about these issues is my attempt to preserve my immortality, to take a snapshot of my life and dip it in lacquer for safekeeping (I know there is folly in this).
