I told my uncle in an e-mail the other day that I had a meeting with a therapist this week. His basic response to this was that he understands how I feel, but I should be aware that our family is not that only dysfunctional family that is out there, and there’s no such thing as a perfect family. Even families that seem like they are fine have secrets that they tend to hide from outsiders. And he sent me this link so that I could see what a functional vs. dysfunctional family would be like.

It’s true that there’s no such thing as a perfect family, but that doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be opportunities for me to find ways to better understand the dynamics of my family and why they are the way they are. I don’t want to be like the rest of the members of my family who continue to hold all this pent up anger in them about how they were raised and what they were deprived of. It’s led to generations of misery. Frankly, I went through the list in that link, and my family meets probably 3/17 of what makes a family “functional,” and if I had to include my extended family, it meets even less of them. Knowing that there are other very dysfunctional families out there shouldn’t be my justification for accepting things as they are today.