As a family psychologist, I have sat across from hundreds of people — young and old — who are reflecting on their past and on the family relationships that shaped them. Sometimes the childhood being examined is decades behind them, but the emotions are still raw. Sometimes the person in front of me is younger, a teenager still living that childhood, or just making their way out of it — at least chronologically.
And at the centre of nearly every story, tangled up in a complicated mix of feelings, are one — sometimes two — people.