Can a step-family actually work?

In my previous column, I took some time to talk about living through divorce as a child, 34 years after the fact.

Some of the lessons I learned through that experience contain parallels I have since seen with other individuals, especially those who have been fortunate enough to grow up in a healthy way despite the divorce.

In fact, I would say that this trauma was actually much less challenging in some ways than discovering the "art" of growing up in a step-parent family.

Having a family learn to function with one less member is one thing, asking that family to re-engineer itself with a new and non-blood related parent (and potentially siblings) is quite another.

So how did this experience become one that I can look back upon fondly, rather than with resentment?

Read more...: http://www.castanet.net/edition/news-story-125008-1056-.htm

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