Family can be both shelter and complication without either truth canceling the other.

Family is often described as though you have to pick one account, either the source of your strength or the source of your damage. Almost nobody’s is only one. The same people who kept you fed may also have made things you are still untangling, and holding both is not disloyalty or denial. It is just accuracy.

When you catch yourself defending or condemning your family as a whole, get more specific. Name the particular thing that helped and the particular thing that hurt. Precision makes the relationship easier to manage than a verdict does.