Putting Fun Back into DysFUNctional

Friends are God's way of apologizing for your relatives. -- Wayne Dyer

You can never remedy a bad relationship by condemning it. -- Wayne Dyer

There is this ever-appealing myth that our family supports us through good times and bad; they're the people you can always count on. Well, sometimes that's true, and sometimes it's not.

It's a fact of life that family members, and actually everyone on the planet, has their own imperfections, which may include being insanely jealous of you, criticizing you, rejecting you, making fun of you, ignoring you, putting you down, and any number of other unsupportive activities and attitudes.

It's not your job to win their approval, or make them love you. It's your job to get over it. As J. K. Rowling said in her moving commencement address to Harvard's graduating class three or four years ago, "There is an expiration date on blaming your parents." Surely she meant your other relatives, too, even the ones who married into your family.

If you're like most people, if asked you could spout out a litany of ways you were treated unfairly by family members, people who are supposed to be on your side.

Don't bother. Get over it and determine what attitudes and actions you want to take on to design your own creative and connected life.