The people who caused our primal wounds almost invariably didn’t mean to do so; they were themselves hurt and struggling to endure. We can develop a sad but realistic picture of a world in which sorrows and anxieties are blindly passed down the generations. The insight isn’t only true with regard to experience; holding it in mind will mean there is less to fear. Those who wounded us were not superior, impressive beings who knew our special weaknesses and justly targeted them. They were themselves highly frantic, damaged creatures trying their best to cope with the litany of private sorrows to
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