Popular culture celebrates the importance of forgiveness, particularly of children forgiving their parents.  Unfortunately, too often such forgiveness is simply a repetition of a universal, albeit self-destructive tendency in children to let their parents off the hook in the service of maintaining a connection with caretakers upon whom children are completely dependent.  Facing the pain that parents were responsible for inflicting is usually a necessary part of psychological growth and, ultimately, of self-forgiveness.

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