The Brain & Parental Rejection, 4

While waiting in line recently, the woman next to me began to chat about recently reconnecting with her parents 40+ years after she had left Asia as a small girl with her older brother—whom she was very close to. During all those years she had wondered “why my parents rejected me.” Her parents said that she had begged to go to American with her brother, but they had refused and locked her in her bedroom. Somehow she had climbed out of her bedroom window, caught up with her brother, and he had taken her with him to America. As they talked together, the woman began to get glimpses in her mind’s eye of running down the street after her brother, crying, and calling to him to take her with him. The woman said “I’m so glad I finally got up the courage to ask them why they had rejected me. Turns out they hadn’t!” Admittedly, things don’t always turn out like this—but unless you try, all you are left with are your brain’s own perceptions . . .