Lost Family Ties

The Lost Family Ties tells how an abusive family of origin can leave children with lifelong scars that can never be undone. The parents in this story were literate people born in the 1960s and 1970s, outstanding figures in their rural community in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet their peculiar temperament, with its extremes of love and hate, ruined the lives of all three children: me, Yuli, and Yujuan, one son and two daughters. Yuli, their clever, mischievous son, became a victim of his parents' abusive nature at a very young age. The eldest daughter, Huijuan, struggled to earn a place at university amid a home filled with constant bickering, then shouldered the family's heavy burdens. Her parents were arrogant and extravagant, cold and ungrateful, constantly comparing themselves to others until they drove their hardworking eldest daughter to madness. Yujuan, born in the 1980s, was sheltered by her big sister Huijuan and spared much of their parents' toxicity. Her lonely, peaceful life left her with a princess complex, and society made her stumble at every turn. The children's extraordinary lives reflect the failures of their family's way of functioning. Their experiences may seem unreasonable, but life made them all too believable. Compressed into these lines, their pain is raw and heartbreaking!