Every family carries a mythology — a set of stories about who it is, what it has endured, what it values, and what it does not discuss — and this mythology is among the first identities installed in a child, often before the child has language to evaluate it. The family story is not neutral; it selects and silences, honors some members and erases others, often along the same fault lines of gender and status that organize the larger world. To examine the family narrative is among the most intimate and most necessary acts of the examined life.
Each step builds on the last.