By Jane E. Brody, The New York Times, December 7, 2020
Show me a family that has not been fractured — temporarily or permanently — by a fury-filled rift between two or more members and I might believe in miracles. Just about everyone I know seems to have experienced such a distressing event, often with painful psychological and sometimes physical effects that carried over to relatives who had nothing to do with the precipitating dispute.
Rifts can begin with financial, religious, political, even existential conflicts. Common precipitants include contested wills, disputes over parental care, sibling rivalry and charges of favoritism.
Sometimes the incident may have been imagined. A woman who had been molested as a child falsely accused her mother’s husband of molesting her son and severed all contact between the man and her children.
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