I have five children… four did everything right… one always chose the wrong path… all five grew up in the same “two” families. My first wife had some serious issues, my second wife is amazing. Why four children made smart decisions and one chose bad ones will always be a mystery.

I had a women who worked for me who grew up in a broken family in Appalachia… did not own shoes till she was 12, was pregnant with a child at 16, married thereafter, divorced after that… something inside her clicked when she was 20… how a woman growing up in Appalachia drives herself from not having a high school degree to getting one, then a college degree and eventually a Master’s degree in information technology, I don’t pretend to understand… all I know is she did it…

You have really taken this discussion far from the original topic. That topic was very simply whether debt is a good thing or bad thing. And my point, is that debt is “tool”, it can be used properly or not.

I suffer chronic pain from serious arthritis. I am also a “heart patient” and so I cannot take normal painkillers. So I have been on prescribed narcotics for more than ten years. For me “narcotics” are another tool that can be used or abused. After 10 years, I still consume less than 1–2 pills a week eventhough I am prescribed up to 4 pills a day. I want the “effect” to keep working when I need it most and I don’t want to get addicted to them. So I use them as sparingly as possible and put up with the pain when I can afford to. Managing pain is a major thing in my life.

You should feel proud of how far you have come. I do not disparage that. I merely point out that in the end, we are responsible for the path we take. It took you longer for reasons you believe related to your upbringing and my daughter who almost always made bad decisions in her late 30s is beginning to make good ones. Why it took her twenty years longer again is a mystery, she did not have any of the issues you mentioned, but it took her almost as long.

But even your story points to the fact that in the end, we stand in our own way for reasons that we really don’t understand. You feel your upbringing was the reason, but not everyone with the same upbringing responds in the same way you did. Having worked in health care, it is a fact that 30% of people with chronic health care issues suffer mental illness of some sort. Less clear is which caused the other… chronic disease lead to depression or depression lead to chronic disease…

I am glad you were able to overcome your issues. I wish you the best. But unless and until we can reclaim our lives for ourselves and not think of ourselves as “victims”, we can never move ahead. That is the truth… I am not suggesting it is easy to do that… or even that every one can do that…

Getting back to the original topic. My one daughter who did everything wrong at first, also took on way to much debt. She ended up going through bankruptcy and lost her home.

There was no way to help her, because the more you did to help her, the less she did to help herself.

Slowly but surely as a single mother, I think it was the responsibility she had to her daughter that began to change her the way nothing else could. For the first time she is taking responsibility for more and more of her life. It is only now, that reaching out to help makes sense as it will be additive to her life. In the past all help from others translated into her working less.

Good luck in your future endeavors…