We all have a Family of Origin and as many views of it as there are members. It doesn't matter if you came from the nuclear family design of two opposite sex parents and their offspring, or two same sex parents, or foster parents, or raised by grandparents, or any other combination like a 5 adult group raising 7 children.  Where and with whom your developmental years were lived, they are your Family of Origin, or FOO.  I'll likely use FOO in further writing on this site to refer to your Family of Origin.

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Here is a very simple beginning point: All families did their best they could do. In my 45 professional years of counseling, and my 71 years of breathing air on the planet I have yet to me the parents who proclaimed, "I (we) intend to hurt these children in anyway possible so that they have miserable lives." Nope, as much as some parents do fail to provide safe, rational, and consistent structure and/or fail to provide safe, rational, and consistent nurturing, I've yet to meet the parents in the 3,000+ families I've worked with who set out to mess up their kids' lives. Some families are a consistent long lasting disaster that lack healthy structure and nurturing. 

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In our writing on this site we will continue to add articles and resources looking at family process hampered by different stressors such as chronic mental illness, parents with personality problems like narcissism, alcohol and drug addiction, poverty, and chronic physical illnesses.  

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There are a few basic assumptions that are at the core of The Montana Family Center philosophy towards family and individual well being:

1) All people are born with the inherent qualities of being Lovable and Worthwhile, no exceptions.

2) Self worth and self image are learned in the family from how we are treated by our primary caretakers.

3) Patterns of how we respond to ourselves and other people are learned very early in our lives and are difficult to change.

4) We