Our childhood is everything.

It's when we learn how to ride a bike, or rather fall off a bike, and get back up.

It's when we learn to read, to write, and attend school for the first time.

We make friends, learn what friendship is, and set the tone for the rest of our life.

Now as great as it can be, it can also be the total opposite.

Not everyone's childhood is filled with positive memories, there can be trauma, and there can be deep pains.

For some of us, it's more obvious than others, and it's not until we're twenty-two, thirty-five, or fifty that we find ourselves hit in the gut with the realization that we're not fully healed from our pasts. That whatever happened to us as kids, affects us as adults.

I think one of the hardest things about being a kid is communicating pain properly, and communicating what's going on in your mind and heart. I know for me I wasn't aware of what I was feeling or thinking, and I didn't realize that my actions were a reflection of the deep pain within my heart.

As a kid the adults, and friends around us are an example, we can see no wrong, and we place so much hope and trust in them. When they fail us, I'm not sure we know what to do with that feeling.

It stings for the rest of your life when you see the look of total disappointment on your dad's face, when you hear the man who is suppose to protect you, and look out for you, completely fed up with you.

Or when your mom doesn't even know what to do with you. And you try to communicate these pains and feelings, but it always seems to get turned back around on you.

"Well, what are you doing?"

"You need to try harder and get more involved."

"It's not them, it's you."

And you really start to believe it, making you feel like there is something fundamentally flawed within you, almost crazy even.

And then sibling number two comes along, and their mental health is more important, and the difficulties they experience at school or with friends is recognized, and not thrown back in their face.

It sucks to know you're the bad kid making all your other siblings look so much better.

No one wants to feel like the black sheep or the outcast.

Even those seeking attention, and acting out in school, or at home, are all really just crying out for help.

Maybe you had a wonderful home life, an average home life, or a horrible one,

nevertheless, our childhoods affect us all.

They make us who we are, good, or bad.

It's not to put full blame on others, or dwell on the issues of twenty plus years ago, but to know where to begin healing. Where some of your issues may be coming from.

And know that, we don't have to be defined by our childhoods.