If your family acted as if they didn’t want you or treated you like an outcast it would be best to disown them and move on with your life?

You will certainly feel better, in the short term. I have a friend who did that. His wife was undermining him with his children, and refused to discipline them, so the children became drug addicts, and his wife ended up leaving him for another man.

He was so violently hurt by all of the above that he cut them off completely...all of them, but I believe in his heart he still considers himself married, and still regrets what happened. He doesn't even know how to contact his children, if he wanted to do so. All he knows is that his ex-wife moved to Florida.

Now he is dying of lung cancer, and last night, he said to me, "I didn't think I would die alone like this."

I tried to tell him he has plenty of people who love him...and he said he did not mean his siblings, he meant his nuclear family...meaning his ex-wife and kids.

There is some part of him that is so attached to them he can never let go. Somehow, even though your family have done poorly toward you, leave one little window open. Distance yourself, but leave a way open if you should ever decide you want to see them again.

Don't go to your grave with terrible regrets.