Sometimes Goodbye Is a Second Chance

Abstract

Abstract In some ways, reaching emerging adulthood offers even more opportunity for persons from a difficult background than for those from a privileged background. Specifically, they become capable of leaving a troublesome family environment and living on their own, potentially transforming their lives and setting them on a different path from their parents. Consequently, emerging adulthood is arguably the period of the life course when the possibility for dramatic change is greatest. This chapter illustrates this aspect of emerging adulthood theory by examining the lives of four emerging adults whose lives defy the assumption that one’s early years permanently decide the path one will follow in the future. All of them experienced terrible events or circumstances in childhood, all of them had lives that were in disarray by adolescence, and all of them transformed themselves in emerging adulthood and turned their lives in a dramatically different direction, toward health and happiness.