on: being grounded (and not in the teenager kind of way)

i was talking to a friend recently and they were telling me about the current woes of a young woman they know. apparently she's a child of divorce and her mom is unstable and one or both parents are recovering alcoholics and she, according to my friend, just can't seem to get her act together. in this young woman's defense, though, she's still, well, young. i've not met this woman, but i know she's only a year out of college and is still trying to figure out what she wants to be when she grows up.

my friend is understandably concerned about this woman, b/c apparently her issues are starting to manifest themselves in ways that could be construed as self-defeating, if not self-destructive. as far as i can tell (and this is based solely on what my friend's told me, mind you), this young lady isn't really aware of the fact that her behavior is starting to raise some eyebrows.

"you know what i think a big part of (young lady)'s problem is," my friend noted, "is that there's no substance there. she doesn't have any sort of grounding or center. she doesn't really know who she is. it's not her fault, obviously, but i think that's what's missing."

we mulled that over for a bit and then my friend continued, "i mean, look at you. look at the things that have happened to you during the past few years. you're grounded enough and you're confident enough in who you are that you were able to deal with all of those things without floating away or completely coming unglued."

(god bless this friend for choosing to ignore just how damn close i've been to breaking down on multiple occasions, but whatever.)

my friend thinks that this young woman needs to seek counseling so that she can identify all of her myriad issues and, slowly but surely, work on addressing them. not a bad idea, obviously. the conversation shifted to other topics before we went our separate ways, but i've been mulling this over ever since.

i'm wondering how we got lucky enough to have the sort of "grounding" that my friend referred to. a lot of us come from dysfunctional family backgrounds and therefore we weren't necessarily raised to be super self-confident. i know i personally spent a good chunk of my post-college years trying to figure out exactly who i was and who i wanted to be. let the record show that this is a constant work in progress and i reserve the right to change my mind at any time. :-)

but seriously - how is it that some folks get dealt a less-than-ideal hand and manage to get through it relatively unscathed, while other folks just can't seem to claw their way through? any thoughts?