Diva, you wrote:

"Isn't silly that the little things that upset us in childhood like not getting a valentine can still have the power to hurt."

Not silly, at all, to my mind. My mother always said that we keep all the ages we've ever been inside us like an onion: the 1 year old inside the 2 year old inside the three year old, etc., on up to our current age.

She also believed that our views of the world and our place in it is pretty much set by the age of ten, so that most of the time (despite an adult veneer of fact and figures and details of history and economics), we look at the world through 10 year old eyes -- until we're scared or upset, and then we revert to 2, and start wishing for Mommy's skirt to hide behind.