Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger?

I've been re-reading "The Glass Castle." It's a memoir of a girl who grew up not only in abject poverty, but with highly eccentric and neglectful parents. This book hits too close to home sometimes in terms of the extreme levels of infantile and narcissistic behavior by the parents, who often blame the kids for keeping them from living their dreams, all the while not even providing the basics of adequate shelter and clothing because the parents rarely if ever work and refuse all charity to boot.

In all difficult situations there are some aspects that add to one's strength as a human being (that is, if you don't succumb to the extreme despair that would have been totally understandable in the writer's situation).

At one point in the book the children (largely left to themselves to scavenge for food from garbage pails and to conveniently show up at friend's homes around dinner in order to get at least one meal per day) find what looks like a real diamond ring under the cinder block foundation of their house. Their mother takes the ring to an appraiser and finds that the ring is, indeed, a two carat ring worth what to them would be a small fortune. The kids know full well that because of the ne'er-do-well antics of their alcoholic father, and the refusal of their mother to get a job (even though she has a teaching degree and there is a teaching shortage in their county) that their parents are far behind in rent payments, that they're tired of eating popcorn for dinner at best, and that their is no heat or electricity in their run-down shack.

The children are ecstatic when the mother returns with the news, thinking that now the bills will be paid and they might even get a pair of sneakers out of the deal. But the mother announces "I'm not selling the ring. It will give me self-esteem to wear it, and self-esteem is more important than food."

For the sake of discussion on a public blog, I can't get into details, but I know a story along those lines...and it's just as true.

Will knowing this pain make me stronger, or just angrier? I hope it's the former.