Triggers for Parents of Estranged Adult Children: Why the Hour After Matters Most A woman I have worked with for some time told me about an ordinary Tuesday in a grocery store. She was standing in the produce section, and a few feet away was a mother about her age…
Abuse by a Family Member: Why We Tolerate It, and How We Stop I’ve spent a lot of time listening to people describe being hurt by the people they’re supposed to be safest with. A mother whose adult son speaks to her with open contempt. A woman in her fifties…
The Open Heart in a World That Ends There is a particular stillness a person arrives with when they have decided, somewhere they cannot quite name, that the safest way through their life is to want less of it. They rarely say this out loud. It shows up instead as…
The Parent You’re Angry At Is Not the Problem There is a pattern I encounter often enough in the therapy room that I have come to expect it. Someone comes in carrying years of dense, complicated frustration toward one of their parents. They can describe it in precise detail: the…





