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 Permission to Want: Why You Hide What You Really Desire Preparing a client for a retreat last spring, I sat across from a woman who had spent twenty years on her path. Meditation every morning. Years of training in energy work. A depth of presence you could feel through…
The Quiet Cost of Being Loved Conditionally A few years ago I had a client tell me, mid-session, that she didn’t think she’d ever actually wanted the career she’d built. She said it the way people say things they’ve never said out loud before, carefully, like she was checking it…
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…






