Parenting is a beautiful, rewarding, and challenging undertaking. It’s easy to second guess yourself as a parent, and you sometimes wonder if you are doing all you can to give your child the love and guidance she needs. The good news is that we all have the tools we need to be positive parents. The key to unlocking them is found through awareness of the impact the parent-child relationship holds for your child. Here are three key areas to consider when cultivating a positive parenting approach. The relationship with your child. Children develop through relationship. Everything that a child learns and internalizes is based on this. A newborn infant does not understand that he is a separate entity from his mother. The developmental task of a child’s first three years of life is to gain a sense of psychological “separateness”     . . . read more

They’re everywhere: the people who suck up energy with their negativity. I bet you hear as many stories as I do about the mean and insensitive things these difficult and exhausting people say and do. Now I understand very well that miserable people are that way for a reason. People make sense in the context of their lives. I absolutely have compassion for them, but not their poor behavior. We need to stop their misery from becoming ours. Love the person (but maybe from a distance) and limit exposure to the behavior. One easy way for their misery to become ours is by being sucked in. The worst of it is when you get caught in their web of manipulation and negativity for months or even years on end. Do you hear that sound? That’s the sound of you being     . . . read more

The holidays have a way of bringing out the kid in all of us. We long to innocently enjoy all the wonder (blissfully unaware of the work involved!). We treat ourselves to hot chocolate with a candy cane stirrer because, after all, it’s the holidays. The first time we turn on the tree lights, we remember our very first tree and clap our hands with the same joy and excitement. Innocent childhood delights adding a special flavor to our adult celebrations. No harm in that, right? Right! But what if your holiday-inspired temporary reversion to childhood isn’t quite so harmless? What if you get together with your family and find yourself acting like the bossy older sister, a role you thought you’d outgrown a long time ago? Or what if a step through Granny’s door takes you instantly from competent, capable mother to     . . . read more

Holidays can be a minefield to navigate when you are grieving the loss of a loved one, especially if that loss was recent and this is your first holiday without them. There you are, feeling so very sad and vulnerable and raw, and everywhere you turn you are listening to cheerful holiday music, looking at pictures of smiling people, and watching excited children and beaming parents going about their holiday preparations. The contrast between where you are and where the rest of the world seems to be can be overwhelming and quite painful. Holidays are a time when cultural tradition exerts tremendous pressure on you to be a certain way, feel a certain way, act a certain way – ways that feel almost foreign to you in the midst of your grief. As you look around your holiday table, the     . . . read more

Jennifer is just like you and me – a highly competent, compassionate woman with a great career, a family she adores, and a very full life. On the outside, she looks great. You should see her Facebook photos! On the inside, she’s cooked. Beyond done. A bunch of jangled nerves running on sheer will alone. Jennifer’s been chronically stressed out for so long that her physical and mental health are starting to become compromised. She’s about to burn out big time. For checking all those boxes, doing all the right things, it seems all that she gets in return is exhaustion. And she knows it, but she doesn’t know what to do about it. Jennifer has tried to figure out how to manage her time better, how to cope better, how to practice more and better self-care. She’s read the books     . . . read more