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Father’s Day Redux
When we finally gave our parents what they ought to have first given us, we discovered we were repairing not only our own hearts, but tears in the fabric of the universe, too.
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True Blood
Being told you’re somehow misshapen temperamentally can be a terrible injustice and heartache to a child. It’s also hurtful when we give the adults in our lives this message of unacceptability.
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The Karma of Leaving
Show me the way in which the child was left, and I will show you the way in which that child grows up and later leaves others and ultimately leaves himself.
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Leaving Home
A thread running through many dysfunctional leave-takings is that they occur between adolescents and their parents. The once-perfect child goes wrong and is ousted by parents who project their own lack of individuation through an act of tough love.
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Being There
Some people survive childhood by taking care of themselves. One day, they realize that they’re giving others what they didn’t experience, but knew they needed. They become pioneers in their families of origin.
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The Hearth from Which We Leave
How different it is to be in a nurturing family! Immediately, I can sense the aliveness, the genuineness, honesty, and love.
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Stop and Listen
We must grow up enough to become willing to stop reacting against everything. We need to settle down into a good soil we find or create, so that we can re-grow ourselves and regain what was lost.
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The First Year
I constantly felt a tender ache of longing for my missing child. The finality of death was stunning and cruel, something I hadn’t expected to experience so bitterly, because I had every hope in an afterlife.
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Switched at Birth
On a summer day in 1951, two baby girls were born in a hospital in small-town Wisconsin. The infants were accidentally switched, and went home with the wrong families.
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Jim Crow Love
This other adoptive mother wrote that, while she felt instant, overwhelming love for her biological daughter, she had to learn to love her adopted babies, which was difficult. Very, very difficult.
