Two hours into my Zoom meeting and I am staring at myself while I talk. I am noticing that I move my mouth in a weird, exaggerated way when I speak, especially when I am passionate about what I am saying. I start trying to reign the mouth in and stop moving it so much. I am still trying to concentrate on what I am saying and focus on the people in the group, but I can’t stop being horrified by the way I look when I talk.

Before now, it has never occurred to me to think about how…

When I was a little girl, I did many things that upset the grown-ups around me. I talked too much and too loud. I laughed uproariously whenever something struck me as funny. I sang and danced and twirled and jumped. I was told many times to be quiet and be still. I was sent to my room. I was chastened and reproved.

Consequently, I learned to hate myself because I was always getting in trouble for being me. I know, now that I’m an adult, that it was not the intention of the grown-ups in my life to teach me…

We need to deny the over-popular trend of smearing fear and shame all over ourselves and instead celebrate compassion, colossal screw-ups and vulnerability. — Jen Sincero

Most mothers I know — myself included — see our parenting mistakes in stark relief against a backdrop of feelings of inadequacy. We feel like we have to make up for the ways we have failed, for the times we were less than patient and kind, for our inability to always be what our children needed us to be. At times we try to make up for that lack by overcompensating. …

When a parent first experiences the grief and shock of estrangement from their beloved child, the only thing on their mind is reconciliation. It is the first thing we think of in the morning and the last thing we think about as we fall asleep. We are desperate for our child to come back to us. It consumes us.

Most parents would do anything to reconcile with their child. The problem is, until recently there has been little support or advice from ‘experts’ in the field because it has been a topic that is hidden behind so much shame. Most…

Go ahead and google “narcissism,” “narcissist,” or “narcissistic personality disorder.” What you find will boggle your mind. If you were to believe all the articles out there, you might come to the conclusion that every other person on the planet is a narcissist and the goal is to get them all out of your life. The thinking is that when you can rid your life of these toxic humans, everything will be just fine. Then you can have the life you want.

Am I the only person who is alarmed at the tendency for us to label one another, therefore…

I broke a glass in my hand once. It was a thin, crystal glass and it sliced the inside of my thumb below the knuckle. The gash required stitches, and because the doctor could not staunch the flow of blood, he was unable to see that he was stitching a tiny shard of glass into my thumb. It was now a part of me, whether I liked it or not.

From then on, whenever I grasped something, it sent a shock of pain through my thumb and up my spine, reminding me of the original trauma. Sometimes I would run…

For years I had an on-again-off-again relationship with my journal. I would start a journal and because of the rules I created about how my journal had to look, my effort would flop. I would write for a few days, or a few weeks, then get off track, unable to meet my self-imposed perfectionistic standards. I had rules for how often, what, and how neatly I wrote in my journal.

The problem was, I was making journaling hard because I had set up expectations that were totally unrealistic and unnecessary. It didn’t help that I I was reading articles about…

When I first became estranged from my youngest daughter 10 years ago, I did what I always do when faced with a question that needs an answer: I went to the library. Guess what? There were no books about family estrangement in the library. None. There was one book about difficulties in parent-child relationships, but it didn’t have much about estrangement.

I was at a loss. I knew no one else whose child had cut them out of their life. I was confused, hurt, and above all, deeply ashamed. How could this have happened? It was the last thing I…