Family

Did you have an allowance when you were a child? Did you put an allowance in place when your children were young? Or perhaps you didn’t have children but watched nieces/nephews and friends’ children learn about money, or not? It’s kind of scary to realize, but super…

We adore our pets, but not everyone feels the same. Some people are afraid of cats and dogs. Some folks are allergic. You just never know. If you’re looking to sell your home, you don’t want to lose a potential sale if a buyer walks in to a barking dog, mess on the floor or a litter box…

Parenting is hard. Parenting while carrying your own childhood wounds? Even harder.
Many of us brought our pasts into motherhood without even realizing it. We didn’t set out to repeat old patterns or project our pain – but sometimes, that’s exactly what happened…

Estrangement from an adult child is an emotional and/or physical distance that is emotionally troublesome for all involved. The complicated nature of the process and elements of estrangement are as varied as the individual stories…

Perhaps because my late husband was a pastor, some people thought they were helpful after Tom’s death to tell me, “God needed another angel in heaven.” (Wrong! I needed that angel beside me, not gone away.) Or they said, “I know exactly how you feel…

Even if you are not super competitive, we all like to be correct/win – especially when it comes to people closest to us like our family/partners. Wanting to be right can extend to almost any aspect of our lives – some significant, but many times trivial…

For many women of a certain age, taking on the full-time responsibility of a pet can be out of the question. Despite the well-documented advantages that pets have on relieving loneliness and isolation, their care and feeding can add up to a significant expense…

We do not usually identify ourselves by what we are not. We do not say I am not blonde or not good at knitting or I do not come from a large family. Nor do other people think about these things when they think of us…

I clearly remember the day the job of grandmothering started. My daughter walked in from the kitchen, carrying a dish of lasagne. She put it down on the table. She stood up and cleared her throat. ‘We have some news for you,’ she said…

I didn’t expect to get divorced in my 60s. We met at 47, and this was our second marriage for both of us. I often described my husband as the most gentle and caring man I’ve ever known. We had an easy rhythm; conflicts were discussed, not yelled about. Our routines were not unusual…