Adult Children

I’m going to start with a simple question: “Is the world changing?” Yes, it is, especially when it comes to family. Family was an intricate part of our lives up until the early 1970s. The years beyond the 1970s took us from the “nuclear family” structure into diverse paradigms…

In my 60s, I finally understood why my body had been screaming at me for 30 years. The tightness in my chest wasn’t “just anxiety.” The knot in my stomach wasn’t “overthinking.” The exhaustion that followed every interaction with my adult child wasn’t “getting older…

Boundaries aren’t walls that keep love out. They’re bridges to the kind of relationships I actually want – built on respect instead of obligation, truth instead of resentment. For decades, I believed that being a good mother, a good daughter, a good woman meant saying yes…

I am a single mom of two adult men. I’ve been a single mom their entire life, so it has been hard for me to transition to “letting go.” It has been easier with the eldest (because I assumed he didn’t need me anymore), but harder with the youngest. Sometimes I’m losing on both ends…

I am known for exposing the “elephant in the living room.” Those things everybody knows but nobody is talking about. Not every mother-daughter relationship reads like a Hallmark card, and our culture makes that a shameful secret to bear…

They don’t prepare you for this part of parenting in any baby book. Nobody tells you that decades after you’ve stopped cutting grapes into quarters and checking for fevers, you might face the hardest parenting decision of your life. I was in my 60s when my phone rang…

Some of us moms have a problem with our attachment to our children, to the point where the bond can become unhealthy. Can we love our children but not let their choices or behavior make us crazy? Is some detachment actually a good idea?

You promised yourself it wouldn’t happen again. You’d stop answering those late-night calls. You’d quit sending money you don’t have. You’d stop fixing problems that aren’t yours to fix. But then, the voice on the other end trembles – your adult child’s, or maybe your ex’s…

For years, you were the one who made everything better. You found the missing shoes, calmed the tantrums, juggled the bills, and made sure everyone had what they needed. You were the glue. The heartbeat. The fixer. But now your children are grown…

I was 60 when I realized the words I used with my son weren’t mine. They were my mother’s. And before that, my grandmother’s. Three generations saying “stop crying” when feelings got big. Three generations of kids learning emotions weren’t safe. I’d spent 40 years as a healthcare…