Co Parenting Quotes

Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.

Our eyes adjusted; we gazed at what was in the room. And then I felt the floor pitch under me, as if we were suddenly at sea. George cleared his throat. I put out my hand to clench his arm. Lockwood stood slightly behind us, waiting. "Your parents?" I was the first to find my voice. "Close," Anthony Lockwood said. "My sister.

Oftentimes I felt ridiculous giving my seal of approval to what was in reality such a natural thing to do, sort of like reinventing the wheel and extolling its virtues. Had parents' intuition sunk so low that some strange man had to tell modern women that it was okay to sleep with their babies?

Even after centuries of human interacting, children still continue to rebel against their parents and siblings. Young marrieds look upon their in-laws and parents as obstacles to their independence and growth. Parents view their children as selfish ingrates. Husbands desert their wives and seek greener fields elsewhere. Wives form relationships with heroes of soap operas who vicariously bring excitement and romance into their empty lives. Workers often hate their bosses and co-workers and spend miserable hours with them, day after day. On a larger scale, management cannot relate with labour. Each accuses the other of unreasonable self-interests and narrow-mindedness. Religious groups often become entrapped, each in a provincial dogma resulting in hate and vindictiveness in the name of God. Nations battle blindly, under the shadow of the world annihilation, for the realization of their personal rights. Members of these groups blame rival groups for their continual sense of frustration, impotence, lack of progress and communication. We have obviously not learned much over the years. We have not paused long enough to consider the simple truth that we humans are not born with particular attitudinal sets regarding other persons, we are taught into them. We are the future generation's teachers. We are, therefore, the perpetrators of the confusion and alienation we abhor and which keeps us impotent in finding new alternatives. It is up to us to diligently discover new solutions and learn new patterns of relating, ways more conducive to growth, peace, hope and loving coexistence. Anything that is learned can be unlearned and relearned. In this process called change lies our real hope.

The best aunts aren't substitute parents, they're co-conspirators.

Co-dependent was used interchangeably with the term enabler—someone whose life was out of control because he or she was taking responsibility for “saving” a chemically dependent person. But in the past few years the definition of co-dependency has expanded to include all people who victimize themselves in the process of rescuing and being responsible for any compulsive, addicted, abusive, or excessively dependent person.

The debt between a child and her mother could never be repaid, like running a foot race against someone fifteen miles ahead of you. What hope did you have of catching up? It didn't matter how many Mother's Day cards you drew, how many cliches and vows of devotions you put inside them. You could tell her she was your favorite parent, wink like you were co-conspirators, fill her in on every trivial detail of your life. None of it was enough. It had taken me years to figure this out: you would never love your mother as much as she loved you. She had formed memories of you since you were a poppy seed in her belly. You didn't begin making your own memories until three, four, five years old? She'd had a running start. She had known you before you even existed. How could we compete with that? We couldn't. We accepted that our mothers held their love over us, let them parade it around like a flashy trinket, because their love was superior to ours.

When I look at the clues that indicate the nature of Jesus – born in a barn, questionable parents, spotty ancestry, common name, misdirected announcement, unattractive looks, reared in a bad neighborhood, owning nothing, surrounding himself with unattractive co-workers, and dying a shameful death – I find his whole approach unable to fit into the methods that automatically come to mind when I think about “winning the world.” His whole approach could easily be described as nonthreatening or nonmanipulative. He seemed to lead with weakness in each step of life. He had nothing in the world and everything in God and the Spirit.

The emotional abuse suffered at the hands of a narcissist is on par with the psychological and mental abuse when dealing with a psychopath or sociopath.

I’M SORRY I am developing a new board game. It’s called “I’m Sorry.” It’s also a form of “Self-Help Psychological Therapy!” You take turns moving around the board like Monopoly. But if you land on a Yellow or Green “I’m Sorry Space”… you have to make a Phone call. Both green and yellow cards are labeled- the same with things like: Your Ex, Parental figure, friend, co-worker, boss, children, etc. You get the point… If you land on the yellow space, the game stops, everyone gets quiet and you have to call that person up – on speakerphone. You apologize for something you’ve done in your past. Come on you know you are not perfect and you probably screwed up, hurt or disappointed everyone in your past at one time or another. So you call and you apologize. You explain what you did to them wrong if they forgive you, you move forward 10 places and everyone cheers! No forgiveness back- you move back to the beginning. If you land on the green space- it’s similar. But you call the person up and you try to explain to them how, in someway, they hurt you in the past. If they apologize… cheers and you move forward 10 spaces. No apology… move backward ten spaces. They curse at you- game over. In the original packaging of the yellow and green cards, are mixed in a set of “I’m Sorry Cards.” If you are lucky enough to get to pick up an “I’m Sorry Card,” it’s like a Get Out of Jail Free Card, and you don’t have to make the call. The only catch is that the cards come hermetically sealed. After opening up the package, and the cards are exposed to air, all of the “I’m Sorry Cards,” magically turn into “Deal With it Cards!” And so, you really never get a free ride. In reality, every time you pick up a yellow or green card, you have to- Deal with It! Of course you can always order a new factory set of sealed of “I’m Sorry Cards.” But they only last about 30 minutes and are very expensive, so you’ll have to play fast. Cute Game? Hey, don’t steal my idea!!!

If time has taught me anything, it’s that our differences are what make this life unique. None of us are exactly like the other, and that is a good thing because there’s no right way to be. The room mom, the working mother, the woman without children, the retired grandma, the mom who co-sleeps, the mama who bottle-fed her baby, the strict mom, the hipster mom, the one who lets her kid go shoeless, or the one who enrolls her baby in music enrichment classes at birth—whoever, whatever you are, you’re adding spice and texture and nuance into this big beautiful soup of modern-day parenting. I can look at other mamas and learn from them. I can also leave the things that don’t strike me as authentic or practical for our family. You can do the same for your own. That is the beauty of growing and learning and figuring out exactly who you are.

one of the major results of being on the receiving end of Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome is the development of PTSD

Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering. To understand someone, we have to be aware of the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. And we need to remember that his is not solely responsible for those seeds. His ancestors, parents, and society are co-responsible for the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. When we understand this, we are able to feel compassion for that person. With understanding and love, we will know how to water our own beautiful seeds and those of others, and we will recognize seeds of suffering and find ways to transform them.

There are many different ways of approaching parenting as there are cultures. However, in non-industrialized cultures, the similarities are also striking. Extended nursing, co-sleeping, carrying the baby in close physical contact, responding promptly to cries or distress, never leaving a baby alone, are all virtually universal in traditional societies that have not become overly "westernized".

In particular, while natural selection favors both males and females that leave many offspring, the best strategy for doing so may be different for fathers and mothers. That generates a built-in conflict between the parents, a conclusion that all too many humans don’t need scientists to reveal to them. We make jokes about the battle of the sexes, but the battle is neither a joke nor an aberrant accident of how individual father or mothers behave on particular occasions. It is indeed perfectly true that behavior that is in a male’s genetic interests may not necessarily be in the interests of his female co-parent, and vice versa. That cruel fact is one of the fundamental causes of human misery.

We begin to understand that to co-parent is to one day look up and notice that you are on a roller coaster with another human being. You are in the same car, strapped down side by side and you can never, ever get off. There will never be another moment in your lives when your hearts don't rise and fall together, when your stomach doesn't churn in tandem, when you stop seeing huge hills emerge in the distance and simultaneously grab the sides of the car and hold on tight. No one except for the one strapped down beside you will ever understand the particular thrills and terrors of your ride.

As the writer Jeffrey Kluger puts it in The Sibling Effect, ‘From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales . . . Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we’ll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life.

Also, if Briar had a kid, it would basically be my kid, too... I don’t mean that in some like…nuclear family, heterosexual, we’re-registered-at-Hobby-Lobby kind of way. I just mean, you know, Briar is my family, and our family is whatever we decide it is.

Don't ever talk badly about the narcissist in front of your kids. Understand the narcissist will talk badly to your kids about you. Children will learn to trust no one and be messed up forever if you don't keep them grounded. Put kids first to protect them.

Takoví jsou to muži. Za svítání vyjdou s dvěma holýma rukama na trávník a dovnitř se vrátí z nově postavené verandy. Jakože cože? Já jsem dvěma holýma rukama leda tak vyhrál Grand Theft Auto IV. A to jsem použil cheat all weapons. Tvoji dědečkové si sami postavili domy v době, kdy ještě nebyl Google. Uvědomuješ si, co je to za výkon? To nejsou lidi. To jsou švýcarské armádní nože se strništěm na bradě.

The sacred gift of parenthood is inscribe in the universal words ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’.

Peace and gladness in every home is a peace for the society, nation and the world.

It may be difficult at first but divorcing a narcissist is worth it.

Lots of kids wet the bed when they are little but grow out of it. An example of a tolerable stress response would be a child who reverts back to bedwetting after his parents’ divorce. The split isn’t acrimonious, and while the dad moved out, both adults are committed to co-parenting and understand that their child needs stability and extra support. As a result of that buffering of the child’s stress, he stops wetting the bed after a few months. Like my drive-by-induced stress, the effects are temporary if a solid support network is in place.

Motherhood is the last area in which the qualities we usually value—rationality, independent thinking, consulting our own best interests, planning for a better, more prosperous future, and dare I say it, pursuing happiness and dreams—are condemned as frivolity and selfishness. We certainly don’t expect a man who accidentally impregnates a woman to drop everything and accept a life of difficulties and dimmed hopes in order to co-parent a baby. No college for you, young man—maybe you can pick up some courses later, when your child is in school.

Each time we offer a reflection, we are also quietly repairing/disconfirming attachment wounds that always contain elements of our parents or others not being able to see us because of their own injuries.

Each of our parents and others close to us offer their unique version of attachment, so while we have four categories to give us a general outline of what may occur, we will find that each person's expression of each style is as individual as a fingerprint.

In 1999, Daniel Salmon and co-workers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that the risk of contracting measles in five- to nine-year-olds whose parents had chosen not to vaccinate them was one hundred and seventy times greater than for vaccinated children.

A common mistake people make is assuming compassion requires some kind of action they’re not ready to take. In other words, if I feel compassion for this dangerous, havoc-wreaking person (or for my tedious co-workers, the guy who cut me off in traffic, my abusive parents, that politician, etc.) then I’ll have to drop everything I’m into and go hug and try to heal or help...or ...do something I don’t know how to do. Not so. Compassion begins within; the compassion you have for yourself will guide you to act or detach with regard for your own well-being.

I want to stay here,” she said quietly. He drew in a short breath, still full of adrenaline from the violence and still fuming because she was rejecting him. He looked into her eyes. “My parents want you to come home so that they can be near their first grandchild.” Her eyebrows lifted. “That’s a new angle,” she said. “Pulling out all the stops, are you?” He glared at her. “Don’t think I can’t live without you, even if you are carrying my son.” She shrugged, not letting her sorrow show. “I’ve never thought that, Tate,” she said with forced cheer. “How could a mere woman compete with covert ops?

When I had the honor of being included in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2019, I sat for a painting with four objects on a shelf behind me in the composition: a photo of my parents; a photo of Raj, Preetha, and Tara; a Yale SOM baseball cap; and a PepsiCo annual report with the words “Performance with Purpose” on the cover.

She'd always lived with family, and she hadn't realized how big a role waking up in the morning to the sounds of her parents...played in her feeling like herself. Her family was a mirror in which she recognized her reflection. When she woke up on a co-worker's couch, not sure where she was for a few moments, she didn't know who she was either.

My parents and my whole family. Tersteeg, and along with him a lot of fellows who knew me when I was with Goupil & Co., went so far in their disapproval of all my doings that these last years, instead of wasting any more time on attempts to convince them, I, who have no time to waste, have simply given them the cold shoulder in my turn - and let them say, think, do whatever they like without minding it the least little bit.

One small study of undergraduates found that 66 percent of men and 25 percent of women choose to painfully shock themselves rather than sit quietly with nothing to do for 15 minutes. Boredom doesn’t just lead us to hurt ourselves; 18 percent of bored people killed worms when given a chance (only 2 percent of non-bored people did). Bored parents and soldiers both act more sadistically. Boredom is not just boring; it is dangerous in its own way.

We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia’s father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers’ training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him… The old fisherman was a toothless, hapless, faithless cove you would not trust too near you with a filleting knife, but whether from fear or simple cunning he co-operated eagerly. The lad agreed to marry the girl and since Silvia would never abandon Ollia here, we decided that the fisherboy had to come back with us to Rome. His relations looked impressed by this result. We accepted it as the best we could achieve.

You have to conclude that your country has run amuck, that the people responsible are insane, that you can not trust your leaders, your President, your general, your parents, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, your police, your town, your state, your country, anymore because it is liable to turn upon you for no reason at all, except that for its own security it needs a scapegoat, any scapegoat including you, and there is no appeal possible.

Lane,” it said curtly. “I was afraid you were still out of the country,” Cecily said with relief. “Are you all right?” “A few new scars,” he said, with lightness in his tone. “How about a pizza? I’ll pic you up…” “I’m in South Dakota.” “What?” “It’s a long story. Leta has a comfortable sofa. Can you come out here right away?” There was a pause. “If you miss me that much, maybe we’d better get married,” he pointed out. “I’m not marrying a man who shoots people for a living,” she replied with a girn. “I only shoot bad people,” he protested. “Besides…I know what a foramen magnum is.” “Darling!” she exclaimed theatrically. “Get the license!” He chuckled. “That’ll be the day, when you take me on. What sort of mischief are you up to, Cecily?” “No mischief. Just an artifact-buying trip. But I need you.” “In that case, I’m on the way. I’ll rent a car at the airport. See you soon.” He hung up. “You’re not going to marry Colby Lane,” Leta said like a disapproving parent. “But he knows what a foramen magnum is,” she said teasingly. “A who?” “It’s the large opening at the back of the skull,” Cecily said. “Gory stuff.” “Not to an archaeologist,” Cecily said. “Did you know that we can identify at least one race by the dentition of a skull? Native Americans are mongoloid and they have shovel-shaped incisors.” This caused Leta to feel her teeth and ask more questions, which kept her from thinking too much about Colby’s mock proposal.

Clovenhoof had orchestrated great plans and co-ordinated many minions in the pursuit of a single goal before. And getting demons to work together was like trying to herd cats. However, getting six year olds to do the right thing at the right time was like trying to herd neutrons in a nuclear reactor. They simply had too much energy. Before the morning was out, he had composed several angry letters to parents in his head on the subject of sugary cereal and snacks and why they should be replaced with a diet of gruel.

It isn’t fair that she had to be so kind to such an unkind man. I hope she raged about him to her coolest friends. As a single mother—and by that I mean truly a mother alone like you, Oh Mama, one who does not share custody or co-parent—she had to be her best self more often than it’s reasonable for any human to be. And you know what’s so never-endingly beautiful to me? She was. She was imperfect. She made mistakes. But she was her best self more often than it’s reasonable for any human to be. And that is the gift of my life.

Having a narcissistic parent is an early manifestation of a phenomenon termed by some as “co-narcissism.” Alan Rappoport describes this as unconsciously adapting to and supporting the narcissistic patterns of another person. He argues that this pattern starts in childhood, with the child having to adjust and calibrate to the narcissistic parent. Narcissistic parents are not tuned into their children, and the narcissistic parent largely views the child as an object with which to satisfy his or her needs. Narcissistic parents will be overly indulgent and intrusive about some things and detached and uninterested in others. Children in these situations often believe life is unpredictable and strive hard to please “unpleasable” and distracted parents. If you grow up like this, you learn that you are valued for what you did, but only if it was aligned with your parent’s wants and needs. It can be a confusing way to grow up and also the perfect set-up for accepting narcissistic behavior as “normal” and then tolerating it from a partner or in other close relationships.

I have never hated anything as much as I hated being a teenager. I could not have been more ill-suited to the state of adolescence. I was desperate to be an adult; desperate to be taken seriously. I hated relying on anyone for anything. I'd have sooner cleaned floors than be given pocket money or walked three miles in the rain at night than be given a lift home by a parent. I was looking up the price of one-bedroom flats in Camden when I was fifteen, so I could get a head start on saving up with my babysitting money. I was using my mum's recipes and dining table to host 'dinner parties' at the same age, forcing my friends round for rosemary roast chicken tagliatelle and raspberry pavlova with a Frank Sinatra soundtrack, when all they wanted to was eat burgers and go bowling. I wanted my own friends, my own schedule, my own home, my own money and my own life. I found being a teenager one big, frustrating, mortifying, exposing, co-dependent embarrassment that couldn't end fast enough. Alcohol, I think, was my small act of independence. It was the one way I could feel like an adult.

In a private room down the hall, a tired but delighted Cecily was watching her husband with his brand-new son. Cecily had thought that the expression on Tate’s face at their wedding would never be duplicated. But when they placed the tiny little boy in his father’s gowned arms in the delivery room, and he saw his child for the first time, the look on his face was indescribable. Tears welled in his eyes. He’d taken the tiny little fist in his big, dark hand and smoothed over the perfect little fingers and then the tiny little face, seeking resemblances. “Generations of our families,” he said softly, “all there, in that face.” He’d looked down at his wife with unashamedly wet eyes. “In our son’s face.” She wiped her own tears away with a corner of the sheet and coaxed Tate’s head down so that she could do the same for him where they were, temporarily, by themselves. Now she was cleaned up, like their baby, and drowsy as she lay on clean white sheets and watched her husband get acquainted with his firstborn. “Isn’t he beautiful?” he murmured, still awed by the child. “Next time, we have to have a little girl,” he said with a tender smile, “so that she can look like you.” Her heart felt near to bursting as she stared up at that beloved face, above the equally beloved face of their firstborn. “My heart is happy when I see you,” she whispered in Lakota. He chuckled, having momentarily forgotten that he’d taught her how to say it. “Mine is equally happy when I see you,” he replied in English. She reached out and clasped his big hand with her small one. On the table beside her was a bouquet of roses, red and crisp with a delightful soft perfume. Her eyes traced them, and she remembered the first rose he’d ever given her, when she was seventeen: a beautiful red paper rose that he’d brought her from Japan. Now the roses were real, not imitation. Just as her love for him, and his for her, had become real enough to touch. He frowned slightly at her expression. “What is it?” he asked softly. “I was remembering the paper rose you brought me from Japan, just after I went to live with Leta.” She shrugged and smiled self-consciously. He smiled back. “And now you’re covered in real ones,” he discerned. She nodded, delighted to see that he understood exactly what she was talking about. But, then, they always had seemed to read each others’ thoughts-never more than now, with the baby who was a living, breathing manifestation of their love. “Yes,” she said contentedly. “The roses are real, now.” Outside the window, rain was coming down in torrents, silver droplets shattering on the bright green leaves of the bushes. In the room, no one noticed. The baby was sleeping and his parents were watching him, their eyes full of warm, soft dreams.

Why did they have kids then? Why did they have children if they didn’t want to love and nurture them? Weren’t you supposed to cherish every moment you got with your kids? The wives sounded like the only reason to have children was to fulfill some ridiculous social contract that apparently was co- signed when we signed away our single status. If all you wanted to do was to get on with your life, while the hired help took care of bringing up your child, why have one? There was a simpler option. Just don’t have them. There were enough unwanted children in the world already.

You need a battle plan,” Matt advised. “I never left the base without detailed reconnaissance and a battle plan. It’s why I came home alive.” Tate chuckled in spite of himself. “She’s a woman, not an enemy stronghold.” “That’s what you think,” Matt said, pointing a spoon in the other man’s direction before he lowered it into his cup. “Most women are enemy strongholds,” he added, with a wicked glance at his smiling wife. “You have to storm the gates properly.” “He knows all about storming gates, apparently,” Leta said with faint sarcasm. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be expecting a grandchild…” She gasped and looked at Matt. “A grandchild. Our grandchild,” she emphasized with pure joy. Matt glanced at Tate. “That puts a whole new face on things, son,” he said, the word slipping out so naturally that it didn’t even seem to surprise Tate, who smiled through his misery. “You go to Tennessee and tell Cecily she’s marrying you,” Leta instructed her son. “Sure,” Tate said heavily. “After all the trouble I’ve given her in the past weeks, I’m sure she can’t wait to rush down the aisle with me.” “Honey catches more flies than vinegar,” Matt said helpfully. “If I go down there with any honey, I’ll come home wearing bees.” Leta chuckled. “You aren’t going to give up?” Matt asked. Tate shook his head. “I can’t. I have to get to her before Gabrini does, although I’m fairly sure he has no more idea where she really is than I did until today. I just have to find a new approach to get her back home. God knows what.” He sipped more coffee and glanced from one of his parents to the other. He felt as if he belonged, for the first time in his life. It made him warm inside to consider how dear these two people suddenly were to him. His father, he thought, was quite a guy. Not that he was going to say so. The man was far too arrogant already.

Other international organizations—the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), the World Economic Forum—now encourage their member nations to guarantee their workers paid parental leaves and subsidized day care. They do so because it’s clear that these things are good for economic growth. Studies demonstrate the ways that family-friendly policies tailored to today’s realities benefit a country’s economy. Family leave policies and affordable day care increase women’s participation in the labor force, help employers retain workers, and improve the health of women and children.

These stories are real, the dreams are real, yet the dilemmas each person faces are founded on the presences that haunt from their past. We see again the twin mechanisms present in all relationships: projection and transference. Each of them, meeting any stranger, reflexively scans the data of history for clues, expectations, possibilities. This scanning mechanism is instantaneous, mostly unconscious, and then the lens of history slips over one's eyes. This refractive lens alters the reality of the other and brings to consciousness a necessarily distorted picture. Attached to that particular lens is a particular history, the dynamics, the script, the outcomes of which are part of the transferred package. Freud once humorously speculated that when a couple goes to bed there are six people jammed together because the spectral presences of the parents are unavoidable. One would have to add to this analogy the reminder that those parents also import their own relational complexes from their parents, so we quickly have fourteen underfoot, not to mention the persistence of even more ancestral influences. How could intimate relationships not be congested arenas? As shopworn as the idea seems, we cannot overemphasize the importance of primal imagoes playing a domineering role in our relational patterns. They may be unconscious, which grants them inordinate power, or we may flee them, but they are always present. Thus, for example, wherever the parent is stuck—such as Damon's mother who only equates sexuality with the perverse and the unappealing, and his father who stands de-potentiated and co-opted—so the child will feel similarly constrained or spend his or her life trying to break away (“anything but that”) and still be defined by someone else's journey. How could Damon not feel depressed, then, at his own stuckness, and how could he not approach intimacy with such debilitating ambivalence?

One of single moms’ biggest challenges is finding time to do it all. If you have a co-parent, it can be tempting to use those hours and days your kids are with their dad to catch up on housework or professional work. Don’t go down that rabbit hole. Use this time to prioritize self-care. Later, you will read from several women who so appreciate the time afforded by co-parenting to exercise, build businesses, catch up on TV and movies, nurture their social and dating lives, or just read a book. Do not squander those hours by doing laundry! Despite how full (and crazy) your days can be, there are always pockets of time you can dedicate to self-care.

Spiritual maturation includes not only developing the ability to interpret the deeper messages of sacred texts, but learning to read the spiritual language of the body. As we become more conscious and recognize the impact of our thoughts and attitudes—our internal life—upon our physical bodies and external lives, we no longer need to conceive of an external parent-God that creates for us and on whom we are fully dependent. As spiritual adults we accept responsibility for co-creating our lives and our health. Co-creation is in fact the essence of spiritual adulthood: it is the exercise of choice and the acceptance of our responsibility for those choices.

I realized that the childish impression I had always had of my father, as Just Lawgiver, was entirely wrong. We were utterly dependent on this man, who was not only deluded and ignorant, but incompetent in every way. What was more, I knew that my mother was incapable of standing up to him. It was like walking into the cockpit of an airplane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk in their seats. And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Plano. Who is in control here? I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?

I realized that the childish impression I had always had of my father, as Just Lawgiver, was entirely wrong. We were utterly dependent on this man, who was not only deluded and ignorant, but incompetent in every way. What was more, I knew that my mother was incapable of standing up to him. It was like walking into the cockpit of an airplane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk in their seats. And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Plano. Who is in control here?> I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?

To realize we love another to get love because we do not love our own self is one of our core human wounds. For each of the two parts of this prayer meditation, express out loud or silently these sentences. Let the feelings and memories come. Express the feelings intuitively, changing and adding to the sentences if it helps. You can repeat one sentence several times in a row until you feel it, or go straight into the next one. You can improvise sentences that may better fit your feelings. One may also experience spirit interference in this prayer meditation. This can manifest as voices and feelings disagreeing with it. Unless you are living as unconditional love, you can be sure these are negative spirits trying to dissuade you from traveling deeper into your own wounds to release them, thereby banishing these spirit influences forever. Do each part for one hour. This meditation prayer can be about two hours long. Center yourself and drop into a prayerful, silent heartful space. Ask to become vulnerable and open your heart. Part One: I am not loved I am not loved I am not loved I have never been loved My parents did not love me I need love I need love I need love Please love me My quest for love has never worked My quest for love will never work Nobody really loves me Nobody really loved me How do you feel? Part Two: I am love I am love I am love God loves me God loves me God loves me God desires me God desires me God desires me I am love I am love I am love (from your heart) I am not loved I have never been loved I am not loved I am not LOVED I am just not loved No one has ever loved me No one loves me I am not loved I am not loved I do not love myself I do not love myself I do not love myself I am loved I am loved I am loved I am LOVED God is not here for me God has never been here for me God is not here for me God has left me I am not loved I have never been loved No one loves me God loves me God LOVES me God wants me God wants me God LOVES me God WANTS me God desires me I don’t want God I don’t want God I don’t want God I want fear I want fear I want fear I AM LOVED I AM LOVED I AM LOVED God wants me God desires me God loves me What does this make you feel? The experience of love and need in co-dependent relationships In such a relationship, one or both partners cover each others emotions by giving false comfort, false ‘love’ and other placating behaviors that prevent the other in deeply feeling and owning their own emotions. When you want to get out of this pattern, this prayer meditation will help. It will let both partners feel the truth of the unspoken demand of love and how they respond to it. Simply sit in front of your partner and express out loud these sentences as a way to reveal the unconscious behavior that is being played out between you both.

our species’ most basic needs (food, shelter, safety) must be met before we can pursue more sophisticated emotional or social desires like prestige and creative fulfillment. Initially, marriage provided a way for people to secure resources and fulfill those basic needs. Later, the companionate marriage redefined the institution as one that met higher needs such as belonging, love, and self-esteem. Now, in the twenty-first century, we don’t just want reliable co-parents and monogamous sex; we want our partners to support our self-expression and foster our personal growth—the things at the very top of Maslow’s hierarchy. Increasingly, we see marriage as an important tool in constructing a fulfilling life.

The flat tire that threw Julio into a temporary panic and the divorce that almost killed Jim don’t act directly as physical causes producing a physical effect—as, for instance, one billiard ball hitting another and making it carom in a predictable direction. The outside event appears in consciousness purely as information, without necessarily having a positive or negative value attached to it. It is the self that interprets that raw information in the context of its own interests, and determines whether it is harmful or not. For instance, if Julio had had more money or some credit, his problem would have been perfectly innocuous. If in the past he had invested more psychic energy in making friends on the job, the flat tire would not have created panic, because he could have always asked one of his co-workers to give him a ride for a few days. And if he had had a stronger sense of self-confidence, the temporary setback would not have affected him as much because he would have trusted his ability to overcome it eventually. Similarly, if Jim had been more independent, the divorce would not have affected him as deeply. But at his age his goals must have still been bound up too closely with those of his mother and father, so that the split between them also split his sense of self. Had he had closer friends or a longer record of goals successfully achieved, his self would have had the strength to maintain its integrity. He was lucky that after the breakdown his parents realized the predicament and sought help for themselves and their son, reestablishing a stable enough relationship with Jim to allow him to go on with the task of building a sturdy self. Every piece of information we process gets evaluated for its bearing on the self. Does it threaten our goals, does it support them, or is it neutral? News of the fall of the stock market will upset the banker, but it might reinforce the sense of self of the political activist. A new piece of information will either create disorder in consciousness, by getting us all worked up to face the threat, or it will reinforce our goals, thereby freeing up psychic energy.

I’m having a baby.” Cue the pregnant pause––pun intended. On the other side of the pond, my brother’s confused expression says it all. “With who?” “I don’t know.” “Jesus, you don’t know who the father is? How many people are you dating?” “Shut up. I’m not pregnant yet. I’m searching for a man to share parental responsibility.” “What?” “Co-parenting. We legally share a child.” “Like a sperm donor?” He looks unhappy with this turn of events. As much as I love my brother, and I do, he’s a total caveman when it suits him. “I’ll volunteer my sperm,” a deep voice shouts in the background. Alex turns in the direction of the voice. “Not if I stuff your nuts down your throat first, Hayes. That’s my baby sister you’re talking about.” “By a minute,” I feel the need to clarify. “You’re still my baby sister.” 

I cannot say that your letter of today was the least bit useful or necessary to me. Only I assure you that your saying your belief in me was shaken and all that leaves me pretty indifferent - you are no exception in this as far as certain others are concerned. I let people say of me and think of me whatever they like and treat me just as they like - that is their business; I am not obligated to listen to their everlasting drivel. My parents, my teachers, Messrs. Goupil & Co., and furthermore all kinds of friends and acquaintances have said so many unpleasant things to me for my own good and with the best intentions that in the end the burden has become a little too heavy for me; and since I let people talk without paying any attention to it, I have not fallen off, my friend - this much I think I know for sure.

You called?" Sounding casual is difficult when it feels like you're heart's river-dancing in your rib cage. "Yes. I just wondered where you were. You didn't answer your cell. Is everything okay?" She sighs, but I can't tell if it's in relief or parental aggravation. "Everything's fine. My battery is dead, but Galen bought me a charger to keep over here, so it's charging." "How sweet of him," she says, knowing good and well she instructed him to do so. "Well, just wanted to check in. Should I wait up for you? I don't appreciate you missing curfew the last few nights. Technically, staying over there until four in the morning is a coed sleepover, which I don't allow, or had you forgotten? Your trip to Florida with Galen's family was a special circumstance." "I stayed the night at Chloe's all the time with JJ there." JJ is Chloe's eight-year-old brother. Not a great comeback, but it will have to do.

A self-concept is fluid; it is composed of numerous ongoing self-assessments forming an awareness of a person’s physical and mental attributes. Our perception of self comes from our interaction with all of nature, and is especially dependent upon social interactions with parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and other aquanatiences. Self-identity includes an understanding of a person’s personality attributes, knowledge of their skills and abilities, taking stock of their values and religious affiliations, and tallying their choices for occupation and hobbies. Identity is a mixture of our resilience and our energy; it is the product of our aggressiveness and meekness. We forge an identity with the arms we bear to protect our territory and by the gentleness that we exhibit towards other people. Identity is weaved from sunshine and shadows. It derives from good and evil conduct; it encompasses a sense of love, wonder, and loss.

Imagine the daughter of a narcissistic father as an example. She grows up chronically violated and abused at home, perhaps bullied by her peers as well. Her burgeoning low self-esteem, disruptions in identity and problems with emotional regulation causes her to live a life filled with terror. This is a terror that is stored in the body and literally shapes her brain. It is also what makes her brain extra vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of trauma in adulthood.                              Being verbally, emotionally and sometimes even physically beaten down, the child of a narcissistic parent learns that there is no safe place for her in the world. The symptoms of trauma emerge: disassociation to survive and escape her day-to-day existence, addictions that cause her to self-sabotage, maybe even self-harm to cope with the pain of being unloved, neglected and mistreated. Her pervasive sense of worthlessness and toxic shame, as well as subconscious programming, then cause her to become more easily attached to emotional predators in adulthood. In her repeated search for a rescuer, she instead finds those who chronically diminish her just like her earliest abusers. Of course, her resilience, adept skill set in adapting to chaotic environments and ability to “bounce back” was also birthed in early childhood. This is also seen as an “asset” to toxic partners because it means she will be more likely to stay within the abuse cycle in order to attempt to make things “work.” She then suffers not just from early childhood trauma, but from multiple re-victimizations in adulthood until, with the right support, she addresses her core wounds and begins to break the cycle step by step. Before she can break the cycle, she must first give herself the space and time to recover. A break from establishing new relationships is often essential during this time; No Contact (or Low Contact from her abusers in more complicated situations such as co-parenting) is also vital to the healing journey, to prevent compounding any existing traumas.

For this reason, we ought to explore with our children questions such as: How has this experience opened you up? What needs to happen for you to surrender to this experience? Is there something you are resisting, or something of which you are afraid? What will you carry from this experience into your next experience? When our children watch us process our experiences and deal with life as if it were full of rich meaning and opportunities for growth, this is how they will approach their own challenges. They will learn to befriend their experiences and trust that these experiences exist to take them closer to authenticity. Approaching parenting with such a philosophy, we impart to our children the assurance that life isn’t to be feared and resisted, but that it possesses infinite wisdom in all its shapes, colors, and dimensions. We teach our children to embrace situations without reacting to them, fighting with them. In this way they learn to become peaceful co-creators of their life, viewing it as a partner to grow with, not as an enemy to conquer.

READER’S REPORT From the Parent of a College Coed Dear Mother and Dad: Since I left for college I have been remiss in writing and I am sorry for my thoughtlessness in not having written before. I will bring you up to date now, but before you read on, please sit down. You are not to read any further unless you are sitting down, okay? Well, then, I am getting along pretty well now. The skull fracture and the concussion I got when I jumped out the window of my dormitory when it caught on fire shortly after my arrival here is pretty well healed now. I only spent two weeks in the hospital and now I can see almost normally and only get those sick headaches once a day. Fortunately, the fire in the dormitory, and my jump, was witnessed by an attendant at the gas station near the dorm, and he was the one who called the Fire Department and the ambulance. He also visited me in the hospital and since I had nowhere to live because of the burntout dormitory, he was kind enough to invite me to share his apartment with him. It’s really a basement room, but it’s kind of cute. He is a very fine boy and we have fallen deeply in love and are planning to get married. We haven’t got the exact date yet, but it will be before my pregnancy begins to show. Yes, Mother and Dad, I am pregnant. I know how much you are looking forward to being grandparents and I know you will welcome the baby and give it the same love and devotion and tender care you gave me when I was a child. The reason for the delay in our marriage is that my boyfriend has a minor infection which prevents us from passing our pre-marital blood tests and I carelessly caught it from him. Now that I have brought you up to date, I want to tell you that there was no dormitory fire, I did not have a concussion or skull fracture, I was not in the hospital, I am not pregnant, I am not engaged, I am not infected, and there is no boyfriend. However, I am getting a “D” in American History, and an “F” in Chemistry and I want you to see those marks in their proper perspective. Your loving daughter, Sharon Sharon may be failing chemistry, but she gets an “A” in psychology.

The Case of the Eyeless Fly The fruit fly has a mutant gene which is recessive, i.e., when paired with a normal gene, has no discernible effect (it will be remembered that genes operate in pairs, each gene in the pair being derived from one parent). But if two of these mutant genes are paired in the fertilised egg, the offspring will be an eyeless fly. If now a pure stock of eyeless flies is made to inbreed, then the whole stock will have only the 'eyeless' mutant gene, because no normal gene can enter the stock to bring light into their darkness. Nevertheless, within a few generations, flies appear in the inbred 'eyeless' stock with eyes that are perfectly normal. The traditional explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is that the other members of the gene-complex have been 'reshuffled and re-combined in such a way that they deputise for the missing normal eye-forming gene.' Now re-shuffling, as every poker player knows, is a randomising process. No biologist would be so perverse as to suggest that the new insect-eye evolved by pure chance, thus repeating within a few generations an evolutionary process which took hundreds of millions of years. Nor does the concept of natural selection provide the slightest help in this case. The re-combination of genes to deputise for the missing gene must have been co-ordinated according to some overall plan which includes the rules of genetic self-repair after certain types of damage by deleterious mutations. But such co-ordinative controls can only operate on levels higher than that of individual genes. Once more we are driven to the conclusion that the genetic code is not an architect's blueprint; that the gene-complex and its internal environment form a remarkably stable, closely knit, self-regulating micro-hierarchy; and that mutated genes in any of its holons are liable to cause corresponding reactions in others, co-ordinated by higher levels. This micro-hierarchy controls the pre-natal skills of the embryo, which enable it to reach its goal, regardless of the hazards it may encounter during development. But phylogeny is a sequence of ontogenies, and thus we are confronted with the profound question: is the mechanism of phylogeny also endowed with some kind of evolutionary instruction booklet? Is there a strategy of the evolutionary process comparable to the 'strategy of the genes'-to the 'directiveness' of ontogeny (as E.S. Russell has called it)?

The biggest fear for homeschooled children is that they will be unable to relate to their peers, will not have friends, or that they will otherwise be unable to interact with people in a normal way. Consider this: How many of your daily interactions with people are solely with people of your own birth year?  We’re not considering interactions with people who are a year or two older or a year or two younger, but specifically people who were born within a few months of your birthday. In society, it would be very odd to section people at work by their birth year and allow you to interact only with persons your same age. This artificial constraint would limit your understanding of people and society across a broader range of ages. In traditional schools, children are placed in grades artificially constrained by the child’s birth date and an arbitrary cut-off day on a school calendar. Every student is taught the same thing as everyone else of the same age primarily because it is a convenient way to manage a large number of students. Students are not grouped that way because there is any inherent special socialization that occurs when grouping children in such a manner. Sectioning off children into narrow bands of same-age peers does not make them better able to interact with society at large. In fact, sectioning off children in this way does just the opposite—it restricts their ability to practice interacting with a wide variety of people. So why do we worry about homeschooled children’s socialization?  The erroneous assumption is that the child will be homeschooled and will be at home, schooling in the house, all day every day, with no interactions with other people. Unless a family is remotely located in a desolate place away from any form of civilization, social isolation is highly unlikely. Every homeschooling family I know involves their children in daily life—going to the grocery store or the bank, running errands, volunteering in the community, or participating in sports, arts, or community classes. Within the homeschooled community, sports, arts, drama, co-op classes, etc., are usually sectioned by elementary, pre-teen, and teen groupings. This allows students to interact with a wider range of children, and the interactions usually enhance a child’s ability to interact well with a wider age-range of students. Additionally, being out in the community provides many opportunities for children to interact with people of all ages. When homeschooling groups plan field trips, there are sometimes constraints on the age range, depending upon the destination, but many times the trip is open to children of all ages. As an example, when our group went on a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank, all ages of children attended. The tour and information were of interest to all of the children in one way or another. After the tour, our group dined at a nearby food court. The parents sat together to chat and the children all sat with each other, with kids of all ages talking and having fun with each other. When interacting with society, exposure to a wider variety of people makes for better overall socialization. Many homeschooling groups also have park days, game days, or play days that allow all of the children in the homeschooled community to come together and play. Usually such social opportunities last for two, three, or four hours. Our group used to have Friday afternoon “Park Day.”  After our morning studies, we would pack a picnic lunch, drive to the park, and spend the rest of the afternoon letting the kids run and play. Older kids would organize games and play with younger kids, which let them practice great leadership skills. The younger kids truly looked up to and enjoyed being included in games with the older kids.

Justified within ourselves that we have suffered more than others, we feel guiltless when we disregard those in front of us, be they our family, our co-workers, strangers we interact with during our daily business, or faceless masses in foreign lands. There are those who transcend the bitter acts done unto them, declaring that the pain shall end with them. And then there are those who use the crimes committed against them as a free pass to commit crimes against others. Wronged as we each have been, nothing gives us the right to disregard the fragility of another. We can and must halt the hate passing throughout this world. A hateful act done unto us can be absorbed and transcended or it can be re-projected, thus allowing its ill force to continue moving throughout the population. We must work to transcend those hateful things already carried out upon each of us and in doing so prevent new acts of hate from being done. We must work to heal from the wounds already received and connect to a sense of consideration, to ensure that we do not pass along any of our pain to the generations as yet unburdened. We must declare a general amnesty; we must forgive each other and in doing so find that we have been forgiven. We must put away our bitterness and extend an open hand.

I know I said this before, but it bears repeating. You know Tate won’t like you staying with me.” “I don’t care,” she said bitterly. “I don’t tell him where to sleep. It’s none of his business what I do anymore.” He made a rough sound. “Would you like to guess what he’s going to assume if you stay the night in my apartment?” She drew in a long breath. “Okay. I don’t want to cause problems between you, not after all the years you’ve been friends. Take me to a hotel instead.” He hesitated uncharacteristically. “I can take the heat, if you can.” “I don’t know that I can. I’ve got enough turmoil in my life right now. Besides, he’ll look for me at your place. I don’t want to be found for a couple of days, until I can get used to my new situation and make some decisions about my future. I want to see Senator Holden and find another apartment. I can do all that from a hotel.” “Suit yourself.” “Make it a moderately priced one,” she added with graveyard humor. “I’m no longer a woman of means. From now on, I’m going to have to be responsible for my own bills.” “You should have poured the soup in the right lap,” he murmured. “Which was?” “Audrey Gannon’s,” he said curtly. “She had no right to tell you that Tate was your benefactor. She did it for pure spite, to drive a wedge between you and Tate. She’s nothing but trouble. One day Tate is going to be sorry that he ever met her.” “She’s lasted longer than the others.” “You haven’t spent enough time talking to her to know what she’ s like. I have,” he added darkly. “She has enemies, among them an ex-husband who’s living in a duplex because she got his house, his Mercedes, and his Swiss bank account in the divorce settlement.” “So that’s where all those pretty diamonds came from,” she said wickedly. “Her parents had money, too, but they spent most of it before they died in a plane crash. She likes unusual men, they say, and Tate’s unusual.” “She won’t go to the reservation to see Leta,” she commented. “Of course not.” He leaned toward her as he stopped at a traffic light. “It’s a Native American reservation!” She stuck her tongue out at him. “Leta’s worth two of Audrey.” “Three,” he returned. “Okay. I’ll find you a hotel. Then I’m leaving town before Tate comes looking for me!” “You might hang a crab on your front door,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “It just might ward him off.” “Ha!” She turned her eyes toward the bright lights of the city. She felt cold and alone and a little frightened. But everything would work out. She knew it would. She was a grown woman and she could take care of herself. This was her chance to prove it.

On the eve of my move to New York, my parents sat me down to talk. “Your mother and I understand that we have a certain responsibility to prepare you for life at a coed institution,” said my father. “Have you ever heard of oxytocin?” I shook my head. “It’s the thing that’s going to make you crazy,” my mother said, swirling the ice in her glass. “You’ll lose all the good sense I’ve worked so hard to build up in you since the day you were born.” She was kidding. “Oxytocin is a hormone released during copulation,” my father went on, staring at the blank wall behind me. “Orgasm,” my mother whispered. “Biologically, oxytocin serves a purpose,” my father said. “That warm fuzzy feeling.” “It’s what bonds a couple together. Without it, the human species would have gone extinct a long time ago. Women experience its effects more powerfully than men do. It’s good to be aware of that.” “For when you’re thrown out with yesterday’s trash,” my mother said. “Men are dogs. Even professors, so don’t be fooled.” “Men don’t attach as easily. They’re more rational,” my father corrected her. After a long pause, he said, “We just want you to be careful.” “He means use a rubber.” “And take these.” My father gave me a small, pink, shell-shaped compact of birth control pills. “Gross,” was all I could say. “And your father has cancer,” my mother said. I said nothing. “Prostate isn’t like breast,” my father said, turning away. “They do surgery, and you move on.” “The man always dies first,” my mother whispered.

Although a youth culture was in evidence by the 1950s, the first obvious and dramatic manifestation of a culture generated by peer-orientation was the hippie counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan called it “the new tribalism of the Electric Age.” Hair and dress and music played a significant part in shaping this culture, but what defined it more than anything was its glorification of the peer attachment that gave rise to it. Friends took precedence over family. Physical contact and connection with peers were pursued; the brotherhood of the pop tribe was declared, as in the generation-based “Woodstock nation.” The peer group was the true home. “Don't trust anyone over thirty” became the byword of youth who went far beyond a healthy critique of their elders to a militant rejection of tradition. The degeneration of that culture into alienation and drug use, on the one hand, and its co-optation for commercial purposes by the very mainstream institutions it was rebelling against were almost predictable. The wisdom of well-seasoned cultures has accumulated over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Healthy cultures also contain rituals and customs and ways of doing things that protect us from ourselves and safeguard values important to human life, even when we are not conscious of what such values are. An evolved culture needs to have some art and music that one can grow into, symbols that convey deeper meanings to existence and models that inspire greatness. Most important of all, a culture must protect its essence and its ability to reproduce itself — the attachment of children to their parents. The culture generated by peer orientation contains no wisdom, does not protect its members from themselves, creates only fleeting fads, and worships idols hollow of value or meaning. It symbolizes only the undeveloped ego of callow youth and destroys child-parent attachments. We may observe the cheapening of cultural values with each new peer-oriented generation. For all its self-delusion and smug isolation from the adult world, the Woodstock “tribe” still embraced universal values of peace, freedom, and brotherhood. Today's mass musical gatherings are about little more than style, ego, tribal exuberance, and dollars.

A third assumption: a commitment to monogamy is an admirable consequence of love, stemming from a deep-seated generosity and an intimate interest in the other’s flourishing and well-being. A call for monogamy is a sure indication that one partner has the other’s best interests at heart. To Rabih’s new way of thinking, it seems anything but kind or considerate to insist that a spouse return to his room alone to watch CNN and eat yet another club sandwich while perched on the edge of his bed, when he has perhaps only a few more decades of life left on the planet, an increasingly dishevelled physique, an at best intermittent track record with the opposite sex, and a young woman from California standing before him who sincerely wishes to remove her dress in his honour. If love is to be defined as a genuine concern for the well-being of another person, then it must surely be deemed compatible with granting permission for an often harassed and rather browbeaten husband to step off the elevator on the eighteenth floor, in order to enjoy ten minutes of rejuvenating cunnilingus with a near-stranger. Otherwise it may seem that what we are dealing with is not really love at all but rather a kind of small-minded and hypocritical possessiveness, a desire to make one’s partner happy if, but only if, that happiness involves oneself. It’s past midnight already, yet Rabih is just hitting his stride, knowing there might be objections but sidestepping them nimbly and, in the process, acquiring an ever more brittle sense of self-righteousness. A fourth assumption: monogamy is the natural state of love. A sane person can only ever want to love one other person. Monogamy is the bellwether of emotional health. Is there not, wonders Rabih, an infantile idealism in our wish to find everything in one other being – someone who will be simultaneously a best friend, a lover, a co-parent, a co-chauffeur and a business partner? What a recipe for disappointment and resentment in this notion, upon which millions of otherwise perfectly good marriages regularly founder. What could be more natural than to feel an occasional desire for another person? How can anyone be expected to grow up in hedonistic, liberated circles, experience the sweat and excitement of nightclubs and summer parks, listen to music full of longing and lust and then, immediately upon signing a piece of paper, renounce all outside sexual interest, not in the name of any particular god or higher commandment but merely from an unexplored supposition that it must be very wrong? Is there not instead something inhuman, indeed ‘wrong’, in failing to be tempted, in failing to realize just how short of time we all are and therefore with what urgent curiosity we should want to explore the unique fleshly individuality of more than one of our contemporaries? To moralize against adultery is to deny the legitimacy of a range of sensory high points – Rabih thinks of Lauren’s shoulder blades – in their own way just as worthy of reverence as more acceptable attractions such as the last moments of ‘Hey Jude’ or the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace. Isn’t the rejection of adulterous possibilities tantamount to an infidelity towards the richness of life itself? To turn the equation on its head: would it be rational to trust anyone who wasn’t, under certain circumstances, really pretty interested in being unfaithful?

I fully realize that it may have been hard for you to read about the many difficult and painful feelings that you have had as a parent. Of course, it’s important to acknowledge that all these negative feelings co-exist with many joyful, loving and connected feelings in your role as a parent, as well. Having worked with hundreds of CEN parents, I assure you that, no matter how much self-doubt, shame, or disconnection you feel with your child, there is nothing actually wrong with the intensity, quality or value of your love. It’s all there, inside you. You are not lacking anything, and you are not selfish. You do love your children enough. And you do care enough. The problem is only with accessing and sharing what you feel. Having made it through the entire section above about your feelings, I encourage you at this point to acknowledge and accept that this is your experience. It’s what you were handed, most likely unwittingly, by your parents. You didn’t ask for any of those feelings, nor did you choose them. Your experience is valid, and your feelings are real. They are a product of your Childhood Emotional Neglect. And what do we know about Childhood Emotional Neglect? It can be healed.

With the help of parents, other authority figures, and institutions (such as education, organized religion, politics, the media, and even some psychotherapy), most of us learn to stifle or deny our Child Within. When this vital part of each of us is not nurtured and allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. I further describe these two parts of each of us in Table 1. (See page 10).

It may be subtle in its manifestations, and therefore difficult to identify. The following is a case history of Karen, a 45-year old woman whose parents were co-dependent and through growing up with them she became co-dependent. “When I heard the characteristics of adult children of alcoholics described, I saw a lot of myself in them. So I looked and looked for an alcoholic in my family background and couldn’t find one. I found I had to look deeper as my parents both had a lot of characteristics of co-dependence. My father was also a workaholic. He was such a success. But he gave his time and energy to everyone except his family. He was the mayor of our town, and I felt guilty when I asked him for attention. He just wasn’t there for me as a father and to help me when I was growing up. My mother was a compulsive overeater, although I didn’t know that at the time. She wasn’t the mother I needed either. They both trained me to be a self-sacrificer and a people-pleaser.

The Dandelion Co-op carried locally grown vegetables, and almond milk, and nuts and spices in bulk. Sunshine's parents had hooked me on natural food. Cassie and Sam had a plump little garden back behind the cabin, in the only spot that got much sun. They made coconut milk ice cream, and cauliflower fried in olive oil, and pesto pizzas, and on and on.

I’m saying that I want to be in your life and Miles’s life, not just as a co-parent, but as more if you’ll have me.” “Rowan.” I felt the tears building in my eyes before I could stop them. “I love you, Tessa Monte. I bleed for you.

Sadiq al-Mahdi, former prime minister of Sudan, would agree. On March 24, 1999, he wrote to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, that “the traditional concept of JIHAD does allow slavery as a by-product.”11 And so slavery persists to this day in some areas of the Islamic world. The BBC reported in December 2008 that “strong evidence has emerged of children and adults being used as slaves in Sudan’s Darfur region”—where a jihad rages today.12 Mauritanian human rights activist Boubakar Messaoud asserted in 2004 that in that country, people are born and bred as slaves: “A Mauritanian slave, whose parents and grandparents before him were slaves, doesn’t need chains. He has been brought up as a domesticated animal.”13 Three years later, nothing had changed. Messaoud explained in March 2007, “It’s like having sheep or goats. If a woman is a slave, her descendants are slaves.”14 Likewise in Niger, which formally abolished slavery only in 2003, slavery is a long-standing practice. Journalist and anti-slavery activist Souleymane Cisse explained that even Western colonial governments did nothing to halt the practice: “The colonial rulers preferred to ignore it because they wanted to co-operate with the aristocracy who kept these slaves.”15 Islamic slavery has not been unknown even in the United States. When the Saudi national Homaidan Al-Turki was imprisoned for holding a woman as a slave in Colorado, he complained that “the state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution.”16 Where did he get the idea that slavery was a “traditional Muslim behavior”? From the Koran. Slavery: it’s in the Koran. And if it’s in the Koran, it is unquestionably right.

About 41 percent of mothers are primary breadwinners and earn the majority of their family’s income. Another 23 percent of mothers are co-breadwinners, contributing at least a quarter of the family’s earnings.30 The number of women supporting families on their own is increasing quickly; between 1973 and 2006, the proportion of families headed by a single mother grew from one in ten to one in five.31 These numbers are dramatically higher in Hispanic and African-American families. Twenty-seven percent of Latino children and 51 percent of African-American children are being raised by a single mother.32 Our country lags considerably behind others in efforts to help parents take care of their children and stay in the workforce. Of all the industrialized nations in the world, the United States is the only one without a paid maternity leave policy.33 As Ellen Bravo, director of the Family Values @ Work consortium, observed, most “women are not thinking about ‘having it all,’ they’re worried about losing it all—their jobs, their children’s health, their families’ financial stability—because of the regular conflicts that arise between being a good employee and a responsible parent.”34 For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst. Women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life? The good news is that not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so. In 2009, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober published Getting to 50/50, a comprehensive review of governmental, social science, and original research that led them to conclude that children, parents, and marriages can all flourish when both parents have full careers. The data plainly reveal that sharing financial and child-care responsibilities leads to less guilty moms, more involved dads, and thriving children.35 Professor Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University did a comprehensive review of studies on work-life balance and found that women who participate in multiple roles actually have lower levels of anxiety and higher levels of mental well-being.36 Employed women reap rewards including greater financial security, more stable marriages, better health, and, in general, increased life satisfaction.37 It may not be as dramatic or funny to make a movie about a woman who loves both her job and her family, but that would be a better reflection of reality. We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers—or even happy professionals and competent mothers. The current negative images may make us laugh, but they also make women unnecessarily fearful by presenting life’s challenges as insurmountable. Our culture remains baffled: I don’t know how she does it. Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

Page 7: (H)e (Darwin) supposed that man, before he even emerged from apedom, was already a social being, living in small scattered communities. Evolution in his eyes was carried out mainly as a struggle between communities - team against team, tribe against tribe. Inside each team or tribe, the 'ethical cosmos' [the dual code of Amity and Enmity] was at work, forging and strengthening the social bonds which made the members of such a team a co-operative whole. … Thus, in the early stages of human evolution we find competition and co-operation as constituent elements of the evolutionary process … Co-operation and unity give strength to a team or tribe; but why did neighboring tribes refuse so stubbornly to amalgamate? If united, they would have got rid of competition and struggle. Why do human tribes instinctively repel every thought of amalgamation, and prize above all things independence, the control of their destiny, their sovereignty? Here we have to look beneath the surface of things and formulate a theory to explain tribal behavior. How does a tribe fulfill an evolutionary purpose? A tribe is a 'corporate body,' which Nature has entrusted with an assortment of human seed or genes, the assortment differing in some degree from that entrusted to every other tribe. If the genes are to work out their evolutionary effects, then it is necessary that the tribe or corporation should maintain its integrity through an infinity of generations. If a tribe loses its integrity by a slackening of social bonds, or by disintegration of the parental instincts, or by lack of courage or of skill to defend itself from the aggression of neighboring tribes, or by free interbreeding with neighbors and thus scattering its genes, then that tribe as an evolutionary venture has come to an untimely end. For evolutionary purposes it has proved a failure. Page 25: Tribalism was Nature's method in bringing about the evolution of man. I have already explained what a tribe really is - a corporation of human beings entrusted with a certain capital of genes. The business of such a corporation is to nurse and develop its stock of genes - to bring them to an evolutionary fruition. To reach such an end a tribal corporation had to comply with two conditions: (1) it had to endure for a long age; (2) it had to remain intact and separate from all neighboring and competing tribes. Human nature was fashioned or evolved just to secure these two conditions - continuity through time and separation in space. Hence the duality of man's nature - the good, social, or virtuous traits serving intratribal economy; the evil, vicious, or antisocial qualities serving the intertribal economy and the policy of keeping its genes apart. Human nature is the basal part of the machinery used for the evolution of man. When you know the history of our basal mentality - one fitted for tribal life - do you wonder at the disorder and turmoil which now afflict the detribalized part of the world?

When I stand before my students, I don't just think of their needs, but also their families' needs.

We look to our parent-figures for clues about how to connect, how to navigate the world, and how to cope with stress, which is called co-regulation

Co-regulation is not only a learning experience for the mind, it’s also a learning experience for the body. This is when our parent-figures teach us how to moderate our emotional reactions and return to the social engagement mode baseline.

Brittney, our firstborn, is married with three children. My husband and I are extroverts, and Brittney is an introvert. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She was shy, and I wondered how much to push her socially. My instincts told me she would eventually grow out of her shyness, and I wasn’t going to make a problem out of something that really wasn’t one. I regularly engaged her in conversation, encouraged her to talk about her ideas, her interests, her feelings, and what was going on inside, but I tried not to push. We did the things that happened naturally for our family. She attended classes once a week at a homeschool co-op, we went to church, and we got together with friends. I modeled what good conversation looks like, but I never really made it a topic of conversation because I felt it might make her self-conscious. Brittney made friends along the way. She loved drama class, and one of the reasons she enrolled in it was because she wanted to challenge herself to grow. When she was fifteen, she auditioned for and got the lead role in the spring play. Suddenly, she blossomed and took on a leadership role that defied all evidence she was an introvert at heart. She’s never been the same. She continued to grow in confidence and is a strong, gracious soul who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks when the situation calls for it. As a thirty-year-old mom who is homeschooling her kids, she tells me that pushing an introvert is the worst thing a parent can do. She believes she would never have grown so naturally into her own skin if we had not given her permission to do so at her own pace. After high school, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and the patients there loved her. Not only can Brittney easily talk with people her own age, but with anyone she meets regardless of their age.

Realize that narcissists are looking for admirers, not partners. And, for your information, the admirer needs to show obedience. The only value you have for a person with NPD is someone who tells him how great he is to feed his ravenous ego. You, your feelings, and your desires don't count.

Not everything your partner is feeling must make sense to you. Learn to be compassionate even when you do not understand them. Compassion is part of being human. Acknowledging the other person's fears and insecurities does not hurt you.

narcissist may often lie yet accuse you of lying, no matter the proof you show to know he is wrong. He may feel as if everyone is out to get him, and they always get the short end of the stick, so he projects his subconscious beliefs on you by accusing you of plotting schemes against him every time there is a simple misunderstanding.

The Narcissist Will Make You Feel Worthless After hanging out with a narcissist for a while, you will notice that when you have any disagreement or argument, his first instinct is to dismiss you in a way that makes you feel worthless.

It's not easy to recognize how to handle a mentally unstable ex-partner. Many people will tell you to walk away, but sometimes it's not that easy. There may be legal obligations or shared children and family and community ties that make it challenging to leave them. If you've experienced abuse, there is the added complication that the abusive partner will often rely on you for emotional support and material support, even after they have mistreated you.

It plays in your mind like a mantra, the self-affirmation reminding you that going in the right direction will be worth it. It should be so easy—why stay with someone who has no empathy, care, or kindness towards you and wants to see you suffer? Yet, it is not as easy as it seems, hence why you need to repeat statements such as this.  It is one detail that many people don't tell you when taking steps to divorce a narcissist. You need mantras or affirmation-like statements to keep you on the course, remind you that this is in your best interests and that it will be worth it in the end. The psychological, mental, and emotional abuse and trauma you have suffered are real, and regardless of how many times you have been gaslighted or made to appear crazy, in the wrong, or losing the plot, you know the truth in the core of your cells. Being with a narcissist is entirely detrimental to your health.

You deal with an emotionally deficient individual who refuses to acknowledge his shortcomings or apologize for past mistakes, but you're also co-parenting now.

The process of co-parenting with a narcissistic ex can be challenging. It's hard for both parents to rebuild trust; it's easy for the children to question your motivations; therefore, the situation is costly, not only from lack of money going into a giant pot but also from all the therapy that needs to be done. Yet, despite the money, time, and energy to invest, it's still worth doing.

Their past traumas and experiences have crafted them into a person with such anxiety that the line between nervousness and abandonment has morphed and blurred into an individualistic focus. In that context, the admiration they are constantly seeking is due to Their inner mental conflicts rooted in a possible lonely and unloved childhood.

As an outsider looking in, an x-ray of the Michaels family would look something like this: Cassidy Michaels-Harrington: Oldest child, snob, interior designer, mother of two hellions I loved dearly, and married to an attorney who, if possible, was an even bigger snob. Tyson Michaels: The baby, snob, finishing the last year of his plastic surgery residency and apparently re-engaged to an orthopedic surgeon who was not a snob, but in a lot of ways, he was by association because he put up with, and often encouraged, my brother’s behavior. And then there was me, Bowen Michaels: blissfully normal accountant, stuck in the middle, wondering how in the hell my cool-ass parents had given birth to me and the co-mayors of Snobville.

You may be kind, decent and a lovely human being but the narcissist will pick the tiniest negative and amplify it for their own gain (and your destruction). Be in the know and wise.

Imagine three months from now, Bonnie introduces you to a random dude. She's together with him. He'll co-parent as well. He'll marry her." "No fucking way," I exclaimed. Tate widened his eyes. Reese burst out laughing. Luke nodded. "I rest my case.

Funny thing is when you’re young and vulnerable, you should have two people you can trust: your parents. They are the people you’re supposed to rely on, the people who are supposed to shelter you from the relentless storm we call the world. But when one of them destroys every aspect of your childhood, it’s hard to trust anyone else. It’s hard to let people in when your heart has been hardened to the outside world. Why would you? Why would you make yourself so vulnerable again?

He was determined that his bit was going to win over my mum’s bit, which is at least half of successful co-parenting.

Claudia Fine, originally the co-owner of Fine Newcombe & Winsby and now executive vice president of SeniorBridge,

On Christmas morning, my Mam and Dad were downstairs shouting to me to look out the window. They’d shout, ‘There’s Santa.’ Dad used to ring this bell and say it was one of Santa’s bells on the sleigh. I could hear Santa’s bells ringing as I jumped out of bed, really excited and I looked out the bedroom window in to the dark morning, fully expecting to see Santa and co magically flying through the air and maybe even he would spot me and give me a wave. ‘I can’t see him,’ I’d proclaim in sadness and then the bells would stop and I knew he’d have gone to someone else’s house, but I also knew that he hadn’t forgotten me. I’d run downstairs and in to the room whilst still in my pyjamas where the prezzies were. The excitement was unbelievable and my parents used to buzz as they watched my face beaming up at them in joy.

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves—not even a Lincoln. I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents—often due to their own carelessness and neglect—and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. ‘Let the government do it,’ they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government’s disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave.

Josh Miller, 22 years old. He is co-founder of Branch, a “platform for chatting online as if you were sitting around the table after dinner.” Miller works at Betaworks, a hybrid company encapsulating a co-working space, an incubator and a venture capital fund, headquartered on 13th Street in the heart of the Meatpacking District. This kid in T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, and a potential star of the 2.0 version of Sex and the City, is super-excited by his new life as a digital neo-entrepreneur. He dropped out of Princeton in the summer of 2011 a year before getting his degree—heresy for the almost 30,000 students who annually apply to the prestigious Ivy League school in the hope of being among the 9% of applicants accepted. What made him decide to take such a big step? An internship in the summer of 2011 at Meetup, the community site for those who organize meetings in the flesh for like-minded people. His leader, Scott Heiferman, took him to one of the monthly meetings of New York Tech Meetup and it was there that Miller saw the light. “It was the coolest thing that ever happened to me,” he remembers. “All those people with such incredible energy. It was nothing like the sheltered atmosphere of Princeton.” The next step was to take part in a seminar on startups where the idea for Branch came to him. He found two partners –students at NYU who could design a website. Heartened by having won a contest for Internet projects, Miller dropped out of Princeton. “My parents told me I was crazy but I think they understood because they had also made unconventional choices when they were kids,” says Miller. “My father, who is now a lawyer, played drums when he was at college, and he and my mother, who left home at 16, traveled around Europe for a year. I want to be a part of the new creative class that is pushing the boundaries farther. I want to contribute to making online discussion important again. Today there is nothing but the soliloquy of bloggers or rude anonymous comments.” The idea, something like a public group email exchange where one can contribute by invitation only, interested Twitter cofounder Biz Stone and other California investors who invited Miller and his team to move to San Francisco, financing them with a two million dollar investment. After only four months in California, Branch returned to New York, where it now employs a dozen or so people. “San Francisco was beautiful and I learned a lot from Biz and my other mentors, but there’s much more adrenaline here,” explains Miller, who is from California, born and raised in Santa Monica. “Life is more varied here and creating a technological startup is something new, unlike in San Francisco or Silicon Valley where everyone’s doing it: it grabs you like a drug. Besides New York is the media capital and we’re an online publishing organization so it’s only right to be here.”[52]

YOU ARE YOUR BABY’S BEST EXPERT Whenever we are asked advice on any topic, a favorite question of ours is “What do you think?” For example, if parents ask us if they should co-sleep with their baby, instead of simply saying yes (because that’s what felt best for ourselves and our babies), we like to first hear what the parents’ intuition is telling them to do. We may then share our personal thoughts on the matter, which may or may not be in line with how the parents feel. We would rather help parents build on their own intuition than try to shape their ideas to fit ours. And the same goes for you, our readers.

Look for a moment at someone in your life who bothers you. Describe three things about this person that you don’t like, things that you want him or her to change. Now, look deeply inside of you and ask yourself, “Where am I like that, and when do I do the same things?” Close your eyes and give yourself the time to do this. Then ask yourself if you ARE WILLING TO CHANGE. When you remove these patterns, habits, and beliefs from your thinking and behavior, either the other person will change or he or she will leave your life. If you have a boss who is critical and impossible to please, look within. Either you do that on some level or you have a belief that “bosses are always critical and impossible to please.” If you have an employee who won’t obey or doesn’t follow through, look to see where you do that and clean it up. Firing someone is too easy; it doesn’t clear your pattern. If there is a co-worker who won’t cooperate and be part of the team, look to see how you could have attracted this. Where are you noncooperative? If you have a friend who is undependable and lets you down, turn within. Where in your life are you undependable, and when do you let others down? Is that your belief? If you have a lover who is cold and seems unloving, look to see if there is a belief within you that came from watching your parents in your childhood that says, “Love is cold and undemonstrative.” If you have a spouse who is nagging and nonsupportive, again look to your childhood beliefs. Did you have a parent who was nagging and nonsupportive? Are you that way? If you have a child who has habits that irritate you, I will guarantee that they are your habits. Children learn only by imitating the adults around them. Clear it within you, and you’ll find that they change automatically. This is the only way to change others — change ourselves first. Change your patterns, and you will find that “they” are different, too. Blame is useless. Blaming only gives away our power. Keep your power. Without power, we cannot make changes. The helpless victim cannot see a way out.

every major relationship we have is a reflection of the relationship we had with one of our parents. She also claims that until we clean up that first one, we will never be free to create exactly what we want in relationships. Relationships are mirrors of ourselves. What we attract always mirrors either qualities we have or beliefs we have about relationships. This is true whether it is a boss, a co-worker, an employee, a friend, a lover, a spouse, or child. The things you don’t like about these people are either what you yourself do or would not do, or what you believe. You could not attract them or have them in your life if the way they are didn’t somehow complement your own life.