Creating Memories With Your Child Quotes

I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own time line there's a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life more than the others. A moment that creates a before and an after. Maybe it's when you meet your love or you figure out your life's passion or you have your first child. Maybe it's something wonderful. Maybe it's something tragic. But when it happens it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life and it suddenly seems as if everyone you've been through falls under the label of pre or post.

When a personality is created out of a trauma situation, the personality can watch and learn by looking and hearing out of your eyes and ears. The personality doesn't have to be the one in charge of the body to know what is going on. If the personality is created while you are of a very young age that personality can remain at that age, even though you are growing and maturing. A personality can also be hidden within the memory that created them and they don't realize time has moved on.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

The Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller reports that many adults are unable to remember their childhoods. According to Miller, these memories are repressed at a time when it is necessary for the child’s emotional survival to forget. To experience the pain of wounds inflicted by parents on whom the child is totally dependent is, in the child’s undeveloped mind, tantamount to death. And so the child learns not to feel—and eventually, not to remember—these hurts.

I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own timeline, there’s a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life, more than the others. A moment that creates a “before” and an “after.” Maybe it’s when you meet your love or you figure out your life’s passion or you have your first child. Maybe it’s something wonderful. Maybe it’s something tragic. But when it happens, it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life, and it suddenly seems as if everything you’ve been through falls under the label of “pre” or “post.

by have a home in the first place? Good question! When I have a tea party for my grandchildren, I'm passing on to them the things my mama passed on to me-the value of manners and the joy of spending quiet time together. When Bob reads a Bible story to those little ones, he's passing along his deep faith. When we watch videos together, play games, work on projects-we're building a chain of memories for the future. These aren't lessons that can be taught in lecture form. They're taught through the way we live. What we teach our children-or any child who shares our lives-they will teach to their children. What we share with our children, they will share with generations to come. friend of mine loves the water, the out doors, and the California sunshine. She says they're a constant reminder of God's incredible creativity. Do you may have a patio or a deck or a small balcony? Bob and I have never regretted the time and expense of creating outdoor areas to spend time in. And when we sit outside, we enhance our experience with a cool salad of homegrown tomatoes and lettuce, a tall glass of lemonade, and beautiful flowers in a basket. Use this wonderful time to contemplate all God is doing in your life. ecome an answer to prayer! • Call and encourage someone today.

easy thing for a spirit to get used to. It is very confining, very limiting. So the child will cry out at suddenly being so limited. Hear this cry. Understand it. And give your children as much of a sense of “unlimitedness” as you possibly can. Next, introduce them to the world you have created with gentleness and care. Be full of care—that is to say, be careful—of what you put into their memory storage units. Children remember everything they see, everything they experience. Why do you spank your children the moment they exit the womb? Do you really imagine this is the only way to get their engines going? Why do you take your babies away from their mothers minutes after they have been separated from the only life-form they have known in all of their present existence? Will not the measuring and the weighing and the prodding and the poking wait for just a moment while the newly born experience the safety and the comfort of that which

I think that perhaps everyone has a moment that splits their life in two. When you look back on your own timeline, there’s a sharp spike somewhere along the way, some event that changed you, changed your life, more than the others. A moment that creates a “before” and an “after.” Maybe it’s when you meet your love or you figure out your life’s passion or you have your first child. Maybe it’s something wonderful. Maybe it’s something tragic. But when it happens, it tints your memories, shifts your perspective on your own life, and it suddenly seems as if everything you’ve been through falls under the label of “pre” or “post.” I used to think that my moment was when Jesse died. Everything about our love story seemed to have been leading up to that. And everything since has been in response. But now I know that Jesse never died. And I’m certain that this is my moment. Everything that happened before today feels different now, and I have no idea what happens after this. 

I sit down across from her at the table and put the vial of memory serum between us. “I came to make you drink this,” I say. She looks at the vial, and I think I see tears in her eyes, but it could just be the light. “I thought it was the only way to prevent total destruction,” I say. “I know that Marcus and Johanna and their people are going to attack, and I know that you will do whatever it takes to stop them, including using that death serum you possess to its best advantage.” I tilt my head. “Am I wrong?” “No,” she says. “The factions are evil. They cannot be restored. I would sooner see us all destroyed.” Her hand squeezes the edge of the table, the knuckles pale. “The reason the factions were evil is because there was no way out of them,” I say. “They gave us the illusion of choice without actually giving us a choice. That’s the same thing you’re doing here, by abolishing them. You’re saying, go make choices. But make sure they aren’t factions or I’ll grind you to bits!” “If you thought that, why didn’t you tell me?” she says, her voice louder and her eyes avoiding mine, avoiding me. “Tell me, instead of betraying me?” “Because I’m afraid of you!” The words burst out, and I regret them but I’m also glad they’re there, glad that before I ask her to give up her identity, I can at least be honest with her. “You…you remind me of him!” “Don’t you dare.” She clenches her hands into fists and almost spits at me, “Don’t you dare.” “I don’t care if you don’t want to hear it,” I say, coming to my feet. “He was a tyrant in our house and now you’re a tyrant in this city, and you can’t even see that it’s the same!” “So that’s why you brought this,” she says, and she wraps her hand around the vial, holding it up to look at it. “Because you think this is the only way to mend things.” “I…” I am about to say that it’s the easiest way, the best way, maybe the only way that I can trust her. If I erase her memories, I can create for myself a new mother, but. But she is more than my mother. She is a person in her own right, and she does not belong to me. I do not get to choose what she becomes just because I can’t deal with who she is. “No,” I say. “No, I came to give you a choice.” I feel suddenly terrified, my hands numb, my heart beating fast-- “I thought about going to see Marcus tonight, but I didn’t.” I swallow hard. “I came to see you instead because…because I think there’s a hope of reconciliation between us. Not now, not soon, but someday. And with him there’s no hope, there’s no reconciliation possible.” She stares at me, her eyes fierce but welling up with tears. “It’s not fair for me to give you this choice,” I say. “But I have to. You can lead the factionless, you can fight the Allegiant, but you’ll have to do it without me, forever. Or you can let this crusade go, and…and you’ll have your son back.” It’s a feeble offer and I know it, which is why I’m afraid--afraid that she will refuse to choose, that she will choose power over me, that she will call me a ridiculous child, which is what I am. I am a child. I am two feet tall and asking her how much she loves me. Evelyn’s eyes, dark as wet earth, search mine for a long time. Then she reaches across the table and pulls me fiercely into her arms, which form a wire cage around me, surprisingly strong. “Let them have the city and everything in it,” she says into my hair. I can’t move, can’t speak. She chose me. She chose me.

Or, in your case, as wide. Wait. Did you just say Gandalf?” “He is the founder of our order, and the first of the Five Warlocks. He comes from afar across the Western Ocean, from Easter Island, or perhaps from Japan.” “No, I think he comes from the mind of a story writer. An old-fashioned Roman Catholic from the days just before First Space Age. Unless I am confusing him with the guy who wrote about Talking Animal Land? With the Cowardly Lion who gets killed by a Wicked White Witch? I never read the text, I watched the comic.” “Oh, you err so! The Witches, we have preserved this lore since the time of the Fall of the Giants, whom we overthrew and destroyed. The tale is this: C. S. Lewis and Arthur C. Clarke were led by the Indian Maiden Sacagawea to the Pacific Ocean and back, stealing the land from the Red Man and selling them blankets impregnated with smallpox. It was called the Lewis and Clarke Expedition. When they reached the Pacific, they set out in the Dawn Treader to find the sea route to India, where the sacred river Alph runs through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea. They came to the Last Island, called Ramandu or Selidor, where the World Serpent guards the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and there they found Gandalf, returned alive from the underworld, and stripped of all his powers. He came again to mortal lands in North America to teach the Simon Families. The Chronicle is a symbolic retelling of their journey. It is one of our Holy Books.” “Your Holy Books were written for children by Englishmen.” “The gods wear many masks! If the Continuum chooses the lips of a White Man to be the lips through which the Continuum speaks, who are we to question? Tolkien was not Roman. He was of a race called the hobbits, Homo floresiensis, discovered on an isle in Indonesia, and he would have lived in happiness, had not the White Man killed him with DDT. So there were no Roman Catholics involved. May the Earth curse their memory forever! May they be forgotten forever!” “Hm. Earth is big. Maybe it can do both. You know about Rome? It perished in the Ecpyrosis, somewhat before your time.” “How could we not? The Pope in Rome created the Giants, whom the Witches rose up against and overthrew. Theirs was the masculine religion, aggressive, intolerant, and forbidding abortion. Ours is the feminine religion, peaceful and life-affirming and all-loving, and we offer the firstborn child to perish on our sacred fires. The First Coven was organized to destroy them like rats! When Rome was burned, we danced, and their one god was cast down and fled weeping on his pierced feet, and our many gods rose up. My ancestors hunted the Christians like stoats, and when we caught them, we burned them slowly, as they once did of us in Salem. What ill you do is returned to you tenfold!” “Hm. Are you willing to work with a Giant? I saw one in the pit, and saw the jumbo-sized coffin they pried him out from. What if he is a baptized Christian? Most of them were, since they were created by my pet pope and raised by nuns.” “All Christians must perish! Such is our code.” “Your code is miscoded.” “What of the Unforgettable Hate?” “Forget about it.

A miracle.' How many times had I heard Grandma use that word? That you even exist is a miracle; a miracle that you're here; a miracle we're alive; a miracle that we survived. As a child, I'd thought miracles were good. But Jewish tradition teaches that miracles are ambiguous. After all, if the universe really was created in the image of the Divine Spirit, there should be no need for miracles. A miracle happens when we humans rip holes in the universe's perfection, and the Divine Spirit bleeds through the holes. Thus a miracle cannot prevent or undo the damage humans inflict; it can only alleviate some of the suffering caused by that damage. The question that follows a miracle is the same as the question provoked by tragedy: Why me? In those days, the only answer I could summon was, To remember. And I would look around the bleak living room in La Roche and feel afraid, as if I had faded entirely out of the present and transmogrified into some kind of remembering hermit crab, holed up in a bunker for unbearable memories.

Culture is a vehicle for true self-expression. The flowering of individual creativity takes place in the context of culture. When a child becomes peer-oriented, the transmission lines of civilization are downed. The new models to emulate are other children or peer groups or the latest pop icons. Appearance, attitudes, dress, and demeanor all adapt accordingly. Even children's language changes — more impoverished, less articulate about their observations and experience, less expressive of meaning and nuance. Peer-oriented children are not devoid of culture, but the culture they are enrolled in is generated by their peer orientation. Although this culture is broadcast through media controlled by adults, it is the children and youth whose tastes and preferences it must satisfy. They, the young, wield the spending power that determines the profits of the culture industry — even if it is the parents’ incomes that are being disposed of in the process. Advertisers know subtly well how to exploit the power of peer imitation as they make their pitch to ever-younger groups of customers via the mass electronic media. In this way, it is our youth who dictate hairstyles and fashion, youth to whom music must appeal, youth who primarily drive the box office. Youth determine the cultural icons of our age. The adults who cater to the expectations of peer-oriented youth may control the market and profit from it, but as agents of cultural transmission they are simply pandering to the debased cultural tastes of children disconnected from healthy adult contact. Peer culture arises from children and evolves with them as they age. Peer orientation breeds aggression and an unhealthy, precocious sexuality. The result is the aggressively hostile and hypersexualized youth culture, propagated by the mass media, to which children are already exposed by early adolescence. Today's rock videos shock even adults who themselves grew up under the influence of the “sexual revolution.” As the onset of peer-orientation emerges earlier and earlier, so does the culture it creates. The butt-shaking and belly-button-baring Spice Girls pop phenomenon of the late 1990s, as of this writing a rapidly fading memory, seems in retrospect a nostalgically innocent cultural expression compared with the pornographically eroticized pop idols served up to today's preadolescents.

The real danger comes when the siblings just ignore each other. There may be less tension to deal with, but that’s also a recipe for a cold and distant relationship as adults. So if you want to develop close long-term relationships between your kids, think of it as a math equation, where the amount of enjoyment they share together should be greater than the conflict they experience. You’re never going to get the conflict side of the equation to zero. Siblings argue; they just do. But if you can increase the other side of the equation, giving them activities that produce positive emotions and memories, you’ll create strong bonds between them

HOW MBS DEVELOPS FROM THE PSYCHOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW: Childhood and adult stressors trigger feelings of fear, anger, or resentment, which are stored in emotional memory (internal child). Personality traits learned in childhood create a strong sense of duty, self-blame, self-criticism, guilt, and excessive concern for others (internal parent). In situations where people feel trapped by stressful events that trigger emotions from childhood hurts, or feel a conflict between what they want for themselves and what they feel they need to do for others, MBS symptoms are likely to develop, especially if there is no outlet to express these feelings or the feelings are actively suppressed.

You can only truly remember your past experiences with the same energy with which they were created. You have grown so much since you were a child, and your memories are not accurate. You’re trying to remember them with a different type of energy.

Pretend for a moment that you are in the horrifying situation of watching one of your children being pulled out to sea in a riptide. Would you just go on eating your lunch? No way. The first thing you would do is to scream to get help rescuing your child. You would simultaneously get all other children out of the water as you dive in and try to rescue the missing child, even knowing the danger and that it is probably too late. If you were sensible enough not to swim out or fortunate enough to get back to shore safely, grief would promote endless rumination about what you could have done to prevent the loss. This would help prevent a repetition with other children. Your sobbing would signal your need for help and warn others about the danger. When a child dies of cancer or pneumonia, speculating about what you might have done to prevent it is mostly useless. However, the tendency to blame is built in, so people do it anyway, blaming themselves, doctors, anyone who was involved. Those motives can create marvelous initiatives, Mothers Against Drunk Driving being a spectacular example. Every community has organizations dedicated to preventing the kind of sickness or accident that carried off a loved member of the community. In our ancestral environment, loved ones must often have simply not returned to camp. Searching for them would have been essential. A loss creates mental preoccupation and a search image tuned to detect relevant cues. In the weeks after a loss, bereaved individuals often think that they see or hear the lost loved one. Tiny random sounds or sights are misinterpreted as the person’s voice or form. Visual and auditory hallucinations arise. Such experiences are sometimes interpreted as wish fulfillment, but a more plausible explanation is that they are products of a search image that makes it easier to find the missing person. False alarms in such a system would be normal, useful, and experienced as ghosts. Anniversary reactions are also common and fascinating. Many people occasionally experience sadness that seems unaccountable, until they realize it is the anniversary of a loss. I doubt that anniversary reactions are adaptive in general; however, in ancestral environments many opportunities and dangers recur with seasonal regularity. So smelling overly ripe apples in an orchard may bring back vivid memories of a fall long ago.

CIRCUIT BREAKER MEDITATION First, settle into your body and your breath, as described in the Basic Mindfulness Meditation in Chapter 3. Invite yourself to move slowly through the meditation exercise, taking your time with each step. Bring your awareness to your jaw and your mouth. Allow your tongue to relax inside your mouth and let your jaw open slightly. Feel your breath passing easily through your relaxed throat. When you feel ready, gently place your hand on your heart, in the center of your chest. Place your other hand on your lower belly, below your navel. Imagine your hands getting warmer, the tiny capillaries and arteries relaxing just a bit to allow warmth to flow into them. Breathe gently and deeply, imagining the breath going into your heart and your belly. With each breath, invite yourself to also breathe into your heart and your belly any sense of goodness, safety, trust, acceptance, or ease that you’re able to bring to mind. Once that’s steady, call to mind a moment of being with someone who loves you unconditionally, someone you feel completely safe with. This may not always be a partner or a parent or a child. Those relationships can be so complex and the feelings can be mixed. It may be, for example, a good friend or a trusted teacher. It may be your therapist, your grandmother, a third-grade teacher, or a beloved pet. Pets are great. As you remember feeling safe and loved with this person or pet, see if you can feel the feelings and sensations that come up with that memory in your body. Allow yourself to really savor these feelings of warmth, safety, trust, and love in your body. When that feeling is steady, gently release the image for now and simply bathe in the feeling for 30 seconds or so. As always, when you’re done with your formal practice, gently and gradually bring yourself back into the room and into the stream of

ourselves with is an opportunity to create the cultural climate that we want. We can create a climate of compassion or one of fear, depending on what we do with our mistakes and our judgments of ourselves and others. Because I wanted to create a climate of compassion in the microcosm of my couplehood, I hunted in my memory for the tools with which to accomplish this. I remembered what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg said: “All judgments are the tragic expressions of pain and unmet needs.” Perhaps this might even apply to my oh so right, sophisticated, clinical judgments? So I started to look for the pain in my body. Oh, there it is! Outrage! And what is the universal human need underneath the outrage? The need for respect, gentleness and safety. What else is in there?—because I know that anger never comes alone. There is always hurt or fear or something under it. Now I can feel it: Devastating hurt. A need for reassurance that I am valued. -§ I may be the detonator but I am never the dynamite. I may be the trigger for another’s pain but the cause is their unmet needs. -§ As I lay there giving myself empathy, (i.e. paying attention to, and feeling into, what my reaction was all about) I start to feel a relieving shift in my body. The shift came as I allowed my awareness of my feelings to lead me into a reconnection with the life force within me. As soon as I am fully in touch with my true need, like the need to feel valued, I immediately feel the beautiful strength of it. (This is much different than staying up in my head meditating on images of the ‘lack’ or the hunger to feel valued. This only produces more fear and pain.) I began to wonder if my friend was experiencing the same thing—hurt, and the need for reassurance that she is valued. I know that if I had tried to play lifeguard earlier, attempting to save her from drowning in her distress, it would have been a double drowning. I know that the undertow of my own unconscious reactions from my unhealed past would have prevented me from really being present. I had been drowning and needed to get myself to shore first before trying to throw her a line. Or as a wise man from the Middle East once said, -§ When I am in pain I want to wait till I am clear what I want back from you before I speak. -§ “Get the dirt out of your eye first, so you can see clearly to help someone else do the same.” After giving myself empathy, I was moved by compassion to go to my friend and see if I could offer her the understanding that would restore our connection. I am glad that I waited until my desire to connect with her came from my need to understand and reconnect, instead of from fear of abandonment, or guilt about abandoning her. I am glad I remembered the first commandment of nurturing relationships: Me first and only. I waited until my giving came simply from my heart, without any fear, shame, or guilt. Once this shift happens, the energy I give from is the same joy and innocence a child has when it feeds bread to a hungry duck. “When I heard you call me a jackass a while ago, were you feeling angry and hurt because you were needing reassurance that your need to be heard mattered?” Her eyes started to fill with tears and a faint outline of a smile started to creep across her lips as she said “It’s about time, jackass.” “Yes, I’m guessing that was painful for you, and you would have liked this quality of listening earlier.” I said. “Yes” she said, the tears now flowing freely. “But I am also relieved that you waited till you were really in a position to do so instead of trying to give me empathy

Memorization Through Association Memorization through association is taking something familiar to you and correlating it to what you’re trying to remember. So for example sometimes certain lyrics in a song remind you of a person you know. The theory is that these combined memories can help you remember more. If you have 2 or 3 memories tied to a single one it should be easier to recall. Some people when they smell bacon in the morning they might be reminded of the mornings they woke up as little child with their parents cooking breakfast. So the smell of bacon may bring to mind a mental image of bacon and a past experience with bacon. Due to these similarities people try to create an association between an object and a memory thus to bring to mind what they’re trying to memorize more easily. This may work well for a list of objects, and this may work well for numbers, past experiences and the like. But this may not be an appropriate option for memorizing vast amounts of scripture while attempting to retain the meaning behind them. We need to retain the meaning of the scripture when we memorize them that when we recall it, it can be put to use accurately. Therefore it is necessary focus on the things which help us recall the scripture while being able to accurately apply it. Memorization by association may work well for others but it is not appropriate for memorizing pages and verses of scripture. It may help you memorize a few verses but it will not help you memorize a multitude of verses, which is our goal.

Parents know that it can be hard to forgive or move on when there is little or no accountability from their kids or genuine apologies. Their kids want to get it over with, say a quick sorry, and move on. The best option for you is to have a conversation with your son or daughter in a quiet moment, within their twenty-four-hour memory window, about what happened. Say what you need to say, see that it is heard, and ask for some accountability. When the conversation is over, you are finished; you reset and move forward. Compassion creates alliances that are the heart of successful parenting. Drs. Edward Hallowell and Peter Jensen, in their book Superparenting for ADD, emphasizes its importance

Be Great My Child This is your own journey I cannot tell so easily Exactly how to navigate But I am here to guide you Because I truly care And wish to see you prosper My darling, whatever life brings along Find ways to deal with it Acknowledge each season Pursue your God-given purpose Choose what is right Forget that which is not Be wiser as you grow old Live the best way you can Love yourself more and more Learn to embrace who you are Say a prayer each day Create beautiful memories Dream big and be happy Wake up, make your dreams a reality Walk towards prosperity And build a long-lasting legacy Whatsoever you do child, be great!

Think of various ways to infuse your presence into your child’s room and bed area. Maybe you put a family photo next to your child’s sleep area and a photo of your child next to your bed as well. You can introduce this, during the daytime, by saying: “You know what I’ve been thinking about? Sometimes I have a hard time falling asleep and I think of you and miss you! I’d love to have a picture of you right next to my bed. Then I can see you and remind myself that you’re here and I’m safe, and that I’ll see you in the morning! I think it would be good for both of us to have pictures of each other. Maybe we can make picture frames and then put them by our beds.” I’d suggest making the frames together—nothing fancy, you can just decorate a piece of construction paper and glue the photo on top. This way your presence is infused into the room in your picture but also in your child’s memory of creating art with you, a memory that likely feels safe and connected, which

Kale wrinkled her nose at the dank air drifting up from the stone staircase. Below, utter darkness created a formidable barrier. Toopka stood close to her knee. Sparks skittered across the doneel child’s furry hand where she clasped the flowing, soft material of Kale’s wizard robe. Kale frowned down at her ward. The little doneel spent too much time attached to her skirts to be captivated by the light show. Instead, Toopka glowered into the forbidding corridor. “What’s down there?” Kale sighed. “I’m not sure.” “Is it the dungeon?” “I don’t think we have a dungeon.” Toopka furrowed her brow in confusion. “Don’t you know? It’s your castle.” “A castle built by committee.” Kale’s face grimaced at the memory of weeks of creative chaos. She put her hand on Toopka’s soft head.

Jeff’s expression changed from confused to mad to upset as he looked from one of them to the other. When he appeared to have made up his mind, he tossed down his napkin and rose. “Well.” It was all he got out. Delilah got her only satisfaction from the fact that the goon was in a booth, and he didn’t make it all the way to standing before he hit his thighs against the table and had to scoot out, ungracefully, to the side. “Goodnight.” He raised his weak chin high and stamped out of the bar like a child. Delilah let loose in a low growl, and it cost her every effort to keep her response to mere words. If she’d had her way, her focus was strong enough to create a small wind around her and make her eyes burn red. But her witchcraft had cost her enough already where Brandon was concerned. Even though she was mad enough to burn all bridges and say to hell with it, she kept it in check. “What are you doing?” He laughed. “What, you don’t remember Tiger and Muffin?” She drew a deep breath and held her emotions on tight rein. The waitress chose that moment to saunter her bare belly up to their booth and ask if they wanted anything else. Delilah merely ground out the word ‘no.’ The waitress didn’t seem to notice, simply smiled and said ‘thank you,’ instantaneously producing a check and sliding it to the middle of the table, before she sauntered away. Great, Delilah thought, the obnoxious Jeff had downed five very over-priced snobby beers and she was stuck with the bill. She didn’t think this could get any worse. /> But Brandon had her pinned into the booth, the fake sad look gone from his face. The humor now missing as well. Which was just fine, since she didn’t have any of her own. She asked him again. “What are you doing here in my booth?” “Running your date off. Sparing him memory loss and who knows what.” He reached out and snaked her mojito away, before taking a healthy gulp. “That’s mine!” His smile resembled a shark’s. “After everything else we’ve done, sharing a glass isn’t going to kill you.” He took another drink, draining half of what remained and a lot of her sanity. “I had to save the dweeb from you.” “He didn’t need saving.” She tried again to push past him, but he didn’t budge. “So you weren’t going to take him home and screw his brains out and make him forget everything?” She was so shocked by his blunt but accurate assessment of their first night together that she didn’t think, just blurted out, “No!” That startled Brandon, and he asked, “why not?” out of genuine curiosity, before she could regroup. “I didn’t like him.” Crap, that was a whole other can of worms. She sat back, at last resigned to this going from bad to worse. It was Brandon’s turn to be startled.

This volatile connection between parent and child is unpredictable or unsafe, and although the child yearns for closeness, it can be uncomfortable or painful when they attain it. Essentially, they do not form an attachment strategy. This is what creates the Fearful-Avoidant’s ongoing struggle between being vulnerable in their relationships and being distant. Since, as a child, they do not learn to self-soothe, nor do they feel safe attaching to the caregiver, they are constantly in a state of disorganization. This is why the Fearful-Avoidant is also sometimes referred to as Anxious-Avoidant or Disorganized in attachment theory. Ultimately, the Fearful-Avoidant begins replaying memories from the past, telling them that deep connection and vulnerability is unsafe—yet they want it so much at the same time. A Fearful-Avoidant attachment style can also be created by a one-way connection with a parent. This means that one or both parents rely on their child for emotional support, but do not reciprocate.

There is a very good organization called "Make a Wish Foundation" that helps make a dying child's wishes come true. People go out of their way and work together to create an unbelievable lasting memory for a deserving person. What just dawned on me was: Why do we wait until someone is dying in order to do that? We have the opportunity to do this everyday for many, many, many people over our lifetime. It doesn't have to be a really big wish, small wishes add up fast. Imagine how much better the world would be if we all granted each other small wishes that came true every day. Find someone today and implement the "Make a Wish" concept in your life. Watch what happens.

The heavy hood concealed the stranger’s face in shadow, but Aelin glimpsed ivory skin, dark hair, and fine velvet gloves reaching into her cloak—for a weapon? “Start explaining,” Aelin said, leaning against the door frame, “or you’re rat meat.” The woman stepped back into the rain—not back, exactly, but toward the carriage, where Aelin noted the small form of a child waiting inside. Cowering. The woman said, “I came to warn you,” and pulled back her hood just enough to reveal her face. Large, slightly uptilted green eyes, sensuous lips, sharp cheekbones, and a pert nose combined to create a rare, staggering beauty that caused men to lose all common sense. Aelin stepped under the narrow awning and drawled, “As far as memory serves me, Lysandra, I warned you that if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you.