Crucial Mother Quotes

I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from her entirely. No matter how strong or weak I was, she was a part of me, as crucial as my own heart. I would never be strong enough, in all my life, to do without her.

A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!

I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat. And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. I woke up that morning, hot and bored, worried about the hours ahead. How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. I remember feeling that word, heavy and slightly sticky across my pubic bone. My mother's steak knife. Cutting like a child along red imaginary lines. Cleaning myself. Digging in deeper. Cleaning myself. Pouring bleach over the knife and sneaking through the kitchen to return it. Wicked. Relief. The rest of the day, I spent ministering to my wound. Dig into the curves of W with an alcohol-soaked Q-tip. Pet my cheek until the sting went away. Lotion. Bandage. Repeat.

You were born to lead as mothers and fathers because nowhere is righteous leadership more crucial than in the family. You were born to lead as priesthood and auxiliary leaders, as heads of communities, companies, and even nations. You were born to lead as men and women willing 'to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places' because that's what a true leader does.

We all intuitively know that a mother's love is crucial to the creation of a well-adjusted human and that we are all born with an instinctive expectation of receiving unconditionally selfless love from our mother.

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother; here is the war of Mary and Musa, and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show, it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ...

I listen to the clock striking out each determined tick. If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathering them like drops of water in a desert. I'd always counted on having an oasis.

If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathered them like drops of water in a desert. I’d always counted on having an oasis.

Woman's fear of the female Self, of the experience of the numinous archetypal Feminine, becomes comprehensible when we get a glimpse - or even only a hint – of the profound otherness of female selfhood as contrasted to male selfhood. Precisely that element which, in his fear of the Feminine, the male experiences as the hole, abyss, void, and nothingness turns into something positive for the woman without, however, losing these same characteristics. Here the archetypal Feminine is experienced not as illusion and as maya but rather as unfathomable reality and as life in which above and below, spiritual and physical, are not pitted against each other; reality as eternity is creative and, at the same time, is grounded in primeval nothingness. Hence as daughter the woman experiences herself as belonging to the female spiritual figure Sophia, the highest wisdom, while at the same time she is actualizing her connection with the musty, sultry, bloody depths of swamp-mother Earth. However, in this sort of Self-discovery woman necessarily comes to see herself as different from what presents itself to men -as, for example, spirit and father, but often also as the patriarchal godhead and his ethics. The basic phenomenon - that the human being is born of woman and reared by her during the crucial developmental phases - is expressed in woman as a sense of connectedness with all living things, a sense not yet sufficiently realized, and one that men, and especially the patriarchal male, absolutely lack to the extent women have it. To experience herself as so fundamentally different from the dominant patriarchal values understandably fills the woman with fear until she arrives at that point in her own development where, through experience and love that binds the opposites, she can clearly see the totality of humanity as a unity of masculine and feminine aspects of the Self.

If I died –” – Nick “Your father would have another child. That one won’t have your humanity. Your mother is what makes you special, Nick. Adarian’s next woman wouldn’t be her. His child wouldn’t be you. All of us are a culmination of vital parts of our parents and their pasts. A vital part of the circumstances we were raised with. Everything that happens to us, good and bad, leaves a lasting impression on our souls. You take one part of that out, and you can completely rewrite something crucial about us. By and large, we’re not shaped by the big things. It’s the little, day-to-day moments that make us who we are. Who we’re going to be.” – Nekoda

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it[...] Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun.

The right wing of the Republican party-- which controlled the White House from 1980 to 1992, crucial years in the evolution of motherhood--hated the women's movement and believed all women, with the possible exception of Phyllis Schlafly, should remain in the kitchen on their knees polishing their husband's shoes and golf clubs while teaching their kids that Darwin was a very bad man. Unless the mothers were poor and black--those moms had to get back to work ASAP, because by staying home they were wrecking the country.

Americans often view maternity leave as a time for a mother to recover from giving birth, and anything longer as an entitlement that unfairly gives women benefits that men and their childless colleagues don’t get. Nordic societies see this question differently. For starters, in the Nordic view long leaves for both parents are seen as crucial to allow the child to form strong bonds with both the mother and the father.

Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts ~~ Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be.

You saved me, you should remember me. The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember sounds like that from my childhood, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, something like that. Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. Islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes— as far as I remember, changed in no detail, the moment vivid, intact, having never been exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age hungry for life, utterly confident— By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green pieced into the dark existing ground. Surely spring has been returned to me, this time not as a lover but a messenger of death, yet it is still spring, it is still meant tenderly.

We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother's birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms--a hundred trillion or more. They are bacteria, mostly, but also viruses and fungi (including a variety of yeasts), and they come at us from all directions: other people, food, furniture, clothing, cars, buildings, trees, pets, even the air we breathe. They congregate in our digestive systems and our mouths, fill the space between our teeth, cover our skin, and line our throats. We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; those cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds--the same as our brain. Together, they are referred to as our microbiome--and they play such a crucial role in our lives that scientists like [Martin J.] Blaser have begun to reconsider what it means to be human.

Not to be overlooked are the four women who played crucial roles in FDR’s life: his mother, Sara; Lucy Mercer, the woman he loved; Missy LeHand, the woman who loved him;

Ronan was defending me.” Adam’s mouth was dry as the dirt around them. The officer’s expression focused on him as he went on. “From my father. All this … is from him. My face and my …” His mother was staring at him. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her and say it. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like he was falling, like the horizon pitched, like his head tilted. Adam had the sick feeling that his father had managed to knock something crucial askew. And then he said what he couldn’t say before. He asked, “Can I … can I press charges?

The moment I was old enough to play board games I fell in love with Snakes and Ladders. O perfect balance of rewards and penalties O seemingly random choices made by tumbling dice Clambering up ladders slithering down snakes I spent some of the happiest days of my life. When in my time of trial my father challenged me to master the game of shatranji I infuriated him by preferring to invite him instead to chance his fortune among the ladders and nibbling snakes. All games have morals and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures as no other activity can hope to do the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb a snake is waiting just around the corner and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that no mere carrot-and-stick affair because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things the duality of up against down good against evil the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuousities of the serpent in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see metaphorically all conceivable opposition Alpha against Omega father against mother here is the war of Mary and Musa and the polarities of knees and nose... but I found very early in my life that the game lacked one crucial dimension that of ambiguity - because as events are about to show it is also possible to slither down a ladder and lcimb to truimph on the venom of a snake... Keeping things simple for the moment however I recrod that no sooner had my mother discovered the ladder to victory represented by her racecourse luck than she was reminded that the gutters of the country were still teeming with snakes.

I realized it was conceivable that Ann and I both, in our own way, were experiencing a crisis, which according to its definition is: (1) a crucial stage or turning point, and (2) an unstable or precarious situation. At the very least,

When one is trying to speak a foreign language without years of schooling in its grammatical nuances, there is one survival strategy that one always falls back on: strip down to the bare essentials, do away with everything but the most critical content, ignore anything that’s not crucial for getting the basic meaning across. The aborigines who try to speak English do exactly that, not because their own language has no grammar but because the sophistication of their own mother tongue is of little use when struggling with a foreign language that they have not learned properly.

It’s a delicate thing to initiate change in a traditional culture. It has to be done with the utmost care and respect. Transparency is crucial. Grievances must be heard. Failures must be acknowledged. Local people have to lead. Shared goals have to be emphasized. Messages have to appeal to people’s experience. The practice has to work clearly and quickly, and it’s important to emphasize the science. If love were enough to save a life, no mother would ever bury her baby—we need the science as well. But the way you deliver the science is just as important as the science itself.

Crucially, in this telling, Agamemnon did nothing more than slaughter a simple animal. It's poetic and pretty, and so very clean. But I saw her body convulse in her father's arms as he drew that blade across her throat. I held her, warm and bleeding and dead on the beach, while the sun climbed higher in the sky and the winds whipped up around us. I remember how the crimson-streaked saffron fabric fluttered around her ankles, and how I stared for so long at her face, not believing that he eyes would not open again and that she would not look at me and call me mother and kiss me.

Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while. His father, an ineffectual, inarticulate man with a taste for Byron and a habit of drowsing over the Encyclopedia Britannica, grew wealthy at thirty through the death of two elder brothers, successful Chicago brokers, and in the first flush of feeling that the world was his, went to Bar Harbor and met Beatrice O'Hara. In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassed by the idea that he didn't and couldn't understand her.

Every culture has death rituals with the power to shock the uninitiated and challenge our personal web of significance—from the Wari’ roasting the flesh of their fellow tribesmen to the Tibetan monk torn apart by the beaks of vultures to the long, silver trocar stabbing Cliff’s intestines. But there is a crucial difference between what the Wari’ did and the Tibetans do with their deceased compared to what Bruce did to Cliff. The difference is belief. The Wari’ had belief in the importance of total bodily destruction. Tibetans have the belief that a body can sustain other beings after the soul has left it. North Americans practice embalming, but we do not believe in embalming. It is not a ritual that brings us comfort; it is an additional $900 charge on our funeral bills. If embalming were something a tradesman like Bruce would never perform on his own mother, I wondered why we were performing it on anyone at all.

Violence against women is often against our voices and our stories. It is a refusal of our voices and what a voice means—the right to self-determination, to participation, to consent or dissent, to live and participate, to interpret and narrate. A husband hits his wife to silence her. A date rapist or acquaintance rapist refuses to let the ‘no’ of his victim mean what it should, that she alone has jurisdiction over her body. Rape culture asserts that women’s testimony is worthless, untrustworthy. Anti-abortion activists also seek to silence the self-determination of women. Murderers silence forever.. . . Having a voice is crucial. It’s not all there is to human rights, but it’s central to them and, so, you can consider the history of women’s rights and lack of rights as a history of silence and breaking silence.

But in her time of greatest need, her activist sisters came through for her. They offered her moral support, assured her that she had done nothing wrong, and confirmed the crucial importance of her work. They also connect her with a good pyscho-therapist. One of them even traveled to her city to speak to mother to tell her that her daughter wasn't a criminal and explained that she had in fact made a huge contribution to women's rights and China. "The Sisterhood offered me a safe place where I could be myself and feel secure" she said. "That feminist solidarity rescued me.

Touch is the most basic and fundamental of human experiences. Before we can suckle, before we can even see, we are enveloped by the welcoming arms of our mother. As we nestle into her body, feel the steadiness of her heartbeat, breathe her smell, we embed ourselves with her as our beacon. Her body, her voice, her skin, her touch become the way we orient ourselves as we make our personal journey through infancy, childhood and beyond. And touch is among the most crucial of these elements, not only providing us, in the case of loving touch, with a sense of security and ease in our bodies, but shaping our biology and our neurocircuitry in ways that will affect our tempers and our personalities throughout our lives.

But each time I would get the cord so tight I could feel a rushing in my ears and a flush of blood in my face, my hands would weaken and let go, and I would be all right again. Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it, time and again, whereas if I had the whole say, I would be dead in a flash. I would simply have to ambush it with whatever sense I had left, or it would trap me in its stupid cage for fifty years without any sense at all. And when people found out my mind had gone, as they would have to, sooner or later, in spite of my mother's guarded tongue, they would persuade her to put me into an asylum where I could be cured.

Thus it went as she made her way around the biomes of Ring B. Always she found that her mother the great engineer had made some crucial intervention, finding solutions to problems that had stymied the locals. Devi had the knack of sidestepping dilemmas, Badim said when Freya mentioned this, by moving back several logical steps, and coming at the situation from some new way not yet noticed. “It’s sometimes called avoiding acquiescence,” Badim said. “Acquiescence means accepting the framing of a problem, and working on it from within the terms of the frame. It’s a kind of mental economy, but also a kind of sloth. And Devi does not have that kind of sloth, as you know. She is always interrogating the framing of the problem. Acquiescence is definitely not her mode.

Over the course of the 1970s conservatives made the endangered child into a kind of political and rhetorical abstraction, a way of thinking about the country and its citizens that could help advance a wide range of policy initiatives. They opposed the counterculture on the grounds that rock and roll caused adolescents to lose respect for family life. They promoted the War on Drugs with racially tinged morality tales about addicted inner-city mothers and, crucially, the “superpredator” “crack babies” to whom those mothers supposedly gave birth. (That particular epidemic was later shown to be a myth.)40 And when Anita Bryant led a campaign to allow Dade County to discriminate against homosexuals in hiring teachers for public schools, she named the effort “Save Our Children.” The fear that tied all of these campaigns together was of the ease with which children could be victimized or else corrupted and turned against the society that was supposed to nurture them.

Having a TV—which gives you the ability to receive information—fails to establish any capacity for sending information in the opposite direction. And the odd one-way nature of the primary connection Americans now have to our national conversation has a profound impact on their basic attitude toward democracy itself. If you can receive but not send, what does that do to your basic feelings about the nature of your connection to American self-government? “Attachment theory” is an interesting new branch of developmental psychology that sheds light on the importance of consistent, appropriate, and responsive two-way communication—and why it is essential for an individual’s feeling empowered. First developed by John Bowlby, a British psychiatrist, in 1958, attachment theory was further developed by his protégée Mary Ainsworth and other experts studying the psychological development of infants. Although it applies to individuals, attachment theory is, in my view, a metaphor that illuminates the significance of authentic free-flowing communication in any relationship that requires trust. By using this new approach, psychologists were able to discover that every infant learns a crucial and existential lesson during the first year of life about his or her fundamental relationship to the rest of the world. An infant develops an attachment pathway based on different patterns of care and, according to this theory, learns to adopt one of three basic postures toward the universe: In the best case, the infant learns that he or she has the inherent ability to exert a powerful influence on the world and evoke consistent, appropriate responses by communicating signals of hunger or discomfort, happiness or distress. If the caregiver—more often than not the mother—responds to most signals from the infant consistently and appropriately, the infant begins to assume that he or she has inherent power to affect the world. If the primary caregiver responds inappropriately and/or inconsistently, the infant learns to assume that he or she is powerless to affect the larger world and that his or her signals have no intrinsic significance where the universe is concerned. A child who receives really erratic and inconsistent responses from a primary caregiver, even if those responses are occasionally warm and sensitive, develops “anxious resistant attachment.” This pathway creates children who feature anxiety, dependence, and easy victimization. They are easily manipulated and exploited later in life. In the worst case, infants who receive no emotional response from the person or persons responsible for them are at high risk of learning a deep existential rage that makes them prone to violence and antisocial behavior as they grow up. Chronic unresponsiveness leads to what is called “anxious avoidance attachment,” a life pattern that features unquenchable anger, frustration, and aggressive, violent behavior.

Outside of governments, the Church is the largest provider of education and medical services in the world, and this gives it great presence and impact in the lives of the poor. That is helpful in so many ways, but not when the Church discourages women from getting the contraceptives they need to move their families out of poverty. Those are some of the conversations that have been heard in the world over the previous hundred years or more. Each conversation helped drown out the voices and the needs of women, girls, and mothers. And that gave us a crucial purpose for holding the first summit in 2012: to create a new conversation led by the women who’d been left out—women who wanted to make their own decisions about having children without the interference of policymakers, planners, or theologians whose views would force women to have more, or fewer, children than they wanted. I gave the opening address that day in London and asked the delegates: “Are we making it easier for women to get access to the contraceptives they need when they need them?

Familial schizophrenia (like normal human features such as intelligence and temperament) is thus highly heritable but only moderately inheritable. In other words, genes-hereditary determinants-are crucially important to the future development of the disorder. If you possess a particular combination of genes, the chance of developing the illness is extremely high: hence the striking concordance among identical twins. On the other hand, the inheritance of the disorder across generations is complex. Since genes are mixed and matched in every generation, the chance that you will inherit that exact permutation of variants from your father or mother is dramatically lower. In some families, perhaps, there are fewer gene variants, but with more potent effects-thereby explaining the recurrence of the disorder across generations. In other families, the genes may have weaker effects and require deeper modifiers and triggers-thereby explaining the infrequent inheritance. In yet other families, a single, highly penetrant gene is accidentally mutated in sperm or egg cells before conception, leading to the observed cases of sporadic schizophrenia.

The main ones are the symbolists, connectionists, evolutionaries, Bayesians, and analogizers. Each tribe has a set of core beliefs, and a particular problem that it cares most about. It has found a solution to that problem, based on ideas from its allied fields of science, and it has a master algorithm that embodies it. For symbolists, all intelligence can be reduced to manipulating symbols, in the same way that a mathematician solves equations by replacing expressions by other expressions. Symbolists understand that you can’t learn from scratch: you need some initial knowledge to go with the data. They’ve figured out how to incorporate preexisting knowledge into learning, and how to combine different pieces of knowledge on the fly in order to solve new problems. Their master algorithm is inverse deduction, which figures out what knowledge is missing in order to make a deduction go through, and then makes it as general as possible. For connectionists, learning is what the brain does, and so what we need to do is reverse engineer it. The brain learns by adjusting the strengths of connections between neurons, and the crucial problem is figuring out which connections are to blame for which errors and changing them accordingly. The connectionists’ master algorithm is backpropagation, which compares a system’s output with the desired one and then successively changes the connections in layer after layer of neurons so as to bring the output closer to what it should be. Evolutionaries believe that the mother of all learning is natural selection. If it made us, it can make anything, and all we need to do is simulate it on the computer. The key problem that evolutionaries solve is learning structure: not just adjusting parameters, like backpropagation does, but creating the brain that those adjustments can then fine-tune. The evolutionaries’ master algorithm is genetic programming, which mates and evolves computer programs in the same way that nature mates and evolves organisms. Bayesians are concerned above all with uncertainty. All learned knowledge is uncertain, and learning itself is a form of uncertain inference. The problem then becomes how to deal with noisy, incomplete, and even contradictory information without falling apart. The solution is probabilistic inference, and the master algorithm is Bayes’ theorem and its derivates. Bayes’ theorem tells us how to incorporate new evidence into our beliefs, and probabilistic inference algorithms do that as efficiently as possible. For analogizers, the key to learning is recognizing similarities between situations and thereby inferring other similarities. If two patients have similar symptoms, perhaps they have the same disease. The key problem is judging how similar two things are. The analogizers’ master algorithm is the support vector machine, which figures out which experiences to remember and how to combine them to make new predictions.

Harvard University biologist David Haig has spent the last few years systematically debunking the notion that the relationship between a mother and her unborn child is anything like the rose-tinted idyll that one usually finds on the glossy covers of maternity magazines. In fact, it is anything but. Pre-eclampsia, a condition of dangerously high blood pressure in pregnant women, is brutally kick-started by nothing short of a foetal coup d’état. It begins with the placenta invading the maternal bloodstream and initiating what, in anyone’s book, is a ruthless biological heist – an in utero sting operation to draw out vital nutrients. And I’m not just talking about baby Gordon Gekkos here – I’m talking about all of us. The curtain-raiser is well known to obstetricians. The foetus begins by injecting a crucial protein into the mother’s circulation which forces her to drive more blood, and therefore more nourishment, into the relatively low-pressure placenta. It’s a scam, pure and simple, which poses a significant and immediate risk to the mother’s life. ‘The bastard!’ says Andy. ‘Shall we get some olives?’ ‘And it’s by no means the only one,’ I continue. In another embryonic Ponzi scheme, foetal release of placental lactogen counteracts the effect of maternal insulin thereby increasing the mother’s blood sugar level and providing an excess for the foetus’s own benefit. ‘A bowl of the citrus and chilli and a bowl of the sweet pepper and basil,’ Andy says to the waiter. Then he peers at me over the menu. ‘So basically what you’re saying then is this: forget the Gaddafis and the Husseins. When it comes to chemical warfare it’s the unborn child that’s top dog!’ ‘Well they definitely nick stuff that isn’t theirs,’ I say. ‘And they don’t give a damn about the consequences.’ Andy smiles. ‘So in other words they’re psychopaths!’ he says. BABY

In the wild, a young female is an allomother long before she bears her own offspring. She has fifteen years to practice being a big sister to the calves that are born to the herd. I’d seen calves approach young female elephants to suckle for comfort, even though the juveniles did not have breasts or milk yet. But the young female would put her foot forward, the way her mother and aunties did, and proudly pretend. She could act like a mother without having any of the real responsibility until she was ready. But when there is no family to teach a young female to raise her own calf, things can go horribly awry. When I was working in Pilanesberg, this story repeated itself. There, young bulls that had been translocated began to charge vehicles. They killed a tourist. More than forty white rhino were found dead in the reserve before we realized that these subadult males were the ones who’d attacked them—highly aggressive behavior that was far from normal. What is the common denominator for the odd behavior of the young female elephant that didn’t care about her own calf and the belligerent pack of teenage bulls? Certainly there was a lack of parental guidance. But was that the only issue at play? All those elephants had seen their families killed in front of them, as a result of culling. The grief that I have studied in the wild, where a herd loses an old matriarch, for example, must be contrasted to the grief that comes from observing the violent death of a family member—because the long-term effects are so markedly different. After a natural death, the herd encourages the grieving individual to eventually move on. After a mass killing by humans, there is—by definition—no herd left for support. To date, the animal research community has been reluctant to believe that elephant behavior might be affected by the trauma of watching one’s family being killed. I think this isn’t scientific objection as much as it is political shame—after all, we humans have been the perpetrators of this violence. At the very least, it is crucial when studying the grief of elephants to remember that death is a natural occurrence. Murder is not.

The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.

DEONTOLOGY AND CONCEQUENTIALISM, A NOVEL APPROACH: Consequentialism and Deontology (Deontological Ethics) are two contrasting categories of Normative Ethics, the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental principles that determine the morality of human actions (or non-actions). Their supposed difference is that while Consequentialism determines if an action is morally right or wrong by examining its consequences, Deontology focuses on the action itself, regardless of its consequences. To the hypothetical question “Should I do this man a little injustice, if by this I could save the whole humanity from torture and demise?”, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, a pure deontologist (absolutist) answers: “Fiat justitia, pereat mundus” (Do justice even if the whole world would perish). Superficially, it seems that a decent deontologist don’t care about consequences whatsoever. His/her one and only duty is to invariably obey to pre-existing, universal moral rules without exceptions: “do not kill”, “do not lie”, “do not use another human as a means to an end”, and so on. At this point I would like to present my thesis on this subject. The central idea here is that deontological ethics only appears to be indifferent to the consequences of an action. In fact, it is only these very consequences that determine what our moral rules and ethical duties should be. For example, the moral law “do not kill”, has its origin to the dire consequences that the killing of another human being brings about; for the victim (death), the perpetrator (often imprisonment or death) and for the whole humanity (collapse of society and civilization). Let us discuss the well-worn thought experiment of the mad axeman asking a mother where their young children are, so he can kill them. We suppose that the mother knows with 100% certainty that she can mislead him by lying and she can save her children from certain death (once again: supposing that she surely knows that she can save her children ONLY by lying, not by telling the truth or by avoiding to answer). In this thought experiment the hard deontologist would insist that it is immoral to lie, even if that would lead to horrible consequences. But, I assert that this deontological inflexibility is not only inhuman and unethical, it is also outrightly hypocritical. Because if the mother knows that their children are going to be killed if she tells the truth (or does not answer) and they are going to be saved if she tells a harmless lie, then by telling the truth she disobeys the moral law “do not kill/do not cause the death of an innocent”, which is much worse than the moral rule “do not lie”. The fact that she does not kill her children with her own hands is completely irrelevant. She could have saved them without harming another human, yet she chose not to. So the absolutist deontologist chooses actively to disobey a much more important moral law, only because she is not the immediate cause, but a cause via a medium (the crazy axeman in this particular thought experiment). So here are the two important conclusions: Firstly, Deontology in normative ethics is in reality a “masked consequentialism”, because the origin of a moral law is to be found in its consequences e.g. stealing is generally morally wrong, because by stealing, someone is deprived of his property that may be crucial for his survival or prosperity. Thus, the Deontology–Consequentialism dichotomy is a false one. And secondly, the fact that we are not the immediate “vessel” by which a moral rule is broken, but we nevertheless create or sustain a “chain of events” that will almost certainly lead to the breaking of a moral law, does surely not absolve us and does not give us the right to choose the worst outcome. Mister Immanuel Kant would avoid doing an innocent man an injustice, yet he would choose to lead billions of innocent people to agonizing death.

ON MY THIRTIETH birthday my mother hands me a hardcover copy of Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow. The novel is about the life of the poet Delmore Schwartz, whom she knew. She wants me to read Humboldt’s Gift because it’s crucial, and she talks about Saul Bellow. She respects him and holds him in high regard.

Body Image AT about 4 to 5 months of age, at the peak of symbiosis, behavioral phenomena seem to indicate the beginning of the first subphase of separation-individuation, namely differentiation. During the symbiotic months —through that activity of the pre-ego which Spitz has described as coenesthetic receptivity—the young infant has familiarized himself with the mothering half of his symbiotic self, as indicated by the unspecific, social smile. This smile gradually becomes the specific (preferential) smiling response to the mother, which is the crucial sign that a specific bond between the infant and his mother has been established (Bowlby, 1958).

Throughout Brazil there are ‘dual burden households’ where some family members (usually the children) are underweight and stunted and others (usually the mothers) are obese.51 Many adolescent girls in Brazil are both anaemic and obese, suggesting that their diets, though plentiful, are low in crucial micronutrients, especially iron.52

Rather, Dolto insisted that the content of what you say to a baby matters tremendously. She said it was crucial that parents tell their babies the truth in order to gently affirm what the babies already know. In fact, she thought that babies begin eavesdropping on adult conversations—and intuiting the problems and conflicts swirling around them—from the womb.

I’d like to ask those who favor this position if they would be willing to go to Littleton and explain to some mothers what constitutes an acceptable risk. Really. Because in a society that embraces violence, this is what “our way of life” has come to mean. The question can’t be why but only “Why yours and not mine?” We have taught our children in a thousand ways, sometimes with flag-waving and sometimes with a laugh track, that the bad guy deserves to die. But we easily forget a crucial component of this formula: “Bad” is defined by the aggressor. Any of our children may someday be, in someone’s mind, the bad guy.

The gift of sustenance is crucial to motherhood: the mother providing milk for her newborn from her own body, created from her own blood. Julian sees breast feeding as an image of the Eucharist,

Bears and Axes Mari Larsson was 38 years old when she was killed by multiple blows to the head from an axe. It was the night of October 17, 2004. Mari’s former partner had broken into her house in the small town of Piteå in the north of Sweden and was waiting for her to come home. The tragic and brutal murder of a mother of three was barely reported in the national media and even the local newspaper gave it only modest coverage. That same day a 40-year-old father of three, also living in the far north of Sweden, was killed by a bear while out hunting. His name was Johan Vesterlund and he was the first person killed by a bear in Sweden since 1902. This brutal, tragic, and, crucially, rare event received massive coverage throughout Sweden. In Sweden, a fatal bear attack is a once-in-a-century event. Meanwhile, a woman is killed by her partner every 30 days. This is a 1,300-fold difference in magnitude. And yet one more domestic murder had barely registered, while the hunting death was big news. Despite what the media coverage might make us think, each death was equally tragic and horrendous. Despite what the media might make us think, people who care about saving lives should be much more concerned about domestic violence than about bears. It seems obvious when you compare the numbers.

If the portrayal of Dylan as a monster left the impression that the tragedy at Columbine had no relevance to average people or their families, then whatever measure of comfort it offered was false. I hope the truth will awake people to a greater sense of vulnerability—more frightening, perhaps, but crucial—that cannot so easily be circumscribed.

attachment theory, which predicts social competency and the ability to thrive as functions of nurturing early attachments, of bonding; and Erik Erikson, whose work suggests that the violation of the child’s trust leads to a life of increasingly perilous failures of trust; and D. W. Winnicott, the British pediatrician whose writings stress the importance of parental love, the ongoing connection between mother and child. All these authors describe the crucial role of touch, and of the family setting as a place of safety and security.

sinners . . . I was angry with God . . . I drove myself mad with a desperate disturbed conscience.”4 It is not insignificant that Luther’s own father and mother were both harsh disciplinarians, but regardless of the cause, Luther had clearly internalized a crippling image of God as judge that tormented him until he discovered grace. This message of grace and forgiveness has been a life-changing one to many people over the ages since Luther rediscovered it, but it has often been tragically accompanied by a message of fear and condemnation itself. Luther, for example, preached that one must face the horrors of wrath before one could come to grace. In other words, he believed that everyone needed to be forced to go through the horrible struggle he did before they could hear about grace. Ever since then, there has been a long history of revival preachers who have proclaimed this “pre-gospel” of fear, threat, and condemnation—telling people the bad news so they could then receive the good news, wounding people first, so they could then heal those wounds. The philosophy behind this strategy is that people need to be shaken out of their complacency and made ready to respond to the gospel. This may indeed be true for some, but for others it amounts to little more than abuse, and has resulted in a hurtful image of God being hammered into their heads that has estranged them from God, and driven them away from faith. For a person struggling with moral failure, facing up to their brokenness and realizing that God loves them and died for them despite it is a crucial step towards life. But to tell a person whose sin is self-hatred that they need to face how bad and worthless they are is like making them swallow the wrong prescription medicine—what was healing to the first person,

Bunch of Quotes … Legend: #/ = page number 12/ Money as Archetype. The key point is that money must have power over us inwardly in order to have power in the world. We must believe in its value before we will change our conduct based on whether or not we will receive it. In the broadest sense, money becomes a vehicle of relationship. It enables us to make choices and cooperate with one another, it singlas what we will do with our energy. 16/ The Latin word moneta derives from the Indo-European root men-, which means to use one’s mind or think. The goddess Moneta is modeled on the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Contained in the power to remember is the ability to warn, so Moneta is also considered to be a goddess who can give warnings. To suggest money can affect us in different ways we might remember that the Greek words menos (which means spirit, courage, purpose) and mania (which means madness) come from the same root as memory and Moneta. Measurement, from the Indo-European root me-, also relates to mental abilities and is a crucial aspect of money. 95/ [Crawford relates the experience of a friend], a mother, whose only son suffered from drug addiction. … At last she overcame her motherly instincts and refused him a place to stay and food and money. [She gave him a resources list for dealing with addiction.] 98/ Even an addition, according to psychologist C.G. Jung, a form of spiritual craving. Jung expressed this viewpoint in correspondence with Bill Wilson (Bill W), the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. 107/ The inner search is not a denial of our outer needs, but rather in part a way of learning the right attitudes and actions with which to deal with the outer world—including money and ownership. 114/ Maimonodes, Golden Ladder of Charity. [this list is from charitywatch.org] Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish scholar, invented the following ladder of giving. Each rung up represents a higher degree of virtue: 1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed. 2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little. 3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked. 4. Giving before being asked. 5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity. 6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity. 7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other's identity. 8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant. 129/ Remember as this myth unfolds [Persephone] that we are speaking of inheritance in the larger sense. What we inherit is not merely money and only received at death, but it is everything, both good and bad, that we receive from our parents throughout our lifetime. When we examine such an inheritance, some of what we receive will be truly ours and worthwhile to keep. The rest we must learn to surrender if we are to get on with our own lives. 133/ As so happens, the child must deal with what the parent refuses to confront. 146/ Whether the parent is alive or dead, the child may believe some flaw in the parent has crippled and limited the child’s life. To become attached to this point of view is damaging, because the child fails to take responsibility for his or her own destiny.

The concept of the Mother Tree and her connections to those around her had even made it into Hollywood, as a central concept to the tree in the film Avatar. How the film resonated with people reminded me how naturally crucial it is for people to connect to mothers, fathers, children, family—our own and the families of others—and to trees and animals and all of the creatures of nature, as one.

These observations can underscore their sense of loneliness. The psychologist Erik Erikson said that adolescents’ essential task is to develop a sense of identity. They rebel against, but also look to, their chief role models, their parents, as they ask questions about who they’ll become. Among adoptees who lack access to their personal history, this process is complicated by the knowledge that no matter how they are loved, wanted, and wished for, they understand that a crucial part of themselves is lost. This can become a source of identity confusion, and some researchers say it results in shame, feelings of abandonment, embarrassment, and low

When animals first evolved, they reproduced by laying eggs, and most creatures in the animal kingdom continue to give birth this way. Then, between 100 million and 200 million years ago, a shrew-like creature developed the capacity to gestate her young inside her own body—an extraordinary evolutionary advance because a fetus is much safer growing inside its mother’s body. It is only possible because of the placenta, a temporary organ that attaches to the uterus and allows nutrients and oxygen to pass from mother to baby, and carbon dioxide and waste to travel in the other direction, without provoking a devastating response from the mother’s immune system. There is nothing like this interface between the placenta and womb anywhere else in our bodies. When geneticists looked at the gene responsible for creating it, they realized that it was almost identical to those used by retroviruses to produce the proteins that attach to cells they are infecting without triggering an immune response.[24] The scientists concluded that a crucial function of the placenta didn’t emerge gradually as a result of evolution by natural selection but was suddenly acquired when a retrovirus inserted its DNA into our ancestor’s genome.

When Shi Qingluo, an agriculture expert, opened her eyes again after dying, she realised she had transmigrated as a farm girl in an ancient era. Her story started from when she was sold by her family, and was currently being forcibly taken away. She subdued evil with greater evil, and violence with greater violence, forcing the troublemakers to cry in defeat and ended up giving in to her. Then, she married off to another village. She became the wife of Scholar Xiao Hanzheng who was in a coma, and had just been abandoned by his extended family. Qingluo looked at Scholar Xiao’s frail mother, delicate younger sister, and obedient younger brother, and rubbed her chin out of satisfaction. From now on, they were all hers to protect. Since then, she took on the crucial role as the family’s breadwinner, led the family towards prosperity and accidentally became the nation’s wealthiest individual. Xiao Hanzheng woke up to find that his brother, who supposedly died from drowning, was alive and kicking. His sister was still at home. And their mother, who was supposedly eaten by wild beasts when she entered the forest in hopes of earning money to buy medicine, was still alive. More importantly, he even gained a capable wife after waking up. All of his immediate family members loved and relied on her. He looked at her and asked, “If you’re the breadwinner, what should I do?” His wife said, “You just have to look pretty, and earn a position in the government so that you can support me.” Xiao Hanzheng’s frozen heart suddenly came alive. “Sure!” Since then, he has worked hard in his career. He went from being an elementary scholar to a distinguished minister with great influence. He knew that from the moment he woke up, his wife was his saviour.

Our images of God color our faith with bright splashes of joy and love, subtle hues of confidence, comfort, and peace, or dark shades of distrust, fear, and aloneness. With David we may picture God as the Good Shepherd, a loving parent, and a wise, faithful king and judge. Or we may see God as a stern and distant father, an undependable mother, or an unpleaseable judge. How can one trust in or be loyal to those latter images? Is it any wonder that many persons find it very difficult to have faith? Our image of God is a crucial part of our faith, and the images of God our children are forming will greatly influence their faith.

Everything felt wrong, like she was living in a parallel universe, separated by one crucial degree from the one containing the life she was meant to have. This other, true life was visible to her, even palpable at certain instances—like during the births of her sons—but impossible to occupy. She cried from pity for herself, and because of the stupidity of such pity. She cried for Luciano and for Anton. She cried because she’d only loved one boy with the follow-you-over-the-edge-of-the-earth kind of love—at fifteen. She cried for her mother, who had died two years ago, and whom she still missed every day.

The greatest power over a man is his desire to please a particular woman. This is crucial to understand. So much in this life hangs on it. It is this inherent desire which gives that woman power to make or destroy him. Most men will never confess that they are influenced…easily influenced…by the women they prefer. Wives, lovers, mothers, daughters, or sisters. Many have no idea that they are. This knowledge is the source of the hetaera’s power. It is powerful, child. So subtle and powerful. It can and does influence men to murder. It causes men to forsake their sworn oaths and duties. Even mastons. These feelings can shatter mountains into broken pebbles. They can break down the strongest man. Remember this teaching. It will benefit you in the future as you ponder it.

The studio’s photographic activity lay quietly in hibernation, and not even your mother’s friends left their beloved Södermalm to support the studio despite their eagerly expressed curiosity for what they called “the colorful, multicultural suburb.” I never really understood the meaning of this expression. The neighborhood in the vicinity of the studio was not particularly separated from the neighborhood in Hornstull where you localized your lodgings. The same rectangular box houses, the same brown house colors. The same brightly shining mailboxes, the same Konsum grocery, the same Apoteket sign. The same red-nosed alcoholics who sat mumbling on the benches outside Systembolaget. The same Assyrians who started the same pizzerias with the same clever Italian names. Sometimes I noticed that people from Södermalm truly enjoyed pointing out every crucial difference between “the suburbs” and “downtown.” Sometimes I thought that the situation was similar to when tourists in Tabarka enjoyed pointing out the crucial difference between “the mystique of the Orient” and “the stress and pressure of the Western world.

Historical experiences of this absolute godliness gave rise to all the scriptures in the world. Hence, the scriptures themselves don’t account for the actual globally prevalent psychological element of faith or divinity in the human society. Faith is a crucial evolutionary trait of the human mind, selected by Mother Nature as an internal coping- mechanism.

Exquisitely sensitive to her infant’s nonverbal messages, the “good” mother empathically divines the needs of her baby with near clairvoyant accuracy, relying on her capacity to regressively revive in herself this early communication channel that, Spitz felt, is lost to most adults. She senses why her infant is crying, a mystery to others, and is able to respond correctly. Each accurate reading and satisfying intervention—picking him up, feeding him, jostling him, soothing him—becomes another interaction in the essential cycle of meaning-making. Spitz saw these repetitions as also helping the infant sort out feeling states into discernible, sequential categories with beginnings and endings (for example: I was upset, then I felt better), contributing to the laying down of memory traces of recognizable experience. Thus Spitz offered psychoanalysis a very different kind of developmental progression, adding to the unfolding psychosexual sequence of drive discharge (from oral to anal to phallic to oedipal) the increasing structuralization of ego capacities which emerge, in the first year of life, within crucial transformations in the relationship to the libidinal object.

It is a successful inward voyage of reconciliation of a sort that he was to make much more readily and regularly in his fiction than in his life. His own experience had made the child figure central to his imagination, the sensitive youth whose sense of his worth is assaulted by a hostile world from infancy onward. The assault precedes adolescence, and adolescent experience is a late stage of the reenactment of early-childhood loss. The most powerful expression in his fiction of such loss and deprivation is to be born an orphan or near orphan, as are Oliver, Pip, Little Nell, David Copperfield, and Esther Summerson, or to have lost one parent, like Nicholas Nickleby, Florence Dombey, and Amy Dorrit. In the first of his fictional child heroes, he contrasts the emotional impact of his own mother’s distance and rejection with the absence of Oliver’s, as if to say that a dead mother is preferable to a deadening one. Unlike his own, Oliver’s mother dies while giving birth to her son. It is a tragic sacrifice that Dickens provides as an expression of the unqualified love of the perfect mother for her only son. Like Mary, she dies “Young Beautiful And Good,” and her angelic presence at crucial moments in the novel provides Oliver with both an assurance of his self-worth and, since it is she he resembles, a visible connection with the world of love, benevolence, and innate moral values.15

Campers handwrite letters on a form that is scanned into Walden’s computer as PDF files and e-mailed home three days later. Parents can e-mail Walden with notes for their child, and these are printed and delivered to campers three days after being received. The delay of three days on either end was designed to intentionally mimic the same lag that Canada Post experiences, which is crucial, according to Birenbaum, to preserve something he referred to as “the transfer of authority.” “Let’s say a kid is getting bullied in a cabin by another camper,” he said, using a recent example. “If she writes an e-mail home on her phone, her mother reacts immediately, advising action to her daughter, and contacting me to remedy the problem. The mother retains authority. But with a six-day delay from the time the daughter sends her letter to the mother’s response, the camper has to deal with the problem of the bully. Eventually, the camper realizes that ‘Hey, maybe this eighteen-year-old staff member taking care of me is someone who I should talk with,’” and you suddenly achieve that transfer of authority from parent to counselor that is crucial for Walden’s social cohesion.

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. It might be better to say that experience is the mother of invention. It was the experience of seeing the risen Lord that created the inner circle of Jesus, and the coming of the Spirit that birthed the church. In other words, naturalistic historical explanations alone will never adequately explain the crucial events that led to the rise of the inner-circle leaders within the Christian movement and the rise of the movement itself.

Writing can be a crucial skill, like cartography. Everybody lives in the middle of a landscape. Writing can provide a map. (PHYLLIS THEROUX)

Cyprian declared, "He cannot have God for his Father who does not have the church for his Mother." We need the church as urgently as a starving baby needs his mother's milk. We cannot grow

must have looked like a mild fit, I had failed to pay attention to my surroundings. Mrs. Mason’s approach startled me. I swallowed and tried to remember the crucial steps of the “first greeting” my mother had drilled into each of us: look them in the eye, remember their names, smile and be pleasant, and above

There are other media too [the first being newspapers and control of information] whose basic social role is quite different. It’s diversion. There’s the real mass media, the kinds that are aimed at the guys who… Joe six-pack. That kind. The purpose of those media is just to dull people’s brain. This is an over-simplification, but for the 80 per cent or whatever they are, the main thing for them is to divert them. To get them to watch National Football League, and to worry about the… you know… mother with child with six heads, or whatever the thing you pick up on the supermarket stands, and so on. Or, you know, look at astrology, or get involved in fundamentalist stuff, or something. Just get them away you know. Get them away from things that matter. And for that, it’s important to reduce their capacity to think. Sports. That’s another crucial example of the indoctrination system in my view. For one thing, because it offers people something to pay attention to that is of no importance. That keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea about doing something about. And in fact, it’s striking to see the intelligence that’s used by ordinary people in sports. You listen to radio sations where people call in. They have the most exotic information and understanding of all kinds of arcane issues, and the press undoubtedly does a lot with this. I remember in high school I suddenly asked myself at one point: Why do I care if my high school team wins the football game? I mean, I don’t know anybody on the team, you know. […] It doesn’t make any sense. But the point is, it does make sense. It’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority. And, you know, group cohesion behind… you know, leadership elements. In fact, it’s training in irrational jingoism. That’s also a feature of competitive sports. I think, if you look closely at those things, typically, they do have functions, and that’s why energy is devoted to supporting them, and creating basis for them, and advertisers are willing to pay for them.

Yet this brings home to me the crucial role that young people played in the struggle against apartheid. We were clear-sighted and idealistic, and we were unencumbered by the adult responsibilities that led many people to make compromises with the regime. Young people's hunger for justice made a decisive difference in South Africa's freedom struggle.

Faith is the belief in things not seen. Or it is the hope that what has not yet materialized might, someday, manifest. I am loosely quoting Hebrews 11:1, in which people hope for some future when a crucial promise might somehow be fulfilled. One of the hallmarks of faith is to believe in a promise and—though the promise has yet to come to pass, and may never in my lifetime be fully fulfilled—to find a way to carry on. To discover and honor what has come to fruition.

The Importance of Prenatal Care for High-Risk Pregnancies Pregnancy is a time of joy and excitement, but for some women, it can also be a time of worry and concern. However, for those with high-risk pregnancies, the road to motherhood can be filled with uncertainty and worry. It is crucial for women with high-risk pregnancies to seek specialized prenatal care to ensure the best possible outcome for both mother and baby. High-risk pregnancies can be caused by a variety of factors, such as advanced maternal age, health conditions like diabetes or hypertension, multiple gestations, and previous pregnancy complications. If you find yourself in this situation, it is important to seek the guidance of a high risk pregnancy specialist near you as soon as possible.

We perceive women suffering from mental illness with a sort of paradoxical double-sidedness; both victims and monsters, simultaneously infantilized and feared. A certain level of dysfunction is accepted—after all, women who are suffering mild depression and starving themselves aren’t going to leave their husbands or start revolutions, which is very practical indeed. But beyond a certain point, it flips. Women are supposed to be gentle, devoted, loving and—above all else—rule-abiding. Undeniable suffering is bad, and anger is worse. A woman suffering from severe anxiety or untreated mania isn’t going to have dinner on the table by 6 o’clock. No longer is she fulfilling that crucial, limited role she’s expected to fulfill. No longer can she be a dutiful daughter, a picture-perfect wife, a devoted mother. Throughout history, women suffering from mental illness have been hidden away, burned at the stake, lobotomized, and sterilized.

A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours; For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

A child’s attachment to his mother is a complicated yet crucial psychological business. In normal childhood development, at first the child’s whole world is the mother. Then, sometime between the infant and toddler stages, the child realizes that he’s separate from his mother and experiences separation anxiety, crying when she isn’t in sight. Often, to avoid the anxiety, he adopts an object that represents the security of the mother-child attachment. This becomes the transitional attachment object. It’s usually a blanket or a plush toy, and the toddler takes it everywhere, especially to bed. The transitional object helps the child bridge the gap between dependence and independence.

If we knew, if we understood when we were young how crucial childhood is, no one would ever dare have children.

Best Tips for a Stress-Free Pregnancy – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Bringing a new life into the world is an extraordinary journey, one filled with anticipation and joy. Yet, the path to motherhood can also be fraught with stress and anxiety. The good news is that there are ways to navigate this period with greater ease. From seeking support through childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to embracing the serenity of Pre-Natal Yoga Classes for Pregnant Mothers in Chandigarh, let’s explore some of the best tips for a stress-free pregnancy. Understand Your Body Pregnancy is a unique and transformative experience, but it also brings a host of physical changes. Understanding these changes can alleviate anxiety. Remember, your body is doing something miraculous. It’s nurturing and growing a new life. Embrace the journey with wonder and gratitude. Stay Active with Pre-Natal Yoga Pre-Natal Yoga Classes in Chandigarh provide an exceptional avenue to connect with your body and your baby. Yoga helps maintain flexibility, ease discomfort, and reduce stress. The gentle stretches and mindful breathing techniques impart a sense of calm and inner peace. Educate Yourself Knowledge is power, and when it comes to pregnancy, it’s empowering. Enroll in childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to gain insight into what to expect during labor, delivery, and early parenthood. Knowing what lies ahead can significantly reduce apprehension. Nurture Emotional Well-being Pregnancy is not just about physical health; emotional well-being is equally vital. Seek emotional support from your partner, friends, or a counselor if needed. Express your feelings and allow yourself to experience a range of emotions without judgment. Eat Mindfully Nutrition is crucial for both you and your baby. Consume a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients. Remember, you’re not eating for two adults; you’re providing the building blocks for a new life. Consult with a healthcare professional for dietary guidance. Stay Hydrated Hydration is key to a healthy pregnancy. It helps prevent common issues like constipation and urinary tract infections. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day, and adjust your intake as needed to accommodate your changing body.

Pregnancy Skincare: Nurturing Your Glow with Expert Care – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Pregnancy – a wondrous journey that transforms your world in every conceivable way. As you prepare to welcome a new life into the world, your body takes center stage, and so does your skincare routine. Amidst the excitement and anticipation, the canvas of your skin undergoes its own set of changes. But fret not, for the guidance of best gynecologist obstetricians in Chandigarh and the expert care at Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital can help you navigate the realm of pregnancy skincare with grace and confidence. The Glow and the Challenges Ah, the famed pregnancy glow! While it’s true that many expectant mothers experience a certain radiance, it’s also a time when your skin decides to throw a few curveballs. Hormones like estrogen and progesterone, the maestros behind many pregnancy changes, might lead to increased oil production. This could result in unexpected acne or that elusive “glow” turning into a somewhat excessive shine. And let’s not forget about the infamous melasma, often referred to as the “mask of pregnancy.” This uneven pigmentation might make an appearance on your face, especially if you’re basking in the sun’s rays without proper protection. But worry not, for the guidance of the best gynaecologist in Chandigarh, you can take steps to manage these challenges and let your true radiance shine through. Dos and Don’ts In this symphony of pregnancy skincare, it’s crucial to compose a harmonious routine that nurtures both your skin and the life growing within you. First and foremost, let’s talk hydration. Drinking water is like giving your skin a refreshing dose of vitality, ensuring that it remains supple and resilient. As you venture into the world of skincare products, remember that less is more. Opt for gentle, pregnancy-safe cleansers that cleanse without stripping away your skin’s natural moisture. Ingredients like hyaluronic acid and glycerin can be your skin’s best friends, offering hydration without clogging pores. Ah, the allure of sunscreen! Now more than ever, shielding your skin from the sun’s rays is of paramount importance. Look for a broad-spectrum SPF and ensure that it’s pregnancy-safe. A hat and sunglasses can also join the ensemble of sun protection. Now, as you scan the beauty aisles, you might come across a wide array of products promising miracles. But be cautious – not all ingredients are pregnancy-friendly. Best gynecologist in Sector44C would advise steering clear of retinoids, salicylic acid, and benzoyl peroxide. Instead, embrace the calming embrace of ingredients like chamomile and aloe vera. Treating Yourself with Care Amidst the whirlwind of preparations, don’t forget to treat yourself to moments of self-care. A gentle exfoliation once or twice a week can help slough away dead skin cells and keep your complexion radiant. Opt for exfoliants with natural granules to ensure that your skin is treated with the gentleness it deserves. Expert Support for Your Glow The journey of pregnancy is as unique as a fingerprint, and so is your skin’s response to it. That’s why seeking guidance from the best obstetricians in Chandigarh can make all the difference. As you navigate the realms of pregnancy skincare, remember that the changes your skin undergoes are a testament to the incredible journey you’re on. It’s a journey of growth, transformation, and the anticipation of new beginnings. With the guidance of experts, a touch of self-care, and the support of Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, you can stride through this journey with confidence, letting your inner glow shine as brightly as your dreams.

Luck is crucial from the first inhale we take as we emerge from our mother's womb to the last exhale we make at the end of 'tour-de-life.

The success of (mainly bourgeois and white) women in this area was of crucial importance to the later development of the welfare state in these countries, which were only firmly institutionalized after World War II. Insofar as many of these policies alleviated some of the risks and insecurities felt by working-class families, they also exhibited significant racial biases. To use the US as an example, it has been well noted that mothers’ pensions were not directed to relieve and generally did not support African-American and other women of colour – this, despite the racialized nature of poverty in America: in 1934 Los Angeles, Mexican Americans constituted 10 percent of the population but only 1 percent of welfare recipient (forcing thousands of Mexicans to return to Mexico) while in Atlanta, Georgia, the average amount of relief given to a white person was nearly 70 percent more than that given to a black person ($32.66 versus $19.29 per month)

If you are going to do the work of ministry, it is crucial that you learn how to restore and maintain the anointing. The Bible teaches that power for ministry is maintained through fellowship with God. The secret of maintaining the anointing is to constantly go back to the source. You go back to God and receive more. Mark 1 describes a very busy day in the life of Jesus. He began at the synagogue where He preached and cast out a demon. Then He went to Peter’s house and healed Peter’s mother-in-law. That evening, the whole town came to Him, and He spent the evening healing and casting out demons. I imagine by the end of that time, He was exhausted. He was spiritually and physically drained. So what did He do? “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1:35). After such a busy day of ministry, most of us would have to sleep in the next morning, but Jesus got up before dawn and went out to spend time with the Father. That was often Jesus’ response after an unusually intense time of ministry. In Mark 6:34-44, Jesus spent an entire day teaching the multitudes and healing the sick. He ended the day by feeding the 5,000. After this eventful day, what did He do? Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray (Mark 6:45,46). Jesus sent the disciples away and spent most of the night in prayer. When He was weak, when He had given His all to the crowds, Jesus knew it was an absolute necessity to go back to the source and spend time in fellowship with the Father.

In the end, the answer is the men. They have to do the work. Why do we tie ourselves in knots to avoid saying this one simple truth? It's a daily and repetitive and eternal truth, and it's a dangerous truth, because if we press this point we can blow our households to pieces, we can take our families apart, we can spoil our great love affairs. This demand is enough to destroy almost everything we hold dear. So we shut up and do the work. No single task is ever worth the argument. Scrub a toilet, wash a few dishes, respond to the note from the teacher, talk to another mother, buy the supplies. Don't make a big deal out of everything. Don't make a big deal out of anything. Never mind that, writ large, all these minor chores are the reason we remain stuck in this depressing hole of pointless conversations and stifled accomplishment. Never mind that we are still, after all these waves of feminism and intramural arguments among the various strains of womanhood, treated like a natural resource that can be guiltlessly plundered. Never mind that the kids are watching. If you mind you might go crazy. Cooking and cleaning and childcare are everything. They are the ultimate truth. They underpin and enable everything we do. The perpetual allocation of this most crucial and inevitable work along gender lines sets women up for failure and men for success. It saps the energy and burdens the brains of half the population. And yet honest discussion of housework is still treated as taboo.

Brilliant, Molly thought, the cheese samples would absorb the kids while she finished the last bit of shopping for the party - the juice boxes, the rainbow sprinkles, the streamers, the other expenses and excesses of the exhausted mother. What a thing it was, grocery shopping, so tedious and so crucial.

Now take the child from that mother, and place him somewhere else. Not in another home, among different people who love him—and who will be sources of mystery to him, too. Not with his Aunt Violet or with his grandmother, nor even with the kind old lady next door. Place him with—here is the crucial word—a professional. Place him in the context of a money-making—here is another crucial word—industry. Take him to those functional places with tellingly abstract and impersonal names, like the Early Learning Center, or the Tiny Tots Academy. Place him among professional caregivers, rather like people who will walk and feed your dog at the kennel, only much nicer. They will feed the child, will parcel out the child's day with appropriate Learning Activities, will enforce the scheduled Naptime, and will send him home clean, well-fed, generally contented, runny-nosed, patted, played with, and unloved. Thus will his natural hunger for love be filled instead with the pleasantly functional. He will have no complaints about the Choo-Choo Child Connection. It may, in fact, be the only time in his day that he will run into other children. And he will be all the readier for school. Not only because he will be able to say his ABC’s. He will be ready to see himself and everyone else in the school as ciphers in an institution built to serve a certain function. Charles

One of the crucial documents for the Ordine dei Medici, it turned out, was an Italian passport. Until then nobody had bothered to mention this potentially insurmountable obstacle. It happened I did have a right to citizenship, but since it would be bestowed on me automatically by my Italian husband (Italian husbands are less powerful nowadays), the passport logically hung on Italian recognition of our American marriage, which was in turn predicated on Italian recognition of my husband’s American divorce from a prior marriage. The divorce certification, based on various Byzantine legal fictions, was a long time coming. One time there was a false sighting of his Italian divorce, and I optimistically went down to the Anagrafe or Central Registry to see whether I could get my citizenship papers. At the end of the forty-five-minute line a small man with slicked-down hair took my documents with a yawn and disappeared into the dark forest of files. When the clerk emerged, the bored look was gone from his face. He invited me to follow him along the long bank of teller windows, he on his side me on mine, and then pass through a little gate to the employee side. He sat me down, then paced between piled-up dossiers for a minute, no grille window to screen him off, before speaking. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said kindly, “You have applied for Italian citizenship on the grounds of being married to a certain Andrea Di Vecchia.” I admitted that was true. He paced a little more, lit a cigarette. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said again, even more gently, and I should have caught on from the way he repeated it. “I must tell you something. This Mr. Di Vecchia—he is already married to another woman!” His hand was already out to give a comforting squeeze to my shoulder, but it dropped when I laughed and explained that the problem was red tape, not bigamy. I thought later, high drama must be rare behind the certificate window, and he had risen to its call. How many American file clerks would have been so ready for their unexpected moment of glory? Another problem involved my residence papers, a crucial component in any pile of documents. All residents in Italy must communicate changes of address to the State within three months, and when we left my mother-in-law’s for our own place eight months earlier we had duly registered the move. But when I went to pick up an identity document I was told it couldn’t be issued because I was still listed at my old address. I slyly told the clerk in the cage to hold on, scurried over from his Identity Card window to the Certificate window three paces away, had the printer spit out a Residence Certificate bearing my name and the new address, and carried it back in triumph. He wasn’t impressed. “Oh, that certificate. That’s from the computer, it’s not worth anything. Your address has been changed in the computer, but the computerized part of the system doesn’t count.

At Chilli Padi Confinement Catering, our mission is to help new mothers transition into postpartum comfortably by delivering delicious quality home-style food that restores mother's hormonal balance and increases the production of quality breast milk. From day one, our goal has been to provide postpartum care for new mothers and to spread the benefits of eating super foods during the crucial post-partum confinement period. We understand the kind of nourishment new mothers require after delivering to their new-born and we pride ourselves in having the expertise of preparing tasty & healthy confinement meals.

Ambivalence exists in all human relationships, including parent-child. Anna Freud maintained that a mother could never satisfy her infant's needs because those are infinite, but that eventually child and mother outgrow that dependence...In Torn in Tow, the British psycho analyst Rozsika Parker complains that in our open, modern society, the extent of maternal ambivalence is a dark secret. Most mothers treat their occasional wish to be rid of their children as if it were the equivalent of murder itself. Parker proposes that mothering requires two impulses - the impulse to hold on, and the impulse to push away. To be a successful mother you must nurture and love your child, but cannot smother and cling to your child. Mothering involves sailing between what Parker calls 'the Scylla of intrusiveness and the Charybdis of neglect.' She proposes that the sentimental idea of perfect synchrony between mother and child 'can cast a sort of sadness over motherhood - a constant state of mild regret that a delightful oneness seems always out of reach.' Perfection is a horizon virtue, and our very approach to it reveals its immutable distance. The dark portion of maternal ambivalence toward typical children is posited as crucial to the child's individuation. But severely disabled children who will never become independent will not benefit from their parents' negative feelings, and so their situation demands an impossible state of emotional purity. Asking the parents of severely disabled children to feel less negative emotion than parents of healthy children is ludicrous. My experience of these parents was that they all felt both love and despair. You cannot decide whether to be ambivalent/ All you can decide is what to do with your ambivalence. Most of these parents have chosen to act on one side of the ambivalence they feel, and Julia Hollander chose to act on another side, but I am not persuaded that the ambivalence itself was so different from one of these families to the next. I am enough of a creature of my times to admire most the parents who kept their children and made brave sacrifices for them. I nonetheless esteem Julia Hollander for being honest with herself, and for making what all those other families did look like a choice.

. . . my experience as a psychotherapist working with people with troubled bodies shows that the kind of touch we receive when we are little and the impact of a mother's (or carer's) physical sense of herself are crucial to the development of our own body sense. Our bodies are a lot more than an executed blueprint given by our DNA.

The first step is to recognize our denial of this wound and the depth of the wound’s place in our soul. Second, we must accept the reality of our lives, giving up denial and illusions, so that we can heal our pain and live in the truth of our own reality and potentials. The third step is to strengthen ourselves before confronting our Medusa and to realize that this is a labor of love. Fourth, following the path of Perseus, we will do our healing and our inner work, going deep inside ourselves as a labor of love. The fifth step is seeing the transformation take place as we die to our old, false life and are born into a new life. If we do not take this crucial fifth step, we might get stuck contemplating how bad our old life was and how unhappy and frustrated we are today.