Loss Of Both Parents Quotes

And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. ‘I can care for myself, please,’ and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely. In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, and an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn’t seem to care. ‘You’re all right?’ her mother asked. Buttercup sipped her cocoa. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You’re sure?’ her father wondered. ‘Yes,’ Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause. ‘But I must never love again.’ She never did.

Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; to her, mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.

The child must adapt to ensure the illusion of love, care, and kindness, but the adult does not need this illusion to survive. He can give up his amnesia and then be in a position to determine his actions with open eyes. Only this path will free him from his depression. Both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality by living as though the availability of the parents could still be salvaged: the grandiose person through the illusion of achievement, and the depressive through his constant fear of losing “love.” Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact.

Grief needs an outlet. Creativity offers one. Some psychiatrists see mourning and creativity as the perfect marriage, the thought processes of one neatly complementing the other. A child’s contradictory impulses to both acknowledge and deny a parent’s death represents precisely the type of rich ambiguity that inspires artistic expression.

You worry about your parents, siblings, spouses dying, yet no one prepares you for your friends dying. Every time you flip through your address book, you are reminded of it---she's gone, he's gone, they're both gone. Names and numbers and addresses scratched out. Page after page of gone, gone, gone. The sense of loss that you feel isn't just for the person. It is the death of your youth, the death of fun, of warm conversations and too many drinks, of long weekends, of shared pains and victories and jealousies, of secrets that you couldn't tell anyone else, of memories that only you two shared.

Both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality by living as though the availability of the parents could still be salvaged: the grandiose person through the illusion of achievement, and the depressive through his constant fear of losing “love.” Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact.

A scream is a sound we make that is born of intense feeling. A scream of fear, of being startled, is often high-pitched. It may be short or prolonged. A scream may also accompany delight or amusement, though often that is more of a squeal. And a scream of sorrow or rage ... well, that is an entirely different thing. That comes from a darker place, from the depths of our souls, and when we scream in those times, because we are sad or angry, there is a terrible knowledge that accompanies it, that we are giving voice to our emotions, to what is simply too big for our hearts to contain. And as Li Wei cries out, I know Feng Ji is right. It is his heart I am hearing, a way of expressing what he feels over his father's loss that is both primal and beautiful, and it comes from his soul and reaches something within mine. It is the sound my own heart made when my parents died, only I didn't know it until now.

The child identifies with the parent who has been betrayed because he is suffering immeasurable loss as well—the loss of trust in one or both parents, the loss of both parents’ ability to be an attentive parent, the loss of faith in the cohesiveness of the family, and, of course, a loss of innocence.

Have I said yet that we were lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people, both near and far?

Dear Pen Pal, I know it’s been a few years since I last wrote you. I hope you’re still there. I’m not sure you ever were. I never got any letters back from you when I was a kid. But in a way it was always therapeutic. Everyone else judges everything I say. And here you are: some anonymous person who never says “boo.” Maybe you just read my letters and laughed or maybe you didn’t read my letters or maybe you don’t even exist. It was pretty frustrating when I was young, but now I’m glad that you won’t respond. Just listen. That’s what I want. My dog died. I don’t know if you remember, but I had a beagle. He was a good dog. My best friend. I’d had him as far back as I could remember, but one day last month he didn’t come bounding out of his red doghouse like usual. I called his name. But no response. I knelt down and called out his name. Still nothing. I looked in his doghouse. There was blood everywhere. Cowering in the corner was my dog. His eyes were wild and there was an excessive amount of saliva coming out of his mouth. He was unrecognizable. Both frightened and frightening at the same time. The blood belonged to a little yellow bird that had always been around. My dog and the bird used to play together. In a strange way, it was almost like they were best friends. I know that sounds stupid, but… Anyway, the bird had been mangled. Ripped apart. By my dog. When he saw that I could see what he’d done, his face changed to sadness and he let out a sound that felt like the word ‘help.’ I reached my hand into his doghouse. I know it was a dumb thing to do, but he looked like he needed me. His jaws snapped. I jerked my hand away before he could bite me. My parents called a center and they came and took him away. Later that day, they put him to sleep. They gave me his corpse in a cardboard box. When my dog died, that was when the rain cloud came back and everything went to hell…

In their parents, children ideally have sources of protection and comfort and love. Parents can also be sources of irritation, fear, and anxiety. Their deaths thus represent both loss and liberation.

The root of all of it: he’s never lost. He still has both his parents, and any kind of loss he ever went through was his choice, which is always a different kind of loss than the kind that’s ripped from you.

Environmental influences also affect dopamine. From animal studies, we know that social stimulation is necessary for the growth of the nerve endings that release dopamine and for the growth of receptors that dopamine needs to bind to in order to do its work. In four-month-old monkeys, major alterations of dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems were found after only six days of separation from their mothers. “In these experiments,” writes Steven Dubovsky, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of Colorado, “loss of an important attachment appears to lead to less of an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Once these circuits stop functioning normally, it becomes more and more difficult to activate the mind.” A neuroscientific study published in 1998 showed that adult rats whose mothers had given them more licking, grooming and other physical-emotional contact during infancy had more efficient brain circuitry for reducing anxiety, as well as more receptors on nerve cells for the brain’s own natural tranquilizing chemicals. In other words, early interactions with the mother shaped the adult rat’s neurophysiological capacity to respond to stress. In another study, newborn animals reared in isolation had reduced dopamine activity in their prefrontal cortex — but not in other areas of the brain. That is, emotional stress particularly affects the chemistry of the prefrontal cortex, the center for selective attention, motivation and self-regulation. Given the relative complexity of human emotional interactions, the influence of the infant-parent relationship on human neurochemistry is bound to be even stronger. In the human infant, the growth of dopamine-rich nerve terminals and the development of dopamine receptors is stimulated by chemicals released in the brain during the experience of joy, the ecstatic joy that comes from the perfectly attuned mother-child mutual gaze interaction. Happy interactions between mother and infant generate motivation and arousal by activating cells in the midbrain that release endorphins, thereby inducing in the infant a joyful, exhilarated state. They also trigger the release of dopamine. Both endorphins and dopamine promote the development of new connections in the prefrontal cortex. Dopamine released from the midbrain also triggers the growth of nerve cells and blood vessels in the right prefrontal cortex and promotes the growth of dopamine receptors. A relative scarcity of such receptors and blood supply is thought to be one of the major physiological dimensions of ADD. The letters ADD may equally well stand for Attunement Deficit Disorder.

Although maybe love was too much to ask from his parents. They had lost so many children that perhaps they simply either wouldn't or couldn't surrender themselves wholly to the ones they now had. Eventually, both he and Hemming would leave them too, by choice or not, and then their losses would be complete.

good news is that we’re all doomed, and you can give up any sense of control. Resistance is futile. Many things are going to get worse and weaker, especially democracy and the muscles in your upper arms. Most deteriorating conditions, though, will have to do with your family, the family in which you were raised and your current one. A number of the best people will have died, badly, while the worst thrive. The younger middle-aged people struggle with the same financial, substance, and marital crises that their parents did, and the older middle-aged people are, like me, no longer even late-middle-aged. We’re early old age, with failing memories, hearing loss, and gum disease. And also, while I hate to sound pessimistic, there are also new, tiny, defenseless people who are probably doomed, too, to the mental ruin of ceaseless striving. What most of us live by and for is the love of family—blood family, where the damage occurred, and chosen, where a bunch of really nutty people fight back together. But both kinds of families can be as hard and hollow as bone, as mystical and common, as dead and alive, as promising and depleted. And by the same token, only redeeming familial love can save you from this crucible, along with nature and clean sheets. A

Adoption is outside. You act out what it feels like to be the one who doesn't belong. And you act it out by trying to do to others what has been done to you. It is impossible to believe anyone loves you for yourself. I never believed that my parents loved me. I tried to love them but it didn't work. It has taken me a long time to learn how to love - both the giving and the receiving. I have written about love obsessively, forensically, and I know/knew it as the highest value. I loved God of course, in the early days, and God loved me. That was something. And I loved animals and nature. And poetry. People were the problem. How do you love another person? How do you trust another person to love you? I had no idea. I thought that love was loss. Why is the measure of love loss?

Jay showed up after school with a bouquet of flowers and an armful of DVDs, although Violet couldn’t have cared less about either . . . he was all she wanted. She couldn’t help the electric thrill of excitement she felt when he came strolling in, grinning at her foolishly as if he hadn’t seen her in weeks rather than hours. He scooped her up from the couch and dropped her onto his lap as he sat down where she had been just a moment before. He was careful to arrange her ankle on a neatly stacked pile of pillows beside him. He stubbornly refused to hide his affection for her, and if Violet hadn’t known better she would have sword that he was going out of his way to make her self-conscious in her own home. Fortunately her parents were giving them some space for the time being, and they were left by themselves most of the time. “Did you miss me?” he asked arrogantly as he gently brushed his lips over hers, not bothering to wait for an answer. She smiled while she kissed him back, loving the topsy-turvy feeling that her stomach always got when he was so close to her. She wound her arms around his neck, forgetting that she was in the middle of the family room and not hidden away in the privacy of her bedroom. He pulled away from her, suddenly serious. “You know, we didn’t get much time alone yesterday. And I didn’t get a chance to tell you . . .” Violet was mesmerized by the thick timbre of his deep voice. She barely heard his words but rather concentrated on the fluid masculinity of his tone. “I feel like I’ve waited too long to finally have you, and then yesterday . . . when . . .” He stopped, seemingly at a loss, and he tried another approach. His hand stroked her cheek, igniting a response from deep within her. “I can’t imagine living without you,” he said, tenderly kissing her forehead, his warm breath fanning her brow. He paused thoughtfully for a moment before speaking again. “I love you, Violet. More than I ever could have imagined. And I don’t want to lose you . . . I can’t lose you.” It was her turn to look arrogant as she glanced up at him. “I know,” she stated smugly, shrugging her shoulder. He shoved her playfully but held on to her tightly so that she never really went anywhere. “What do you mean, ‘I know’? What kind of response is that?” His righteous indignation bordered on comical. He pulled her down into his arms so that his face was directly above hers. “Say it!” he commanded. She shook her head, pretending not to understand him. “What? What do you want me to say?” But then she giggled and ruined her baffled façade. He teased her with his mouth, leaning down to kiss her and then pulling away before his lips ever reached hers. He nuzzled her neck tantalizingly, only to stop once she responded. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to pull him closer, frustrated by his mocking ambush of her senses. “Sat it,” he whispered, his breath warm against her neck. She groaned, wanting him to put her out of her misery. “I love you too,” she rasped as she clung to him. “I love you so much . . .” His mouth moved to cover hers in an exhausting kiss that left them both breathless and craving more than they could have. Violet collapsed into his arms, gathering her wits and hoping that no one walking in on them anytime soon.

Peter Friedrich, wer bin ich? Peter Frederick, who am I? German or American? The answer was neither and both. I had German blood but an American mentality. This trip allowed me to understand that a man can make his home where ever he chooses. If I wanted, I could live happily in America. My heart fought and pleaded, saying it wasn't true, that I was German, and only in Germany would I be content. In one of the few times in my life, intellect overruled emotion. Germany wasn't the key to my happiness. I couldn't deny what I had experienced, and my last hope for a key to the castle door died. International adoption destroyed the connection to my heritage. It is only conjuncture to guess how my life might have turned out under different circumstances, but there is one certainty: If I had remained in the orphanage or had been adopted by German parents, I never would have suffered the loss of my national identity. If I had to be adopted by Americans, then they should have been of German descent.

The idea behind both concepts is that there must be an accounting, a ledger in the hearts and histories of a family. As if accepting a sum or taking a life will fill the void of the loss of a loved one." "It can't fill the void, but it can make things even," Adam said. "No. It does not. What you get is a deficit of two." "Then both are at an equal loss." Adam took a deep drag on his beer. "And how does this loss serve the memory of the loved one?" "It doesn't ... [v]engeance is selfish," Adam continued. "I've never tried to hide that." "Ah," Philip said. "Now we get to the heart of it. Adam, here is my question for you. Would you trade your claim to vengeance to set your brother free?" Talia watched the muscle twitch in Adam's jaw. It was a hard question, an impossible, painful question, especially after learning that Jacob had chosen his current state. Jacob had chosen to take the lives of his parents. He had reduced Adam's world to a haunted hotel with a group of mad scientists. Maybe she should say something. Change the subject. Seen any naked pictures of me today?

Mixed emotions are compounded when a separation involves the potential of irretrievable loss. When there is a chance that we will never see a loved one again, we protect ourselves from the prospect of losing that person by becoming ambivalent-- holding our spouse at arm's length, picking a fight with a parent, or shutting a sibling out even while he or she is still physically present. Anticipating a loss, we both cling to our loved ones and push them away. We will resist their leaving and at the same time want to be finished with the goodbye.

I figure, we used to be part of our mother’s body. I mean, we did. I don’t just figure we did. That part is a given, but this next part is what I figure. She breathed for us, and pumped blood through us. And there’s only one person in the entire world we can say that about. So we’re less separate from our mothers than anybody else on the planet. We’re not literally one body with them anymore, but I think we carry this really instinctive subconscious memory of the time when we were. Until we could breathe on our own there was no surviving without her. And even when we came out into the world we would have died without her care. Actually somebody else could have cared for us at that point, but we didn’t know it. We just knew she did. So when we lose our mother, it’s different. It’s just different from any other loss. And it isn’t all about what a great relationship it was. It isn’t necessarily a loss of all these wonderful things you shared. It’s not only with the best mother-child bonds. It’s all of them. If it was great, you miss that. If it was troublesome, you suddenly realize the door has been slammed on it ever being any better way. So no matter what it was, it’s really hard to lose. Anyway, that’s my observation from watching both my parents lose their mothers.

In these examples, triangulation becomes a defense. Triangulation becomes a way to offset the abuse of power and to get clarity about the wrongs committed. This kind of triangulation occurs in families where one member is abusing his or her power. Like a poor boss, an abusive parent who is deaf to protest gives the children no choice but to talk about that parent. When a parent refuses to hear the issues of adult children, the children turn either to each other or to outsiders, but both sides lose. The parent loses an opportunity for greater closeness with the child and the adult child must grieve the loss of the sought-for resolution that cannot come about.

Risking a glance at the dignified young man beside her- what was his name?- Mr. Arthurson, Arterton?- Pandora decided to try her hand at some small talk. "It was very fine weather today, wasn't it?" she said. He set down his flatware and dabbed at both corners of his mouth with his napkin before replying. "Yes, quite fine." Encouraged, Pandora asked, "What kind of clouds do you like better- cumulus or stratocumulus?" He regarded her with a slight frown. After a long pause, he asked, "What is the difference?" "Well, cumulus are the fluffier, rounder clouds, like this heap of potatoes on my plate." Using her fork, Pandora spread, swirled, and dabbed the potatoes. "Stratocumulus are flatter and can form lines or waves- like this- and can either form a large mass or break into smaller pieces." He was expressionless as he watched her. "I prefer flat clouds that look like a blanket." "Altostratus?" Pandora asked in surprise, setting down her fork. "But those are the boring clouds. Why do you like them?" "They usually mean it's going to rain. I like rain." This showed promise of actually turning into a conversation. "I like to walk in the rain, too," Pandora exclaimed. "No, I don't like to walk in it. I like to stay in the house." After casting a disapproving glance at her plate, the man returned his attention to eating. Chastened, Pandora let out a noiseless sigh. Picking up her fork, she tried to inconspicuously push her potatoes into a proper heap again. Fact #64 Never sculpt your food to illustrate a point during small talk. Men don't like it. As Pandora looked up, she discovered Phoebe's gaze on her. She braced inwardly for a sarcastic remark. But Phoebe's voice was gentle as she spoke. "Henry and I once saw a cloud over the English Channel that was shaped in a perfect cylinder. It went on as far as the eye could see. Like someone had rolled up a great white carpet and set it in the sky." It was the first time Pandora had ever heard Phoebe mention her late husband's name. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you and he ever try to find shapes in the clouds?" "Oh, all the time. Henry was very clever- he could find dolphins, ships, elephants, and roosters. I could never see a shape until he pointed it out. But then it would appear as if by magic." Phoebe's gray eyes turned crystalline with infinite variations of tenderness and wistfulness. Although Pandora had experienced grief before, having lost both parents and a brother, she understood that this was a different kind of loss, a heavier weight of pain. Filled with compassion and sympathy, she dared to say, "He... he sounds like a lovely man." Phoebe smiled faintly, their gazes meeting in a moment of warm connection. "He was," she said. "Someday I'll tell you about him." And finally Pandora understood where a little small talk about the weather might lead.

Rocco was gripped with the panic he often experienced around her, around himself. He seemed to be both here now and simultaneously five years in the future looking back at this moment, at the loss of this moment. He was always sliding past the nowness of being with her, throwing himself at her like a cranked-up insincere clown for an exhausting fifteen minutes a day or getting cozy with booze in order to achieve the proper mood, and from the time she was born he had felt he was on his deathbed, remembering with regret how skittish and slippery his time with her had been. Had been, as if she were a hard thirty-seven and divorced instead of a two-year old baby, as if he were eighty-six and senile instead of forty-three and slightly overweight.

We that are bred up in learning, and destinated by our parents to this end, we suffer our childhood in the grammar-school, which Austin calls magnam tyrannidem, et grave malum, and compares it to the torments of martyrdom; when we come to the university, if we live of the college allowance, as Phalaris objected to the Leontines, [Greek: pan ton endeis plaen limou kai phobou] , needy of all things but hunger and fear, or if we be maintained but partly by our parents' cost, do expend in unnecessary maintenance, books and degrees, before we come to any perfection, five hundred pounds, or a thousand marks. If by this price of the expense of time, our bodies and spirits, our substance and patrimonies, we cannot purchase those small rewards, which are ours by law, and the right of inheritance, a poor parsonage, or a vicarage of 50 l. per annum, but we must pay to the patron for the lease of a life (a spent and out-worn life) either in annual pension, or above the rate of a copyhold, and that with the hazard and loss of our souls, by simony and perjury, and the forfeiture of all our spiritual preferments, in esse and posse, both present and to come. What father after a while will be so improvident to bring up his son to his great charge, to this necessary beggary? What Christian will be so irreligious, to bring up his son in that course of life, which by all probability and necessity, coget ad turpia, enforcing to sin, will entangle him in simony and perjury, when as the poet said, Invitatus ad hæc aliquis de ponte negabit: a beggar's brat taken from the bridge where he sits a begging, if he knew the inconvenience, had cause to refuse it." This being thus, have not we fished fair all this while, that are initiate divines, to find no better fruits of our labours, [2030] hoc est cur palles, cur quis non prandeat hoc est? do we macerate ourselves for this? Is it for this we rise so early all the year long? [2031] "Leaping" (as he saith) "out of our beds, when we hear the bell ring, as if we had heard a thunderclap." If this be all the respect, reward and honour we shall have, [2032] frange leves calamos, et scinde Thalia libellos: let us give over our books, and betake ourselves to some other course of life; to what end should we study?

But it was in the life-saving competition that Stanley Judkins's conduct was most blameable and had the most far-reaching effects. The practice, as you know, was to throw a selected lower boy, of suitable dimensions, fully dressed, with his hands and feet tied together, into the deepest part of Cuckoo Weir, and to time the Scout whose turn it was to rescue him. On every occasion when he was entered for this competition Stanley Judkins was seized, at the critical moment, with a severe fit of cramp, which caused him to roll on the ground and utter alarming cries. This naturally distracted the attention of those present from the boy in the water, and had it not been for the presence of Arthur Wilcox the death-roll would have been a heavy one. As it was, the Lower Master found it necessary to take a firm line and say that the competition must be discontinued. It was in vain that Mr. Beasley Robinson represented to him that in five competitions only four lower boys had actually succumbed. The Lower Master said that he would be the last to interfere in any way with the work of the Scouts; but that three of these boys had been valued members of his choir, and both he and Dr. Ley felt that the inconvenience caused by the losses outweighed the advantages of the competitions. Besides, the correspondence with the parents of these boys had become annoying, and even distressing: they were no longer satisfied with the printed form which he was in the habit of sending out, and more than one of them had actually visited Eton and taken up much of his valuable time with complaints. So the life-saving competition is now a thing of the past.

The danger was not gone—Helen knew that. Each day spent together, the existence of this tiny charge was in her hands. It suddenly seemed the most perplexing fact of life—it was up to flawed, bruised, broken adults to bring up angels. Helen wanted to offer the child a place of safety, but no matter where Lyric went, that could not be found. Not for sure. If she stayed, they would each risk hurt, loss, and suffering. But it was no more than anyone else could offer. Helen realized, as she brushed a strand from the girl’s face and tucked it behind her small ear, that if she didn’t take that risk, she could be risking even more. For both of them. Lyric blinked, yet the look in her eyes never left. Helen closed her own eyes and leaned forward, placing a soft kiss on the child’s forehead. I will fail. She knew. I will fail you thousands of times more. But if we stay together, I will spend every day we have doing all I can to keep you from losing that look in your eyes. She nodded slowly to herself, to the unspoken words inside her. When you see me, I hope you always see a home.

timelines register the pain of her loss for the first time. “I’m sorry, honey.” He remembers the day she died, eight weeks ago. She had become almost childlike by that point, her mind gone. He had to feed her, dress her, bathe her. But this was better than the time right before, when she had enough cognitive function left to be aware of her complete confusion. In her lucid moments, she described the feeling as being lost in a dreamlike forest—no identity, no sense of when or where she was. Or alternatively, being absolutely certain she was fifteen years old and still living with her parents in Boulder, and trying to square her foreign surroundings with her sense of place and time and self. She often wondered if this was what her mother felt in her final year. “This timeline—before my mind started to fracture—was the best of them all. Of my very long life. Do you remember that trip we took—I think it was during our first life together—to see the emperor penguins migrate? Remember how we fell in love with this continent? The way it makes you feel like you’re the only people in the world? Kind of appropriate, no?” She looks off camera, says, “What? Don’t be jealous. You’ll be watching this one day. You’ll carry the knowledge of every moment we spent together, all one hundred and forty-four years.” She looks back at the camera. “I need to tell you, Barry, that I couldn’t have made it this long without you. I couldn’t have kept trying to stop the inevitable. But we’re stopping today. As you know by now, I’ve lost the ability to map memory. Like Slade, I used the chair too many times. So I won’t be going back. And even if you returned to a point on the timeline where my consciousness was young and untraveled, there’s no guarantee you could convince me to build the chair. And to what end? We’ve tried everything. Physics, pharmacology, neurology. We even struck out with Slade. It’s time to admit we failed and let the world get on with destroying itself, which it seems so keen on doing.” Barry sees himself step into the frame and take a seat beside Helena. He puts his arm around her. She snuggles into him, her head on his chest. Such a surreal sensation to now remember that day when she decided to record a message for the Barry who would one day merge into his consciousness. “We have four years until doomsday.” “Four years, five months, eight days,” Barry-on-the-screen says. “But who’s counting?” “We’re going to spend that time together. You have those memories now. I hope they’re beautiful.” They are. Before her mind broke completely, they had two good years, which they lived free from the burden of trying to stop the world from remembering. They lived those years simply and quietly. Walks on the icecap to see the Aurora Australis. Games, movies, and cooking down here on the main level. The occasional trip to New Zealand’s South Island or Patagonia. Just being together. A thousand small moments, but enough to have made life worth living. Helena was right. They were the best years of his lives too. “It’s odd,” she says. “You’re watching this right now, presumably four years from this moment, although I’m sure you’ll watch it before then to see my face and hear my voice after I’m gone.” It’s true. He did. “But my moment feels just as real to me as yours does to you. Are they both real? Is it only our consciousness that makes it so? I can imagine you sitting there in four years, even though you’re right beside me in this moment, in my moment, and I feel like I can reach through the camera and touch you. I wish I could. I’ve experienced over two hundred years, and at the end of it all, I think Slade was right. It’s just a product of our evolution the way we experience reality and time from moment to moment. How we differentiate between past, present, and future. But we’re intelligent enough to be aware of the illusion, even as we live by it, and so,

One of the most astonishing and precious things about motherhood," writes Kathleen Norris, "is the brave way in which women consent to give birth to creatures who will one day die." I am not so brave. Far more frightening to me than the threat of interrupted plans or endless to-do lists is the thread of loving someone as intensely as a mother loves her child. To invite in to the universe a new life, knowing full well that no one can protect thatl ife from the currents of evil that pulse through our world and through our very bloodstreams, seems a grave and awesome task that is at once unspeakably selfish and miraculously good. I am frightened enough by how fervently I love Dan, by my absolute revolt against the possibility -- no, the inevitable reality -- that he will get hurt, that he will experience loss, and that one day he will die. I'm not sure my heart is big enough to wrap itself around another breakable soul. I was once waiting in an airport next to a woman whose six-year-old daughter suffered from a rare heart defect that could take her life at any moment. In spite of mounting medical bills and the pressures of raising both a child with special needs and another younger daughter, the woman said she and her husband planned to adopt a boy from Ethiopia later that year. "What made you want to grow your family in the midst of all this turmoil?" I asked. "Why did the Jews have children after the Holocaust?" she asked back. "Why do women keep trying after multiple miscarraiges? It's our way of shaking our fists at the future and saying, you know what?--we will be hopeful; things will get better; you can't scare us after all. Having children is, ultimately, an act of faith.

We can cry tears for our abandoning of God, tears for our betrayals of love, tears for our children, parents, friends and animals, tears for our denials of love, tears for our judgments of love, tears for the loss of our cherished yet naïve ideals about love, tears for our separations from love, tears for things we know not what we are crying for, and there is no need to know. We can cry tears of compassion for others’ pain as our own, we cry tears for our own heartbreak. We can cry and laugh at the same time, feeling both sadness and joy, heartbreak and hilarity. In this, we are not attached to the negative emotion (from the soul’s perspective) and can feel both sides of release and expansion at the same time. Tears of sweet madness, tears of pain, tears of sorrow, tears like honey that drip like nectar, remaking anew all that they touch. There are the tears of sweet sorrow, being the vessel for the woes of the world to be felt on behalf of all; someone has to cry if no one else does. The tears of grief as you feel your deepest pains with the aid of your greatest love of all loves, God; the tears of the sheer joy of the soul, the tears of loving orgasm as you make love with your Beloved whilst in prayer with God; the intimate tears of adoration for a Soul Mate in the act of making love, as the soul is touched on every level of love, human and Divine. Tears of gratitude, being touched by God in new and virgin places that have always been pure; tears of being touched in the ecstatic yearning, desire, shaking prayer and inflowing of God’s Love; tears borne from your desire to receive that love so keenly, so heartfully; tears of expansion and release. The intimacy of tears of adoration, of wondrous awe and loving gratitude for Beloved God, and more, and more, and more … Some tears can never be described, for they encompass all emotions at the same time. I wish you these tears of all tears.

children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more like a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture; you must trust that you being a very good you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will somehow matter in the social fabric, save a thread or two from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the sure and certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, at all, one bit, and in fact the vast majority of the things you do right will go utterly unremarked; except, perhaps, in ways we will never know or understand, by the Arab Jew who once shouted about his cloak, and may have been somehow also the One who invented and infuses this universe and probably a million others—not to put a hard number on it or anything. Humility, the final frontier, as my late brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none among us is actually rich or famous or more beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true finally about humility. This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that there is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I am a muddle and a conundrum, shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

Mor rubbed her face. 'You were right about me, though. You were...' Her hand shook as she lowered it. She gnawed on her lip, throat bobbing. Her eyes at last met mine- bright and fearful and anguished. Her voice broke as she said, 'I don't love Azriel.' I remained perfectly still. Listening. 'No, that's not true, either. I- I do love him. As my family. And sometimes I wonder if it can be... more, but... I do not love him. Not the way he- he feels for me.' The last words were a trembling whisper. 'Have you ever loved him? That way?' 'No.' She wrapped her arms around herself. 'No, I don't... You see...' I'd never seen her at such a loss for words. She closed her eyes, fingers digging into her skin. 'I can't love him like that.' 'Why?' 'Because I prefer females.' For a heartbeat, only silence rippled through me. 'But- you sleep with males. You slept with Helion...' And had looked terrible the next day. Tortured and not sated. Not just because of Azriel, but... because it wasn't what she wanted. 'I do find pleasure in them. In both.' Her hands were shaking so fiercely that she gripped herself even tighter. 'But I've known, since I was little more than a child, that I prefer females. That I'm... attracted to them more over males. That I connect with them, care for them more on that soul-deep level But at the Hewn City... All they care about is breeding their bloodlines, making alliances through marriage. Someone like me... If I were to marry where my heart desired, there would be no offspring. My father's bloodline would have ended with me. I knew it- knew that I could never tell them. Ever. People like me... we're reviled by them. Considered selfish, for not being able to pass on the bloodline. So I never breathed a word of it. And then... then my father betrothed me to Eris, and... And it wasn't just the prospect of marriage to him that scared me. No, I knew I could survive his brutality, his cruelty and coldness. I was- I am stronger than him. It was... It was the idea of being bred like a prize mare, of being forced to give up that one part of me...' Her mouth wobbled, and I reached for her hand, prying it off her arm. I squeezed gently as tears began sliding down her flushed face. 'I slept with Cassian because I knew it would mean little to him, too. Because I knew doing it would buy me a shot at freedom. If I had told my parents that I preferred females... You've met my father. He and Beron would have tied me to that marriage bed for Eris. Literally. But sullied... I knew my shot at freedom lay there. And I saw how Azriel looked at me... knew how he felt. And if I'd chosen him...' She shook her head. 'It wouldn't have been fair to him. So I slept with Cassian, and Azriel though I deemed him unsuitable, and then everything happened and...' Her fingers tightened on mine. 'After Azriel found me with that note nailed to my womb... I tried to explain. But he started to confess what he felt, and I panicked, and... and to get him to stop, to keep him from saying he loved me, I just turned and left, and... and I couldn't face explaining it after that. To Az, to the others.' She loosed a shuddering breath. 'I sleep with males in part because I enjoy it, but... also to keep people from looking too closely.

Intuitively we all know that it is better to feel than to not feel. Our emotions are not a luxury but an essential aspect of our makeup. We have them not just for the pleasure of feeling but because they have crucial survival value. They orient us, interpret the world for us, give us vital information without which we cannot thrive. They tell us what is dangerous and what is benign, what threatens our existence and what will nurture our growth. Imagine how disabled we would be if we could not see or hear or taste or sense heat or cold or physical pain. To shut down emotions is to lose an indispensable part of our sensory apparatus and, beyond that, an indispensable part of who we are. Emotions are what make life worthwhile, exciting, challenging, and meaningful. They drive our explorations of the world, motivate our discoveries, and fuel our growth. Down to the very cellular level, human beings are either in defensive mode or in growth mode, but they cannot be in both at the same time. When children become invulnerable, they cease to relate to life as infinite possibility, to themselves as boundless potential, and to the world as a welcoming and nurturing arena for their self-expression. The invulnerability imposed by peer orientation imprisons children in their limitations and fears. No wonder so many of them these days are being treated for depression, anxiety, and other disorders. The love, attention, and security only adults can offer liberates children from the need to make themselves invulnerable and restores to them that potential for life and adventure that can never come from risky activities, extreme sports, or drugs. Without that safety our children are forced to sacrifice their capacity to grow and mature psychologically, to enter into meaningful relationships, and to pursue their deepest and most powerful urges for self-expression. In the final analysis, the flight from vulnerability is a flight from the self. If we do not hold our children close to us, the ultimate cost is the loss of their ability to hold on to their own truest selves.

Loss of Self – when people’s lives are dominated by emotion, which is the result of living in a tumultuous home with addiction, they become ‘fused’ or dominated by automatic emotional responses. This differs from a healthy mindset where the person has balance between emotion and intellect. Decision making and coping with stress is much easier for this type of person. They are also more independent. This is not the case with a codependent person. Violence and neglect – Both are common in families with addiction. One study done in three major metropolitan areas revealed that 78% of all cases of children put into foster care involved substance abuse by the parents. Homicide is only a step away. Emotional damage – Children raised in households with addiction have negative feelings deeply imbedded, including anger, hate, guilt, blame, and shame.

I realize it has taken the death of both my parents for me to finally begin to see who I am, but not through their eyes. I’ll never forget them; my parents I have been in lockstep ever since I was young child, but their words drowned out my own voice. I’m starting to come into my own. (240)

Your parents—both sets of them,” Greyson said. “They may be gone, but if you take the time to remember, it helps to know how loved you were. You’ll still feel the loss—you always will, it’s proof of how much you cared for them—but it’s better to remember the love and mourn them than it is to avoid thinking of them so

Clients with whom I have worked have occasionally experienced this kind of intense, life-redefining frame change as a result of major loss—both expected or unexpected—such as a corporate takeover, the death of a partner, spouse, or child, or the diagnosis of a critical disease, to name just a few. An intense transformational learning experience can also result from a gain, such as the realization that over the years their income has ballooned to substantially more than that of their parents, a successful corporate takeover, the birth of a child, recovery from a critical illness, or adjusting to living in a different country. Executives who have experienced learning in these circumstances sometimes claim to feel “enlightened” or to have become a “new person.

I left the practice of law when it became clear that my autistic son needed an advocate. The collective chaos of managing three children, a fourth pregnancy, two nannies, a housekeeper, and a demanding career finally overwhelmed me. My husband and I considered hiring someone to manage our autistic son’s education and therapies, but I simply couldn’t delegate his care. I needed firsthand knowledge of his diagnosis and how to treat it. Leaving professional life was hard. I walked away from friends, a schedule, a salary, and social stature. I plunged into full-time parenting, something at which I was not proficient—something that still perplexes me! However, remaining in the workforce would have been harder. I made a free choice, fully apprised of the risk I took, and I have never looked back. Philosopher Ayn Rand believed there is no such thing as sacrifice. Rather, there are only rational decisions that bring us closer to our ultimate goals. In other words, the choices we make are irrefutable evidence of what we value. Even generous acts reflect a set of values. Living in accordance with those values gratifies us, hence our gain outweighs our loss. In a world of scarcity and competing demands, Rand’s view has a certain hard-nosed rationality. We give up something we want for something we want more. We each have a single life, made up of finite seconds that tick inexorably away. How we choose to spend each day both expresses our values and carries us closer to our ultimate goals, even if we have never articulated precisely what those values and goals are. I was fortunate that my decision to come home had a positive, even miraculous, outcome for my son. Others make similar decisions without such obvious payback. I still have professional aspirations, and I’m pursuing them wholeheartedly, but I will not return to the practice of law. My time at home focused my values and helped me understand what I want to do with my remaining days, months, and years.

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

I am sorry, Anna. I’ve talked about losing two brothers, both during my adulthood, and I never considered that you have losses of your own.” He did not raise the issue of the departed Mr. Seaton, for which Anna was profoundly grateful. “It was a long time ago,” Anna said. “My parents did not suffer. Their carriage careened down a muddy embankment, and their necks were broken. The poor horse, by contrast, had to wait hours to be shot.” “Dear God.” The earl shuddered. “Were you in that carriage, as well?” “I was not, though I often used to wish I had been.” “Anna…” His tone was concerned, and she found it needful in that moment to study her empty wine glass. “I have become maudlin by virtue of imbibing.” “Hush,” Westhaven chided, crawling across the blanket. He wrapped her in his arms then wrestled her down to lie beside him, her head on his shoulder. She cuddled into him, feeling abruptly cold except where his body lay along hers.

all these wonderful things you shared. It’s not only with the best mother-child bonds. It’s all of them. If it was great, you miss that. If it was troublesome, you suddenly realize the door has been slammed on it ever being any better way. So no matter what it was, it’s really hard to lose. Anyway, that’s my observation from watching both my parents lose their mothers.” “It’s a good observation,” I said.

The grandiose person is never really free, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others and because his self-respect is dependent on qualities, functions, and achievements that can suddenly fail. #8 Grandiosity and depression are often seen together in patients. Grandiosity is the false self, and depression is the void that is created when the false self breaks down. The former child no longer exists, and the former parents are now old and dependent. #9 Grandiosity and depression are similar in that they are both a result of the loss of a potential true self. They are also similar in that they are both a result of the denial of the emotional world of a person’s childhood.

The child’s attachment system wants to move towards their attachment figure, while the protective defensive mechanism of flight / flight / freeze / appease wants to move away from the attachment figure, and the two systems are coactivated. The predominant factor leading to this style in childhood is having parents who are suffering from their own unresolved trauma or losses. When a parent has a history of unresolved trauma, they are more easily overwhelmed by life’s demands and emotionally flooded by their child’s emotional states. Unable to regulate their own emotions, parents with their own history of unhealed trauma, neglect or abuse might then act out, lash out or completely tune out in ways that are scary to the child. Whether that parent is being terrifyingly overresponsive or frighteningly underresponsive, the child learns that they’re not safe with the very person who’s supposed to protect them. Research has shown that approximately 20 to 40 percent of the general population has some degree of a disorganized attachment style, and approximately 80 percent of children who have experienced abuse develop a disorganized attachment style to one or both of their parents.

Horseman is the haunting sequel to the 1820 novel The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and takes place two decades after the events that unfolded in the original. We are introduced to 14-year-old trans boy Bente “Ben” Van Brunt, who has been raised by his idiosyncratic grandparents - lively Brom “Bones” Van Brunt and prim Kristina Van Tassel - in the small town of Sleepy Hollow, New York, where gossip and rumour run rife and people are exceedingly closed-minded. He has lived with them on their farm ever since he was orphaned when his parents, Bendix and Fenna, died in suspicious and enigmatic circumstances. Ben and his only friend, Sander, head into the woodland one Autumn day to play a game known as Sleepy Hollow Boys, but they are both a little startled when they witness a group of men they recognise from the village discussing the headless, handless body of a local boy that has just been found. But this isn't the end; it is only the beginning. From that moment on, Ben feels an otherworldly presence following him wherever he ventures, and one day while scanning his grandfather’s fields he catches a fleeting glimpse of a weird creature seemingly sucking blood from a victim. An evil of an altogether different nature. But Ben knows this is not the elusive Horseman who has been the primary focus of folkloric tales in the area for many years because he can both feel and hear his presence. However, unlike others who fear the Headless Horseman, Ben can hear whispers in the woods at the end of a forbidden path, and he has visions of the Horseman who says he is there to protect him. Ben soon discovers connections between the recent murders and the death of his parents and realises he has been shaded from the truth about them his whole life. Thus begins a journey to unravel the mystery and establish his identity in the process. This is an enthralling and compulsively readable piece of horror fiction building on Irvings’ solid ground. Evoking such feelings as horror, terror, dread and claustrophobic oppressiveness, this tale invites you to immerse yourself in its sinister, creepy and disturbing narrative. The staggering beauty of the remote village location is juxtaposed with the darkness of the demons and devilish spirits that lurk there, and the village residents aren't exactly welcoming to outsiders or accepting of anyone different from their norm. What I love the most is that it is subtle and full of nuance, instead of the usual cheap thrills with which the genre is often pervaded, meaning the feeling of sheer panic creeps up on you when you least expect, and you come to the sudden realisation that the story has managed to get under your skin, into your psyche and even into your dreams (or should that be nightmares?) Published at a time when the nights are closing in and the light diminishes ever more rapidly, not to mention with Halloween around the corner, this is the perfect autumnal read for the spooky season full of both supernatural and real-world horrors. It begins innocuously enough to lull you into a false sense of security but soon becomes bleak and hauntingly atmospheric as well as frightening before descending into true nightmare-inducing territory. A chilling and eerie romp, and a story full of superstition, secrets, folklore and old wives’ tales and with messages about love, loss, belonging, family, grief, being unapologetically you and becoming more accepting and tolerant of those who are different. Highly recommended.

While their feelings are normal, it is not your responsibility to fix them or to take them on as your own. You get to decide both your willingness and emotional capacity to support your parents through any difficult emotions that arise. Celebrating gender exploration and transition allows us to reframe this feeling of loss as similar to any other developmental milestone. Like a parent who cries as their child goes off to kindergarten, change often mixes loss with pride and possibility.

We identify six explanatory threads: the rising political polarization and cross-party animosity of U.S. politics, which has led to rising hate crimes and harassment on campus; rising levels of teen anxiety and depression, which have made many students more desirous of protection and more receptive to the Great Untruths; changes in parenting practices, which have amplified children’s fears even as childhood becomes increasingly safe; the loss of free play and unsupervised risk-taking, both of which kids need to become self-governing adults; the growth of campus bureaucracy and expansion of its protective mission; and an increasing passion for justice, combined with changing ideas about what justice requires.

First comes the Emotion Regulation Network. I consider this primary, because I believe that unless we have the ability to regulate our emotions, we cannot enjoy a happy life. We can’t sustain Bliss Brain for long enough to spark neural plasticity if our consciousness is easily hijacked by negative emotions like anger, resentment, guilt, fear, and shame. The Emotion Regulation Network controls our reactivity to disturbing events. Regulating emotions is the meditator’s top priority. Emotion will distract us from our path every time. Love and fear are fabulous for survival because of their evolutionary role in keeping us safe. Love kept us bonded to others of our species, which gave us strength in numbers. Fear made us wary of potential threats. But to the meditator seeking inner peace, emotion = distraction. In the stories of Buddha and Jesus in Chapter 2, we saw how they were tempted by both the love of gain and the fear of loss. Only when they held their emotions steady, refusing either type of bait, were they able to break through to enlightenment. THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF CONSCIOUSNESS BY EMOTION Remember a time when you swore you’d act rationally but didn’t? Perhaps you were annoyed by a relationship partner’s habit. Or a team member’s attitude. Or a child’s behavior? You screamed and yelled in response. Or perhaps you didn’t but wanted to. So you decided that next time you would stay calm and have a rational discussion. But as the emotional temperature of the conversation increased, you found yourself screaming and yelling again. Despite your best intentions, emotion overwhelmed you. Without training, when negative emotions arise, our capacity for rational thought is eclipsed. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux calls this “the hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion.” Consciousness is hijacked by the emotions generated by fearful unwanted experiences or attractive desired ones. We need to regulate our emotions over and over again to gradually establish positive state stability. In positive state stability, when someone around us—whether a colleague, spouse, child, parent, politician, blogger, newscaster, or corporate spokesperson—says or does something that triggers negative emotions, we remain neutral. The same applies to negative thoughts arising from within our own consciousness. Positive state stability allows us to feel happy despite the chatter of our own minds. Getting triggered happens quickly. LeDoux found that it takes less than 1 second from hearing an emotionally triggering word to a reaction in the brain’s limbic system, the part that processes emotion. When we’re overwhelmed by emotion, rational thinking, sound judgment, memory, and objective evaluation disappear. But once we’re stable in that positive state, we’ve inoculated ourselves against negative influences, both from our own consciousness and from the outside world. We maintain that positive state over time, and state becomes trait.

it is the self we are always looking for, or always trying to escape, and fiction provides us with both options; they are wrapped together, these flights to and from who we are. We read because we are looking to see what others are thinking, feeling, seeing; how they are acting out their frustrations, their happiness, their addictions; we see what we can learn. How do people manage marriage and loss and illness and sex and parenting? How do they do all this? Often, the emotions that fill our inner lives are too large to make sense of; chaos and irrationality jump around inside us. To enter the form of a story is to calm down, or excite ourselves, within a controlled space.

During a belated New Year’s cleaning, I come across my grad-school coursework on the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Scanning my notes, I begin to remember his story. Frankl was born in 1905, and as a boy, he became intensely interested in psychology. By high school, he began an active correspondence with Freud. He went on to study medicine and lecture on the intersection of psychology and philosophy, or what he called logotherapy, from the Greek word logos, or “meaning.” Whereas Freud believed that people are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain (his famous pleasure principle), Frankl maintained that people’s primary drive isn’t toward pleasure but toward finding meaning in their lives. He was in his thirties when World War II broke out, putting him, a Jew, in jeopardy. Offered immigration to the United States, he turned it down so as not to abandon his parents, and a year later, the Nazis forced Frankl and his wife to have her pregnancy terminated. In a matter of months, he and other family members were deported to concentration camps, and when Frankl was finally freed, three years later, he learned that the Nazis had killed his wife, his brother, and both of his parents. Freedom under these circumstances might have led to despair. After all, the hope of what awaited Frankl and his fellow prisoners upon their release was now gone—the people they cared about were dead, their families and friends wiped out. But Frankl wrote what became an extraordinary treatise on resilience and spiritual salvation, known in English as Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he shares his theory of logotherapy as it relates not just to the horrors of concentration camps but also to more mundane struggles. He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Indeed, Frankl remarried, had a daughter, published prolifically, and spoke around the world until his death at age ninety-two. Rereading these notes, I thought of my conversations with Wendell. Scribbled in my grad-school spiral were the words Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose our response, Frankl was saying, even under the specter of death. The same was true of John’s loss of his mother and son, Julie’s illness, Rita’s regrettable past, and Charlotte’s upbringing. I couldn’t think of a single patient to whom Frankl’s ideas didn’t apply, whether it was about extreme trauma or an interaction with a difficult family member. More than sixty years later, Wendell was saying I could choose too—that the jail cell was open on both sides. I particularly liked this line from Frankl’s book: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Stress is a demand on the organism that is beyond the capacity of the organism to deal with. And it has elements of uncertainty, lack of information and loss of control and connection. The more isolated you are, the more stressed you are. Now, in our society, because of our breakdown of community structures, clan, family, extended family.. people are more isolated and the demands are also greater, both parents having to work now to provide living for the family. Parents are distracted by anxiety about economic conditions, they have less support because relationships are more difficult, marriages are very stressed (there's a fairly high divorce rate) and a lot of marriages even without divorce are under strain. And all this makes for a lot of emotional stress on the part of the parents, which gets translated to the kids. Not because the parents are not doing their best, not because the parents are not dedicated or devoted, but because they are stressed. A whole number of studies have shown that parents who are stressed, their children are more likely to have asthma. In other words, the child's lung function is actually affected by the emotional stress on the parent and it's physiologically very straightforward. The child is very plugged into the parent, emotionally and even biologically and whatever stresses the parent will stress the child.

On job of parents - " Their job is to love you, protect you as best as they can, try to understand you, and enjoy your laughter. I hope they will give you both roots and wings. When they give you roots, you will feel safe, loved, and secure, knowing they genuinely want to understand the person you are. When they give you wings, you will feel free to think whatever you want to think, free to explore the world of your heart and mind and the world outside".

Like both Mary’s parents—as I would later learn from Mary herself—my mother never found in the various bounties of her new country anything like sufficient compensation for the loss of what she’d left behind.

One of the underlying shifts following my father’s death was getting used to the fact that I was no longer protected by him.  Parents look after us during our childhood, and many continue to do so in adulthood. When this feeling of protection is taken away, it can result in an intense feeling of vulnerability and loneliness. The unconditional love that there once was, is no longer there to provide support. This varies from one person to the next, and can depend upon the relative ages of the bereaved and the parent, as well as the nature of the relationship and personalities involved. If both parents are now lost or absent the feeling of being alone in the world can be very frightening.