Of Riding Ellipticals, Counting Minutes, and The Challenge of Parenting …
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles and Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
Like the teacher in my psychology program who said that the hardest thing about parenting was the time required, I find that I never have enough.
Mothering three daughters, seeing to my husband, or rather attending our marriage, along with my work as a psychotherapist, and writing novels proves daunting.
I count minutes in much the same way that I count calories.
Frustration continually arises as I reprimand myself for lack of efficiency.
“I’m working as hard as I can,” I say to myself.
But am I working smarter?
I do not know.
Personal experience has
Of Fissures and Cracks, Parenting, and The Laboratory of Home …
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
A mother of three ages, 24, 20 and 13, all daughters, I find myself, a wife of thirty years, psychotherapist, oftentimes growing cynical, not so much with the children of our culture and society, but having lost patience with the parents, or should I say, adults, who suppose themselves experts at everything and therefore question nothing of themselves, life or their children.
This is not The Mommy Psychologist.
We would all do well to heed her byline regarding our own lives and concerning most matters in life– “ … the child psychologist who thought she had all the answers to parenting until she became one herself. “
She, along with her posts inspire me–
Of Love, Nurturing and Outliers…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
In a culture where citizens and institutions emphasize work and accumulation of wealth, and where ascertaining the basic necessities of life cost a small fortune, all of us can easily descend into believing, and rather unconsciously, that lacking a trust fund in which to dip our fingers and secure these necessities, along with the various accoutrements society demands we provide our children–iphones, their own personal computer, ipads, ipods, televisions, designer shoes, etc–we lack what it takes to parent well.
And yet parents who possess tons of
Of Actions, Integrity and Trusting Our Choices…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
In stating, “…mothers and daughters cannot serve as best friends to the other…,” Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer add in an excerpt from Too Close for Comfort: Questioning the Intimacy of Today’s New Mother-Daughter Relationship , that the …basic question… a mother must answer is: “…Do you trust your daughter to be an independent and self-sufficient woman? Can you support her in making choices and doing things differently from how you would do them?”
The answer a mother offers lies within her ability or inability to trust
Of Breaths, Challenges and Handing Over the Reins…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
“…[M]others and daughters can have a close bond, but should never take it to the level of being best friends…” say Susan Morris Shaffer and Linda Perlman Gordon, co-authors of Too Close for Comfort: Questioning the Intimacy of Today’s New Mother-Daughter Relationship.
“A best friend is different than a mother-daughter relationship,” says Shaffer in her interview
Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
Writing teacher and mentor, Clive Matson, always said that if a writer found her or himself wanting and/or needing to explain her or his story that the reader might gain the author’s intended message, the author needed to revise their story further.
Completing a manuscript requires more than simply writing the story, editing and revising it for clarity regarding grammar and typos, or even for development of plot.
Within each story or novel lives the narrative of that story, and how it came into being.
The author’s understanding and exploration of this process informs
Of Alice Miller, Amy Chua, and Parenting as a Way of Growth and Transformation…
Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under ... anjuellefloyd ..., Articles & Essays, Articles and Essays, Relationships
A beneficiary of the Civil Rights Era, I entered integration in third grade carrying with me the missive delivered to many middle-class African-American children around the country: “Integration [of schools] offers an opportunity to work even harder. You may sit next to white students, but you will need to prove yourself. You will need to work hard and be better at all that you do.”
While my mother and father loathed slothfulness and laziness, this missive added pressure to an already weighty responsibility.
The result has been that I, like many African-Americans of my age and social class are and continue to be over achievers.
The concept of always giving your
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