parenting

Of Breaths, Challenges and Handing Over the Reins…

“…[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

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Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…

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

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Of Alice Miller, Amy Chua, and Parenting as a Way of Growth and Transformation…

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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Of Mothers, The Illusion of Control, and Training Yourself Out of a Job…

When I was a child my mother demanded 100% obedience.
Did I give it to her?
No.
Neither did I agree with everything she said or believed.

Many of the lessons she taught and that I employ have kept me in good stead as an adult, wife and mother. I thoroughly appreciate then.

Yet, I have often wished my mother could have supported me more in standing upon my own ground.
Better said, I would have appreciated immensely my mother supporting me in the areas where we differed in our perspectives on an issue.

When our youngest child reached five-years-old, I began

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