suicide

by earthly magic--13322139325_72b3fb9886_o

Of Ambivalence, Loss, and What Seemed Retribution …

My greatest fear as my mother’s daughter was not that I would die, but rather that I would live.

It takes strength to live, courage to wake up each day and face someone that you are so unsure of.

You do not know whether they love you, and yet they say they do.

This is the ambiguity that leads to the

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Lotus Flower-IMG_8651-1-2-1-800--by Bahman Farzad

Of The Good Daughter, Marriage and A Different Path …

When I think back on my late teens and early twenties–I met my now husband when I was seventeen years old–I am amazed that I married, that he wanted me and that we have remained together for thirty-two years.vWe’ve known each other thirty-six.

I tried committing suicide, my second attempt, three months after meeting my husband, then boyfriend. We met in August of 1978, my first week as a college freshman. He was a junior, practically 4.0 student, majoring in Chemistry and with aspirations

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Appreciation

Of Frustration, Suicidal Ideations, and The Need to Feel Appreciated …

Everyone wants to know that they matter, that no one else can fill their role and that they are appreciated.

I wish to have told my mother how much I, her daughter, appreciated her.

But doing that would have entailed, if I were honest, also telling her how much she hurt me.

More importantly, letting her know how special she was in my life, emphasizing the unique role she played in my development, would have included telling her how much I needed her to be kind to me, that I looked up to her and when she lashed out I felt horrible, worse than that actually.

I wanted

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“Seasons in Purdah” | On Sale Now !!! …

The loss of her sight has ignited a war between her two best friends.

Thirty-five-year-old, psychologist, Sahel Ohin, spent nearly each day of her childhood making mud cakes with Titus Denning and Carl Pierson. The attended St. Maria’s Parish School, Oakland Catholic Prep and graduated Cal Berkeley.

Six weeks after an accident rendered her blind Sahel married Titus. Her neurosurgeon, Carl Pierson, insists surgery could restore her sight. The procedure might also kill her.

The first night out since her blindness Sahel meets James Bolton, a former San Francisco stockbroker. Though newly acquainted, they converse as if old friends.

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Of Mothers, Daughters and Narcissus…

A recurring visitor to my blog responded to a recent post, Of Mothers, Daughters and a Nation Crying for Help.



She suggests in her comment that women/mothers who kill their children suffer from a terrible form of psychosis, an idea with which I think most of us would agree with. 



She adds that when the murder a mother commits involves killing her daughter, the mother experiencing this break with reality seeks to destroy a younger form of herself, i.e. her daughter.

I awoke this morning intrigued by the length at which

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Of Mothers, Daughters and a Nation Crying for Help…

During the past year I have noticed an increasing number of Internet stories/articles reporting the murders and /or more often murder-suicides wherein a parent has killed the spouse and their children.

Men and fathers are usually the assailants for cases involving a murdered spouse.

Children are usually the victims when mothers commit homicide on members of their immediate families.



The act of any parent or adult killing a child is horrendous.

And yet, as the mother of three daughters, I am most taken when a mother kills her daughter (s).

As a psychotherapist I a to ask, “What

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Of Mothers, Daughters and The Struggle to Live…

Since learning of the death of Whitney’s Houston death, Saturday, February 11th, 2012, I held little patience with those who expressed sincere shock and amazement that she no longer lived with us in the world of life on planet earth.

Even as our elder daughter posted comments on Facebook offering condolences I cautioned her to not become so caught up in what I termed, “…one more example of the media bastardizing a very real and human loss in the effort to make headlines and money…”

On Monday I zoomed in my criticism on the fact that while people may miss Whitney, no one’s loss could compare with that of her and Bobby Brown’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina.

During the drive to school on the morning of Valentine’s Day, our youngest daughter said,

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