There is a particular kind of ache that comes with watching your adult child struggle. It’s quieter than the worries of early motherhood, but often heavier. At this stage of life, you may have imagined something different – more ease, more connection, more shared joy. Instead, you find yourself lying awake at night, wondering how … Read more
One of the hardest truths of midlife motherhood is this: You can do everything “right” and still end up heartbroken. You can love fiercely, sacrifice willingly, pray faithfully, and show up again and again only to find yourself standing in a place you never imagined. A place where your relationship with your adult child feels … Read more
I was in my 60s when my relationship with my adult daughter finally broke completely. The details don’t matter as much as this truth: I spent the first six months believing my life was over. How could it not be? I’d spent decades defining myself as a mother. My identity was wrapped up in those … Read more
I’m sitting in my therapist’s office, crying into a tissue that’s basically disintegrated, and he asks me a question that stops me cold: “Whose anxiety are you actually managing right now?” I start to answer, “My daughter’s,” but the words catch in my throat. Because the truth – the uncomfortable, rage-inducing truth – is that … Read more
They don’t tell you about this part of motherhood in the parenting books. They don’t prepare you for the Christmas when your adult child doesn’t call. When the addiction has its hooks in so deep you don’t recognize them anymore. When mental illness has created a wall you can’t break through. When estrangement has turned … Read more
There’s a moment in every mother’s journey when she realizes that the way she’s been showing up is no longer serving anyone – not her children, and certainly not herself. For me, it came in my 60s when I found myself dashing off to meet some emergency with one of my kids – yet again. … Read more
I’m going to start with a simple question: “Is the world changing?” Yes, it is, especially when it comes to family. Family was an intricate part of our lives up until the early 1970s. The years beyond the 1970s took us from the “nuclear family” structure into diverse paradigms. This was influenced by social and … Read more
In my 60s, I finally understood why my body had been screaming at me for 30 years. The tightness in my chest wasn’t “just anxiety.” The knot in my stomach wasn’t “overthinking.” The exhaustion that followed every interaction with my adult child wasn’t “getting older.” It was my nervous system trying to tell me something … Read more
Boundaries aren’t walls that keep love out. They’re bridges to the kind of relationships I actually want – built on respect instead of obligation, truth instead of resentment. The Pattern I Couldn’t See For decades, I believed that being a good mother, a good daughter, a good woman meant saying yes. To everything. Always. Host … Read more