21: "I write as a daughter and a mother at the same time… "
Release Date: 01/14/2020
44: “The whole family is walking on eggshells.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
“I would like to hear your thoughts on how parents can speak about the elephant in the room.
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43: “My daughter is overweight.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
My 13 year-old daughter is overweight and I don't know how to handle this.
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42: “It's the world that's crazy -- not us parents.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
“Hi Lisa and Stella. This is not so much of a question, but a warm and heartfelt THANK YOU. I think (hope!) that we're slowly getting to the end of some really tough years.
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41: “I don’t trust her decision making.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
A year ago when our ADD student daughter then aged 21 revealed to my husband and myself that she was on a waiting list to have cross sex treatment, our 16-year-old son took the role of her trans ally.
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40: “I know we should love the child we have and not wish them to be different but I can't help having these thoughts.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
“I worry that my boy is not very clever and I am secretly embarrassed and ashamed about this. My family is over-invested in achievement and especially educational achievement and the cousins' fabulous exam results are continuously talked about within our family WhatsApp. It is very distressing to feel ashamed of my boy who is both kind and funny. I'm not sure how I should navigate this - should I just declare that he isn't 'academic' and thereby lead the rest of the family to make insinuations that he is a bit stupid? Although I don't equate intelligence with...
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39: “My work has "juice" for me now while parenting just feels hard and draining.”
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“I'm feeling incredibly disconnected from my kids right now.
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38: “My sense of disappointment feels selfish.”
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“I'm a single mom and I've always worked full time while raising my kids. My youngest is graduating from high school this year and I've been anticipating the empty next stage of life with mixed emotions. I've known it will be tremendously sad, but at the same time, I'm looking forward to having more time to myself for the first time in over two decades. Now with the coronavirus, it looks possible that he won't be leaving for college in the fall and I am feeling very disappointed about this. I know he is disappointed as well. My sense of disappointment feels selfish. It's...
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37: “Now, with the Coronavirus, she won't have any of the ceremonial endings that seem important to her.”
Secrets of the Motherworld
“My 12 year-old is leaving school this year and now, with the Coronavirus, she won't have any of the ceremonial endings that seem to important to her.
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36: “We never told my parents.”
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“I come from a close family. My parents have been involved in all aspects of my children’s lives and are extremely special to them. I have one adult sibling who has special needs and is cared for exclusively by my aging parents. At the time of his birth, it was common for children with special needs to be placed in an institution rather than raised at home."
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35: “Should I ask him if he’s still transgender?”
Secrets of the Motherworld
A year ago, my 16 year old son told us he is transgender. I was completely shocked, as he is not particularly feminine.
info_outlineHere’s the (edited) story we discuss this week:
“I guess I write as a daughter and a mother at the same time. Almost two years ago my mother had a financial crisis and the only solution I saw at the time was to offer her to live with us until she could figure things out.
She is 70, very active and independent so she struggled to share the space with us. We also struggled, our youngest son moved to our room so we lost privacy and intimacy as a couple. Also my mother is an extrovert and my husband and I introverts so she felt rejected when she wanted to chat about her social life while we just wanted to sit down together (just the two of us) with a glass of wine and listen to some music at the end of the day.
We all made an effort to tolerate one another for a little more than a year until she bought a house that was under construction. The construction was delayed and she needed to wait months before moving in.
My youngest son needed his own space and we needed our marriage back desperately so I offered my mother to help her to find a cheap place where she could live while she waited for her house. She accepted but took the whole thing as a rejection from my husband who by the way made a huge effort to accommodate to her in his own way but wasn't what she expected.
I felt all the time in between them and I was exhausted, there were times where they didn't even speak to each other in a passive aggressive dance that was draining for me.
She found a room for rent in a friends' house, and my family and marriage recovered the lost space. However she suffered because of this decision, she feels unwanted in this new place too and I feel guilty about what happened. The relationship between her and my husband is now damaged probably forever.”