Even if our (step)-parents are no longer alive, the body remembers our experiences with them, and our psyches can be stirred. With Mother’s Day recently past and Father’s Day upon us, these days often evoke comfortable and uncomfortable feelings (regrets, guilt, resentments, disappointments and even anger). Why not approach these (and any) days as consciously […]
Mother’s & Father’s Days – Revisiting Our Parents
With Mother’s Day recently past and Father’s Day upon us, these days often evoke comfortable and uncomfortable feelings. Fond remembrances and pleasant current happenings can be shadowed by past and present regrets, guilt, resentments, disappointments and even anger. Take a moment to get grounded, take a couple of deep breaths, and think of each […]
Revisiting Our Families
For the most part, we end up in a ‘family’ – whether biological or adoptive. It is a place we call ‘home’, or at least, a place we associate with childhood, with some type of authority or caretaking figures. A healthy family environment provides children with a sense of physical security (food, shelter, bed, clothes), […]
How Parents Affect Our Adult Relationships
Our earliest relational experiences, usual parent-child ones, program whom we are drawn to and how we act within relationships. Idealized images of caretakers form in our childhood psyches. Jung termed this over-valued, emotionally laden and deified view of mother and father the ‘parental imago.’ Our parents, for the most part, accepted these idealized images. The […]
