A tale of unconditional love this Father’s Day
Father’s Day is this weekend and that can always be a complicated time for a lot of us.
But here’s a tale of divergent personalities coming back together to celebrate a birthday (and father’s day!) with love and compassion.
I’m graduating and want to move: but who will care for my ailing parents?
I am a 22-year-old woman graduating from undergrad in a few short weeks. My parents are in their 50s and 60s and both have had a lot of health complications. They’re relatively stable, but because I’m their only child and I went to college locally, they have always relied on me for everything from helping with heavy household chores to emergency hospital visits. I know that I owe it to myself to live the life I want, which isn’t really possible where my parents reside, but at the thought of moving away, all I can think about is who would help them do all those things if I wasn’t there.
How do I make this choice without being selfish?
Growing up Southern as a lesbian late bloomer
When you’re raised in a way that shields you from anything that’s different, it really alters your ability to think outside of the small little box that’s your world. Had I met someone when I was younger who was gay or bisexual, maybe there would have been bells and whistles going off and I wouldn’t have been clueless for so long. Who knows? But I was blind for a very very long time. I met a guy who I married, had a couple of kids, and that’s how the story was supposed to go…
…only it didn’t.
Mothering without a mom: I worry that my mom abandoning me will negatively affect me as a mom
There seems to be a lack of discussion in the world around women who are disowned or cut off from their mothers. The only literature I can find is surrounding the death of a parent and, this is so so different…
I have a mom. She is alive and well. She doesn’t live far from me. But she considers me to be “dead,” and wishes I could just forget she ever existed.
Now I’m pregnant, and the “mom stuff,” as I call it, comes up frequently…
How do you reconnect with emotionally abusive parents while protecting yourself?
My sister and I have emotionally abusive parents. They say that they want to be there for us now, but don’t know how to change. I don’t know how to explain to them how to start building proper parent-child relationships. I’d really appreciate some ideas on how to do this.
How do you cope when your family thinks you’re not ready to have a kid?
My partner and I have been together six years, and married for two. We are finally both in steady full time (dream) jobs. We have been desperate to start a family for years. We feel that we have the stability, as well as emotional and financial resilience to do so. We are lucky enough to […]
A downtown Seattle family photo session featuring a Dalek, umbrellas, and dancing
I first spied a few of the photos from this fun family session in our Flickr pool a week or so ago, and after seeing a few more I knew it needed to be shared. This family is basically the epitome of SO MUCH FUN — I love that their session took place at EMP in Seattle! This is the stuff of pop culture geekery dreams.
Open thread: do you ever catch yourself turning into one of your parents and like it?
I spent a lot of time as a teenager wondering if my mom was really happy. How could she be, I wondered, working a thankless job as a teacher, married to a man who worked incessantly, and dealing with two kids who were hell? She never stopped moving — she would wake up at 4AM to work out before her day began, and then go through her daily motions. How could anyone be happy with that?