“Who does the mirror say I am?  Could I be like someone who matters even for a moment?  Chasing beautiful.” These words stopped me dead in my tracks when I first heard them sung by Heather Vassar.  In her song titled Chasing Beautiful Heather captures the desperation of a girl searching for her own beauty.  [...]

My daughter’s bedroom has a secret door in the closet.  It’s the type of door one hesitates to open for the first time for fear of any number of unrealistic scary-movie scenarios.  I’ve managed to avoid entering this unusable, unfinished space in the five years I’ve lived in the house.  But after a week of heavy rain [...]

My then-two year old daughter staged a tantrum of mammoth proportions.  She growled and screamed and kicked.  Her words were angry and loud.  I felt her frustration and wondered why mine wasn’t rising to meet hers. A question popped into my head, “What do I need most when I’m out of control?”  The answer: Love.  [...]

The following link forwards to an article written by a teen at RadicalParenting.com.    I share it with you because it is a very typical example of the critical and defeating inner dialogue of an adolescent girl.  It reminds us that exterior image or impression is not necessarily indicative of one’s inner sense of self-worth.  A bold, beautiful, accomplished [...]

Cautions from childhood echo in my ear, “What are you complaining about?  Wait til you’re an adult in the real world.  Then you’ll know problems!”  Dismal warnings like this were enough to make me want to curl under my covers and hope that Peter Pan would rescue me from becoming an adult.  Feeling overwhelmed and [...]