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Archives for 2005

Disbelief (Gush Katif)

August 15, 2005 by

In high school I learned about “willing suspension of disbelief.” My teacher explained that when you are reading fantasy, you give up some of your logical, judgmental thought and just read and enter into the fantasy. Over the years, there have been films and television programs that have demanded the same. We have seen a flying nun, a witch, angels who interact with people, a man who gets the newspaper a day early, and a girl who talks to God in many different guises. However, I have never seen anything that challenged my logic or judgment as much as what I am watching this morning.

Today I am watching the Army and the police begin the process of removing people from the homes they have built and lived in for the last 30 years. These are homes that the people built with the blessings of the Israel government. They came to sand dunes. They were greeted with bread and salt by their Arab neighbors who looked at them incredulously and asked them how they intended to build a life on the sand. But build they did! They gave birth to their children, raised them there. They planted trees and bushes and gardens and turned the sand dunes into a paradise. They formed communities that worked together like large families, caring for each others’ children, celebrating each others’ milestones, and mourning each others’ losses. They developed farming methods and greenhouses that account for a third of Israel’s agricultural exports not to mention the domestic consumption.

In 1994, I visited Neve Dekalim for a weekend. There was a lovely hotel there and we celebrated together with our new daughter-in-law’s family the recent marriage of our children. The beach was idyllic, the people were friendly and kind, and the Arab neighbors we encountered on our walk were friendly.

In the fall of 2000 the Arabs began a large terror campaign. Innocent Israelis were murdered in their cars and homes, in pizza parlors and buses, in the street and in shopping malls. After all of these tragedies, for some unknown reason, our Prime Minister decided to evacuate and destroy 25 Jewish communities. We have not yet heard any explanation other than they represent a small number among a sea of Arabs. Of course the same could be said for the entire country of Israel. We are a population of 5 million Jews in a sea of over 200 million Arabs. Should we all leave our homes?

Meanwhile, the television stations are showing nonstop coverage of the discussions taking place between the representatives of the communities and the Army commanders sent to deliver eviction notices. Hundreds of photographers and reporters from all over the world are here to record the expulsion of Jews by Jews. Meanwhile, our Arab enemies are preparing large celebrations under the motto, “Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem.” They have announced that after the expulsions thousands of terrorists will come to live in Gaza.

None of the estimates of what will follow this include a lessening of terrorism. So it appears that what is being accomplished is that the terrorists can rejoice in the fact that their terror has caused Israel to flee and they now feel emboldened to continue murdering and to hope for more expulsions of Jews by Jews.

There is a real question as to whether this process is democratic. Sharon, who is carrying it out ran against Mitzna who proposed it and Sharon won a large victory because of his opposition to the process. When he polled his political party, they rejected this action, but after saying he would abide by their decision, he ignored the vote.

Those who see this process as a good one believe that it is better that our soldiers not have to defend these isolated communities. Of course, leaving them allows the terrorists better access to our larger population areas like the cities of Ashqelon and Ashdod and the power station and desalination plant. So I sit and watch and still am not able to believe what I am seeing…. And I wait for a flying nun or a witch or angels who interact with people or a man who gets the newspaper a day early or a girl who talks to God to come and stop this.

Filed Under: Israel, Uncategorized

Escaping from depression

August 9, 2005 by

The word “depressed” is bandied about in common parlance as meaning anything from how a woman feels when her hairdresser has done a terrible job cutting her hair to how a person feels when he or she is hopeless and feels that life is too difficult to live.

Depression is not a simple thing. People who have never suffered from depression cannot really understand it. Many years ago when I was an intern at a family therapy institute, I was called upon to help a depressed woman. She and I met two or three times a week. It wasn’t until then that I began to understand how unremitting and pervasive depression can be. It was then that I really learned how to stay with a depressed person and enter her/his world. It was only then that I learned to be effective.

People who are depressed fall into two main categories: those who are depressed as a reaction to something that happened to them or something in the environment (e.g., the death of a loved friend or relative, the loss of a job, the harassment of a hostile neighbor) and those who are depressed for no external reason.

The first group of people have what is termed a “reactive depression.” This type of depression is normal and many times it leaves with the passage of time and/or change of circumstance (he/she finds a good job, his/her neighbor moves away). Even when it doesn’t leave of its own accord, in general, therapists can be very effective in helping the person to recover from the depression and resume their normal life.

The second type of depression is much more difficult to treat for a number of reasons. First, there are people who simply have chemical imbalances that cause or exacerbate depression. Second, these people are told by their well-meaning friends and relatives: “Look how much you have to be grateful for!” “You have no reason to be sad—you’re young, intelligent—you have your whole life ahead of you!” Of course then the person not only feels depressed, but also misunderstood, and often guilty for being depressed. Is he/she ungrateful? What does he/she want from the world!

If a person is observant, he/she may notice that he/she has constructed a life that supports the depression. Often the home is dark, the person has few friends. He/she doesn’t feel like going out and so stays at home aside from work or school. He/she may eat either not enough, resulting in feeling weak or too much, in order to fill him/herself up. The person moves slowly, smiles little, and becomes more and more isolated emotionally. Other people represent challenges and sometimes pain, and so the best thing to do is to have as little interaction as possible with them.

People who are depressed often think of the depression as being part of their being, their personality. This is unfortunate as it makes change much harder to achieve. Of course we are talking here about people whose ability to even consider change is weak or non-existent. After all, change involves both effort and risk, and when one is depressed, it seems as if it is simply not worth it.

I think there are some things that people who are depressed can do for themselves whether or not they are seeing a therapist and whether or not they are on medication.

1. Separate yourself from the depression. In other words, just like people get the flu and then the flu goes away, people become depressed and then they become un-depressed. Just as you are not a “flu-person”, you are not a “depressed person”—you are a person who is suffering from depression.
2. Even though it is hard to imagine it, understand that change is possible and that your life will change for the better in the future.
3. Think of one activity you would engage in if you were not depressed. What would you be doing? Painting? Taking long walks? Jogging? Inviting friends over to dinner? Find one, just one, and do it anyway. Pretend for that period of time that you are not depressed. This helps you to begin changing the lifestyle that supports your depression.
4. Be patient with yourself. People go through different phases and stages in their lives. Sometimes life hands you more than you can cope with temporarily. You will get over it. Be gentle and patient with yourself. There is an end to the depression and it may surprise you as to how it happens.

Filed Under: Emotional health

Is your therapist helping you?

August 7, 2005 by

Psychotherapy can be good. Very good. Among other things, it can help people sort out their feelings, heal old hurts, learn how to deal with difficult family members, enable them to make better choices, help them to form a more realistic self-image. As a marriage and family therapist, I feel that psychotherapy often is the key to people living healthy, happy lives. Sometimes we need a sounding board or someone who can look at things from a different perspective. Sometimes we need someone to help us sort things out or to encourage us to try out new behaviors.

Unfortunately, not all psychotherapists provide the help that people need. I include in the term psychotherapist all of the following: psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, family therapists, counselors, life coaches, spiritual advisors, clergypersons and any others who engage in similar activities. There are large numbers of individuals in all of these fields who are capable, competent, ethical, and effective. No field has the monopoly on effectiveness. Yet, in all of these fields, there are individuals who are not capable, not competent, unethical, and even harmful.

Those psychotherapists who do harm to their clients may do so not out of incompetence (although there is plenty of that around) and not because they intend to do harm (because most believe that they are altruistic and helpful), but simply because of economic realities.

In many large cities, the number of psychotherapists per thousand people is greater than the demand. That means that many psychotherapists must work very hard to make a living. Many will have two or three or four different activities that bring in money. Some will teach on a high school to graduate school level, they will give seminars to lay people or professionals, they will supervise other therapists, they will engage in research, they will do therapy groups. In short, they have to hustle to make a living.

Then, into their office walks a client. Clients are not easy to find, and so the therapist, in his or her desire to help the client and to retain the client, becomes very welcoming and spends time getting to know the client and his or her problem. So far, the “good” psychotherapist is indistinguishable from the harmful one. Here are some ways that the lay person can tell the difference between them.

1. Does the therapist tell you that actually your problems are much more complex than you thought?
2. Does the therapist suggest that you see him/her more than once a week?
3. Do you think that the therapist is the most important person in your life?
4. Do you leave the office feeling weaker and more wounded than when you came in?
5. Does your therapist encourage you to believe that no one can understand you the way he/she can?
6. Does your therapist keep you oriented to the past (working out past hurts)?
7. Did your therapist “help” you to recover memories?
8. Does your therapist summarize from time to time the progress you’ve made and where you are in the therapy?
9. Are you working on a specific goal?
10. Overall, are you feeling better than you did when you first entered therapy?
11. Does your therapist encourage you to think of yourself as normal and healthy?
12. Do you have any idea as to when the therapy will end?

If you answered more than two of the first seven questions with a “yes,” and/or any of numbers 8-12 “no” it might be a good idea to talk with someone you respect about whether this therapist is doing you good or whether perhaps, you are helping the therapist to solve some of his/her problems.

Remember, the money that you spend on a therapist is the least expensive part of the investment. As you spend time with an ineffective or unethical therapist, you are wasting time in your life that could be spent healing and living!

If you have doubts or questions about what I have written that you would like to discuss with me, I am available at drsavta@gmail.com. I do NOT do therapy over the internet and there is no money involved.

Filed Under: Emotional health

Happiness is…

August 4, 2005 by

They say that happiness is a warm puppy. Well, if so, someone wanted me to be very very very very happy.

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to go out and teach two seminars (one in the morning and one in the afternoon), we heard a noise outside our apartment door as if someone was mistreating a dog. When my husband opened the door, imagine his surprise when he found a box containing a pillow, blanket, and four puppies.

Yes, they were adorable. Each little brown puppy had a beautiful little puppy face and cute little puppy ears and they were little rascals, biting at each other and rolling over and chasing one another and they put on quite a show.

But I had to leave and my husband, unfortunately, was stuck with the puppies all day.

My daughters advertised them on our local community email list. One daughter came over and took digital pictures and my son posted them on the web. When I got home, the house was a nursery. All over the living room there were puppies, playing running, and yes, doing other things that people don’t like done on their living room floor.

A friend came over and took one of the puppies. Of course, she wasn’t sure whether she could keep the puppy because her husband is not a big dog fan. So last night, we had only (only!) three puppies. We put them in the garden room behind the house and when we got up this morning, they had availed themselves of all of its facilities. My husband held them and petted them and fed them and even cleaned up the mess. But the problem remained: what to do with them?

We understood that if we called the local city vet, they would take the puppies, but if the puppies weren’t adopted fairly quickly, they would be euthanized. We certainly didn’t want that to happen. We contacted the local self-proclaimed selfless, self-sacrificing, animal-loving veterinarian who said that yes, he would take the puppies for a fee of about $40 a puppy to cover the walking and food until he found them homes. We called number of animal rescue organizations. Funny how they always do great work when they’re collecting for charity, but when you actually need them to rescue an animal, they become singularly unhelpful and even abusive.

My husband understood that in my current weakened state, these puppies were too much for me, so he took them first to a neighbor who had had two very large dogs and offered one to her. She snatched it up. Then he went to the local shopping center and within about two hours, the remaining two puppies had found homes.

When he returned home empty-handed, I declared him my hero for life! Maybe real happiness is a husband who is totally devoted to you….

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Relationships

Mailing list survival

July 31, 2005 by

If the office and the school are places where we hold ourselves together, put on a good face, act “normal,” even polite, then the home, is the place where it all hangs out—where suddenly we don’t have to be “together” or friendly or polite, or even nice. To some extent, that it true, I suppose, although kindness, politeness, and good cheer are probably more important at home than anywhere else, because, after all, aren’t we trying to have our closest, most satisfying relationships with the people with whom we live? In healthy families, we give our parents, siblings, and children some latitude to express their anger, hurt, pain, fury, rage, but in verbal ways. We don’t allow hitting or destruction of property. Part of the job of parent is teaching coping skills so that negative emotions can be expressed in socially acceptable ways that harm no one. So we teach our child that instead of saying, “I hate my brother/sister and wish he/she would die” to say, “I feel very angry with my brother/sister.” Later on, if the parent does a good job, the child will learn to affix a “now” to the end of the sentence which then acknowledges the possibility of a future rapprochement.

There is another place where people feel free to be themselves: the internet. All you need is a hotmail/gmail/yahoo account, with your favorite alias name “topcat 672”- and you are in business. “Topcat” then can join mailing lists and begin stirring up trouble. He can pose as an expert on psychiatry on one list and on iron smelting on another. He can be a movie stuntman, a physicist, and the president of his local Rotary Club. He can write about his vast experience, take on the role of expert, and when questioned, write scathing, ad hominem replies. Recently I have seen innocent people on a listserve terrorized by a member who insists on misinterpreting what they write in the worst possible way.

DrSavta’s mailing list survival hints:
1. Always be skeptical of someone who uses a name that isn’t a real name (e.g., “topcat”).
2. When someone is a new member of a mailing list and suddenly starts posting a lot, watch out for trouble
3. When the person begins to become outrageous, simply correct any misinterpretation he/she may have made of what you said and DO NOT respond to him/her
4. The fewer responses, the sooner he/she will go away (with his/her tail between his/her legs.)

And one more thing, I don’t want to violate my own rule and so I will tell you about the name DrSavta.

My real name (posted at the bottom of each page) is Rona Michelson. Two miraculous things happened to me in the 1990s. The first is that I became a Savta (grandmother in Hebrew). The second is that I received my doctorate in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. It is because of these two wonderful things, one which came as a gift and the other after hard work, that I adopted the internet name of DrSavta. (and now you know the rest of the story….)

Filed Under: Relationships

Gratitude

July 27, 2005 by

I went to elementary school in the 1950s. It was a time when children sat in long rows and teachers stood at the front of the classroom with decorated bulletin boards and elaborate chalk writings on the blackboard. We learned reading and arithmetic and how to be good citizens. We were taught with painstaking care how to draw our script letters so that everyone in the class had beautiful penmanship. The message we had conveyed to us again and again was that our education was important and that we were the future leaders of the country and we needed to take responsibility and we needed to learn as much as we could to equip ourselves to take over when we were old enough. We had a responsibility to the society we lived in.

We also were taught something else… We were taught to take time to consider the world and its Creator. Back then, each morning began with the Bible being read for a period of a few minutes. Usually the readings were from the book of Psalms. My teachers seemed to favor Psalms 1, 8, 23, and 24. Sometimes the readings were from the book of Genesis- about the creation of the world. Sometimes they read from Proverbs and we learned about time to sow and time to gather and time of war and time of peace. The beauty of the King James translation was awe-inspiring. Each day began with a glimpse of the infinite.

And then, before our snacks, we said a poem.

Thank you for the world so sweet,
Thank you for the food we eat,
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you God for everything.

I think that we learned that we were part of a very special created world and that we had the obligation to be grateful for all that was given to us. We could take nothing for granted. Everything was a gift of God.

I believe that that is precisely what is missing in the world we inhabit today. Children are not taught to be grateful. Their parents try to please them—they buy them things, take them places, and the children take it for granted! They even criticize the parents for not taking them good enough places or buying them nice enough presents. The children simply have not been taught gratitude.

As with other values, gratitude is both taught and caught. Children who see their parents as people who are grateful, who do not take their good fortune for granted, will themselves be grateful. Showering children with too many toys and gifts and treats gives them the message that the world owes them something. They expect to continue to receive and receive. Children who are taught to give of themselves—to help others, to take responsibility, begin to value what others do for them.

The concept of gratitude is more important than most people realize. In my practice, I have seen hundreds of children. Invariably, the meanest, surliest, most unhappy children were those who had been given everything. After a while, nothing means anything to them. They just want MORE! Conversely, parents who enable their child to earn a wanted item (a new bicycle, a scout uniform) produce a child who is grateful and happy when he finally earns his object of desire.

There are no hard and fast rules, though. I know one family where the children have every toy known to man (woman, and child!) However, these children appreciate any little toy or trinket they get. I believe the answer to this mystery is that the parents never have taken their good fortune for granted. They have worked hard for whatever they have and they are themselves grateful people.

Warning signs that you may be raising an ungrateful child:
1. You give your child a gift and he complains about it.
Reaction: “You don’t like this gift? OK, I will take it back.” Do not apologize or offer to get something better. Your child says he doesn’t like the gift; then he doesn’t get to keep it.
2. Your child focuses on what other people have.
Reaction: “You wish you had what Tommy has. Maybe you could think about something that you have that you like.” Do not go and buy the child the object. Do not sympathize that he doesn’t have it. Do not apologize that you can’t afford it. Life really isn’t fair. We don’t all get everything we want.

In the Jewish tradition we have a maxim that says, “Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot.” Parents need to believe this and then they need to teach it to their children

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships, Spirituality

Respect

July 26, 2005 by

Now that I am feeling a bit better, I was looking for something to write about when I saw that someone had gotten to my page by searching for “teaching children to respect parents.” I thought, “What a great idea!” and so here are the beginnings of my thoughts on that subject.

I have talked about respecting boundaries, and how that type of respect must be mutual. It is difficult to demand that your child keep his hands off or your things when you might take his or her things and use them and misplace them. Most parents don’t realize it, but that Cinderella pencil is sacred and the Harry Potter bookmark is an object of reverence.

However, there are other types of respect that parents should receive from their children and that children should receive from their parents. Very early on, children need to have their behavior shaped so that they are not misbehaving in public. If the child doesn’t misbehave in public, then the parent will never have to publicly humiliate the child. That means actually helping the child to change the undesirable behavior rather than yelling across two aisles of the supermarket “you have to stay with me.” That means that parents of young children should make sure that their children don’t get into bad habits in public like:

1. Running away from their parents or hiding in a store. That is totally unacceptable. It is not funny and it is not amusing and the child should not in any way be rewarded for it by the parent smiling and saying, “Oh, there you are!” As much as possible, the parent has to have their eye on the child so that he or she doesn’t get away. If they should begin to wander away, then the parent immediately needs to stop the child. If the child is able to slip away, the parent must immediately find the child and tell him or her how worried the parent was when he or she disappeared and how that can’t happen again. I have seen parents literally say, “I don’t know where he is, but at least he’s not bothering me; I’ll go and get him when I’m done shopping.” This is a very very bad thing to do. It teaches the child that what is unacceptable is acceptable. This one comes back to bite the parent later. A child who tends to wander needs to be in a stroller or shopping cart or holding onto one. Children who repeatedly wander need to know that they are not able to go shopping with Mom or Dad until they are more reliable.
2. Carrying on for a toy or snack. A child who carries on and is rewarded (“OK, if you are quiet for the next 15 minutes, I will get you that ice pop”) learns to carry on. Rather, the parent should decide from the beginning whether he or she will be buying the child a snack or toy. If the parent thinks it is appropriate, it should be a treat, not a payoff. It is easy to train children not to nag in a store. All you need to do is be consistent in refusing to be blackmailed. The parent needs to realize that the higher the stakes, the more of a fuss the child is making, the worse it is to give in. Children who are not demanding in stores tend to be more pleasant to shop with. Every successful parent/child interaction builds not only the child’s self-esteem, but also the mutually respectful relationship between parent and child.
3. Fighting with siblings. Of all of the ways in which children act out in public, this is probably the worst because the parents just want to be swallowed up by the ground and disappear. Children should learn early on that fighting with siblings is a very bad thing to do, especially in public. It means that no one will get a treat, should there have been one in the offing. It also means that the parents will have little desire to go out with the children.

The reason I speak of these three specific examples is that one of the biggest obstacles to mutual respect of parents and children is the issue of public humiliation, both on the part of the children and on the part of the parent. No parent should “lose it” in public and no child should be embarrassed, yelled at, screamed at, etc. in public. Such mistakes can be devastating to the parent/child relationship. Children should be assisted to act in a kind and respectful manner, having their behaviors shaped by the parents, little by little, ensuring that the child will eventually, on his own, interact in society in a polite and respectful manner.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships

CMV

July 22, 2005 by

Well, I have a diagnosis. It’s called CMV, Cytomegalovirus. The good news: I will get well. The bad news: there’s nothing to be done for it and so I will just have to wait it out.

However, it has given me some new thoughts about the world.
1. I can’t believe how kind and caring people are. My sister, who saved her hard-earned money came from the US to visit me for two weeks and caught the two worst weeks of my life healthwise. She was gracious and caring and loving and didn’t seem to resent spending much of her vacation looking at the outside of my eyelids.
2. I had forgotten how very precious old friends are. Ah, Marcia, my dearest friend from my Fort Campbell period (1972-1976) with the most expansive heart and the kindest words, hugged me from Tennessee, and I felt the warmth from here. Edie, from my Fort Benning (1980-1983)/Fort Sill (1984-1987) period, there with her wisdom and gentleness and love.
3. And how can I fail to mention my cousin Diane, always loving, always laughing, always a treasure?
4. I appreciate that I have friends who feel able to be honest with me. We had been invited to someone’s home and when my diagnosis became known, they were concerned that they could carry my virus to a family member with a compromised immune system. I was glad they felt comfortable enough to tell me. I never would have wanted to harm them or anyone they loved.
5. Oh yes, human frailty. By now I believe in it, but I really don’t like it.

Filed Under: Ramblings

The Alien

July 21, 2005 by

The last two weeks have been a fevered blur to me. Something, likely a virus, has taken over my body and rendered me senseless. This is not a good thing for a person who feels responsibility for keeping the world running. However, the frailty of the human condition sometimes intrudes on our perceived invulnerability.

I’ve been a lucky person. I’ve only been hospitalized for births: my own and those of my children. Doctors were around for inoculations and an occasional antibiotic. Suddenly, I am seeing my doctor three times in a single week and the people at the lab look at me with sympathetic eyes and the four bottles of tabasco sauce (blood) I gave them to culture give me an insatiable taste for tomato juice.

Which leads to the next problem: everything tastes awful. I barely eat. Excellent, I’ll lose weight, I think (always looking for the bright side)… but in fact, after two full weeks of near starvation, I have gained 8 pounds. And… I have no swelling in my fingers or ankles that would indicate it’s fluid. Is there an alien being growing inside?

I know that it’s not growing in my abdomen, because I had an ultrasound yesterday.

So I sit and ponder and have faith that soon this will be a distant memory and both the alien and the fever it brought with it will depart.

Filed Under: Ramblings

Boundaries 7 — Couples

July 12, 2005 by

Couples often have trouble maintaining their boundaries with their parents. Usually the problem stems from a sense that it is disloyal to exclude one’s mother or father from important decisions.

If parents have done their job well and have prepared their children in each stage of their lives to take on greater and greater responsibility, then it seems logical to conclude that as the child reaches adulthood, the parent can sit back and feel good about the fact that they have raised a fully-functioning individual.

Unfortunately, that happens all too rarely. Many parents think that they are still responsible for their adult children’s decisions and must protect them from making “terrible mistakes.” Parents may fear that their children’s decisions will reflect badly on them or will not reflect their preferences. In short, allowing one’s children to grow into independent adults means being able to release oneself from responsibility for them and to trust that they will know what to do.

The young couple, having grown up in homes where their parents were even moderately successful at creating a decent home life, may feel that their parents possess wisdom that they don’t have. That is true, and that is why parents can be called upon to give information, advice, and to help problem solve, but the ultimate voters on what to do are the husband and wife, and the information that they choose to regard as helpful should be determined by the helpfulness of the information, not by whose parent supplied it.

Some parents are satisfied to intervene in a very minimal way. If their children ask for information, advice, or help, the parents are available and they accept that their input is part of an information-gathering enterprise. Other parents, when asked, will immediately see an open door to take over the decision making process. And some parents, even when not asked, still offer their opinions in heavy-handed ways.

Both husband and wife need to know where the boundaries are. It is not a “mine vs. yours” game. It is simply a challenge to both of them to adapt a strategy to minimize the intrusion into their lives.

Here are some hints:
1. Never discuss with intrusive parents something that you are still very unsure of. The less sure that you are, the more sure they will be.
2. It is not disloyal to “manage the news.” There are lots of things that go on in a home that do not need to be shared with anyone, but least of all with intrusive parents. Preserving your marital boundary is something that shores up your marriage and makes it strong. It is loyalty to your spouse who should be number one!
3. Never mention to one set of in-laws the information or assistance given to you by the other. For intrusive parents, that is a casus belli. People who want to control become enraged when they think that someone else has been more successful than they at influencing their child!
4. Have some ideas about questions you wouldn’t mind them answering like how to prepare a specific sauce or where one might find a specific type of book. The more they feel consulted, the less they will feel the need to intrude.
5. Remember that these people raised your spouse, a person who you love and with whom you are building your future.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting, Relationships
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