Our Mothers, Ourselves


Book Description

In Our Mothers, Ourselves, Henry Cloud and John Townsend show how understanding how our mothers have profoundly influenced our lives can set us on a path toward wholeness and growth. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has shaped your worldview, your relationships, your marriage, your career, your self-image - your life. Our Mothers, Ourselves can help you identify areas that need reshaping, to make positive choices for personal change, and to establish a mature relationship with Mom today. The Phantom Mom The China Doll Mom The Controlling Mom The Trophy Mom The Still-the-Boss Mom The American Express Mom You'll learn how your mom affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. Our Mothers, Ourselves is a biblical, realistic, and empowering route to wholeness and growth, to deeper and more satisfying bonds with your family, friends, and spouse - and to a new, healthier way of relating to your mother. This book was previously titled The Mom Factor.




Our Mothers, Our Selves


Book Description

Finally, we have an inclusive collection that brings motherhood into the fold of feminism. As we accede to our universal origins in the mother, we witness the infinite variety of experiences awarded the offspring. Spectrums of gender, race, age, religion, class, and nation give voice in Donnelly and Bernstein's anthology as more than 80 writers contribute poetry, essays, memoirs, and short fiction. Some of the artists are well-known, including Maya Angelou, Galway Kinnell, Marge Piercy, Margaret Atwood, and Robert Bly, while others are less known. All attest to the experience of motherhood as primal. Writing as mothers, as children to their mothers, and as close observers, women and men create selections that fall into three trimesters of involvement: the experiences of going beyond the self, beyond reflection, and, finally, beyond the whole. The many shades of emotional experience, from ecstasy to horror and all points in between, are portrayed in words and photographs. As images take shape, nightmares are relived, emotions flow abundantly, and details come into focus as the cathartic effect of the writing builds. Painting motherhood as much more than just a pretty picture, the editors' purpose is clearly to bring us all together under a multi-faceted umbrella of empathy and to unite us in the diversity of the experience of motherhood.




Mothers Before


Book Description

Who was your mother before she was a mother? Essays and photos from Brit Bennett, Jennifer Egan, Danzy Senna, Laura Lippman, Jia Tolentino, and many more. In this remarkable collection, New York Times–bestselling novelist Edan Lepucki gathers more than sixty original essays and favorite photographs to explore this question. The daughters in Mothers Before are writers and poets, artists and teachers, and the images and stories they share reveal the lives of women in ways that are vulnerable and true, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and always moving. Contributors include: Brit Bennett * Jennine Capó Crucet * Jennifer Egan * Angela Garbes * Annabeth Gish * Alison Roman * Lisa See * Danzy Senna * Dana Spiotta * Lan Samantha Chang * Laura Lippman * Jia Tolentino * Tiffany Nguyen * Charmaine Craig * Maya Ramakrishnan * Eirene Donohue * and many others




The Mom Factor


Book Description

From the very beginning, you relied on her for things no one else could give you. How she met those needs -- or didn't meet them -- affected you daily as a child. And still affects you profoundly as an adult. For every son or daughter who wonders if things should have been different . . . for every man or woman who wonders if they still couldn't be . . . here's a life-changing look at The Mom Factor. She shaped you in ways that would surprise you both. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has shaped your worldview, your relationships, your marriage, your career, your self-image -- your life. How can you identify areas that need reshaping, make positive choices for personal change, and establish a balanced, mature relationship with Mom today? In The Mom Factor, Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend steer you down a path of discovery and growth beyond the effects of six common mothering styles: -The Phantom Mom -The China-Doll Mom -The Controlling Mom -The Trophy Mom -The Still-the-Boss Mom -The American-Express Mom -- Cloud and Townsend show you how your mom affected you as a child and may still be affecting you today. You’ll find a hopeful, realistic, and empowering approach to identifying your unmet mothering needs and filling them in healthy, life-changing ways through other people. This encouraging book doesn’t just help you understand areas in your life that need change and strengthening -- it helps you apply your discoveries to attain new freedom and joy in living, and an increased ability to give and receive love. The Mom Factor is a biblical, highly practical route to wholeness and growth, deeper and more satisfying bonds with your family, friends, and spouse -- and a new, healthier way of relating to your mother today.




Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image


Book Description

When women are told that what is important about us is how we look, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to feel comfortable with our appearance and how we feel about our bodies. We are told, over and over—if we just lost weight, fit into those old jeans, or into a new smaller pair—we will be happier and feel better about ourselves. The truth is, so many women despise their appearance, weight, and shape, that experts who study women’s body image now consider this feeling to be normal. But it does not have to be that way. It is possible for us as women to love ourselves, our bodies, as we are. We need a new story about what it means to be a woman in this world. Based on her original research, Hillary L McBride shares the true stories of young women, and their mothers, and provides unique insights into how our relationships with our bodies are shaped by what we see around us and the specific things we can do to have healthier relationships with our appearance, and all the other parts of ourselves that make us women. In Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image McBride tells her own story of recovery from an eating disorder, and how her struggles led her to dream of a new vision for womanhood—from one without body shame, negative comparisons, or insecurities, to one of freedom, connection, and acceptance.




What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us


Book Description

Talk to women under forty today, and you will hear that in spite of the fact that they have achieved goals previous generations of women could only dream of, they nonetheless feel more confused and insecure than ever. What has gone wrong? What can be done to set it right? These are the questions Danielle Crittenden answers in What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us. She examines the foremost issues in women's lives -- sex, marriage, motherhood, work, aging, and politics -- and argues that a generation of women has been misled: taught to blame men and pursue independence at all costs. Happiness is obtainable, Crittenden says, but only if women will free their minds from outdated feminist attitudes. By drawing on her own experience and a decade of research and analysis of modern female life, Crittenden passionately and engagingly tackles the myths that keep women from realizing the happiness they deserve. And she introduces a new way of thinking about society's problems that may, at long last, help women achieve the lives they desire.




A Bittersweet Season


Book Description

Wise, smart, and ever-helpful, an essential guide to caring for aging parents. When Jane Gross found herself suddenly thrust into a caretaker role for her eighty-five year-old mother, she was forced to face challenges that she had never imagined. As she and her younger brother struggled to move her mother into an assisted living facility, deal with seemingly never-ending costs, and adapt to the demands on her time and psyche, she learned valuable and important lessons. Here, the longtime New York Times expert on the subject of elderly care and the founder of the New Old Age blog shares her frustrating, heartbreaking, enlightening, and ultimately redemptive journey, providing us along the way with valuable information that she wishes she had known earlier. We learn why finding a general practitioner with a specialty in geriatrics should be your first move when relocating a parent; how to deal with Medicaid and Medicare; how to understand and provide for your own needs as a caretaker; and much more. Includes chapters on the following subjects: Finding Our Better Selves The Myth of Assisted Living The Vestiges of Family Medicine The Best Doctors Money Can Buy The Biology, Sociology, and Psychology of Aging Therapeutic Fibs




Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves


Book Description

[This title] operates on the radical premise that neither child nor parent must dominate. -- Review.




Swan Mothers


Book Description

"Swan Mothers" guides parents through the experience of raising autistic, ADHD, highly-sensitive, and otherwise uniquely magnificent children. The book relays stories of real mothers parenting not-what-I-expected children, and shares fresh tools and techniques for moving from frazzled and frustrated to living a fabulous life. Before children, Natalia Erehnah laid the groundwork for what she believed would be perfect parenting. Her children, being their magnificently unique selves, taught her that perfection did not come from following formulas and philosophies, but in honoring them and herself exactly how and where they were. Swan Mothers tells Natalia's story, and the stories of other mothers on conscious parenting journeys. It is full of insights, and packed with ideas for shifting your perspective and experience of your children, your life, and yourself. You will experience many A-ha moments as you travel with us through the 7 Phases of the Hero's Journey: Commonplace life when all is well in our world. Realizing that our children are not normal. Saying "No, thank you" to special parenting. Dealing with denial, anger, and grief. Acknowledging our children as they are. Beginning research and work to make them the way they are supposed to be. The long road of therapies and treatments, focusing on curing and recovering the lost "normal" child. Physical, emotional, and financial exhaustion and collapse from parenting challenging children. Awareness that there is no normal child to recover, there is only a child to see and love. Experiencing rebirth and seeing the world in a new way.




Between Ourselves


Book Description

A collection of letters between mothers and daughters, from 1750 to the present, this book reveals the ways in which women through the ages have struggled to break free of constraints and defy society. With insights into the lives of the famous - Anne Sexton, Florence Nightingale, Vera Brittain, Queen Victoria and Sylvia Plath - as well as the unknown - housewives, construction workers, secretaries, political activists, teachers and scientists - this collection displays the vitality and restless, questioning spirit of all women.