Loving On Purpose

Thank you, kind people, for the responses I've received from sending out my weekly newsletter, THURSDATE.  Here are some of the most popular ones.  They are gems of thoughts on how to live a more contented life, especially when dealing with unfulfilled expectations of our adult children.  Life can be as good as we want it to be.  We just need to learn how we, ourselves, can choose to the exac...

Most of us have desires in some area of our adult children's life where we would like them to be different.  We most often express an unfulfilled expectation as "I want them to change.  I want things different than how things really are in our relationship."  It might be wanting your children to spend equal time between the two sets of parents when they are in town; it might be want...

We have a choice of what kind of life we want to live, emotionally.  We can believe we are a victim of our circumstances or we take responsibility to feel anyway we want to feel.  When we play victim, we lose all control of living the life we want to live.  When we take responsibility for what we can control, our thoughts and feelings, we determine the outcome of our lives.  This episode teaches y...

Our brains run off of two software programs.  A positive software program and a negative one.  It's our choice as to which one we want to use.  But it seems we automatically default to using the negative program when our children are not doing things like we would like.  We are so familiar with this program that we don't even try to use the positive program.  When a negative circumstance...

I was privileged to be interviewed by Kurt Francom on his podcast Leading Saints.  Listen to find out about all the good things Kurt's offers the world to connect, understand and love one another better.  I answer lots of questions regarding navigating life with adult children which causes a parent to feel pain.  From not feeling important in their lives to them searching elsewhere besides th...

What keeps us from admitting the truth? We say everything is “fine” when it’s not fine. We might be thinking, 'well, others have it worse'. But that’s not your reality right now; things aren't fine. There is such benefit in admitting the truth. It helps bring us to reality of what we can change to make it fine and what we don’t have control over to change. This causes us to more con...

We assumed most of our lives when we were feeling offended or angry or some other negative emotion it was the fault of someone or something outside of us.  We didn't have the emotional maturity to understand that we are responsible for how we want to feel.  Another interesting concept we don't explain well is that it's how we feel causes how we behave.  People that are happy usually...

Most of us worry about our adult children.  Why?  Does it help solve the problem?  Does it help them make better choices?  Or change their behavior?  The answer will always be no.  The only thing it does is make oneself feel terrible.  Listen to find out why we default so often to worrying and steps we can take to stop worrying. If you enjoyed this podcast and want to start finding out how to work...

When our children become adults we often have many unfilled expectations.  My clients often compound the situation by using the word "should" regarding what they are or are not doing. The word "should" implies judgement and judgement never feels good in the normal sense that we use the word.  The "should" thought doesn't solve the problem, rather it feeds the sto...

Why do we long for the good old days?  Life was simpler?  We knew what our kids were up to?    What if we had the thought "these are the good old days"?  I had some big disappointments and heartaches with my children when they became adults.  Was it a difficult time?  You bet.  But I am so glad that I was able to have children; I am so glad for the the challenges they brought that allowe...

In order to view your life from a more positive perspective, you need to manage your brain.  Learning to mange our brain takes practice.  When we practice something consistently, it becomes routine, or a new habit.  I find to form a new habit I have to be intentional and I have to desire the benefit it will bring me, not someone else.  Bettering ourselves doesn't happen by accident.  One of t...

Have you held back from having a difficult conversation with an adult child because you are afraid of the result?  If we are in a space of love and concern for the health of the relationship, it can happen without regret.  It takes some preparation on your part to have such a conversation.  and first of all you need to decided why you are having this conversation and if you really, really like you...

Have you ever wondered when do you hire a coach or when do you hire a therapist?  I think everyone needs a coach to maintain their mental health. What are the differences between the two?  How do I know if I'm a candidate for therapy or for coaching?  If you are not sure, listen to become more informed.  Investing in your mental health is worth the investment.  It transforms your entire life....

Have you ever wondered why you take things so personally in the relationship with your adult children in a way that is unlike any other relationship?  Why are you able to feel compassion and understanding and love with your friends' adult children and you often feel despair and despair and embarrassment with your own children?  In this episode I offer you a way to practice feeling compassion,...

I share  with you excerpts and some paraphrasing of what Joseph Grenny believes is causing most of the despair among parents with children who have strayed.  (From an article in the Meridian Magazine, July 7, 2022.  Link below). Not only from their faith, but also from coping with the challenges of life in a healthy way.  He gets his insights from Jacob 4 and 5 in the Book of Mormon.  Even if you...

Have you ever stopped and wondered how much influence you have in your grandchildren's lives?  Have you ever been forbidden by your child to see their children?  Do you feel guilty you don't always say yes to providing day care for your grandchildren?  What about grandchildren that live far away; how can you connect with them better?  Tune and listen as to why and how you are the most in...

Most mornings we wake up with the same feelings.  I'm a morning person so I wake up excited.  I sometimes find my concerns from the day before are not as bad as they were the day before. Others wake up grumpy....and that is okay.  Did you know that you can form the habit of being happy?  By managing our thoughts, we can decide when we wake up what kind of day we want to have that day.  And ou...

Life was good....I was married to a wonderful husband with 5 amazing children.  One night my husband said "We haven't gotten our licks yet".  Not too long after, major challenges surfaced in our family's life.  Challenges I would not sell to have them taken back but challenges I would never wish for anyone to experience.  How did I survive?  A lot of tears but a lot of giving l...

I keep a couple go-to thoughts in my pockets when the the "stinging darts pierce" my chest.; those darts thrown at us by others, especially annoying when they come from one of our adult children.  Sometimes it is just a sting; sometimes it pierces my heart.  I feel the emotion and then I pull out of my pocket a default thought that brings me back to how I want to feel.  I share 15 of the...

There are three parts to every relationship. 1.  What you think others think about you 2.  What you think about them 3.  What you think about yourself. Guess where most our time is spent trying to change or figure out?  Part 1.  But we need to be spending our focus on the other two parts.....what you think about them and what you think about yourself.  Those are the parts you have control over.  &...

We know seeking after perfection is not good for our mental health.  But we really want that family with those adult kids to be a little more perfect.  That image of what we thought life with adult children would look like is often crushed by their behavior and our perspective of something has gone wrong.  But the messy parts of life are not bad; they are not only just the parts of life that didn&...

Nobody ever told us that being a parent to adult children could be challenging.   Nobody ever talked about the responsibilities of this new job and that it was so different than when they were younger.  This episode is all about the six ways we can show up as the best parent we can at this time, and then forever, of their lives; a parent that unconditionally loves and respects their children in al...

When your adult child tells you that he/she wants no contact with you of any kind, it feels like death.  It feels that you have been robbed of one of your most prized possessions.  It is embracing the pain and the understanding of agency that will bring you to acceptance and peace.  It is a process that you can do at your own pace to finally be able to forgive someone that might not deserve to be...

Comparing and disparing is viewing your insides as not as valuable or as good as what you view someone else's outsides (Kara Lowenthiel).  When we look at another family with adult children and all seems to be going well and then look at our family and feel that the relationship is broken, it causes us to be unhappy. Tune in to listen to why we compare ourselves to others; why it is not harmf...

Mother's Day is much too often the worst day of the year for a lot of women.  But if we were to change our perspective on what Mother's Day is all about, it can be a very heartfelt, tender and loving day.  My heart goes out to those women who wanted children and were never able to have any and to those women who have had children who died in their lifetime and to those women and to those...