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Why We May Doubt Our Memories of Childhood Trauma
When I was growing up in my mother’s large, tightly-knit extended family, I was subjected to sexual abuse. Mother warned me not to tell anyone what was happening to me. Instead, she made up a story — a tale of a child nurtured and cared for by a kind, loving family — that she instructed… Read more
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What Health Experts Get Wrong about Seniors and Solitude
“Chuck all that!” says GCHiker in his YouTube video Why I Avoid People. Responding to health experts who advise older people to maintain social contacts to avoid a variety of age-related health problems, GCHiker heartily disagrees. An intrepid hiker and solitary wanderer, he says he has grown quite comfortable in his later years with being alone. Confessing that… Read more
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The Trouble with Writing about an Abusive Parent
If you had to sum up your relationship with one of your parents in a few words, what would you say? I struggle to find a way to convey my childhood experiences with my mother quickly and clearly, so that you, my reader, will have a sense of what happened to me. Where is the… Read more
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The Myth and the Truth about My Great-Grandpa
I always knew something was wrong with the story. When my mother described Great-Grandpa to me when I was a child, he seemed like a mythical hero — mysterious and larger than life. She spoke of him with admiration, but reluctantly, as if his story was a secret with which I was too young to… Read more
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Dr. Rick, Can You Help Me? I’m Becoming My Mother
Aunt Peach used to tell me I was Daddy’s girl. When I was a child, she reminded me often that I looked like my father. “It’s good luck for a little girl to look like her daddy,” she said. At the very least, I suppose, it suggested that her mother had stayed on the straight-and-narrow,… Read more
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Why Writers Should Meditate
Dear writer: In a few moments, I’m going to ask you to close your eyes. Sometimes, the best way to be successful at doing something is to not do it for a while. Imagine you’re tackling a persnickety home maintenance task, for instance. You’re trying to fix a dishwasher that refuses to wash or figure out why… Read more
Do you write about yourself and your experiences? Do you write about traumatic events in your life? Or, do you struggle to find time and motivation to write?
If so, this blog is for you.
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