Mother’s Day is right around the corner, and while it’s a joyful time to honor mothers, it can also be an unsettling occasion for those adult daughters with a pronounced mother wound. The holiday can reawaken a daughter’s memories of the maternal hurt she experienced growing up and which continues to affect her primary relationships. [...]
Pat Taub
A friend once said, “If grown women had pajama parties, they wouldn’t need therapists.” She was referring to the close connections among girls that often get lost when women mature, becoming preoccupied with family and careers. Feminist psychology contends that because women are affiliative by nature they frequently find their voice [...]
Pat Taub
With COVID-19 propelling nurses into the headlines, I wanted to understand what it means to be a nurse. I contacted the National Nurses Union, who put me in touch with two Maine nurses, Cokie Giles, 64, and her daughter Jessie Lambert, 38. Last week we talked via Zoom. As members of the union, Cokie and Jessie are protected from being [...]
Pat Taub
Aging has brought a renewed interest in the spiritual questions I grappled with during my late night college bull sessions. Is there a God? Can prayer make a difference in one’s life? What is my spiritual path? In my middle years I was too busy raising children and building a career to grapple with meaning of life questions with the [...]
Pat Taub
Mother’s Day Actions Sunday is Mother’s Day and peace and justice groups are marking it with actions to support mothers in jail and migrant mothers whose children were taken from them when they crossed the border into the US. For the third year in a row Black justice groups have organized “Black Mama’s Bail Out Day,” raising bail [...]
Pat Taub
Guest Post by Emily Capelle I always heard that as you get older you lose your filter and start saying whatever comes to mind. Or behave in ways you wouldn’t have in the past. Well now that I’m 58, I have noticed it more and more. Growing up in an “in-between” time like the sixties and seventies, I suspect many young girls, like [...]
Pat Taub
One of the most valuable lessons aging has bestowed on me is the importance of shedding anger. The less anger I hold the more inner peace I possess. I’ve learned to release a lot of my anger by imagining myself inhabiting the lives of those who have hurt me, resulting in a new story where I experience compassion towards the other. This [...]
Pat Taub
Guest Post by Walker Thornton I hate asking for help. There is no one specific reason—a mix of not wanting to seem weak or vulnerable, and fearing I’ll be turned down. I was raised in the South, by a very traditional mother who wanted a pretty, sweet daughter. I was taught boys didn’t like girls who were assertive or too talkative. I [...]
Pat Taub
Reading Deborah Tannen’s piece in last week’s New York Times entitled, “My Mother Speaks Through Me,” it dawned on me that as I age I’m becoming more and more like my mother. My younger self would have fumed at this comparison, but my older self honors it. My everyday life has been enriched by adopting some of my mother’s habits: [...]
Pat Taub
Flowers in Memory of My Mother I belong to a progressive church in downtown Portland, which mercifully accepts my spiritual confusion. Last Sunday, in memory of my mother, I donated the altar flowers, purchased at the farmer’s market. They were exactly the kind of natural bouquet Jane would have loved. Garden Angels Update A few weeks ago [...]
Pat Taub