Sometimes it is not the big things that hurt the most. It is the small things. You visit their home and notice photographs of family members on display. Parents, siblings, children, friends, holidays, celebrations, and treasured memories are all visible. But there is no photograph of you. You look around and realise that gifts you… Read More When You Seem to Have Disappeared from Their World
There comes a point in some family relationships when it becomes necessary to stop listening to explanations and start looking at patterns. If decades have passed with no shared holidays, no family celebrations, no meaningful effort to spend time together, no shared Christmases, no birthdays unless you organise and pay for everything yourself, it is… Read More When Decades of Distance Tell Their Own Story
One of the most painful forms of self-deception can occur when a parent desperately wants to believe what their adult child is saying, while ignoring what their adult child’s actions are showing them. Most parents want to see the best in their children. They want to believe the promises, the reassurances, and the comforting words.… Read More When Words and Actions Tell Different Stories
One of the most uncomfortable truths about parenting is that children learn far more from what they observe than from what they are told. Parents may spend years teaching values, giving advice, and explaining what is important in life. Yet children are often paying closer attention to behaviour than words. They watch how we treat… Read More Children Often Learn What We Live, Not What We Say
One of the most painful situations an ageing parent can face is when their adult children make it clear they don’t want to be involved in their care, wellbeing, or future. The reality is that some people are happy for someone else to carry the responsibility. They may not want to help, visit, support, or… Read More When the Children Don’t Want to Know
One of the most painful realities some parents face is the growing realisation that their adult children have no intention of helping, supporting, or caring for them as they grow older. This is not about expecting children to sacrifice their own lives or become full-time carers. Most loving parents want their children to be independent,… Read More When Adult Children Make It Clear They Won’t Be There
True love doesn’t disappear the moment things become difficult, or when someone isn’t behaving the way we hoped they would. Real love is tested during the hard times, not the easy ones. True love shows support, compassion, patience, and empathy when a partner is struggling. It stays present through challenges, disagreements, disappointments, and life’s inevitable… Read More True love doesn’t switch on and off like a tap.
Moral disengagement, developed by Albert Bandura. They describe how people can commit, justify, or tolerate harmful behavior while preserving a positive view of themselves. Here’s a fuller explanation: 1. Moral Justification Harmful actions are reframed as serving a noble, moral, or necessary purpose. Examples: “I did it to protect my family.” “The abuse was for… Read More Moral Justification
Ambiguous deprivation is a psychological concept describing the pain of missing something that was never clearly present in the first place. Unlike grief over a specific loss, ambiguous deprivation is the sorrow of not having received something essential that many people assume should have been there all along—such as love, emotional safety, validation, protection, guidance,… Read More Ambiguous deprivation
Epistemic justice means treating people as credible knowers of their own experiences. In abuse and violence cases, epistemic injustice often happens when victims are dismissed, doubted, ridiculed, or blamed instead of being listened to. Some well-known examples include: The case of Stephen Lawrence and witness Duwayne Brooks After Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist… Read More Dismissing evidence
