Have you seen this movie? I watched it about 15 years ago, and then again recently. What a powerful image of a person who should not have parented a child. My novel, “Paper Girl,” revolves around the same type of parenting. If you have a reader on your holiday gift list, search Amazon’s website for “Julie Butler” to purchase this young adult fiction paperback. (You may also click the “Buy Now” link on this blog to purchase it.) A teacher in Tennessee writes, “I couldn’t put it down. The story completely changed the way I view my students.”

To become your own loving parent takes life-long effort. When a person grows up in an alcoholic environment (or another dysfunctional environment where the child lacks a voice and lacks power), there comes a time when the “adult child” is faced with the realization that he or she was abandoned in some fashion. There is anger and grief, and then, hopefully, there is the realization that the “adult child” is capable of re-parenting himself/herself in loving ways. This re-parenting involves boundaries, fun, therapy, and the allowance of feelings. “Becoming our own Loving Parent means that many of us come to believe that our Higher Power is our actual parent. The birth parents passed on the disease of family dysfunction that affects us in our lives today. Our Higher Power is the parent who gives us unconditional love and the way out of confusion and self-abuse.” (Chapter 8 of of “Alcoholic/Dysfunctional Families,” a/k/a the Big Red Book)

Live and let live. Be kind to yourself today.