…Grief doesn’t then become something we feel we have to do in the privacy, away from others so that we do not feel we are in error because we didn’t immediately feel healed when someone tells us, “everything happens for a reason”. As with any and all emotions, they are absolutely okay to feel…

Purpose, destiny, fate, predestined plans. All of these feel great if we feel we have them. But how do we reconcile this if we do not? As a therapist, I often hear from clients that they do not have a purpose. My answer is generally simplistic: why do you feel you need one?

I was fortunate to have loving parents, but I can look back and recall times that even when they were showing their love, I could not feel it. Our first response as parents and guardians when teenagers get ‘moody’ or show ‘attitude’ is to punish or correct them. We feel that we must put our foot down so we don’t raise disrespectful children.