Showing titles in Parents & Adult Children

If you were raised by a narcissistic mother and are struggling with the lingering effects of a toxic upbringing, this is the road map you need to heal the past and thrive in the present and future.

When your parents are pathologically self-centered, manipulative, or emotionally abusive, the pain they cause is deep and often difficult to put into words. You may experience anxiety, depression, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), low self-esteem, addiction, or other mental health conditions as an adult. But it was not your fault, and there are tools you can use to heal the trauma caused by your childhood.

In this important sequel to Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, author Lindsay Gibson offers powerful tools to help you step back and protect yourself at the first sign of an emotional takeover, make sure your emotions and needs are respected, and break free from the coercive control of emotionally immature parents.

Maggie and her daughter, Renée, have made this audiobook from their own experience. A fierce love of her teen and a determination to push through all the difficulties led Maggie to challenge her parenting style, change her approach, and learn about the best psychological method to help both herself and her daughter.

In Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children, Sheri McGregor, MA, helps parents break free from emotional pain - and move forward in their own lives. As a loving mother to whom the unthinkable happened, McGregor knows the horrible shock that wrings a parent dry, triggers denial, blame, anger, and shame. With empathy and understanding, as well as tools, the latest research, and insight from more than 9,000 parents of estranged adult children, McGregor helps parents of estranged adults plan, prepare for emotional triggers, and prevail over pain.

In Our Mothers, Ourselves, Henry Cloud and John Townsend show how understanding how our mothers have profoundly influenced our lives can set us on a path toward wholeness and growth. No one has influenced the person you are today like your mother. The way she handled your needs as a child has...

This is a story about birds and fathers. About the young magpie that fell from its nest in a Bermondsey junkyard into Charlie Gilmour's life - and swiftly changed it. Demanding worms around the clock, riffling through his wallet, sharing his baths and roosting in his hair.... About the jackdaw kept at a Cornish stately home by Heathcote Williams, anarchist, poet, magician, stealer of Christmas and Charlie's biological father who vanished from his life in the dead of night.

This "wise and caring book" (Library Journal) is a guide to understanding and coping with grief and all of the disorienting emotions that accompany the death of our parents. Losing our parents when we ourselves are adults is in the natural order of things, a rite of passage into true adulthood...

A revolutionary guide to parenting with confidence, clarity and empathy. ‘Five more minutes!’ ‘One more story!’ ‘I’m not tired!’ The pressures of modern-day parenting can be relentless, leading us to over-parent, over-explain and over-negotiate with our kids. This may work at first...

Being an empty nester doesn’t have to be lonely. Here’s how to rediscover yourself and live a happy and meaningful life.

Do You Have An Aging Parent Who — Blames you for everything that goes wrong? Cannot tolerate being alone, wants you all the time? Is obsessed with health problems, real, or imagined? Make unreasonable and/or irrational demands of you? Is hostile, negative and critical? Coping with these traits...

Is your father ruining your life? Discover if He is a Narcissist and Learn How to Neutralize His Manipulations! Are you tired of people minimizing or denying your experience? Are you tired of being told, "Forgive him, he's still your father!"? Caroline Foster is on your side. She has distilled all the information and advice you need to take the hardest step toward emotional independence and self-realization: the first one.

The best news on the planet is that your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be happy. In fact, author Karen C.L. Anderson will take it a step further and say your mother doesn't have to change in order for you to be free, peaceful, contented, and joyful. You can emotionally separate without guilt: Inspired by her own journey, Anderson's Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters shows women how to emotionally separate from their mothers without guilt and anxiety so they can finally create a life based on their own values, desires, needs, and preferences.

Parents whose adult children have cut off contact wonder: How did this happen? Where did I go wrong? What happened to my loving child? Over time, holidays, birthdays, and even the birth of grandchildren may pass in silence. Anguish may turn into anger. While time, in and of itself, does not necessarily heal, actions do, and while every estrangement includes situation-specific variables, there are practical, effective, and universal techniques for understanding and healing these not-uncommon breaches. 

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. 

Why can't he commit? Many women find themselves asking this question when in love with a man who won't get married, won't stop womanizing, or refuses to give up his sex addictions. Often this kind of man is bound by an unhealthy attachment to his mother. This phenomenon is called mother-son enmeshment. In When He's Married to Mom, clinical psychologist and renowned intimacy expert Dr. Kenneth M. Adams goes beyond the stereotypes of momma's boys and meddling mothers to explain how mother-son enmeshment affects everyone: the mother, the son, and the woman who loves him.

Oscar Wilde's first play confronts the hypocrisy of public "morality" compared with genuine, private kindness. The reasons for its continued popularity are not difficult to identify: the play's witty dialogue contains many of Wilde's most quoted aphorisms, its stylish setting provides opportunities for elegant presentation, and its cast of memorable characters play out a story which is genuinely moving. This new audio production brings together a full cast worthy of Wilde's creative genius.

Based partly on the author's experience, partly on her in-depth interviews, and partly on a questionnaire she developed with psychologist Holly Barrett to which almost 600 women responded, Father Loss provides the clearest portrait yet of a very special group of women. As a group, they express their insecurities ("Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to love a man totally...because that would mean I didn't love my father anymore." - Leslie).

An Italian Summer is a novel about friendship, family secrets and second chances, set against the backdrop of Southern Italy. Sandy is in her 50s, and at a crossroads in her life: she's a teacher and respected by her pupils, but she feels she is being sidelined in favour of younger colleagues. So when her mother dies, leaving her a sealed envelope addressed to an unknown woman living in Naples, Sandy decides to head to Italy to resolve the mystery by delivering the letter herself.

Was your mother always shaming you, making you feel rejected? Was it always about her? Was she often emotionally, or even physically abusive towards you? Sadly, this is how narcissists act, and despite the vast majority of mothers being very maternal & loving, narcissistic mothers just aren’t like this. And, of course, this leaves scars as you become an adult.