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College Mom: I'm Trying, But It's Hard

We dropped our first born off at university this week. We have spent the last year plus supporting him as he got ready. From taking AP classes and exams, to doing half of his senior year of high school at our community college, our son was looking forward. We thought frequently about how the transition to college would be for us all, and he and I often would tell each other that we would certainly miss one another and that it would, yes, feel very weird. Well, it does. I didn't even shed a tear until I walked into the house after we drove home without him. Our house, minus one of our children, just doesn't feel like our home. Walking into his bedroom brought me to tears. The boy is gone, at least until Thanksgiving break, and I have to get used to the change. We left him seeming excited and confident, and for that, I am deeply grateful. He is competent to meet the academic challenges ahead, and has support for everything else. I've been comforted by the texts we have

Mary Karr Interview

Thanks, Mary.

Tiger Woods : How Far the Great Have Fallen

With news this morning that Tiger missed the cut in the latest PGA tournament, sports journalists are beginning to comment on his astonishing fall from golf and sports greatness. It does seem as if his personal and professional troubles have created a failure that reminds us of an airplane in free fall. How could someone with such unusual talent lose it so disastrously? There is something of gloating in all this talk, too. After all, who among us doesn't feel just a bit of pleasure in seeing the untouchable hero now seem so human? While the sports writers opine over this and that detail, it seems sadly simple to me. He is suffering, and his life is demonstrating the difficulty he is having holding all the pieces of his super-star world together. What propelled him to greatness - his focus, consistency, precision, unflappability - are all possible because he once managed an internal calm. Even if that calm was managed, or maybe controlled, even masked, by dozens of handlers, unl

More Deadlines

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It's Thursday night, and I have more writing deadlines. I'm late on my professional blog post at GoodTherapy.org (again), and I have a sermon to do for Sunday. For the first 12 years of my parish ministry life, I preached about 46 Sunday sermons a year. I had time away for vacation, and occasionally for continuing education, or a bout with laryngitis, or a special guest preacher, but otherwise, I had a deadline every week. In addition, each year I had a half dozen Lenten sermons to write, a dozen or more funeral sermons to prepare, half a dozen wedding sermons, and a dozen or more newsletter columns to do. When I joined a staff for my last 8 years in the parish, the rhythm slowed to about every third Sunday plus the added services which I led. That's a lot of writing to the clock. That's a lot of writing, period . I know I learned to cope with this demand while an English major in college. What I remember most about my Major are the piles of papers I had to produce in

Oh No You Don't

Medical docs, you don't get to run over a patient and their therapist with your assumptions just because you believe you can. Yesterday one of my long term clients called me to ask for a psychiatrist referral. The message was a puzzle, so I called her back to learn the details. She had been in to see a doctor for medication for an infection. After that examination, blood work and diagnosis was over, the doctor asked my client about an older mental health diagnosis that was in the chart. "Well, I see that you were diagnosed XXX in the past." "Yes," my client answered, "but my current therapist assures me I don't have XXX anymore." Well, that information was ignored. My client was ushered in to see yet another physician who "specialized" in mental health issues. He proceeded to give her a brief screening, and in a few minutes told her that while she probably didn't have XXX anymore she probably had ADHD.  She should see a psychiatri