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It’s hard to deepen the intimacy in a relationship when we feel we can’t say stuff or there are parts of ourselves we need to hide. It’s true that different relationships “pull” for different parts of us. We’re a slightly different person at work than we are at home; we’re a slightly different person to our romantic partner than we are to our friends; we’re a slightly different person to our family than we are to strangers. But if a relationship is predicated on us being a “v

When my daughter was 4, I learned from my daughter that her grandfather was taking her into men’s restrooms. She had seen things she should not. The way I found out? My daughter began having nightmares and stopped wanting to go anywhere with her grandfather. I questioned her and she told me what she had seen. I was shocked and absolutely heartbroken for my little girl. I calmly told her grandfather that I had to ask him something, because I would not be a good mother if I did

One summer, when I was 9, I spent an entire week with my grandmother. She lived 35 minutes from my home. She is the woman who adopted my mother, but never wanted an adopted child. My mother grew up knowing her father wanted her and her mother did not. I did not know this until I was a teenager. Her father was away, 325 days a year as a truck driver. I was afraid of my grandfather, only because I did not know him. I liked my grandmother a lot, I didn’t love her, because I only

Father’s Day With a Narcissistic Father: Surviving the Mood Swings, the Silence, and the Eggshel ls Father’s Day doesn’t feel like a celebration to me. It feels like a reminder—of what I was expected to call “normal,” and what I spent years trying to survive. My father could be charming in public and cruel at home. That contrast is hard to explain to people who only met the version of him that smiled, joked, and knew exactly what to say. The version that made other people thi