You & Your Family

Recently, I have been reminded of how difficult it is to love and accept others unconditionally. Realistically, there may be only a handful of individuals whom we can claim to accept in spite of their failings. Even then, we may find our patience tested to the limits when these few do disappoint us. Yet, although […]

Recently, I have been reminded of how difficult it is to love and accept others unconditionally. Realistically, there may be only a handful of individuals whom we can claim to accept in spite of their failings. Even then, we may find our patience tested to the limits when these few do disappoint us. Yet, although […]

I recently found myself drawn into a conversation between two ladies with contrasting views on parenting. One woman was worried that her daughter was “too good” for her own good. She was genuinely concerned about whether her 17-year-old daughter was sufficiently exposed to “the real world”. Her daughter would be going overseas to study in […]

The phrase “Many are houseless, not homeless” stuck in my mind after meeting the Director of an organisation providing services for women in one of San Francisco’s counties. She had said this in response to my observation of there being many homeless people in the city. This image ended up being one of the enduring […]

The United Nations estimated that as of 2016, there are 795 million people facing hunger in the world. This fact is hard to comprehend, and even harder to accept in a world which has the capacity of producing enough food to feed itself and where food waste is a growing problem with many countries. Even […]

Hiking path and sunset in beautiful woods view inspirational summer landscape in forest. Walking footpath or biking path dirt road. “It’s the journey, not the destination.” I have had this statement addressed to me time and time again. Recently, a fellow walker said this when he noticed how eager I was to start hiking again […]

It would be fair to say that most of us want to be good at what we do. The employee handing in a report he had been slaving over for days and nights will wait anxiously for his boss’ response. A young child who brings a new “toy” he has fashioned to his mother waits […]

An exercise I always set for my students learning about Family Therapy is for them to write an essay about themselves and their family. I will get them to draw their family tree and to subsequently infer how their parents, grandparents, and events from their formative years may have shaped them into who they are […]

In days of old, when messages were carried by persons rather than transmitted through mass media or the Internet, there was a common understanding that one should refrain from “killing the messenger”, especially when the message was unwelcome. These days, a common response to unwelcome news would be to categorise it as “fake news”. This […]

  The irate husband looked in disbelief at his wife and said with a hint of frustration: “We had to come for counselling to say this?” He was responding to what he just heard from his wife, wondering why she could not have told it to him earlier in private. After all, their relationship was […]

  An article in the papers caught my eye some weeks ago. It was interesting because it seemed to say something different about marriage – something that, intuitively, I agreed with. Much of what is written about marriage these days is geared towards helping readers improve it and make it “great”. The notion seems to […]

As we were about to end our tea conversation, my friend made an unexpected proposal. She had clearly thought about it for some time and felt the need to broach it carefully. She paused, cleared her throat and asked me not to take what she was about to say in the “wrong way”. She then […]