Telling Stories Never Fails To

When One Of Us Tells The Truth, He Makes It Easier For All Of Us To Open Our Hearts To Our Pain And That Of Others.

Adolescence Is A Time When Children Are Supposed To Move Away From Parents Who Are Holding Firm And Protective Behind Them. When The Parents Disconnect, The Children Have No Base To Move Away From Or Return To. They Aren't Ready To Face The World Alone. With Divorce, Adolescents Feel Abandoned, And They Are Outraged At That Abandonment. They Are Angry At Both Parents For Letting Them Down. Often They Feel That Their Parents Broke The Rules And So Now They Can Too.

When Europeans Arrived On This Continent, They Blew It With The Native Americans. They Plowed Over Them, Taking As Much As They Could Of Their Land And Valuables, And Respecting Almost Nothing About The Native Cultures. They Lost The Wisdom Of The Indigenous Peoples-wisdom About The Land And Connectedness To The Great Web Of Life...we Have Another Chance With All These Refugees. People Come Here Penniless But Not Cultureless. They Bring Us Gifts. We Can Synthesize The Best Of Our Traditions With The Best Of Theirs. We Can Teach And Learn From Each Other To Produce A Better America.

Adolescents' Immature Thinking Makes It Difficult For Them To Process The Divorce. They Tend To See Things In Black-and-white Terms And Have Trouble Putting Events Into Perspective. They Are Absolute In Their Judgments And Expect Perfection In Parents. They Are Likely To Be Self-conscious About Their Parent's Failures And Critical Of Their Every Move. They Have The Expectations That Parents Will Keep Them Safe And Happy And Are Shocked By The Broken Covenant. Adolescents Are Unforgiving.

One Important Reason To Stay Calm Is That Calm Parents Hear More. Low-key, Accepting Parents Are The Ones Whose Children Keep Talking.