Stories We Tell Ourselves
"He said he had been listening to a symphony, and it was absolutely glorious music, and at the very end... there was a dreadful screeching sound... He added, really quite emotionally, 'It ruined the whole experience.' But it hadn't. What it had ruined was the memory of the experience... He had had twenty minutes of glorious music. They counted for nothing..." -- Daniel Kahneman, TED2010
read moreSelf-Harm: It Makes Sense
"For a burn or a cut might be shown, might be nursed, might scar or heal... would anyway be there, on the surface of her body, rather than corroding it from within." Sarah Waters, The Night Watch
“My head was full of wild ambitious urges to hurt myself... I wanted my interior pain out in my body... I wanted this vague pain to be specific. That’s how I explain it.” Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love
Respecting My Kids: Physical Boundaries
"Excuse me, please! I have something I want to say. It's my birthday, and I'm tired of being pinched, noogied, hit, hugged too tight, picked up, tickled, and touched in ways that I don't like. I am six years old, and I'm the boss of my body!" Ruby's Studio: The Safety Show
One morning a couple of weeks ago, I was dropping off my 5-year-old, Rachel, at school. I asked her, "Do you want a hug or no hug today?"...
Self-Acceptance: A Different New Year’s Resolution
"If you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in the looking glass… exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes… It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow." Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love; The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
Jenna’s Story
"Charlie, don’t you get it?…[you’re] sweet and everything, but it’s like you’re not even there sometimes. It’s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but…You can’t just sit there and put everybody’s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love…I want to know where you are, what you need, and what you want to do." Stephen Chbosky, the perks of being a wallflower
read moreRespecting My Kids: Feelings
"Parents… fear that by giving a name to the feeling, they’ll make it worse. Just the opposite is true. The child who hears the words for what he [or she] is experiencing is deeply comforted. Someone has acknowledged his [or her] inner experience.” Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk
read moreHappy Fathers Day to the Daddy in Our World
"Dad, I loved when you helped me learn to ride my two-wheeler. I love when you help me when I'm sad... and when you let me go to the tot lot..." Rachel, age 6
"My Dad, Jeffrey Knaub: I love you because you wrestle me... you help me roller blade... you help me up if I fall... you make me feel happy, loved, and excited... you let me eat potato chips..." Clara, age 9
Respecting My Kids: The Case Against Spanking Children
“A person's a person, no matter how small.” Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!
"Elizabeth Gershoff... has been studying corporal punishment for 15 years, and is known as the leading researcher on spanking in the United States today... 'There's no study that I've ever done that's found a positive consequence of spanking,' Gershoff said." Sarah Kovac, CNN
To Risk or Not to Risk
"What did I know of life? I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? …Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival?" Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending
I’m sitting at the computer, wondering how to get into this topic. The room is quiet. I glance at my phone, half hoping for a distracting text...
Respecting My Kids: Privacy
"She didn't have to go and tell that, thought Ramona, feeling that her mother had betrayed her by telling, as if it were funny... She still thought Chevrolet was a beautiful name, even though she was old enough to know that dolls were not usually named after cars." Beverly Cleary, Ramona and Her Mother
Puppy Training: New Year’s Lessons from our Puppy
“Over the years I've come to appreciate how animals enter our lives prepared to teach and far from being burdened by an inability to speak they have many different ways to communicate. It is up to us to listen more than hear, to look into more than past.” Nick Trout, Love is the Best Medicine: What Two Dogs Taught One Veterinarian about Hope, Humility, and Everyday Miracles
read moreFeedback
"Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable... But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance." Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
read moreAbout Lynn
I am a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with a Master of Science in Pastoral Counseling from Loyola University in Maryland. I have been in private practice for over twenty years and have experience working with adults and adolescents, addressing a variety of issues: anxiety, depression, relationship problems, past or current trauma, eating disorders, self-mutilation, bereavement, parenting concerns, boundaries, and self-care.