‘The mother-daughter bond has been one of patriarchy’s most effective means of reproducing itself through generations’

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—Bethany Webster, author of Discovering the Inner Mother

‘The mother-daughter bond has been one of patriarchy’s most effective means of reproducing itself through generations’ —Bethany Webster, author of Discovering the Inner Mother

What do you feel when you read that quote? What does it even mean?

I’m the mother of three daughters. I’ve also been coached by Bethany, and when I read her words, again and again, my needs to be seen, heard, understood, and to matter are met. Her analysis, in my experience, is so rarely articulated and so true.

The simplest way I can explain the significance of Bethany’s quote is through describing my eating disorder and recovery from it. When I was obsessed with counting calories (I grew up in the 80s) I had a lot of clarity on what was good and what was bad: cookies were bad, cottage cheese was good; Republicans were bad, Democrats were good; William Faulkner was a great writer, Jackie Collins was a bad writer. I was a teenager, the world was easily divided into binaries, I knew who I was and where I was going.

In my twenties, when I started to try to give up the bulimia, I tried so many modalities to stop the behavior. I went to private therapy, group therapy, nutritionists, 12-step programs, and nothing worked until I started to practice what today would be called intuitive eating. I got help from an organization called Beyond Hunger in Marin County that supported me to eat when I was hungry, eat whatever I wanted, and stop when I was full. To be clear, this was not an eat when-hungry-stop-when-full “diet.” Many times, as I was learning, I would finish a bag of chips when they stopped tasting good, just because I had the urge to keep crunching, but the difference was I became aware of when I was continuing on past my pleasure point. I was conscious of my choices and I learned to be self-compassionate.

But here’s the really weird thing that happened as I recovered from bulimia. Initially, I lost my orientation of right and wrong. I no longer connected with other women as easily as I had in the past. When I stopped criticizing my body, I got confused. When I stopped eating because it was lunch time or dinner time, and ate when I actually was hungry, I didn’t know how to schedule my day. When I was served a plate of food and I only wanted half of the portion or I wanted seconds, when I was in the mood for salad and not the steak that was served, when I ate because I actually wanted the food and not to protect someone’s feelings, a waiter I didn’t even know or a man who cooked for me, I felt a rush of guilt, shame, and fear.

For so many women, having an eating disorder, being sick, is easier than being healthy. Eating what I wanted, when I wanted felt so rebellious and strange. I felt like how I imagine those tigers do, like the one Glennon Doyle wrote about in her book Untamed, who was free of her cage and still couldn’t run. She was paralyzed,

I was 28 years old when I got better from bulimia and I was 34 when I had my first child. I thought I was ready. Not only had I recovered from a vicious eating disorder, I was sober. I was deeply in love with my smart, sweet boyfriend. I had a career that excited and fulfilled me, I produced talk radio programs, co-founded a non-profit that taught young women ethical leadership skills, I published commentary on politics and culture, and I advocated for women’s issues on national television. Who could be more ready for motherhood than me?

I raised all three of my daughters to be intuitive eaters which for me meant I never gave them rules about what to eat and when to eat it. I never made them finish a plate of food or rewarded “good” behavior with something like ice cream or told them not to “snack” before dinner. I filled the refrigerator and low cupboards with food that they could reach on their own. If they wanted ice cream for breakfast, they was fine with me.

This post is not about how in spite of my efforts, my daughters still grew up with disordered eating. All of them are “healthy” eaters. They eat what they want when they want, they’re adventurous with trying new kinds of food, they’re all “normal” weight.

But when my kids were little, the other moms had a really hard time with how my kids ate. When friends came over, often parents joined, and they were shocked and disapproving that my kids could eat candy whenever they wanted. I honestly believe that part of the reason these parents accepted my family’s intuitive eating, is because neither my kids or I were “overweight.” Once again, I learned, not having an eating disorder separated me from community and incited disapproval, judgement, and confusion.

In my own family, being a “healthy” eater (how I define healthy which is not controlling food, I’m not talking about eating your veggies) caused more conflict, upset, confusion, and judgement. When my kids were allowed to eat whatever they wanted and my nieces and nephews weren’t following the same “rules,” new flexibility and openness had to be reached and that path is never smooth. That journey to a different way of being and relating isn’t so so different from the readjustment sobriety can create in a family that connects and bonds at cocktail hour.

Moms want so much to keep our kids safe, and the way I was raising my daughters seemed dangerous, scary, and chaotic to so many parents. I get that because when I went through a new way of eating, that process could feel dangerous, scary, and chaotic.

Mothers pass on eating disorders, generation after generation, out of concern, love, and a desire to protect. As a woman, when you stop monitoring what you eat, when you let your own body determine what you want and when you want it, you are making a radical choice to trust yourself.

It turns out, at 34, I was not “ready” to be a mom, because no one is ever ready and there’s no perfect time. My oldest daughter never had food issues, but she struggled with behavioral challenges that I’ve written about before and what I learned from supporting her through recovery is that my insights about food didn’t go nearly far enough. It wasn’t just at the dinner table that I needed to follow the wisdom of my body, my intuition, my own unique path instead of the systems that rewarded compliance. As a woman, as a mom, as a mom of daughters, time and time again you’re confronted with a choice: Do I do what the “expert” tells me, the psychiatrist, the teacher, the lacrosse coach, the college adviser, or do I deeply listen to the needs of my daughter?

For example, it never once occurred to me, and I now I realize this lack of awareness was partly because I was born white and to a privileged family, that my daughter wouldn’t go to college. I may have been a Democrat, but I believed in all the rules and status and hierarchy of academia. While I wasn’t dependent on how much money or how much I weighed to determine my status and worth, I was still looking for external validation in my daughter’s grades and test scores. Those numbers told me if I was a good mom, if my daughter would be “safe” and “successful” in the world.

What I know now is that helping my daughters thrive in the world means prioritizing connection with them, listening to them, meeting their needs to be seen, heard, and to matter, not just in what they eat but in every aspect of their lives.

Listen to Laurelee Roarke’s podcast It’s Not About Food where I spoke about recovery and raising daughters free of disordered eating

If you want to learn more about Nonviolent Communication or my parent coaching visit listen2connectcoach.com or follow me on Instagram @listen2connectcoach

Celebrating the girls and women of Stranger Things

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Finally, last night, my family watched the finale of Stranger Things. Those three days of waiting to see it after the show dropped December 31 felt pretty brutal; we basically had to avoid social media. But my kids grew up on this show—and they had their own New Year’s Eve plans and next night plans—so if I wanted us to see it together, I had to tolerate the delay.

It was totally worth it!

I made nachos. One thing I love about being a grown-up is I can make nachos, nothing else, and call that dinner. My husband made a fire. Walter, the dog, joined us, and while it poured rain outside, we settled in for two cozy hours together.

This final season was my favorite of them all. You know I rate shows based on the criteria of how females are represented, and Stranger Things just got better and better for its women and girl characters. The addition of Holly in a main role was so satisfying, we got to watch her grow from scared little sister to heroic leader. Not only that, Holly bonded with Max, and they worked together to save the world, a girl-girl partnership that is too often invisible from series created for kids.

Another female character to celebrate is Linda Hamilton’s Dr. Kay. I’ve idolized Hamilton since her Terminator days when she broke stereotypes playing Sarah Connor, not only the mother of the protagonist, John Connor, in that movie, but she was the mother of all humanity. Unlike most depictions of mothers back then, Hamilton’s matriarch was driven, focused, violent, and she had muscles. In Stranger Things, Hamilton is once again driven, focused, and violent, and her body breaks stereotypes because though she’s no longer buff, she’s old. Hamilton’s gloriously natural face gives the necessary depth and authenticity to her character. Part of me feels ridiculous writing that, because of course, the same gratitude isn’t standard or expected for older male actors with wrinkles, but my hope is Hamilton’s portrayal ushers in a new era for older actresses.

Another female who gets to shine in this last season is El’s sister, Kali. She’s strategic, kind, and seeing sisters work together is iconic.

Nancy also comes into her own this season, racing into battle, fully armed, so courageous she seemed to be playing tribute to Sarah Connor’s legacy.

Robin’s character also filled out this season. As always, Robin is witty and smart, providing a comic break but with an edge, and her lesbian romance continues to blossom. Though what happened to her girlfriend? Did I miss something? Tell me if you know where Vickie disappeared to.

Joyce Byers and Karen Wheeler are two fierce moms who know how to rescue, fight for, and love their kids. For these characters, being a mother in and of itself, is a superpower.

El, of course, is the bad-ass hero of the show.

Finally, my favorite character, Max, was pretty much the dominant character of this season, besides Will. Sadie Sink is one of the most talented young actresses today. I’m excited to follow her career, I predict great, stranger things.

Reel Girl rates Stranger Things Season 5 ***GGG*** TRIPLE G for most GIRLPOWER

Unfawning in 2026! Who’s with me?

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You’ve heard of the trauma responses: fight, flight, and freeze, but have you heard of fawning? I’m obsessed with the new book: Fawning by Dr. Ingrid Clayton. Every person—but really, urgently, every woman—needs to read it.

Dr. Clayton quotes psychotherapist Pete Walker defining fawning as “a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat.” In her book, she writes that fawning isn’t a gendered response, anyone can fawn, which I agree with, but Walker’s definition—becoming more appealing to the threat—seems to describe exactly how women are trained to be “safe” in a patriarchy. Dr. Clayton elaborates her definition throughout the book, but here it is in a nutshell: “Fawners mirror or merge with someone else’s desires or expectations to defuse conflict rather than confront it directly.”

I’ve actually read a lot about trauma, I read Pete Walker’s books years ago, and so I’d heard of fawning. But when I read Dr. Clayton’s in-depth analysis, I understood for the first time that fawning is not a conscious response, something you decide to do. Instead, your nervous system activates a fawning response. This understanding helped me be more aware and compassionate when I fawn, as opposed to getting angry at myself, or judging or shaming myself.

As a feminist, as someone who speaks out for causes she believes in, who debates Tucker Carlson on national TV, I may appear to be someone who doesn’t fawn. But now I see my endless arguing, debating, explaining, is in some ways, an attempt to win others over, to get them on my side, “to connect to protect,” as Dr. Clayton describes fawning.

That is not to say debate, arguing, explaining is wrong, it can be necessary and useful. But it’s also helpful to be aware of when and how I’m choosing to spend my precious time, energy, and brain cells.

But how I find Fawning most helpful and enlightening is in supporting me to be a cycle breaker as a mom of three daughters living in a capitalist patriarchy. The unpaid, unappreciated labor of being a mom, from endless scheduling to filling out forms to driving your kids everywhere, even just the energy and skill you need to value emotions and emotional regulation skills, in a society that doesn’t believe feelings matter, is kind of shocking. At least it was for me.

In her book Discovering the Inner Mother, Bethany Webster writes:

“I once saw a video on Facebook that was geared toward mothers who are feeling stressed, sleep deprived, and unappreciated. At the end it said, ‘Look into the eyes of your child and know that you matter.’ Line after line expounded upon how the mother is elevated in the eyes of the child, implying that should be enough to get you through. The entire point of the video was that a mother need only look into her children’s eyes for validation. I found it odd that it didn’t mention the support of friends, partners, or communities to help women through the tough times as mothers. It didn’t mention self-care. It didn’t help women see themselves as inherently valid and important.

At first glance, this can seem like a harmless video with the intention of honoring the ceaseless work mothers do. It was ‘liked’ by thousands of people. But I found the video disturbing for many reasons. For mothers, it perpetuates the illusion that the approval of one’s children should be compensation enough for the brutally unending, thankless, isolating work of motherhood in the modern world. And it sets up the child for bearing the emotional burden of a mother’s struggles and learning how to overfunction as an emotional caretaker. It sets up the child to feel that she “owes” her mother a version of herself to protect her from her pain…

Our culture, with its hostility toward women as expressed in diminishing access to reproductive healthcare, the wage gap, lack of ample maternity leave, and male violence against women as well as systemic barriers like institutional racism, all combine to isolate the mother and to coerce the child into carrying the burden of emotionally validating the mother in the absence of support from partners, adults, institutions, and society in general. This is a void that a child can never fill.”

Webster is describing how mothers and daughters are locked into a fawning trauma response that can continue for generations unless we forge a different path.

In some ways, when I had kids, I thought I was going to get a fan club! Part of me was surprised that healthy kids are usually not showering moms with love and gratitude.

Dr. Clayton writes: “Those of us with an overactive fawn response might unconsciously want our children to fawn. That is how we survived so it can feel like our children won’t be safe in the world without learning to appease, get quiet, and comply, all under the guise of respect. When our children don’t shapeshift for our benefit, we simply don’t have the skills to help because we haven’t learned regulation ourselves. It’s so important for parents to address their own fawning. By doing so, we take responsibility for our dysregulation and break the cycle of living in survival mode, teaching our children a different path forward.”

My New Year’s resolution for 2026 is to unfawn. Are you with me?

Kids Speak in Metaphor—Can Parents Listen for What Matters?

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When my teenage daughter was in residential treatment for behavioral health challenges, she would tell her therapists about the time my husband kicked her out of his truck on the freeway.

That never happened.

The first time my husband and I heard her story, we were shocked and defensive. “How could she say something like that?” We asked the therapist. “Is she trying to hurt us?”  

“Lying is a consistent problem for her,” the therapist told us. “We’ll confront her together in a family session. If she can’t be truthful, she won’t get better.”

Finally, all in one room, my husband and I demanded our daughter tell us why she made up negative stories about us. We restated what really happened: “When you yell at us, get physical in the car and threaten us, when you grab the steering wheel, or shove the car into park and your sisters are in the back seat, we cannot continue to drive. We’ll pull over and ask you to get out to calm down. We do that to keep everyone safe. We would never force you out on a freeway.”

Our daughter’s eyes glazed over, and she wouldn’t say anything or respond to us at all. My husband and I got more agitated, frustrated, and defensive. That session ended, like so many others, in radical disconnection.

Several therapists later, when we heard the same story yet again, I rolled my eyes. “I can’t go through this in another session, it’s a waste of time and money.”

 “What about just listening to her?” said the therapist.

“What?” I said. “She’s lying.”

“But what was she feeling?” asked this therapist.

“What was she feeling when the thing that never happened happened?” I said, my body stiffening.

“We’re not going to enable her,” said my husband, reciting the counsel of so many experts. “She’s manipulating us.”

“Can you listen for the emotions underneath her story?” said the therapist. “Could that be the truth for her?”

I’m a writer, skilled in translating emotion into metaphor, and still hearing the therapist emphasize feelings beneath the narrative, my brain short-circuited.  “You mean how would she feel if we had left her on the freeway?”

“Yes, can you picture that?”

I closed my eyes. I felt like I had to harness every brain cell in my head to even imagine my daughter abandoned on 101 North. “She would be terrified,” I said. “Totally alone.” When I spoke those words, I felt them. I finally experienced the empathy for my daughter that always eluded me when I pictured her on a tree-lined street.

In our next family session, when the freeway story came up, I blinked and saw her standing on the shoulder, cars whizzing by. “That must’ve been really scary,” I said.

 “Yes, it was scary,” she said. She went on to talk about how lonely and sad she was, and how much shame she felt for acting out— this from a kid who would never tell me what she was feeling. And tragically, I spent so many years begging and ordering her to open up. Not long before that session, I’d written in a letter to her:

“Time and time again, we’ve asked you to be honest with us, to be specific about what is happening for you, what problems you face and how you work through them, but what we get is lies or half truths and you taking a victim role. We are not asking you to be perfect. What we need is for you to approach our talks with honesty, openness and authenticity, to feel the words that you’re saying.”

I was asking my daughter to choose to feel, as if that were a conscious decision she could make—and then I expected her to somehow summon the courage to share those painful, vulnerable feelings with me, her angry and frustrated mother.

In her new book, Fawning, Dr. Ingrid Clayton writes: “My brother once told his teachers in elementary school that our parents made him sleep outside at night, in the freezing cold. He said he curled up in an empty hot tub with nothing but the cover for a blanket. This is NOT what was happening in our house, but even as a kid, I remember thinking, that is genius. Because that loneliness, that fear, that neglect…was.”

When my daughter found her own ingenious way to share her internal world with me, I didn’t meet her with curiosity. I yelled at her for lying.

All these years later, I sound like I’m judging myself, and that isn’t my intention. I want to share how desperately I wanted to connect with my daughter, how much she wanted to connect with me, and how we repelled each other like magnets. Too many mental health experts and treatment centers push parents to create and hold firm boundaries in order to achieve behavior change, instead of showing us how to connect with our kids. Professionals handing down wisdom from mountaintops can’t guide us when they don’t know how to listen to us or our children.

Reading about the Reiner family tragedy, I was struck by a similar moment of clarity when the parents spoke about their son Nick’s history in treatment. In 2015, Rob Reiner told a reporter: “The program works for some people but it can’t work for everybody. When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”

Michele Reiner added, “We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar and he’s trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”

My husband and I didn’t have a magical, instantaneous metamorphosis the first time we heard my daughter’s feelings underneath her words. We were still scared, defensive, and confused as we all muddled our way through recovery. But what shifted dramatically that day was our orientation, our goal, our North Star. We no longer prioritized fact-checking, scanning words for accuracy, evaluating for objective truth, and deciding how much we agreed with everything said. Instead, slowly but committed, we turned towards the principles of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and began practicing empathic listening with each other. Developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, NVC centers on identifying feelings and the universal human needs beneath them. Rosenberg taught that conflict arises not from those needs, but from the strategies we use to try to meet them—and that when needs are heard, compassion becomes possible.

I have no doubt my family will spend a lifetime continuing to learn how to listen to each other, but all these years later, my daughter is happy, healthy, and though forever poetic, no longer depends on metaphor to risk expressing her truth.

If you’d like to learn more about NVC and my parent coaching visit my website. You can also find me on Instagram: @Listen2ConnectCoach and TikTok: @reelgirlreviews

Tired, sexist tropes in Elin Hilderbrand’s The Academy

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Mostly, I bought The Academy because the novel is based on my former high school, St. George’s, but I’ve also been kind of intrigued by the author, Elin Hildrebrand. She’s written so many books and I hadn’t read any yet.

So first, what I liked:

This book is a total page-turner. My wandering mind didn’t wander at all. If you’re longing for a break from stress, reality, or doom scrolling, The Academy is a reliable, entertaining choice. It requires just enough brain cells to keep you focused.

HIlderbrand wrote the book with her college age daughter, Shelby Cunningham, and I think that’s pretty cool for them to partner and publish together.

The authors do an expert job weaving multiple storylines and characters into a perfectly paced, thematically connected plot, not an easy balance to pull off.

There are many female characters in this book with dialogue lines and page time that far out numbers the male characters. If you read Reel Girl, you know I call the too-often-too-few girl characters in book, movies, streaming etc the “Minority Feisty” and no need to worry about that criticism here.

But here’s what I didn’t like:

Those many female characters? They mired in shallow and sexist tropes. Charley Hicks, a fifth former/ junior is a brilliant misfit student with glasses and braids who gets a makeover and goes on to win the hottest guy of the school. If I never again in the rest of my life I read one more book or see another movie or series where a supposedly homely girl transforms into a smoke show— from Eliza in “My Fair Lady,” Sandy in “Grease,” Tai Fraser in “Clueless” (of course is based on Harriet in Austen’s Emma) Laney Boggs in “She’s All That,” “Mean Girls,” “House Bunny,” “Devil Wears Parda,” Cinderella for God’s sake— I would not complain.

And something else I’d be happy to never see again? A shallow woman punished for her sexuality. Simone Bergeron, a young history teacher seems straight out of the horror film genre in that her short skirts and over active libido, we readers know, spell her downfall. Sadly, there’s nothing compelling about Simone’s character, no particular ambition or passion, she doesn’t seem much interested in the subject she teaches or teaching at all. She just wants to be popular. I won’t give away the ending of the book but it’s pretty clear early on that no good will come to such a slut.

Another trope that shows up in the book is the “Gossip Girl” framework: an app called “Zip Zap” which posts secrets about students. Not only have we all seen this before in this same genre of rich, high school kids, but, at least for me, the secret identity mystery fell flat.

One more thing I want to note, just because I went to this school and I am kind of fascinated by this particular subplot. Director of Admissions, Cordelia Spooner, gets “Zip Zapped” for her secret policy of admitting students based on how attractive they are. Cordelia trolls the kids and their parents to get a good look at them. The book mentions St. George’s is also called St. Gorgeous, supposedly for its stunning architecture and scenic location but that everyone knows the reference is really about the student body. While I hadn’t heard the nickname before, the values at this school, when I went back in the 80s, were ridiculously focused on appearance and reputation. Back then, new girls— and that means fourteen and fifteen year olds—were expected to dress up as Playboy bunnies on what was affectionately “Casino Night.” My hope would be that the school had evolved since then but reading The Academy tells me it may be just as superficial (and sexist) as ever.

Here’s a link to my Tik Tok about The Academy”

Follow me on IG @margotmagowan

Anyone read “The Academy”? And what do you think of the rich-people-on-islands streaming genre?

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Scrolling through Tik Tok, I saw a video where best-selling author Elin Hilderbrand was interviewed about the new novel she co-wrote with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham, The Academy. The book is inspired by stories Cunningham told her mother on long phone calls while she was a student at St. George’s, a boarding school in Newport Rhode Island where I also went to school.

I’ve blogged quite a bit on Reel Girl about St. George’s, how my “privileged” education there was the introduction into so much sexism and racism, how all the freshman girls “newbies” had to dress up as Playboy bunnies, how I got expelled sophomore year, that Tucker Carlson was my in my class and that Billy Bush is also an alumn, and of course Reel Girl followed the sex abuse legal case. I’ll put the links at the end of this post and above is a photo I just dug up. I apologize for the quality, I’m trying to get this up before I start cooking for the holiday and even though it’s not a great image, it’s so 80s! The Levi’s jean jacket, that bandana!

I love that HIlderbrand wrote a book with her daughter, I’ve never read anything by her before and so far, it’s a page turner, I’ll post a review when I’m finished. I’m wondering if anyone has read it or read books by her, and I’m also wondering what your favorite novels inspired by prep schools are? In her acknowledgements, Hilderbrand references Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld and A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

My kids and I watched “The Perfect Couple” last summer, a Netflix series based on another Hilderbrand book, so that’s all I know of her work do far and a TV adaptation isn’t really a fair assessment. I think most of all, it was fun for me talking about the plot with my kids and guessing who the killer was. We also watched “Sirens” and “We Were Liars,” all three shows were about rich people living on islands. “We Were Liars” was by far, my favorite, though—and I know this is a total cliche—the book was SO much better. “We Were Liars” has a twist ending so it’s almost impossible for me to imagine how it would’ve been to watch the show if I didn’t know the plot.

Have you read The Academy or anything by HIlderbrand? Have you watched any of these three series and do you have any other rich-people-on-an-island shows to add to the list from this popular genre? And finally, what’s your favorite boarding school novel? Let me know anything you’d like me to review, especially anything with female protagonists.

Open letter to Bishop Knisely about sexual assaults and cover ups at St. George’s school

Why is a justice who argued against statutory rape laws on the R. I. Supreme Court?

St. George’s school continues to hold back information in sexual assault investigation

St. George’s releases report on sexual assaults at the school

St. George’s alumna creates fund for survivors sexually assaulted at school

Comments on petition asking St. George’s for fair investigation into assaults make me cry

St. George’s School continues to flub investigation into sexual assaults

Lawyer investigating St. George’s sexual assaults is partner of school’s legal counsel

‘There’s no sense of why so many assaults happened at St. George’s, what the school did to create cultural backdrop that allowed and encouraged rape.’

Prep school alumni respond to St. Paul’s rape trial verdict

Women, class, and the problem of privilege: Everything I learned about sexism, I learned at boarding school

Tucker Carlson, Jerry Garcia, and me

Sad my daughter broke up with her boyfriend

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Just after my 16 year old and I finished a college tour, she got a text from her older sister that she’d broken up with her boyfriend. She wrote back: Is this a prank?

We didn’t believe it was true because they seemed so in love and so happy. The text was not a prank and my daughter shared more of the complicated story about why and how she’d made her decision. I’m impressed by my daughter’s insight, awareness, and health. I wish I had that level of maturity at 22. And I’m so sad! I’m sad because I liked this guy and I’ll miss him. I wanted it to work out. I wish I could fix it.

Even after all I’ve learned—connect, don’t fix is my mantra—I would still love magical powers to skip over the pain, my pain, her’s and his too. I’d like to tell him exactly what to do to make everything better. Just a little advice. I want to go where I don’t belong to meet my own needs for comfort, ease, and joy.

I’m grateful I’ve learned Compassionate Communication and know how to differentiate my needs from her own, and also to have the self-compassion skills to feel what I’m feeling. And it hurts!! This is my first experience as a mom in this situation. Please share your stories if you have any.

If you’re interested in learning more about Compassionate Communication—also called Nonviolent Communication and Heart-Centered Communication—please check out my new web site Listen2connect. In the “About” section, you’ll see the story of what happened with my daughter and me that completely changed my life and led me to become a parent coach.

In the “Media” section of my site, you can listen to recent podcasts I’ve guested on: What happens when a seasoned debater embraces the compassionate lens of Nonviolent Communication (NVC)? In this episode, I’m joined by writer and commentator Margot Magowan, who has debated on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and “Good Morning America”—and now finds herself navigating the delicate intersection between advocacy and empathy.

You can follow my coaching/ parenting on Instagram @listen2connectcoach and Substack @listen2connect.

Here’s a cut and paste of my story:

I discovered Nonviolent Communication when my own parenting felt stuck in cycles of frustration and disconnection.

When my daughter was struggling with behavioral health challenges I often resorted to yelling, arguing, and threats. I was scared for her health and safety. I didn’t know how to regulate my own emotions and show up as the resourceful, strong, connected parent she needed.

Over the next several years, my daughter had access to all kinds of mental health treatment including wilderness therapy, residential therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, family therapy, hospital stays, psychiatry, and a seemingly endless rotation of medications.

During that time, my husband and I started to learn Nonviolent Communication. I was intrigued by NVC but the skill set seemed like such a radically different modality than what we were learning from all the mental health experts. Rather than boundaries, rules, and consequences, NVC prioritized curiosity, compassion, and presence. I wasn’t sure if I trusted NVC or believed in it. I didn’t know if it would “work.”

Then my daughter was in a devastating car accident where she broke her neck. While my husband took care of our two younger daughters in San Francisco, I went to live with her in Utah as she rehabilitated. I finally decided to take the risk to fully embrace the compassionate listening skills taught in NVC. Nothing else was having the impact on my daughter’s health and safety that I kept hoping for. I realized NVC was something I could choose to do, that it was in my power to change my behavior, rather than continually focusing on how to “fix” my child.

When I met my daughter with curiosity, everything started to change. Instead of closing herself off in her room, she started talking to me about what she was feeling and thinking. I could sense her begin to trust me and open up. NVC teaches that these kind of relational shifts can happen when your child experiences inner safety. I felt so grateful that I was getting another chance to know her, to meet her where she was. During those weeks, she decided to start studying for her GED. As she took steps to focus on what she wanted, I learned to support her on her path instead of evaluating or judging how “successful” or “safe” I thought her choices were.

After that trip, I committed to fully immersing myself in NVC. I spent the next four years training with leading NVC teachers including Oren Jay Sofer, Roxy Manning, Ranji Ariaratnam, Kathy Simon, Kathleen Macferran, Sarah Peyton, Newt Bailey, John Kinyon, and Miki Kashtan.

My daughter did her own work as well, and now she’s thriving. She’s back in San Francisco, living in her own apartment, working, going to school, truly happy and engaged in life. All of her relationships are healthy and fulfilling. She’s also medication free except for ADHD meds. I know recovery isn’t a perfect line, challenges will arise, but what’s so different now is we have skills to stay connected, grounded, and centered through any ups and downs.

As I studied and practiced NVC, not only did my relationship with my daughter change, but all of my relationships became healthier, too. While my younger daughters didn’t experience the behavioral challenges my oldest did, they benefited by getting a more empathic, connected, calm mother. Recently, my sixteen year old shared that she now understands no one can “make you feel” a certain way, how emotions rise and pass, and that she wishes more kids her age could know what she does now.

I became a parent coach because NVC had such a profound and dramatic effect on my family, I want more parents get access to these life-changing skills more quickly and easily than I did. My hope is to support other families in avoiding some of the rabbit holes we went down that cost our family enormous resources of time, money, and energy. Listening to your kids is a such a game changer and a completely teachable skill, yet not enough parents know how.

NVC doesn’t just transform relationships—it transforms leadership. As a nonprofit founder, writer, and activist, I used to struggle with disagreement. I didn’t know how to challenge someone’s views without demonizing them. Just as I couldn’t really hear my kids, I couldn’t hear people who were offended by gay marriage or opposed to reproductive rights. NVC taught me to recognize universal human needs and to respond to others with more openness, empathy, and creativity in finding effective strategies to meet those common needs.

I can’t think of a more urgently needed skill set in the world today.

Stop everything and read Children of Blood and Bone

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Honestly, Children of Blood and Bone is so striking, so scary, so original and compelling that this is the book that inspired me to blog again.

I love fantasy, but if you follow my work, you know I read for character, not plot. If a book has a complex, intriguing protagonist, I can read about her watching paint dry just to hear the thoughts in her head.

I have to admit, I started to fall in love with Zelie when I saw the book cover.

I’ve joked on Reel Girl about how, in this world, to some degree, we must judge a book by its cover because representation matters. When I saw Zelie’s intense stare, the anger and clarity and in her eyes and her white hair defying gravity, I couldn’t look away. I had to know more. Zelie did not disappoint.

Zelie is a diviner, one of a race in Orisha, a mythical West African land, who can control magic. She and her people are oppressed by a wicked king who fears their power. Zelie must learn how to control her rage in order to access her skill to use magic effectively and not dangerously. Zelie is deeply flawed, and her weaknesses are often triggered by her relationships. The relationships are what make COBAB so original. Author Tomi Adeyemi has created a whole cast of compelling characters. Tzain is Zelie’s loyal, brave brother, always trying to protect her but keeping her safe means keeping her small. Amiri is a princess, the daughter of King Saran, who is motivated to rebel against her father after he kills her best friend, Binta. Watching the alliance grow between Amiri and Zelie, for me, is a driving force of the book. There is also love, between Tzain and Amiri but also between Zelie and Amir’s brother, Prince Inan. From the moment we meet Inan, his fierce passion, his desire to do the right thing, his conflict over loyalties to his father, to the kingdom, and to his own moral compass, force choices that no one wants to make.

Recently, I did a deeper dive into learning about Adeyemi and her own story is pretty compelling. She’s a Harvard grad and she sold this series for a 7 figure deal when she was 23. She was inspired by the Hunger Games, not only because she loved the book but she was furious about the public’s negative reaction to casting Rue as Black. She also wanted to write, through fantasy, about police brutality and genocide.

The movie comes out January 2027, it’s directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball, The Woman King) and the cast includes Viola Davis, Cynthia Erivo, Idris Elba! How will we wait over a year!?!?! I guess we have some reading to do : )

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It’s been a minute!

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Hi Reel Girl fans!

I’ve missed you. The world has been insane and so have I and I’m guessing you have too.

First of all, let’s celebrate that Reel Girl began long before #Metoo and everything written here, talked about here, discussed here, became FINALLY a national, an international conversation on sexism, misogyny, and the film industry. People finally seemed to make the link between men running Pixar and Disney and the plots of the movies created “for kids” being rooted in patriarchy.

Sadly, we also of course got Donald Trump and some of the most blatant and disgusting grab-her-by-the-pussy hatred for women in America than we have seen in decades. I guess some would argue, and this would include me, the hatred for women has always been here and right now, it’s less white washed. Overturning Roe v Wade obviously goes way beyond window dressing and having Trump and his followers in power rolls back rights so deeply, recovery will take a long time for us to overcome. But we will overcome it. We will overcome it together and we are going to start here by imagining gender equality in the fantasy world, because if we don’t have our imaginations, we have nothing.

Who is with me?

Welcome back. Reviews start soon. And we’re going to begin with favorite celebrations of fantasy books with female protagonists and female casts.

Let me know what you’d like to see me review. I’m planning on starting with:

*A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab

*Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

*The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemison

Let’s get going. We have work to do.

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Graffiti in famous San Francisco park calls climate change ‘big government hoax’

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While walking in San Francisco’s Crissy Field this morning, I was stunned to see the informational display about climate change defaced by graffiti reading “LIES” and “big government hoax.”

Instead of learning how to reduce our carbon footprint, why sea levels are rising and the impact of that, or how to protect the birds in the area, students who visit the park today will see graffiti claiming climate change isn’t real.

Just days ago, I read a story about another park in San Francisco defaced with swastikas.

Known as a sanctuary city and the home of Nancy Pelosi, San Franciscans sometimes think the “left coast” is inoculated from Trump’s virus of hate infecting our country. The frightening trend of graffiti in our local parks shows there is no protected place.