The Mercury / Friday
• My heart goes out to children who live in unsettled houses. Houses where the abuse of alcohol or drugs dominates everything. Houses where rage rips people apart.
• My heart goes out to children whose parents were once together and now are apart. Although the child may have received loving messages about how they are loved despite what mother and father do, it still often makes no sense to the child.
• My heart goes out to children who are fighting a deadly disease and to the siblings who are fighting it with them. The necessary lack of certainty bolstered with statements of faith, all within the same adult sentence, can be confusing. It’s at least as confusing for the child as it is for the adult trying to comfort them.
• My heart goes out to children whose boundaries are ignored and violated and whose voices are ignored or silenced. Such children might as well be invisible to those commissioned to love and protect them.
• My heart goes out to the child who must assume a defensive stance because of race, gender, language; or whether he or she is “legal” or “illegal.”
• My heart goes out to children who are hungry in a nation of plenty, those born outside the dominant culture, those whose troubles are the fruit of a troubled nation.
• My heart goes out to my own sons who, it seems, will never know their blood mothers or blood fathers and who have to tolerate me when at times I’m unpredictable, irrational, and reactive.
difficultrelationships.com 
Leave a Reply