Posts tagged ‘Mother’
I Will Always Love You… Bobbi Kristina
Reprinted from Black Woman Unleashed magazine Feb 4, 2015
Imagine your child is helpless. She can’t do anything for herself. You have to do everything. As her mother, wouldn’t you do anything necessary to make sure she is okay? Of course you would.
Imagine that situation reversed. Your child has grown up watching you, cause that’s what our kids do. They don’t judge whether what we do is good or bad, it just is. So imagine for a minute, that you are Whitney Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina. She’s had a front row seat to the ups and downs of her parents’ life.
Three years ago her enigmatic, famous mother was found in a bathtub. While we hope that our children mirror us in positive ways. They will also follow us into the den of Hell. That’s how much they love us. Come back beautiful angel. Our prayers are with you Bobbi Kristina Brown and your family.
#PrayforBK
If you want to continue this discussion about protecting our #daughters, sign up for my Parenting Newsletter. Want to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our families; reach out to me on Twitter @MsParentguru or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. #parenting
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Specialist
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
Queen Latifah & Her Mom… #SustainingtheBond
Mothers, we are always giving to our children right?
I found this wonderful article about one of my sheroes, (actress and talk show host Queen Latifah) and how she is helping her mother through a serious illness. The bond between a mother and her daughter is can be a good one, might need work or may not exist at all. Don’t you agree?
Below is a reprint of part of the People Magazine article dated May 1, 2014 by Monica Rizzo.
Despite her very public persona, Queen Latifah has long been private about her family life. But last spring as she was ramping up production for her syndicated daytime talk show, The Queen Latifah Show, the entertainer was taking on a personal commitment to take charge of her mother Rita Owens’s round-the-clock medical needs.
Owens, 64, was diagnosed last year with scleroderma, an incurable autoimmune disease that has caused scar tissue build up (pulmonary fibrosis) in her lungs. Owens also has pulmonary hypertension (blood pressure in the lungs), which impacts her ability to breathe.
“I wasn’t going to do the show unless she came here,” Latifah tells PEOPLE in its latest issue. “I knew she was dealing with her health issues sometimes and I would not be able to get to her as easily.”
Despite the challenges caring for someone who’s ill, Latifah, 44, says she can’t imagine anyone else looking after her mother.
“Anyone who has a job and then has a family member at home who is ill, it’s 24 hours. You have to be there. They need you,” says Latifah, who enlisted friends and family members to help out while she’s at work. “I try to be as in the moment and as present as possible. And then I try to get some sleep and go to work and be present there and then go home and be present there.”
“It’s not a day or night that she doesn’t peek her head in my room and make sure I’m okay,” says Owens, a former high school teacher. “If it’s medical she’ll go in and grill the doctors and make sure they are doing what they are supposed to do. She sacrifices her time, her resources. She genuinely loves me and I know that.”
For more from Latifah and her mother, including details on Owens’ condition and her treatment, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine.
If you are taking care of an aging parent (and raising children) part of the sandwich generation. To learn more about loving and communicating with your mother, invest in a copy of my book, ‘Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES. http://bit.ly/Uzr9v6 If you would like to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our daughters, reach out to me on Twitter www.twitter.com/cgwwbook or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. Use hashtag #TellHerTheTruth
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Strategist
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)
P.S. If you have a daughter and live in the Chicago area, treat yourselves to a half-day retreat on Nov. 22nd to share stories, experiences, bond and renew your relationship with each other. Here’s the link to register: mymothermyself.eventbrite.com
If You Make Time, They Will Come..
Ever wonder why we like reality TV? Probably because the stories are so true-life; the characters get to say & do whatever (ridiculous or not) comes to their minds (or the mind of the show’s writer) and there’s always a new angle! Oh most importantly — they are addicting.
Here’s an alternative: You and your daughter take some time 30-60-90 minutes; list your top five issues with each other. Set ground rules and make it ‘safe’ to talk openly & honestly. Promise each other that you will not HOLD Grudges after your time together. For my journalers, write down your thoughts. At my recent Stop Driving Me CraZy Mother – Daughter Retreat, daughters shared that they liked the activities like Mirror-Mirror and Trust Me! Some opened up and told their moms what was on their mind. Mothers enjoyed the video and breakout sessions.
It might feel awkward or ‘fake’, but don’t worry it can breathe life into your relationship. She may act like it doesn’t matter if you both talk or not. But don’t listen to that. Secretly (inside) she is dying for a wonderful relationship with you! Your normally unresponsive, hormonal teen daughter may share things you wouldn’t have imagined. Just try not to flip out if you hear something weird.
By the way, feel free to share this blog post with others and (share) your thoughts with me. I’d love to hear them! My next mother – daughter retreat will be held in November in Chicago, IL. Interested? Email me at clynn@clynnwilliams.com
Happy Relating!
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
If you Divorce Mom Does it Mean You Divorce Me Too? #DivorceHurts
I remember when my parents divorced, I was actually happy! I know that sounds strange, but my dad had started drinking more heavily, and I felt 
uncomfortable around him. He was my lovable dad, but I didn’t like being hugged by him when he reeked of alcohol!
I was happy, and yet my family was breaking up. As a teen, I thought I understood (in my little teen mind) what was going on, but I had no idea that mom and dad divorcing would be a terrible thing for all of us, especially my brother. My mom initiated the divorce, the details didn’t really matter. What did matter was that once my dad moved out, our relationship as his children seemed to change forever.
He would tell my mom (or tell me) that he was coming to get us and visit, but often he didn’t. We saw him occasionally which didn’t make much sense to me, but I had already put up a wall of protection around me – so I told myself I didn’t care. I don’t remember how my sister felt, but my brother started acting out. He got in trouble in school; starting hanging around the ‘bad’ boy next door and stealing from the local store. When that happened, my dad came around and beat his behind. My law enforcement uncle came around more often to talk with my brother. He got the attention he craved, at a high emotional cost. As I became an adult, I asked my father why he promised to visit and didn’t. His answer was that he often had no money to give us and it was hard for him to come around us as a broke dad.
Yes, I truly felt that when our parents divorced, we also divorced the parent who left. This story is for those of you with children who are contemplating divorce; already going through divorce or completely divorced. I get it! Living with someone you no longer get along with for whatever reason is unbearable. I’ve divorced too! I’m sure my children feel the sting that divorce left on them, because they no longer saw their father daily. Please consider an arrangement that allows your ex-spouse to see their kids as often as possible. Get your emotions and hurt feelings out of the way and allow your children to continue to love you and your ex no matter what. #DivorceHurts
If you want to read more #divorcehurts, follow My Blog and sign up for my Parenting Newsletter. Want to ask questions or dialogue with me about how tough adult issues affect our families; reach out to me on Twitter @cgwwbook or on my Facebook fan page www.Facebook.com/CGWWBooks. #DivorceHurts
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Generational Development Strategist
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010) The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012) Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Publishing, 2013)P.S. Hey… I have a new book coming out soon about #BlendedFamilies.
Contact me if you want to read a short excerpt…
MOTHERS Be Nice…
Competing for your son’s attention? Stop! Find someone your own age to rely on and release him from your servitude! You have had your son all of his life, and it is time for him to spread his wings and fly away from your nest. He’s 18 now. You’ve taught him how to take care of himself (cook & clean his clothes and the house), as well as select, treat and respect nice women right? So be NICE to his girlfriend when he brings her to your house. Don’t try to find some reason NOT to like her. His choice of girlfriend may not be who you would have chosen for him. It’s OKAY! Will she be everything that you want for him? Maybe not…then again her parents may feel the same way about him. I am not telling you to keep quiet if you believe your son is dating a ‘black widow’ or something!
Speaking from experience as both a mother of sons, and a woman being brought home to meet “his parents” for the first time, mothers are some rough people to get to know. If your son’s girlfriend uses slang, she’s too common. If she uses an extensive vocabulary, you decide that she thinks she’s better than ‘us’. OMG! He will always be your Pampered Prince – your boy. The true conversation occurs if he asks your opinion of her. If not, don’t offer it.
It’s said that our sons choose women like us. If you (and his dad) have raised him properly, he will make a great husband and father. You really do want someone to love him and take him off your hands…living with you into his forties is not the plan is it?
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Keep Your Hands (and Other Body Parts) to Yourself
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I admit that I have gotten desensitized to news about priests and coaches molesting boys and girls. It happens so often, it seems like daily news. I don’t like it, and it seems to take forever for the truth to come out (the kids are usually adults). Of course, nobody believes that a man of the cloth or a favorite coach is touching our kids inappropriately. Wake up America! Did it ever occur that the ‘acting out’ that our kids are doing, may be related to a secret they are ashamed to tell you?
What I still can’t stomach, is when our teen girls tell us (mothers) that they are being sexually molested by their fathers, stepfathers, uncles (family members) and we don’t listen. What is that about? As I mentor teen girls and young women, I want to say that I’m shocked that mothers prefer to believe their (in some cases) pedophile boyfriend to their own daughter. The sex can’t be that good. To make matters worse, you kick your daughter out, because you can’t possibly believe her. Now what is she supposed to do?
Remember the movie Precious? Precious’ mother knew her husband (Precious’ biological dad) was having sex with his daughter and had fathered Precious’ two children. Yuck! But it happens, probably more often than we care to admit, and it’s a dirty little family secret – especially if a child is born. If there was ever a reason for castration, sexually molesting your kid, niece, nephew or granddaughter is number one as far as this mother is concerned! What are your thoughts?
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
When Is Close Too Close?
Is there ever a time when is a Parent – Child relationship too close?
What does that mean? If you spend time with your son or daughter or talk on the phone daily, is that too close? Does your close relationship interfere with your ability to parent that child? If the lines are blurred, meaning you such good friends, that you can’t give well-deserved consequences for misbehaving, then YES, you are probably too close.
I believe that teenagers and parents can’t be friends because when you need to discipline them or expect them to follow your rules, because they won’t understand how you’ve switched from friend to parent and may not obey you. On the other hand, if you are an aloof parent – the kind that just administers rules and won’t allow a close relationship to develop between you and your tween or teen, how do they learn that important skill of allowing others to be close to them?
However, what happens when your child becomes an adult and a real friendship develops? How much sharing is too much? Can you go out together and drink socially? Can you share the disappointments that you are experiencing in your own life? How do you maintain those relationships in a friendly way and yet not get hurt, the way adults do when one ‘friend’ feels differently or doesn’t respond in a way that you expect? We recently had a social event, and one of my friends, (she’s 40ish), told me that she asked her mother not to attend, so she could comfortably go and ‘have fun’. I had a completely different experience with my mother. Once I went away to school, we became friends and it was not uncommon to come home during break and be part of one my Mom’s famous parties. We’d have a blast!
So share your experiences with your mother. Email me at: cgwwbooks@yahoo.com
Hope you will follow some of my new #blogger friends:
Phil Rowlands Blog: Kindle Authors http://bit.ly/1ix9A3T (password: childsplay)
Christie Edwards Blog: Living Simplistically http://bit.ly/HwlFui
…
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Author & Parent Coach
http://www.clynnwilliams.com
Order My Books on Amazon.com:
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES! (220 Communications, 2013)
Surviving Loss
One of my former students lost her mother yesterday. Her daughter, (also a former student) told me about it today and it took me back five years ago when I lost my own mother. My initial feels of numbness and grief, turned into days of feeling lost and disconnected. Then I could hardly put two thoughts together without being reduced to tears. Weird huh?
What was funny about my reaction after losing my mother was that my sister was closest to my mom; they talked regularly throughout the day, and were cooking and drinking buddies. My mom and I talked daily but relied on each other in different ways. Being more private in my thoughts I didn’t feel the need to share everything with my mom. She taught me how to be resourceful, so I shared problems that I couldn’t figure out alone. Yet when I did share my secrets with her, I could count on her to keep them secret forever. Yes, we were mother & daughter, but we were also good friends, quite different from our relationship during my years as a teenager! Mom was my chief strategist in many ways. Her suggestions and ideas guided me through relationships, both work & personal, childrearing, and through all of my entrepreneurial pursuits. Mothers are a part of our lives in so many ways, is it possible to exist when that relationship comes to an end?
To read more about my thoughts (personal & parenting) about mother & daughter relationships, preorder a copy of my soon to be released book, “Raising Your Daughter Through the Joys, Tears & HORMONES!”…
C. Lynn Williams
Author & Speaker
cgwwbooks@yahoo.com
Mom Love
“Can you just love me as the daughter that I am?” That’s a question that many girls and women ask these days. “What did I do to make my mother treat me the way she does?” A friend of mine talks of how her mother belittles her and treats her like she’s a three year old. One of my adult students says that her mother can’t seem to find a kind word to say to her and she just avoids her. Why is that? As they say, there is nothing like a mother’s love. When you don’t have it, don’t you feel unbalanced?
In one of the chapters of my soon-to-be released book, “How to Raise Your Princess into a Queen”, I discuss what it means to be proud of your daughter. As a mother of two daughters, I remember how much I expected out of them.
My stepdaughter joined our family at the age of 16, so I didn’t get to participate in her training as a young girl. Yes I expected a lot from them, but I also explained why. I remember one of the conflicts that my daughter and I had, was when she became a teen. She told me that my expectations were too high for her. So we talked about it. Part of her problem with me was that I just told her what to do and didn’t seem to care how I said what I said. So it really wasn’t my expectations, but how I said what I expected. What did I expect?
• Be responsible
• Be respectable
• Finish school
• Believe in God
• Work & manage your money
• Respect your parents and other adults
• Think before you act
I think in all of the raising that we do with our daughters, we forget to be human with them, to love and enjoy them. Have a good relationship with your daughter. Talk to her, the way you would want her to talk to you if she were your mother. Cursing and harsh talking will not endear her to you. If she is a strong-willed person, like I was, not only will she not respect you, you may just tell you to jump in the lake. (I’m being funny here, but you don’t want an unnecessary fight on your hands.) Parenting is about gently leading and guiding our children, and teaching them right from wrong. As my grandmother used to say, “You get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar”.
To raise the consciousness of our people (and I’m talking humans everywhere), we have to lead by example and do it with love. The way you treat her, will be the way she treats her children.
I am putting together a mother-daughter workshop that will be offered in late summer, 2013. Let me know if you have a story that you’d like to share with me.
My email is: cgwwbooks@yahoo.com
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentGuru
Author & Parenting Coach
http://www.clynnwilliams.com
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
How to Turn Your Princess into a Queen – The Art of Raising an Awesome Daughter available in late spring, 2013
Happy Mother’s Day – Mothers Care!!!
Happy Mother’s Day to all! As my pastor explained yesterday in church, a mother is more than a biological designation. Any woman with the right ‘plumbing’ can have a child. However it takes someone who has nurtured, loved, and encouraged a child that is engaged in the act of mothering. That would explain the close bond that many athletes have with their coaches; how a foster or step parent can join a family and be the very glue that helps that family become close-knit; and how teachers who have never had children of their own, end up parenting hundreds of kids because of their love and concern for those students (my aunt – Priscilla).
I finally get it! As a mother, a coach (for three seasons – OMG) and a step parent, I care. The basic component of mothering is the caring. People thrive when you actively care for them. Caring can be shown in many ways. Maybe you are there to listen. Many teachers do that daily. There are lots of children who are growing up without someone at home to listen to them. A caring teacher who listens is a mother… Maybe you are a step parent or a foster parent or a guardian parent, and the only tie you have to your “child” is because of court appointment or through the legalities of marriage. Show compassion, be kind, care. Your kindness may not be appreciated right away, but in time, your child(ren) will talk about what they liked/loved about you..
Right now you may feel that your children may not appreciate all that you do to help them grow into magnificent men and women. Don’t worry; just keep loving, nurturing, giving, caring and starting all over again tomorrow doing the same thing. During those times when you feel too exhausted or discouraged to continue, pray for guidance and replenishment to continue caring and loving your child(ren). It will pay off in tremendous ways! You will see!
Take the rest of May and celebrate Mother’s Day with me! If you want to compare your parenting styles to the crazy parenting styles of different celebs, click on this link: http://www.crushable.com/2013/05/12/other-stuff/mothers-day-celebrity-parenting-advice/
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentGuru
Author & Parenting Coach
Trying to Stay Sane While Raising Your Teen (St. Paul Press, 2010)
The Pampered Prince: Moms Create a GREAT Relationship with Your Son (St. Paul Press, 2012)
How to Turn Your Princess Into a Queen – The Art of Raising an Awesome Daughter available in late spring, 2013
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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