therapy blog

"Fathers be good to your daughters Daughters will love like you do. Girls become lovers who turn into mothers So mothers be good to your daughters, too." - John Mayer, Daughters This song came on the radio the other day and it made me stop in my tracks. I remember hearing it for the first time in the car, in 2005, when I was pregnant with my daughter.  It was my first pregnancy and I was constantly on a rollercoaster ride of emotions: from excitement and exhilaration when my husband and I first found out we were going to be parents; to curiosity and anticipation as my body started changing with the baby growing inside of me; to fear and overwhelming sadness when we agreed to an amniocentesis despite the risk of miscarriage; to relief and joy when we didn't miscarry; to exhaustion and disgust as my body kept getting bigger and the numbers on the scale larger until I finally gave birth 11 days after her due date; then elation again as we became new parents which start...

"You say you want Diamonds on a ring of gold You say you want Your story to remain untold... You say you'll give me Eyes in a moon of blindness A river in a time of dryness A harbor in the tempest But all the promises we make From the cradle to the grave When all I want is you…" From U2, "All I Want is You" I was "A. Harbour" in the tempest for much of my life, starting when my stepfather adopted me just a few years after my parents' bitter divorce in the mid-70"s. My mom, eager to shed her very ethnic divorced name, married a nice man of Anglican origin and I became the first kid of three to then bear the Harbour name.  Having a Harbour on the outside and a Spagnolo on the inside proved more difficult to handle than my mom realized. I think she thought if she had my name changed, she could tame me of all of my Spagnolo traits. For example, she thought that with my dad in another home and eventually another state (she moved ...