Question: Dear Luise: I have only one surviving child and he lives thousands of miles away. We used to have an active email correspondence but he’s so busy he’s having to cut back to get his work done. I know it’s the way he needs to have it but I feel so cut-off. How do [...]

Question: Dear Luise: My son is grown, married and has grown children of his own. Yet he seems obsessed with what a bad mother I was. He tells his wife and kids stories of how I upstaged him at his birthday parties, and gave unsolicited advice. He constantly reminds me of phrases I repeat and [...]

Question: Dear Luise: I just got fired. I have done a great job and everyone at work liked me. My job involved greeting the public, directing phone calls and some minor bookkeeping. I was courteous to people, cheerful and helpful. When I was hired I told them about my five children, all quite young. That’s [...]

Question: Deal Luise: My eldest son has decided I am evil. It started in high school and now he’s twenty-three and has convinced his wife that I was a horrible mother. He doesn’t want me anywhere around when their first child is born because I have “bad vibes”. They are going to have a home [...]

Question: Dear Luise: Are you familiar with the way family members sometimes attend the birth of a new baby these days? I am pregnant with my first child. Unfortunately, I am naturally pretty shy. The idea of everyone standing around, cheering me on, running a video camera and witnessing something so totally personal really upsets [...]

Question: Dear Luise: I am again having a terrible time seeing my son leave for Kauai where he lives. I live in the state of Washington. He’s lived over there for years but I haven’t yet gotten to where I can face the countdown and his flight out without a lot of pain. We are [...]

Question: Dear Luise: I have a budding problem with my mother-in-law that I don’t know how to handle. We have a darling four year-old son who has heard us using four letter words and started mimicking us. Not the “f- word” but damn and shit and things like that. We thought it was cute but [...]

Question: My daughter is almost seventeen and has never seen her father as he has chosen to be absent (but somehow lives in the area!). I feel it was my karma to bring her up alone but I feel this has now started to affect her moods and self-esteem (the fact that her father never [...]