Estrangement has always existed. What’s new is the language we now have for pain earlier generations often had to swallow. This article explores how parents and adult children can tell the truth about hurt without losing compassion, humility, or the chance for repair.

My mother called my baby girl chunky. I asked her to stop. She said it again at the baptism. I told myself I'd set a boundary, but I hadn't. Here's what I actually had, and what it cost me to keep it for thirty years.

Every generation is shaped by a different world. This piece opens the Generational Clues series by asking what might happen if we stopped judging one another long enough to listen.

Every decade asks a different question of us, and most family conflict comes from two people answering different ones. This is the introduction to the Generational Clues series, a decade-by-decade look at what each season of life is quietly asking of us, from the 20s through the 70s and beyond.