My 80 year old mother- in- law of 30 years talks non-stop about things I am not interested in----- but the people-pleaser in me keeps listening to her politely and I end up feeling exhausted. [more inside]
posted by seekingsimplicity on Mar 5, 2013 - 23 answers

Were you in a single-income doctor's family in the US during the 1990s? Help me reconstruct what lifestyle and education my siblings and I might have enjoyed if my mother hadn't been a pathologically miserly narcissist. Many, many details inside. [more inside]
posted by stuck on an island on Jan 19, 2013 - 88 answers

Adopting a baby. We want to. Who should we work with? [more inside]
posted by fugitivefromchaingang on Sep 24, 2012 - 4 answers

How can I emotionally begin to handle the end of my relationship with my ex-stepmother? This is the end of a very tangled family situation and I have no idea how to deal with it. I feel terrible. [more inside]
posted by athenadanae on Jan 11, 2012 - 35 answers

Asking for a friend (really): How do you (or did you) deal with finding out that you have an adult child you didn't even know existed? [more inside]
posted by Chairboy on Sep 15, 2011 - 1 answer

My baby is terrified of her grandfather. What can we do to get her to like him a bit better? [more inside]
posted by Bardolph on Mar 2, 2010 - 19 answers

I've become enmeshed in my parent's problems to the extent I feel it's holding me back in life. How to get out? (Long) [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Feb 22, 2010 - 11 answers

Should I invite my estranged father to my wedding? [more inside]
posted by gauche on Dec 18, 2009 - 27 answers

My mother's grief is overwhelming me. How do I keep my cool? [more inside]
posted by Monsters on Sep 5, 2009 - 25 answers

I am deeply concerned for my mother, and hate her boyfriend. [more inside]
posted by kaseijin on Jul 17, 2009 - 27 answers

My parents divorced when I was a toddler, with virtually all my baby pictures plus many hours of movies (including birth, first steps, etc.) going to the non-custodial parent. For a variety of painful reasons, I have been long estranged from that parent, as well as that entire branch of the family. And that is of the good. Yet it would mean so much to be able to fill in the blank slate of my childhood with images and sounds. Am I wrong for feeling as though morally this collection belongs to me? Does a child, especially an estranged child, have the right to ask for their baby pictures? And how, precisely, do I ask such a favor of a person from whom I want absolutely no other contact? [more inside]
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Apr 22, 2006 - 12 answers