— She has been sober for nearly thirty years. She is in her early sixties now — warm, self-aware, genuinely delightful to be around. If you met her today, you would have no difficulty understanding why people love her. But she was not always this person. For much of the time that she was raising…
About Dr. Christopher Cortman
What If Your Parents Really Did Screw Up?
— Let’s skip the part where I pretend this is a comfortable question. Consider this number: recent surveys suggest that somewhere between 27 and 38 percent of Americans are currently estranged from at least one family member. Karl Pillemer’s landmark Cornell Family Estrangement and Reconciliation Project put the figure at 27 percent — roughly 67…
What Really Belongs to Mom?
— They sat across from me looking the way most parents look when a child has gone badly off the rails — exhausted, bewildered, and quietly terrified that the answer to the question why was going to have their names on it. Their twenty-year-old son had just been arrested for breaking and entering. The reason: he needed…