Kate Motaung

Let me say up front, I am not entirely comfortable with the title to this article. Though there are usually common themes to grief, everyone grieves differently. Look up “stages of loss and grief” and you see 5 stages, 8 stages, 12 stages, and 6 months to 4 years as a time frame. The fact is, there is no “right” way to do it. It is something that happens to you as waves happen to a beach. There are

“I know it’s dinnertime, but I need my phone for just a sec! C’mon, Mom, everybody’s on the group chat.” Irene shakes her head, glancing down at the device pinging in her palm, upping the unread messages beyond 200. Elsewhere, a father sits with his collegiate son at a homey Asian restaurant. The waitress approaches with pad Thai, to find Dad perusing news clippings and his son playing a first-person shooter game. The men look up briefly to smile

It is a fact of life that things rarely go exactly how we planned. I have heard people in business describe it at the “80/20 rule” – about 20% of the time things go as expected. The rest of the time, we have to manage the surprise or shock, the irritation or anger, the concern or the anxiety, and try to figure out what can be done now that we’ve hit an obstacle and our personal development plan has

To make parents aware of self-injurious behavior, the film and television media have focused on storylines of teenage self-harm. Unfortunately, some children may view self-injury as a way to cope with the frustrations they feel at home or school. If you catch your child hurting himself or you suspect your teen may be engaging in the behavior, you might feel shocked, angry, confused, or helpless. These are all common reactions to knowing a loved one is hurting – emotionally

We make and execute many plans in life, such as plans to lose weight, plans to get married, plans to get a job, plans to finish certain projects and tasks at work, or plans to get our marriage back on track. But what about a plan to develop our relationship with God? If that area of our lives undergirds and helps to make sense of all the others, we’d be remiss not to plan and be strategic about developing

Before we talk about how to treat depression, we need to agree on what kind of depression we are talking about. Severe depression with feelings of hopelessness and/or suicidality may be a brain chemistry issue, and for this or other reasons often will not respond to self-treatment. This is a serious condition that requires immediate attention from a mental health professional. This kind of depression often requires medication at the beginning of treatment, and sometimes for the long term.

There’s a saying, “What gets watched gets done, and what gets rewarded gets done again.” We may find it surprisingly easy to wander through life more or less on automatic, reacting to whatever obstacles come our way, trying to keep hitting our marks, or keep all our balls in the air, or stay afloat – whatever metaphor floats your boat. The problem with running on auto-pilot is that whatever good things come our way come by happenstance. I kept

You walk into a coffee shop and place your order. As you wait patiently for the barista to conjure up your double-decaffeinated half-caff with a single shot of sugar-free vanilla and light foam, you glance over to the side and notice a woman apparently set up to take some notes on a notepad. Beside the pad are three identical pencils and a retractable pen. While you watch, she takes a second pen out of her purse and carefully disassembles

There’s something uncomfortably glib about a word like “tricky” when applied to the panoply of family dynamics from the mild to the truly horrifying. For this article, let’s agree that tricky means what it means – a puzzle, complex but not overwhelming. If your family dynamics are genuinely overwhelming, this article may not be for you. Having said that, the tools I’m going to talk about can be used by most people in a vast array of relational settings.

From the perennial bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking (first published in 1952) to Oprah’s popular advice, positivity is heralded as the answer to many of life’s most perplexing questions and has been for the past few decades. We need look no further than self-help gurus like Tony Robbins. Touting books with titles like, "Personal Power!", "Power Talk!", and "Awaken The Giant Within" it is easy to see how seductive it can be to imagine all I need is

Along with self-care, manifesting, positive energy, and wellness, self-compassion is a millennial buzzword. But can this concept integrate with a Christian worldview, and should it? One of the key concepts in Christianity is compassion for others. Jesus exhorted us to love our neighbors and our enemies, to give to the poor, and to deny ourselves. Compassion is listed along with other New Testament virtues such as “kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). The story of the Good Samaritan

In the following article, we'll be looking at some common signs of abandonment articles, and what you can do about it. What is the fear of abandonment? How can it lead to abandonment issues? The fear of abandonment is a real struggle that many people face on a daily basis around the world. This is the fear of losing someone close to you or that someone will leave you. It could be that you fear the death of a