Syler explains how she learned to chuck perfection for practicality, offering sage advice and tips on navigating different obstacles while offering real wisdom about mothering that is tempered with humor and warmth.

A psychologist who evaluates the fitness of parents when their children have been removed from their custody finds herself reassessing her own mothering when her son falls victim to the opioid crisis. Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what’s in the best interests of the child. But when her son’s struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers. As an expert, a professor, and a mother, Lamb gives voice to the near impossible standards demanded by a society prone to blame mothers when anything befalls their children. She describes vividly the plight of individual parents, mothers in particular, struggling with addiction and mental illness and trying to make stable homes for their kids amid the economic and emotional turmoil of their lives—all in the context of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged her home state of Vermont. In her office, during visits with their children, and in the family court, the parents we meet wait anxiously for Lamb’s verdict: Have they turned their lives around under child welfare’s watchful eye? Do they understand their children’s needs? In short, are they good enough? But what is good enough? Lamb turns that question on herself in the midst of her gradual realization of her son’s opioid addiction. Amazed at her own denial, feeling powerless to help him, Lamb confronts the heartache she can bring into the lives of others and her power to tear families apart.

The most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves... 'Excellent . . . A gripping debut.' Sunday Times 'Taut, absorbing and psychologically astute.' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train Dr Ruth Hartland is the director of a highly respected trauma therapy unit. She is confident, capable and excellent at her job. But she is finding it hard to maintain. Increasingly preoccupied by her son Tom's disappearance, Ruth is shaken when a new patient arrives at the unit - a young man who looks shockingly like him. As a therapist, she knows exactly what she should do. But as a mother she makes a very different choice - a decision that will have profound consequences. What readers are saying: 'The psychological pull of this novel was so intense, I flew through it in no time at all.' 'A heart-stopping mother's story of love and loss, and a riveting drama that lets us inside the secret world of therapist and patient.' 'A beautifully crafted book with a compelling and emotionally consuming narrative.' 'Brilliantly compassionate and satisfying read. Good to the last page.'

Motherhood in Mexico is profoundly shaped by the legacy of colonialism. This ethnography situates motherhood in a critical global health analysis of maternal health inequalities and interventions in the southeast state of Chiapas. Using a transitional life course framework, it demonstrates how the transition to motherhood is never complete. Once a good mother is defined, she becomes undefined, the goal posts moved, and the rules confronted.

Shows the ways in which humour can be recovered for religion. This book argues that religion is diminished when it fails to understand and embrace its own historical connection. Its chapters deal with topics ranging from humour as an expression of intimacy to humour as the maintenance of the soul.

This book offers an extensive array of theories that includes all the mainstream theories as well as such contemporary approaches as narrative, feminist, and post-modern. It offers students an integrative framework with which to assess the various theories with respect to possible clinical application. This is not a book that simply lists and describes theories; rather it will compare and contrast them, showing strengths and weaknesses, in a way to help students to apply them flexibly. The book also presents self-reflection exercises throughout to reinforce student understanding of theories and to help them understand their own cognitive and affective relationship to them. In other words, students will be challenged to understand what it is about their own personalities that will lead them to accept or reject various theoretical perspectives. Finally the book constantly shows the relationship between theory building and diversity.

Winnicott is concerned with the springs of imaginative living and of cultural experience in every sense, with whatever determines an individual's capacity to live creatively and to find life worth living.

The author's lexicon - The Language of Winnicott - has proved to be the definitive comprehensive guide to Winnicott's thought since it was first published in 1996, Winnicott's centenary Year. The twenty-two entries represent the major conceptualisations in Winnicott's theories and take the reader on a journey through his writings that span from 1931 to 1971. Thus the volume is an anthology of Winnicott's writings. This new edition expands on each original entry predicated on the author's research discoveries, including archival material, over the past decade.