I had a lot of other rad people who I wasn’t related to. I think that’s pretty much the only way.

You obviously have no concept of what it feels like when a parent views their parental duties as a transaction wherein you are giving your child advantages in exchange for things like affection or control over their behavior. I’m really glad for you, and I get why from your position this daughter seems like a brat.…

The call isn’t the abusive part. It’s the withholding-christmas-ice-out that is the abusive part. The daughter ALREADY calls once a week.

I live a state away from my family now, and I always drive home instead of flying because I am so comforted by the fact that, unlike a plane where there is a specific day, at any moment I can hop in my car and drive west until I hit home if I want. It’s sad when you need an escape hatch like that.

I think that sounds like precisely what this is. This girl is 18. Just...don’t take the nice things? Do you think the “we paid for x and she isn’t doing y” started with college money? I have parents like this mom, and I had a breakdown on my 9th birthday because I knew I only had 9 more years before I was an adult to…

Same, I have the worst flashbacks from reading this mom’s letter. Getting my first real job that paid enough money that I could tell my mom I would never depend on her for money ever again was the best thing that ever happened to me, and she was clearly upset by the loss of control. This mom reminds me of her.

There kind of is reason to assume the mom is viewing this encounter through her own lens though, right? Two sides to every story and whatnot? “Lie” is kind of a strong word, but the daughter would probably describe their relationship very differently than the mom did.

It sounds like you didn’t have parents who used the nice things they did for you as a manipulative tool to be revoked whenever you failed to behave in exactly the way they wanted, which is super awesome. But for people whose parents offer nice things that are actually a method of control, it doesn’t feel “bratty” to…

I’m the child of a mother who used money and gifts like this. I’m finally in my late 20s, and I’m financially stable. I could get credit from any bank I wanted if I need to make an emergency purchase that I couldn’t afford by myself (car crash, major medical thing, etc.) and it feels AMAZING to be free of my mom…

You’re welcome! I live in California, and CBD as a painkiller is THE. BEST. Like, at my dispensary people with late stage cancer and organ failure can’t get enough of it, and it has like no side effects. But no anxiety-reducing properties at all sadly. But maybe look into other herbal remedies? Like the kind you get…

It might be regional; they’re a great example on my undergrad campus.

You are the scion of 3.8 billion years of life on earth tweaking itself to get to you. You are made of some tough stuff. Whatever is making your week bad, you can deal with it.

That’s actually what I’ve been doing; I always say “ do you know how much faster this would have been resolved if I didn’t have to guess what the problem was?” so hopefully that will chip away at him.

Um...not really. We make decisions together, he defends me from my terrible family, he cheers me up when I’m sad, he takes my feelings into consideration when deciding how to behave, he does considerate things/chores for me, we have an unbelievable sex life, etc. He just doesn’t like expressing himself clearly. Unless…

I gained A TON of weight my first year of law school, and unfortunately the only thing that has made me feel better was finally buckling down and losing it. But it’s possible that only made me feel better because then I could fit into all my cool clothes again, since I didn’t have the money to replace them once I…

Juniper is going to be fine until plant sciences, when students learn about how junipers send ENORMOUS clouds of sperm into the air trying to pollinate anything they can reach with the wind :/ other than that awkward context, or if they stay away from biosciences, they should be fine :)

CBD doesn’t have any psychoactive effect. I use it as a painkiller and I use regular THC for anxiety, but if you buy straight CBD (they do have hybrids that have both CBD and THC, that would help) that will probably not affect your anxiety at all.

Tell her you’ll support her no matter what and she can always come to you even if you haven’t talked for a while or whatever, but you just can’t bear to witness him treating her that way.

That was me this Thanksgiving! I handled it by 1) doing other stuff around actual Thanksgiving day - friends thanksgiving the weekend before, met a friend for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning (obviously not as good for christmas), etc. that I could tell people so they didn’t feel bad for me and 2) getting majorly…

Okay Jezzies, hit me with your wisdom re: the Taciturn Man. I’ve been seeing a guy who was raised in a working-class Mexican Catholic family in a tiny border town. I’m including all those details to help highlight the fact that identification and expression of feelings were not a priority for his parents. We really…