Here’s a parenting secret no one tells you:

Your kids are always watching you.

Not just when you’re being a picture-perfect role model—but when you’re tired, cranky, and arguing with your partner about who forgot to put gas in the car.

And guess what?

📌 How you handle those moments teaches them more about relationships than anything you say.

So, you did it.
You cut off a toxic family member.

Maybe it was your emotionally manipulative mother who treated guilt like a competitive sport.

Maybe it was your overbearing father who never respected boundaries.

Maybe it was your sibling-turned-nemesis who somehow turned every conversation into a battle.

At first, you felt relief.

But now?

• You’re second-guessing yourself.

• You’re wondering if you overreacted.

• You’re thinking, "What if I regret this?"

📌 Welcome to the Estrangement Aftershock: The phase where guilt, doubt, and ‘maybe I should reach out’ thoughts sneak in.

Once upon a time, family was forever.

No matter how toxic, dysfunctional, or emotionally unhinged your relatives were, you stuck it out.
Because blood is thicker than water, right?

Well, apparently, a lot of people are rethinking that.

📌 Welcome to the Great Estrangement Boom—the era of "Yeah, I don’t talk to them anymore."

If it seems like more people than ever are going no-contact with parents, siblings, or entire extended families, that’s because they are.

Uriah the Hittite wakes up, dazed. The last thing he remembers is marching into battle, carrying a letter from King David himself—his own death sentence, though he didn’t know it at the time. Now, he finds himself in a plush, tastefully decorated room. Soft lighting. Warm-toned walls. A couch.

Across from him sits a woman with stylishly unkempt hair and piercing eyes. She leans forward, clasping her hands.

“Uriah,” she says in a soothing, European-accented voice. “I’m Esther. Tell me—what brings you here today?”

Uriah rubs his temples. “I… I was just murdered?”

Esther nods, sympathetically. “Mmm. That must be a lot to process. And I imagine it wasn’t just the battle that hurt you. It was the betrayal.”

Jordan Peterson's new book We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine is a sprawling, intellectually dense, and sometimes meandering attempt to wrestle with the psychological, moral, and existential implications of biblical stories.

It continues the intellectual trajectory set in his previous works—Maps of Meaning and 12 Rules for Life—but here, Peterson leans even more heavily into religious and mythological themes, situating himself more squarely in the lineage of thinkers like Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Mircea Eliade.

Welcome to Passive Aggression 101: The fine art of being upset without actually admitting it.

Because Nothing Says “I Love You” Like “Fine. Whatever.”

Some families express love with warm hugs and direct communication.

Other families?

They express love with deep sighs, vague texts, and the occasional aggressively polite, “I just think it’s funny how…”

If you’ve ever…

• Heard “Wow, must be nice to have free time.” when you didn’t call someone back fast enough…

• Been on the receiving end of “I’ll just do it myself, I guess.”…

• Witnessed an aunt dramatically rearrange furniture instead of saying she’s mad at your mom…

Congratulations. You are fluent in passive aggression.

If you have kids, you know the deal:

Before children, “date night” meant spontaneous weekends away, leisurely meals, and gazing into each other’s eyes like you were starring in a rom-com.

After children? Date night means staring at each other over a pile of laundry, debating whether sleep deprivation qualifies as grounds for divorce.

Enter: The Babysitter.

Not just any babysitter—but the right babysitter.

The one who doesn’t cancel last-minute.
The one who actually plays with your kid instead of scrolling TikTok.
The one who—miracle of miracles—allows you to leave the house without worrying if you’ll get an emergency call five minutes into your appetizer.

Let’s be honest—no family is immune to chaos.

One minute, everything is fine. Dinner is on the stove, the kids are (mostly) clothed, and nobody has rage-texted the group chat in at least three days.

And then? BAM.

• Your teenager calls you from an unknown number and starts with, “Okay, don’t be mad…”

• Your mom calls mid-weekend with an ominous, “Are you sitting down?”

• A financial, medical, or emotional crisis arrives like an Amazon package you didn’t order.

Suddenly, everyone is scrambling, blaming, crying, and possibly Googling ‘how to do CPR on a cat.’

📌 This is why every family needs an ‘Oh Sh*t’ Protocol.

There is no greater act of self-respect than setting a boundary.

And yet, when that boundary is set with a mother who has spent the last few decades reading your emotional barometer like a seasoned meteorologist, the response is often not gratitude but something closer to existential betrayal.

Research confirms that boundary-setting is essential for mental health and relationship satisfaction (Prentice et al., 2022). But what happens when the person on the other end of that boundary has historically responded to your needs with sighs so theatrical they deserve a Tony Award?

What happens when your mother—your primary attachment figure, the woman who taught you how to tie your shoes and allegedly went through 23 hours of labor to birth you—calls you difficultsimply for trying to protect your own peace?

The answer: you keep going.

A groundbreaking study from Brazil has added new layers to our understanding of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), reinforcing what many therapists and families have long intuited: ADHD is shaped by both our biology and our earliest experiences.

Researchers found that a person’s genetic predisposition to ADHD and experiences of childhood maltreatment each independently increase the likelihood of experiencing ADHD symptoms in adulthood.

But here’s where it gets even more fascinating—the study suggests that genetic risk for ADHD may also subtly increase a child’s chances of experiencing maltreatment.

Published in Molecular Psychiatry, these findings reveal just how deeply intertwined nature and nurture are in shaping a person’s journey through life.

How to Stop Feeling Like the ‘Bad Guy’ for Setting Boundaries

You finally did it.
You set the boundary.
You said no instead of people-pleasing.
You chose your peace over their expectations.

And now?

• You feel like a horrible person.

• You’re questioning whether you were “too harsh.”

• You’re worried you’ve hurt people who “didn’t mean harm.”

If this sounds familiar, I have good news: Feeling guilty for setting boundaries doesn’t mean you did something wrong—it means you’re breaking an old survival pattern.

Boundaries aren’t mean.
Boundaries aren’t selfish.
Boundaries aren’t weapons—they’re the structure that protects your mental health.

So why do so many of us feel like the bad guy when we enforce them?

Imagine you’re born into a family like a brand-new MacBook—fresh out of the box, full of possibility.

But before you even take your first breath, your parents (and their parents before them) have already pre-installed an entire emotional operating system.

By the time you’re walking, talking, and developing a personality, the system is fully functional—equipped with core scripts like:

• “Love means sacrifice” (Translation: Don’t expect too much.)

• “We don’t talk about feelings” (Until we explode at Thanksgiving.)

• “Success equals self-worth” (Enjoy that burnout, kid!)

These aren’t just random sayings—they’re coded into you like firmware.