psy·chot·ic leop·ard sīˈkädik/ˈlepərd/ noun · anything that is funky, interesting, beautiful, niche, useful, and grabs one's attention

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News — Relationships

DEEPENING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN & THEIR FATHERS AND SONS: STEP BY STEP

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

DEEPENING FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS WITH WOMEN & THEIR FATHERS AND SONS:  STEP BY STEP

  When I was little, every Sunday morning started by walking with my dad “to get the paper.”  Instead of The New York Times being delivered to our house, he liked to go down to the local drugstore for it, and I would accompany him.  As the eldest child, my sister still a toddler and at home with my mom, I basked in his full attention.   The neighborhood I lived in was called Indian Village, and all of the streets were named after Native American tribes.  Probably less for tradition and more as a deterrent for cars, almost every...

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Jewelry and Value: Determining the Priceless

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Jewelry and Value:  Determining the Priceless

  When I was in the midst of a messy divorce, one of the things my lawyer said to do was figure out all of the assets, and a biggie, he explained, was jewelry.  I was told to carefully go through what I had, make a list, and figure out an estimated value of its worth. My wedding ring was a simple gold band, and I hadn’t worn it in so long that I couldn’t even remember where it was.  My ex had gotten lucky: I was young and naive when we met, and had not made a big deal...

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Precious and Valuable: Finding Personal Significance in Family Possessions

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Precious and Valuable:  Finding Personal Significance in Family Possessions

My mother is the kind of person who saves everything, including the unimportant, and over the decades, it’s taken over her and my father’s house. Within weeks of my sisters and I going off to college, our bedrooms were transformed into what appeared to be retail storage space for her clothing, as round chrome store-bought racks became centerpieces we had to squeeze around whenever we came home for a visit, the cold metal sagging under dozens of cheap dresses and floral pant sets. I don’t even remember her wearing most of them. To assuage everyone’s complaints and because she actually...

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What Gets Us Through: Trauma and the Importance of Physical Strength in Healing

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

What Gets Us Through:  Trauma and the Importance of Physical Strength in Healing

After nearly eighteen years of a fairly stable relationship, I learned that my husband had begun an affair with a girl thirty years his junior.  Stunning for anyone, yes, but more so was that my partner, whose judgment I had always respected, confessed that he and the girl had actually never met.  Several sites linking her to German porn made no difference; he was convinced she was his soulmate and promised to marry her within two weeks of their email correspondence.   A few months into the rocky navigation of all attempts to save a doomed marriage, my son's best friend shot himself in the head...

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Best Friendship and the Teen Girl: Conflict and Courage

Posted by Lisa Johnson on

Best Friendship and the Teen Girl:  Conflict and Courage

Like everything unknown and in the future, I had romantic visions of parenthood.  Having traveled all over the world, experienced all sorts of people, culture, and heartbreak by the time I was 22, I envisioned the awesomeness of sharing my life experiences with my daughter and son.  I had really lived my life, gathered wisdom beyond my years, and was ready to be a parent.  I had so much to share with these future children of mine, and would be better than most at making sure they were happy, and was sure I could somehow prevent them from experiencing some of the more...

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