The one thing parents can do for their children is live their lives as fully as they can, for this will open the children’s imagination, grant permission to them to have their own journey, and open the doors of possibility for them. Wherever we are stuck, they will have a tendency to be stuck also or will spend their life trying to overcompensate.

Jung’s comment that the largest burden the child must bear is the unlived life of the parent is a stunning reminder of the silent cost these generations bore.

The third form of guilt, inauthentic guilt, rises from a misnomer: we are not guilty; we are anxious. Most of us learned early that enacting who we are was not particularly welcome, was even risky, so we learned to split from our own nature and did so long enough to lose contact with it. In each of us there is a protective monitor. When a natural i

When the path we are on is right for our souls, the energy is there. When what we are doing is wrong for us, we can temporarily mobilize energy in service to goals, and often we must, but in time such forced mobilization leads to irritability, anger, burnout, and symptoms of all kinds.

In a letter in the 1950s, Jung observed that the work of being an evolved human being consists of three parts. Psychology can bring us insight, but then, he insisted, come the moral qualities of the individual: courage and endurance.

however self-satisfied in life, never reach. The second half of life occurs when people, for whatever reason — death of partner, end of marriage, illness, retirement, whatever — are obliged to radically consider who they are apart from their history, their roles, and their commitments. Every young person “escapes” home and then goes out to repeat i

The second half of life is not a chronological moment but a psychological moment that some people, however old, however accomplished,

Ask yourself these simple questions: Where do I need to grow up, step into my life? What fear will I need to confront in doing so? Is that fear realistic or from an earlier time in my development? And, given that heavy feeling I have carried for so long already, what is the price I have to pay for not growing up?

Sooner or later, we are each called to face what we fear, respond to our summons to show up, and overcome the vast lethargic powers within us. This is what is asked of us, to show up as the person we really are, as best we can manage, under circumstances over which we may have no control. This showing up as best we can is growing up. That is all th