Each issue holds two things: a story and an idea. Drawn from our own lives, our clients', and what we're noticing in the world. Always anonymized. This quarter we're exploring love and belonging across all three practices. Today, from Dr. Chloe Massey, through the lens of a woman and how her mother showed her love.

Hi there,

She's a mom of three girls on the West Coast, running a team, and she'd come to me originally because she was scared…scared she might be raising girls just like her. It didn't take long to understand what she meant.

She described her mother as someone who ran what she called "the yes house." New track pants with the snaps down the side? Done. Jelly pens for doodling during History? Done. Pizza instead of whatever was on the stove? You bet. Skipping soccer practice to go to the mall? No question. Her friends knew it. She knew it. It felt like a good childhood.

Then I shifted the conversation. What happened with academics? How'd you do in school?

She paused. That small, embarrassed smile I’ve seen before. "If my mom didn't like my grades, she'd email the teacher to get them changed. If I forgot something for play rehearsal or soccer, she showed up at school with it. She was kind of a frequent flyer in the hallways."

We brought the conversation back to the present. She was falling into the same patterns — avoiding the no, making her girls happy because it was the thing that felt most like good mothering at the end of a long day (plus, she was exhausted and didn’t want to fight). "If I can come home, give them what they want, and have them feel good about me as their mother, that's what I naturally want to do. It’s also easier."

What she was describing, without quite naming it yet, was a childhood where discomfort had been quietly removed at every turn. Not out of malice — out of love. But love that never let her practice the thing she'd eventually need most.

"Did your mom's parenting approach help prepare you for being on your own?" She didn't hesitate. "I was absolutely fcked when I got to LA for my first job after college. I got run over. By my bosses, my colleagues, my friends, the men I dated." She took a breath. A few tears behind the tortoise-shell glasses. "She thought she was preparing me. But everything was harder because of it. I had to learn resilience in my 20s, from scratch."

We sat with that for a moment.

What I've seen, over and over, is that making this connection — between how you were raised and how you're raising — doesn't make you a bad mother. It makes you a more awake one. Which is not a small thing.

A couple of questions to sit with: What's one pattern in your parenting that might be borrowed from your own childhood? And if you made a list of what you remember about how you were raised, what would you want to carry forward, and what would you quietly set down?

Thrilled to be sharing and engaging with all of you.

Until next time,

Dr. Chloe

(with Jill & Dr. Meghan)

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