We now know that the way to help a child develop optimally is to help create connections in her brain—her whole brain—that develop skills that lead to better relationships, better mental health, and more meaningful lives. You could call it brain sculpting, or brain nourishing, or brain building. Whatever phrase you prefer, the point is crucial, and thrilling: as a result of the words we use and the actions we take, children’s brains will actually change, and be built, as they undergo new experiences.

While the days of parenting may seem so long, the years are so short.

Interpersonal experience shapes the mind as it continues to develop throughout the lifespan... Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain's structure and function.

For "full" emotional communication, one person needs to allow his state of mind to be influenced by that of the other.

We are always in a perpetual state of being created and creating ourselves. (p. 221)

At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments.

Grief allows you to let go of something you have lost only when you begin to accept what you now have in its place. As our mind clings to the familiar, to our established expectations, we can become trapped in feelings of disappointment, confusion, anger, that create our own internal worlds of suffering.