We would like otherworldly visitations to come as distinct voices with clear instructions, but they may only give small signs in dreams, or as sudden hunches and insights that cannot be denied. They feel more as if they emerge from inside and steer you from within like an inner guardian angel. . . . And, most amazing, it has never forgotten you, although you may have spent most of your life ignoring it.

It's not enough just to be a mother. It's not only the social pressure on mothers by certain kinds of feminism and other sources. There is also economic pressure on them.

Many people nowadays who discover that they have a major symptom, whether psychological or physical, begin to study it. They get drawn very deeply into the area of their trouble. They want to know more than their doctor. That's a curious thing, and not at all the way it used to be.

Well, if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes. There is no deeper meaning behind things that gives me a reason to be here.

Anything you attend to carefully can bring blessing.

My goal is to create a therapy of ideas, to try to bring in new ideas so that we can see the same old problems differently.

It's a terrible cruelty of predatory capitalism: both parents now have to work. A family has to have two incomes in order to buy the things that are desirable in our culture. So the degradation of motherhood - the sense that motherhood isn't itself a calling - also arises from economic pressure.