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The miracle is that your children will love you with all your imperfections if you can do the same for them.

Harriet Lerner

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Harriet Lerner
Love
Imperfections
Imperfection
Miracle
Children

More quotes by Harriet Lerner

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We all fear change, even as we seek it.
Harriet Lerner
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Kids want nothing more than for all the important adults in their life to get along.
Harriet Lerner
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Many people value criticism in the early stage of a relationship, but become allergic to it over time. Remember this: No one can survive in a marriage (at least not happily) if they feel more judged than admired. Your partner won't make use of your constructive criticism if there's not a surrounding climate of admiration and respect.
Harriet Lerner
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The term girl not only serves to avoid certain anxiety-arousing connotations inherent in the word woman regarding aggression, sexuality, and reproduction, it also serves to impart a tone of frivolousness and lack of seriousness to ambitious, intellectual, and competitive striving that women may pursue.
Harriet Lerner
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The happiest people are focused on living their own life (not someone else's) as well as possible.
Harriet Lerner
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I'm a good example of wanting to apologize only for my precise share of a problem--as I calculate it, of course--and I expect my husband Steve to apologize for his share, also as I calculate it. Since we're not always of one mind on the math, it can lead to the theater of the absurd.
Harriet Lerner
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Whole-hearted listening is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to the other person.
Harriet Lerner
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If you want a recipe for relationship failure, just wait for the other person to change first.
Harriet Lerner
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Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do is to stop trying to be helpful.
Harriet Lerner
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If what we are doing with our anger is not achieving the desired result, it would seem logical to try something different.
Harriet Lerner
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As many have observed, it is easy to tell a lie, but it is almost impossible to tell only one.
Harriet Lerner
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Those of us who are locked into ineffective expressions of anger suffer as deeply as those of us who dare not get angry at all.
Harriet Lerner
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Women ... have long been discouraged from the awareness and forthright expression of anger. Sugar and spice are the ingredients from which we are made. We are the nurturers, the soothers, the peacemakers, and the steadiers of rocked boats.
Harriet Lerner
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No book or expert can protect us from the range of painful emotions that make us human.
Harriet Lerner
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The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don't want to.
Harriet Lerner
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Often when someone apologizes - like a parent who says to a child, I'm very sorry I neglected you when you were a kid - they also ask, Do you forgive me?, because they want the other person to be over it. However, healing can take a great deal of time. And if we forgive too quickly, we cut the process short.
Harriet Lerner
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Women are raised to be the nurturers and steadiers of rocked boats, to hold relationships in place as if our lives depended on it. But it shores up your own dignity and integrity if you're able to say, There are a million things I love about you, and I want our relationship to continue. I forgive you 95 percent, but not this 5 percent.
Harriet Lerner
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Intensity is not the same as intimacy, although we tend to confuse these two words.
Harriet Lerner
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Many of our problems with anger occur when we choose between having a relationship and having a self.
Harriet Lerner
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deception and 'con games' are a way of life in all species and throughout nature. Organisms that do not improve their ability to deceive - and to detect deception - are less apt to survive.
Harriet Lerner