Sheila Heti Quotes

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.

I have daddy issues. So I keep tissues on me at all times.

I really believe strongly that kids should be spared the runoff of their parents' lives and problems.

My dad's been responsible for a lot of my issues.

My wife and I have a schizophrenic son. We didn't want to accept this for 30 years, so we put him under great pressure when we shouldn't have. He just wanted to be looked after, and we didn't respect that. We tried to make him independent.

My mum really depended on me. I'm the eldest of three girls, and she had emotional issues.

Is my job as a child, even as an adult, is my job to heal the wounds of my parents' childhoods?

I, like many people, have had bumps in the road when it comes to family. Family dynamics are complicated and weigh heavily on me.

It's hard enough as a kid these days to feel normal and just try to fit in. To be a diabetic is just a dramatic thing to go through.

I think my biggest focus for myself is learning how to continue to get through the trauma that my father has caused in my life.

My whole family, my father's side, there was a great deal of depression, and my mother's side as well.

Like all parents, my husband and I just do the best we can, hold our breath and hope we've set aside enough money for our kid's therapy.

All my life, I had this idea that if I could unravel the mystery that was my mother, then I could help save her. But it didn't really work. We were close, but she struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, and it was rough at times.

When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

Many great stories are father issues, mother issues or death.

When children have grieving parents it's also common for them to feel an obligation to cheer them up and make them happy.

When you go through a traumatic event, there's a lot of shame that comes with that. A lot of loss of self-esteem. That can become debilitating.

My father was a joyous, joyous spirit, he really was. He was a hedonist, that was just - he enjoyed life, thrust up to the elbows with it. He was a terrible father. I don't know that he was parented that well.

The women in my family are all super-emotional. The catchphrase in our family is 'Listen to my words, not my tears.'

I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother's Day. I didn't want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure.

I was darkly convinced that at age 52 I would kill myself because my mother committed suicide at that age. I was fantasizing that she was waiting for me on the other side of the grave.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

My parents were not perfect, but no one's parents are. As childhoods go, mine was pretty comfortable and good in a lot of ways, and yet I still ended up with anxiety.

At age 12, I was put on tranquilizers when I should have gotten help. There was nothing major and awful, I just didn't feel my family was supportive and emotionally generous.