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Conversation between Eleanor Alden and Lara Newton, May 2010

Discussion of two fairytales: 1) Hansel and Gretel and Sibling Cooperation, Mutuality and Authority, and 2) The Goose Girl by the Well: The Ideal StepMother. Audio files, 45 minutes (approx.)

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Download Your Bonuses Below!

Files are in PDF format, unless otherwise noted.


Bonus #1: StepWisdom Audio Book Preview — Introduction

Listen to the Introduction to StepWisdom, Knowledge from the Ages for Successful StepFamilies, as read by Dagne Spackman.

Bonus #2: Making Requests in a Family With Respect and Success


Bonus #3: Vacation and Holiday Planning Guide

Vacations and holidays with the complexities of stepfamilies can become complicated and make life miserable, but with planning and creativity can also enrich everyone involved in growing and becoming thoughtful compassionate people.

Bonus #4: Functional and Dysfunctional, a Present Day Mythology

Myths have a basis in the reality of society and the human search for meaning. They often have a sense of dualities, right and wrong, or good and bad. A discussion of what makes a family functional, and where there are areas that are not functioning optimally can be helpful for all.

Bonus #5: Celtic Attitudes About Divorce and Stepfamilies

Anne Cole, MSN, has written a paper about Celtic cultural attitudes about divorce; this culture dominated Europe for centuries, and stepfamilies existed successfully.

Bonus #6: Complexes

When we get highly emotional, defensive, or hurt thinking gets distorted. Jung called this highly emotional state of being with distorted defensive thinking "being in a complex." It takes a great deal of consiousness and self-examination to know when one is in such a state and to own that one's thinking is probably not at it's best. The list here has some of the known ways that thinking gets altered by emotions, and can help one become conscious of "being in a complex."

Bonus #7: Pre-Marital Counseling Topics

Pre-Marital check list for StepFamily formation. This is a list of topics which I use for pre-marital discussions to aid in forming sound and successful stepfamilies.

Bonus #8: Vocabulary of Feelings

People struggle with sharing feelings, and our language makes this confusing. We say we feel when we mean we think ("I think Friday is a holiday"), when we have a hunch or intuition about the future (I feel that the hurricane season will be busy."), or when we have a physical sensation ("The velvet feels soft."), and when we have an emotion (I feel sad.")

This document has a list of words for the emotions we feel and the few words we have to express them. Emotions are important to share in a intimate relationship.

Bonus #9: A Poem About Parenting

K. Gibran wrote this almost 100 years ago, but it still true today.