Conversations with Cinthia

A Personal Value System (The World's and God's), Part 1

Are you aware of your own value system, and is your value system attached to your conscience? Are you able to interact respectfully with those who have different value systems, and do you know when to limit your expectations of intimacy in relationships where values are not held in common? Today kicks off a week on values with discussion of what values are and are not, their role in our relationships and function in society, and the importance of knowing and defining our own value systems.  Cinthia also addresses basic boundaries regarding the value systems of others.

Choosing to Be An Adult

Do you ever feel like a child in an adult body?  Do people ever indicate perceiving you to be emotionally immature?  The progression of years may force physical maturity, but emotional maturity does not always keep pace, especially when childhood environment or complications in the transition to adulthood make it hard to grow up.  Living as children in adult bodies is both painful and costly, but it doesn't have to be a life sentence.  Today is an eclectic mix of discussion on several topics related to becoming emotional adults.  Learn what principles emotional adults master and how you can start addressing these.

Becoming Your Own Best Version: The Third Core Truth

You can have pain for gain, Cinthia tells us, or pain in vain.  You just can't have no pain.  The third core truth behind the "be your own best version" teaching is that pain in life cannot be avoided, and that learning to manage it in ways that help turn it to beauty is crucial to becoming all we are meant to become.  As an example, Cinthia shares some deep pain she faced in her own young adulthood and how she made intentional decisions to draw strength instead of bitterness from her experience.  Whatever you are facing, the pain is real, but it does not have the final word.

Becoming Your Own Best Version: The Second Core Truth

Ah, change... It really is possible, at least if you are trying to change things that are yours to change.  But why is it so much harder than it sounds?  Where do we start to create effective change?  Cinthia discusses the power of beginning by changing ourselves, and beginning that by changing our own thinking.  

Becoming Your Own Best Version: The First Core Truth

Dysfunction is never original.  It's been all over the place since Genesis, and it's become pretty predictable.  But your real design?  The one God had in mind for you when He made you?  That is completely unique and will never be repeated.  Today, Cinthia looks at the first of three core truths that underlie her battle cry to "be your own best version!"

The Power Of A Minute

Humans tend to struggle with time, often wasting it, other times wasting more bemoaning the minutes already wasted.  Yet time remains one of the most precious resources we have, especially since God spends those minutes with us.  Join Cinthia as she discusses her own struggles and insights as a hyperactive person stuck in time.

Guest Mark Hancock from Trail Life USA

We often hear about the need to help young women become more confident, more empowered, more interested in science careers, etc.  Does it ever seem that we hear less about the hugely disproportionate number of boys in special education or diagnosed with ADHD, or the possibility that the educational system may be designed much more for the typical brain and body development of girls than boys?  Today's guest verbalizes concern that boyhood today is being treated as "a social disease that needs to be eradicated" and asserts that this attitude is part of what creates the problems that are eventually labeled as "toxic masculinity," etc.  Mark Hancock started Trail Life USA to give boys a safe place to be boys with other boys and men, to test themselves, to learn to value women and value themselves.  Listen as he and Cinthia discuss the need to be careful not to criminalize masculinity itself, and to give boys what they need so they can become the kind of men society needs.

Adult Children and Boundaries, Part 2

The term "failure to launch" has become widely used to describe adult children who continue, or return, to live with their parents due to difficulty achieving financial and/or emotional independence.  While there are times when returning (or staying) home is appropriate, it can be difficult to keep these situations from becoming stressful, enabling, or even harmful.  Cinthia reminds us that the goal is never to let our help hinder our children from becoming all they were meant to be, and she discusses specific boundary ideas in various scenarios.

Adult Children and Boundaries, Part 1

Parenting is a time-limited activity intended to help children become adults; ideally, parents then become friends and mentors to their grown-up children.  Lots of parents these days, however, are unsure how to make this transition or whether they should try.  What if an adult child is struggling?  What if the grandchildren are affected by the adult child's negative choices?  What kinds of support are appropriate?  Cinthia offers insight regarding what relationships with adult children should look like, how they can go wrong, why it can be so hard to change, and where to start.

Attachment Theory and Attachment to God

If you've listened much to Conversations With Cinthia, you know that Cinthia encourages growing up emotionally so that we can live in the world as adults.  This is different, however, from losing the childlike openness to God that allows us to depend on the King and be part of His Kingdom.  Today, Cinthia looks at the attachment needs infants bring to the world and encourages us to re-awaken those needs in ourselves, this time bringing them to the God Who alone is the perfect Caregiver and Who alone can make us safe and whole.