Your children are no longer children. They’ve passed the difficult childhood years and made it through the seemingly endless teenage years.

They’re officially adults, and a whole new set of parenting challenges awaits.

The first years of adulthood – the early and mid twenties – are truly confusing and challenging to both adult children and their parents. Here are some things to keep in mind.

Have you ever been stuck in a low-mood rut, feeling blah, depressed, bored, or lonely?

It happens to everyone.

Sometimes doing something small is enough to break out of the low place, and into a more normal, positive spot.

The key is to do something. Even if you have to force yourself to turn off the TV or get out of bed, small actions can elicit big changes.

Here are 10 easy ways to lift your mood:

How many times have you complained that there are just not enough hours in the day to do what you need to, or wondered in frustration how the afternoon managed to slip by?

Each person has 24 hours in a day to spend. A certain amount of that is for the basics – sleeping, eating, bathing, dressing. But after those hours are spent, the rest of how you use the time is really up to you.

Throughout the day, you make choices – how long to read Facebook, or how many TV shows to watch, if you take your child to the park, or spend 15 minutes talking with your partner about their day, or weed the garden.

These little bits of time may seem insignificant. After all, how many people add up the minutes they spend online, or consider the small bits of time you use talking to your coworkers, or the time spent cuddling a crying child or loving an animal?

But these small bits are where the time that seems to get away from you goes. It doesn’t disappear. It is used, but often forgotten.

Think back to the most inspiring people of your life; the ones who encouraged you think, and who helped you achieve incredible things. Think about the great people of history; who have made the world a better place to be, whose lives are recorded in books and monuments, who changed things. Would you describe them as “normal”?  Probably not.

The words you would use might be: extraordinary, brilliant, strong, unique, amazing.

There are some things in life where normal is wonderful. Test results are one. Weird car noises are another. But is normal a word that you want to be used to describe yourself?

One of the most common problems in relationships is communication. And while some people struggle with being able to talk about their problem, often the main issue is ineffective listening.

When you have a problem that you want to bring up with someone else, or if they bring up an issue to you, there are ways to make the conversation go smoothly.

Learning how to listen is a skill that can be used in every relationship, be it your child, spouse, best friend, or even your neighbor. Using these skills may feel artificial or fake at first, but as you practice them more, and see them working, it will soon become second nature.

Weddings are stressful: there’s the cake, the location, the dress and the guest list to figure out. A great deal of time and money is spent on this major life event.

And although your wedding is something that you will remember forever, far too often couples pay more attention to the celebration of their new life together than to the nuts and bolts of their new life as a couple.

When two people make a commitment to each other, there are some important things that need to be discussed.

In an abusive relationship, there is often more than one victim. Family and friends of abuse victims often struggle with feelings of sadness, helplessness and even anger.

You may want to rescue the person you love. You may be furious at them for staying in an abusive relationship and not listening to you. You may feel frustrated. You may be confused and hurt.

It’s hard to understand the power that an abuser has, and the strong forces that compel victims to remain in harmful situations.

All of the things you’re feeling are normal.  And difficult as it may be to live in the day to day uncertainty that your life entails right now, there are some things that you can do to help the person you love remain strong, and hopefully find the power to get away from the abuse.

Being nice is a great quality to have. The world could definitely use more kindness and generosity.

But there are times when you can have too much of a good thing. There is such a thing as being too nice. People who are too nice end up agreeing to do things they really don’t want to do. They sacrifice independence for a false sense of safety and belonging.

Here are three characteristics of people who take niceness to the extreme.

Grief is a natural, common occurrence to loss. Here are 8 things that are important to recognize about grief.

1. Everyone experiences it in different ways, and no way is better than the other. Some people are vocal and express their grief through cries or screams. Some people grieve quietly. Some people need outside comfort and seek to be around others, while other people need solitude and time to work out their sorrow alone.
2. When an abuser dies, the person he or she hurt can experience complicated and distressing feelings. There may be guilt, or relief, or even joy. Often sadness is felt in the midst of a storm of other emotions. Flashbacks or memories may come up. If this happens, going to therapy can be helpful.
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When my daughter was born, I wanted everything to be perfect. Her room was painted in a nontoxic soft lavender. Tiny clothes hung on tiny hangers. Childproof locks were installed on everything that could open.

The day that I came home from the hospital after giving birth, my husband, new daughter and I stopped for lunch. After eating, I told my husband to meet me out front, I was going to use the restroom. I came out, and saw my husband, but not my two-day-old baby. He had forgotten her in the restaurant booth.