Finding the Road to Happiness

By Patricia Zick @PCZick I wrote Raising Independent Children about my daughter moving to Oregon. Here’s a follow up to that post. I stood on the bricks of an old St. Augustine street just after dawn one Sunday morning. Tears streamed down my face as I waved to the back of a VW bug. My

Raising Independent Children – and facing the consequences

By Patricia Zick @PCZick What was I thinking when I thought putting myself out of the parenting job meant the ultimate success as a parent? The greatest piece of parenting advice I’d ever received, I liked to brag. Several years back, my daughter called me to give me some news. She was newly graduated from

Be Elvis or be yourself

By Patricia Zick @PCZick I saw a poor Elvis impersonator on a street corner in Portland, Oregon a few years back. I watched him from across the street as I sat with my daughter at an outdoor cafe in one of Portland’s lovely small-town neighborhoods. He wore all the accoutrements of a typical Elvis imitator: