By Lavern Nissley

We launched this weekly blog exactly a year ago in order to make available "mini bites" of relationship tips and insights to interested readers and followers. Most posts have gone live on Tuesday mornings around 10 am. To date we've generated 70 topic tags for the 52 posts. And about 18,000 views.

It seemed like a good time to pause and listen to your thoughts. Nothing extensive, just 3 simple questions that you can respond to in the survey below in about a minute.

By Lavern Nissley

The "Send her back" chant that erupted at President Trump's rally in North Carolina last week touched nerves everywhere. It singled out a congresswoman from Minnesota, an immigrant from Somalia and US citizen. Her views have been particularly troubling to conservatives as well as to some colleagues in her own party.

The ping pong match of acerbic tweets and public comments between Trump and "The Squad" of four congresswomen (close allies of the chant target) seemed to boil over into newscasts, social media discussions and private conversations. Maybe that's why we had such hot weather in most of the USA last week?

What can we learn from such intense political polarization and flame-throwing that could help us in our couple, family and organizational relationships?

By Lavern Nissley

A close acquaintance of mine has lived a life of anger. I can’t remember many interactions with him when he wasn’t angry about something. Occasionally, I’ve been the target of his anger.

Needless to say, it’s not enjoyable being around people who are perpetually peeved! But what to do?

​By Lavern Nissley

A number of years ago Ronda and I were in a mentoring session with a couple married for 20 years. They were "prickly" - a term we've come to use for very stressed couples. The puzzle was that they had taken all kinds of marriage classes, attended retreats and read the latest books on marriage. But it wasn't evident at all!

In one session they said something profound. "We know what our problem is. It's actually 3 things." When they said what the 3 things were, we both thought, "Yep! You certainly do seem to have these 3."

​By Lavern Nissley

If you have children, or are planning to have children, what would you say is your one word job description as a parent? It could fit into the blank in this sentence: "I believe my parenting job description is to __________."