Moya Sarner

When do you become an adult? What does it mean to grow up? And what are the experiences that propel us forward — or keep us stuck? As we get older, we pass many milestones, but for some of us it can feel as if adulthood is always just out of reach. Journalist and psychotherapist-in-training Moya Sarner goes on a journey into what growing up really involves, and how we do it again and again throughout our lives. She draws on case studies, as well as her training, and theories of child psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and more, to explore what it means to be a ‘grown up’ and how we can meet the challenges and opportunities of every stage of our lives.

conversations with adults in search of adulthood

When I Grow Up

In one of the most beautifully simple lines I think Ive heard in a lecture, Steiner said, 'Understanding is therapeutic." Understanding not simply as empathy, but as awareness in opposition to ignorance. This is something we do not have a scientific explanation for. It's just true. It is the diference between feeling our pain and sensing where it comes from and being able to put it into words, or being overwhelmed by a heavy, foggy, fragmentary experience which brings to mind Wilfred Bion's expression nameless dread."

When I Grow Up quotes

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