Are you actually living your own life — or someone else's? In this episode, Cynthia Marks is joined once again by Dr. Loren Weiner, a Los Angeles psychotherapist whose practice is steeped in the methodology of the late Dr. Bernard Bail, for a fascinating look at how we unconsciously take in our parents' personalities, limitations, and unlived pain, and then live them out as if they were our own. Loren distinguishes ordinary identification — the natural way children absorb the people around them — from Dr. Bail's discovery of the imprint: the mother's unprocessed, unconscious feelings passed to the baby as early as the womb, quietly writing the rulebook for how much love, success, and happiness we believe we're allowed.

Through three remarkable patient dreams — a clay slab pressed into a bowl to make a perfect copy, a bullhorn announcement to "scrap the plan," and an old dusty house with peanut butter on white bread — Loren shows how the unconscious reveals the ways we've merged with our mothers, and how recognizing this begins to loosen its grip. Cynthia also shares her own discovery of carrying her mother's silence. The conversation widens to the world we build together: if we're all beset by unconscious limitations, our systems will reflect them — and the path to a freer world runs through each of us doing this inner work.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

0:00 — Welcome Back, Dr. Loren Weiner

2:54 — How We Build a Self: Identification

4:48 — The Imprint: A Deeper Inheritance

12:40 — The Ball Metaphor: How Much of You Is You?

26:45 — Where Did I Learn to Do It That Way?

33:07 — Cynthia's Story: Carrying Her Mother's Silence

37:14 — A World Built on Limitations

41:54 — Three Dreams: The Clay Bowl, the Bullhorn, and the Peanut Butter Sandwich

58:55 — Starting the Work Yourself

Award-winning filmmaker and author Eisha Marjara joins Cynthia Marks for a moving conversation about how our earliest imprints shape the way we see ourselves — and how those patterns can be rewritten. Drawing on her acclaimed documentary work, including Am I the Skinniest Person You've Ever Seen? and Calorie, Eisha shares her journey through an eating disorder in her teens, the profound loss of her mother and younger sister, and the long road back to herself. With honesty and grace, she and Cynthia explore how an eating disorder can become a physical expression of an emotional imprint, tangled up with family expectations, grief, and the fear of stepping into womanhood.

Together they look at the ache of coming of age, the difference between care rooted in compassion versus control, and the quiet damage caused by the things families never talk about. Above all, Eisha's story is a testament to healing through creativity and tenderness — a reminder that we don't have to remain prisoners of our earliest conditioning, and that looking back at our youngest, most wounded selves with kindness is where the true rewriting of our story begins.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

This episode discusses eating disorders and loss, and is shared in the spirit of recovery and hope. If you or someone you love is struggling, support is available through the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline (1-866-662-1235).

0:00 — Welcome and Eisha's Films

1:58 — Eisha's Story: Family, Immigration, and Loss

6:46 — Womanhood, the Body, and the Feminine

14:27 — Behind the Documentary

17:11 — Recovery and Rebuilding

25:16 — Two Sisters, One Imprint

29:53 — Grief, the Parents, and the Father's Strength

37:56 — "Calorie," Compassion, and Breaking the Silence

We all build fantasies early in life — a web of denial and idealization meant to protect us from painful truths we couldn't yet face. But those same fantasies quietly shrink our world, steering us toward relationships and patterns that reenact the very things we're avoiding. In this episode, host Cynthia Marks welcomes back Dr. Lauren Dolinsky, a Los Angeles psychotherapist who works from the teachings of the late Dr. Bernard Bail, to explore how we can gently lift the veil, return to reality, and finally make room for real love, real connection, and a life that's actually our own.

Guided as always by the dream, Cynthia and Lauren walk through a series of remarkably clear dreams — a veiled ship lost at sea, a fantasy built around "the Rock," a refrigerator cleaned of moldy wine and rotten milk, and more — that show the unconscious doing its quiet work of clearing away what isn't true. Along the way, Cynthia shares her own deeply personal journey of dismantling a fantasy she once mistook for love. The message at the heart of it all: telling yourself the truth is one of the most loving things you can do, and it begins the moment you're willing to look inside.

This is And Now Love. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart. Please follow, rate, and share the podcast, and pass this episode along to someone who might need it.

0:00 — Welcome Back, Dr. Lauren Dolinsky

4:08 — Why We Settle for a Small Life

8:43 — Dream 1: The Veiled Ship

16:09 — The "Perfect Thanksgiving" Trap

21:05 — Dream 2: "The Rock"

25:05 — Cleaning Out the Unconscious

32:52 — A Personal Reckoning

35:08 — Coming Home to Reality