Muchness and Light

Please learn to rule with your head, not your fist, and those lessons that you learn will carry on.

After Max was born, I remember reading some parenting book (though I can’t remember which) that said not only does your newborn not know that it’s not an extension of you, it doesn’t know that it’s not you.

It makes sense. The baby’s entire existence has been literally attached to you, dependent on you for everything. This doesn’t really change for months, especially during those first vital weeks, when your entire life feels like a never-ending game of Keep the Freakin’ Baby Alive!

But there does come a time when your child starts to articulate its own personality. It was fascinating to me (still is!) to see the ways Max and Tricky both looked and acted like me or DH—and the ways in which they didn’t. No matter if your child has your dimples and the other parent’s cheekbones, they will eventually exhibit certain characteristics that are totally uncharacteristic of either parent. It was always fascinating to me to discover my children.

While mine are both biologically mine, I suppose parents of children who aren’t born of the parents’ biology have their won type of discovery. The determination of Nature versus Nurture would be necessarily different, though just as fascinating. In no way do I mean to denigrate that experience; it is simply one I have never had.

Regardless of how your child comes into your world, you have dreams and hopes and expectations for it. Of course, this is at the heart of construct of gender and social stereotypes, and the later pressures that can come from such constructs, but it also inevitably shapes the ways in which you parent your child.

I try not to judge other parents. There are, of course, parenting choices that I wouldn’t and didn’t choose, and there are choices other parents make that I would never make for Max and Tricky. Sometimes I do find myself privately harsh when speaking of those choices. But, generally, I believe each parent must make those decisions for their own child, knowing them and loving them in ways only a parent can.

One of the things I was adamant about when the boys were young—and got great support from DH on this—was not forcing them to be any certain way or to have certain thoughts. I always tried to give them information and to help guide them toward the decisions that were best for them, even if those decisions were counter to the ones that I would make for them or for myself. Of course, sometimes I had to use a parental veto, and that could be met with disdain or anger or outright indignation.

When Rango and I were together, we argued regularly about how his approach to the boys was counter to everything they’d come to expect. He expected them to fall in line with whatever he said, and respect was code for obedience. I have encouraged them to express their emotions, even in an impassioned way, as long as that expression was respectful. I do not tolerate name-calling and insults, though they have certainly slipped into heated conversations at times, whether toward each other or toward me. I am just as adamant that they make the repair after they inflict damage.

As I have said for years, I am not raising children; I am raising young men. I expect Max and Tricky to be self-actualized adults, who are capable of self-sustenance and educated decisions about their own paths. I hope that they are happy, healthy men, who successfully navigate whatever path they choose, but also who can admit to their mistakes and apologize for their transgressions, whether toward someone else or toward themselves.

All I have ever been able to do is to try to give them the knowledge they need to make the right decision for themselves, in line with their own moral compass.

Max graduated high school this year, spent a month abroad as part of a cultural exchange, and started college as a sophomore. Together, we made the decision that he would live at home this year. In many ways, it has given us both time to adjust to his burgeoning adulthood.

If he were living in the dorms, I wouldn’t have any clue what he’s doing in his spare time. I wouldn’t know if he’s eating healthy or getting a reasonable amount of sleep. I wouldn’t know about his extra-curricular activities. And so, I’m trying to give him the freedom to explore his new world, with the encouragement and support to do so safely.

In so many ways, it’s like when he became a toddler, demanding to explore the world on his terms but running back to me for a hug and a soothing kiss when he got scared or hurt. Sometimes I have to let him fall and then offer him a hand to get back up. I cannot take the hits for him.

Mostly I hope that I have given him the tools to make smart choices about which hits to take.

No matter what, Max and Tricky aren’t me. No matter how much they can remind me of teenage DH at times, they aren’t their father. They are wonderfully intricate, self-contained psyches made up of the best and the worst of everything they’ve experienced, including their parents.

This is at the heart of the teenage rebellion—a rejection of what you have mastered in order to establish your own identity. It is painful for both teen and parent, and adolescents can be complete assholes, but they’re essentially overgrown toddlers playing dress-up with incredibly high stakes.

I have no doubt that I defied my parents’ expectations. I am positive I was, at times, a complete disappointment. I have no doubt that they would have chosen differently for me, if they’d had a say in it at all.

And, the fact is, many of my choices were (and continue to be) in conscious, direct rebellion to their wishes. I am independent and stubborn, often flouting their notions of an ideal child. But I was left to take care of myself from a young age, and I bypassed normal childhood almost entirely. I stopped seeking their permission and their approval long ago, and I feel absolutely no obligation to meet their expectations of me—nor do I care to psychologize what those expectations are now.

In reality, I hope Max and Tricky will eventually do the same. I don’t want them to be grown men who need or strive for validation from their mother. (I’m sure I’ve done enough to screw them up that that doesn’t need to be another topic for their own therapist’s office.) They shouldn’t need my approval to make choices for themselves or their children, though I will always be happy to offer advice and support and encouragement. I may snark about their choices privately, but I will have done my job (and kept the freakin’ baby alive!) if they are in a position to even make those choices.

I will always be, as I have always been, present for my sons. I will always ask them about their day and listen carefully to their response (even when it’s just a grunt). I will always encourage them to make healthy choices and then take them to the doctor when they need it. I will always give them information and ask for their opinions regarding decisions about them. I will always try to give them what they need, not what I think they should need.

In the end, they are living their lives. It’s not me making those decisions or walking their paths, any more than they can walk mine.

But I will continue to offer them a hand and a hug and a safe, reliable place to return, because that is what good parents do.

 

 

Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon.

During and after my break-ups of recent years, I have lamented why I wasn’t worth their fight. There is a lot of good about me, so why wasn’t it good enough? Was there something inherently broken, or was there something about me that was so bad that it outweighed the good?

In part 2 of this series, I wrote about what I find valuable in a partner. In part 1, I wrote about what I find to be valuable about myself. In hindsight, I do believe that the men I’ve loved found me inherently valuable. Whether or not they valued themselves, I’m not even sure I know, though their actions would indicate they valued themselves above all others.

But one of the things I realized recently is that we didn’t necessarily value the same things in a relationship. Shared interests and similar social and political leanings cannot sustain romantic interaction, if both parties aren’t looking for similar things in romance.

So what do I value in a relationship?

I value communication. It’s important for me to be in regular contact with the person I’m dating. It doesn’t have to be constant, though I fully admit that I am a very active texter, emailer, and caller. I will think of something that I want to share with that person, and I’ll send it before considering any ramifications. I don’t expect that there will always be an immediate reply, but it is important to me to get a response eventually. Ongoing conversation builds rapport, expresses affection in subtle ways, and strengthens bonds. But it’s just as important to me that expectations—of plans, of emotions, etc.—be shared. Far too often, I have inferred one thing to be true, only to be met with irritation that my interpretation was not at all what the other person intended.

I value reliability. Interaction doesn’t have to be constant, though it does have to be regular. Just as importantly, I have to be able to rely on the person to be there. Both because it’s just downright irritating when people don’t do what they say they’re going to do and because I have this deep-seated fear of abandonment, I need my partner to show up. I need them to show up when they say they’re going to, but also when they should. Dismissing important events or forgetting to do the logistical things that you’ve promised to do is an indicator that something in the relationship isn’t worth your time and effort. If you tell me you’re going to do something, show up and do it.  

I value kinesis. I spent a lot of time during my marriage and later in my relationship with Rango sitting around and waiting. I was waiting for them to get up on a weekend or waiting for them to get home from working late again or waiting for them to finish what they were doing to join me (or me and the boys) to do whatever. I stagnated in my marriage, and I became stagnant again during that subsequent relationship. It’s not that I can’t just sit and chill sometimes, but I enjoy going for walks at the park or going to see a concert or a show at a museum. But I also value emotional kinesis. I need movement forward. Not necessarily toward a goal of cohabitation or marriage [in part because I don’t know that I’ll ever be willing to do either of those again!], but at least toward shared future. Happily ever after shouldn’t mean stopping at some self-imposed pinnacle and hoping the balance of my life stays exactly the same.

I value family. My boys are a huge focus of my life, and that’s not changing any time soon. My extended family is important to me, and my girlfriends are the sisters I never had. Whomever becomes a part of my life becomes a part of that. It’s vital that we forge our own sense of family, as well, and that necessarily includes my babies.

I value safety. Yes, physical safety is a big deal. I was in one physically abusive relationship and for far, far longer than I like to admit. But emotional safety, for me and for my partner, is just as important. The relationship needs to be a safe space to share feelings and thoughts and ideas, without recrimination. Far too often, I have felt punished by my partner for expressing emotions he didn’t like. In healthy love, there’s no tolerance for stonewalling or emotional abuse.

I value passion. Look, physical passion may well dwindle after that ubiquitous honeymoon phase, but the loss of physical intimacy is the death knell for a relationship. I know; I’ve been there twice. Sex is natural (and wonderful and fun) and is a healthy expression of emotion and trust between two people. For me, a loving relationship will necessarily be emotionally and physically intimate.

I can write about what I want or need, what’s important to me in a relationship. But until I’m actually in a relationship again, I have no way to put these things into practice. Queen Frostine commented that my break-up with Finn was probably the healthiest and most mature I’d ever had. I do believe that I’m capable of clearly discerning when something is not working for me, of giving it time to grow rather than starting from a place of intense, immediate emotion, and of evaluating clearly whether or not the other person may be a healthy, cohesive match for me.

So I’m going to try dating again. At least theoretically, I’m open to the possibility.

But I’m also going to keep spending more time doing the things that are fulfilling to me, even if I don’t have a partner to join me. I’ve done a couple of 5Ks this year. I joined a fantastic philosophy discussion group that meets monthly. I’ve started volunteering.

If I meet someone who wants to join me for some things, I’m willing to let someone into that space. But I’m also keeping that space well-defined. It has taken me a very long time to realize that I’m worth my own effort, and I’m not willing to let that stagnate again.

 

 

We two have run about the hills and pulled the daisies fine. But we've wandered manys the weary foot since long, long ago.

What a year 2017 has been. Whether personally or politically, I wasn’t expecting the dramatic changes this year brought. I’m not quite sure what to expect for 2018, but I don’t imagine that it’ll be quiet.

After 27 years, I finally finished my bachelor’s degree. After more than ten years of pain, I had three levels of my cervical spine replaced and rebuilt. After three years, I ended my relationship with Rango. I had 182 Détente Days with DH—and I’m thankful for every single one.

The greatest lesson for me this year was that almost nothing will come according to my time frame. No matter how hard I work, how thoroughly I plan for any and every contingency, things occur at their own pace. The best-laid plans and all that jazz. It helps when I’m working with a goal in mind, but sometimes I still need the reminder to slow down and at least acknowledge the journey, regardless of the destination. Life is most pleasurable when I can enjoy the trek, but sometimes my path has been littered with difficult obstacles that were, at best, life lessons waiting to happen.

Because there was so much to deal with this year—which was really just a culmination of all the previous years—I went back into therapy. I’ve written a good bit about the Internal Family Systems model and how I’ve used it to deal with decades-old trauma that continues to impact my day-to-day. Part of the process includes understanding the role each subpersonality plays, the burden each carries, and the job each performs to keep the whole manageable and safe.

So, what happens when I know all of that? If the burden is lifted from the subpart, what the hell is she supposed to do now?

As I began the slow process of unburdening, I found different parts—Cissie and Stephie, Harley and Quinn, Pearl and Buttercup—who were lighter of load but who also couldn’t stay trapped in their compartments inside my head. Their work was done, and it did no one any good to keep them trapped in a dusty house, struggling to feel the light of day through an old, dirty window.

I imagined a garden for them. In my mind, it sits off to my left and back just a bit. I can hear the birds and see each blade of grass or petal of flower ripple in breezy sunlight. I can smell the earth and the life. It looks much like the yard in front of my actual house. As each subpart is unburdened, I invite them to go to the garden to play. I invite them to join Cissie on the trampoline, jumping until they’re breathless with laughter, hair mussed and clinging to their sweaty, warm necks. Sometimes Buttercup sits at the edge, bare legs dangling from the porch, dirty feet bouncing against the cool brick, and she sings. Her songs are sometimes little more than she or I can hear, but there is a hum of love whose confidence waxes and wanes but which never really fades away.

Sassafras still struggles. Sometimes I feel her very close to me, close on my immediately left and in need of reassurance when she feels overwhelmed by longing and nostalgia and confusion. But I remind her that we are still working, that I am still working. Although love may not come in the ways in which her heart has desperately imagined, it is always with her. I am always with her. But she is always free to put her burden down, just next to me, and join the others in the garden, even if just for a little while.

There are nameless, numerous others, only some of whom I’ve been fortunate enough to engage yet.

I am still working.

But if I am carrying each of them, and they are each carrying their burdens, then I am also carrying those burdens.

So tonight, as I close one year symbolically and open another, I am inviting those burdens to go into the garden, as well. Whether they be ghosts of Christmases past, unhealthy choices of present, or fears of what the future may or may not hold, I am opening the door for each of them to be free—and to be free myself of those weights.

I am offering one last toast to disappointment, to broken promises, and to unfulfilled dreams. I will drink once more to each and every lost love, all of whom mattered and will always matter, but who cannot continue to keep me mired in the past. I have accepted my fault, and I have accepted theirs, but I cannot continue to define expectations for my future based on the past actions of people I will never see or speak to again. They had opportunity not to be ghosts; I am cutting their chains loose and setting them free.

I wish each of them well as I sweep their dust out the door into the garden.

I’m going into 2018 with few expectations. I expect to continue doing my work and making myself healthy and whole. I expect to attempt new things. I expect to discover new things about myself.

I am superstitious about a few things, and New Year’s Eve is at the top of that list. How I spend that night is often indicative of the entirety of the following year. I can regale with tales of New Year’s Eve Omens for almost as many years as the Valentine’s Curse.

This year, I specifically chose to be at home with my babies. We cooked dinner together and piled up on the couch to watch The Little Prince. I rolled my eyes at the short-sighted, closed-minded grown-ups. I cried when he found his rose too late, overcome by baobabs. I gasped at the sudden lurch of my heart when the he met the snake in the desert one last time.

And I hugged my babies and told them I loved them for the millionth time, because I never want them to know what it feels like to question my love and my support. And I never want to know what it feels like not to give that love and support unconditionally.

So, I don’t know what’s coming. It will be what it is, when it is. But for now, for tonight, I am peacefully in my happiest of places, surrounded in love and comfort, quietly bidding farewell to the past.

I wish you all a peaceful, loving new year.

 

 

Everything has changed. It's a different kind of Christmas.

The first year DH and I were separated, I couldn’t stand being at home for Christmas. The boys and I packed up all our gifts and drove three hours to Alabama, back to family and where DH and I had grown up and where the boys had been born, locking our jaws tightly on high-held heads and got through our first Christmas as a family of three. The second year, I couldn’t stand to drag out the Christmas ornaments we’d collected as a family for years, so the boys and I made our own decorations that year. The court-mandated visitation schedule had begun, and Max and Tricky spent the first half of their Christmas holiday with their dad and his then-girlfriend. When they came home on Christmas Eve, they were sugar-coated and excited, announcing that we would be doing Christmas Guatemalan-style! and opening gifts at midnight. I made breakfast at 2 a.m., and that was the last time both boys slept with me in my bed.

For the next three years, we incorporated Rango into our new tradition. He didn’t have fond Christmas memories from his own childhood, and he was amenable to adopting ours. The day of celebration and the celebratory menu changed, depending on the visitation schedule and on his food allergy. He refused to participate in our annual viewing of A Christmas Story, saying it reminded him of unhappy Christmases growing up in a dysfunctional family. He would game elsewhere, while Max, Tricky, and I piled on the couch and yelled lines at the television, like we’d created our own Rocky Horror Christmas Show.

This year, without Rango, we weren’t limited by his food allergies or his ghosts. When I casually asked the boys what they’d like to eat for middle-of-the-night breakfast, Max cried out and demanded Waffle House.

“It’s Christmas. They’ll be open.”

And this is how a new Christmas tradition was born.

Traditions are beautiful. They tie you to a shared past and anchor you in loving nostalgia. But they are not fully fixed and are open to adaptation, to making them contemporaneously cogent. Some changes are welcomed—a new baby, a new marriage, a new home—and some are not. Since my divorce, both of my grandmothers have passed away, and childhood memories of being at their houses for the holidays are forever frozen in time. While the respective families have worked to create new memories and new traditions, it is bittersweet to conjure those last Christmases with my grandmothers.

I know many families who are creating new traditions this year. New babies make the holidays seem so much brighter. The loss of mothers and children and beloved family members can blur the holiday lights with slow, hot tears. But another Christmas, another new year, is coming and going, and how it is marked is completely up to them.

This is the last Christmas I know for sure that Max will be home. My baby will be graduating high school soon, and he will begin the slow embark on his own adult life. Eventually he will establish his own traditions and schedule that may not include me or his dad or his brother, not in the ways it has through his childhood. He will always be here in some way, but I don’t know how many more times I will get to hear the cacophony of my little boys parading down the hall to open gifts, or the sound of wrapping paper being ripped and tossed at light speed, or the boyish squeal of delight at having received just what they wanted.

“I’ll always come home…. I have to get my presents!”

“But you may be at your girlfriend’s parents’ ski retreat in Aspen,” I retorted.

“Yay. More presents for me,” Tricky chimed in.

But even when they are grown and bringing their babies home to create new memories at Sass’s house (yes, we’ve already agreed that Sass is the likely grandma name), Christmas at midnight—even if it’s on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day or by phone—is something the boys and I can always share. Waffle House is always open; middle-of-the-night hashbrowns can come any day we like.

We were surprised to find our local Waffle House half-filled with grown families, dressed in spirited dress wear, as if they’d come after midnight mass. Two were apparently regulars who’d come to share a meal and bring a gift for their regular server, who hugged each of them and wished them a merry Christmas. Our new tradition of leaving a generous tip for our 1 a.m. server wasn’t original, but it did help to anchor us in this time, when it is still just Sass and her boys, for the inevitable coming change.

To everyone who is living tradition-challenging change this year, go with it. No matter the reason, find something in the newness in which to anchor yourself, and make it your own. There may be laughter or tears, unequivocal joy or breath-stealing heartache. Make them into what you need. They are yours to do with as you wish.

I wish you all love, light, and peace in this holiday season.

 

 

You can be the outcast, or you can be the backlash of somebody's lack of love... or you can start speaking up.

NOTE: This post includes discussion of some pretty difficult subject matter, presented in an emotionally honest way. It may not be appropriate for all reading audiences.

At the heart of my myriad insecurities is a deep-seated fear of emotional abandonment. I am afraid that the people who profess to love me will stop caring, will decide that I am not worth their love and affection, and will dismiss me and my own emotions outright.

Physical abandonment is daunting enough, but it always seems to be symptomatic of a deeper emotional distance. DH left after our 19-year marriage crumbled, but that came only after he’d emotionally checked out of our relationship for years. I’d struggled to get Rango to engage in any emotionally significant way for more than a year before he told me he just wasn’t showing up for Max’s football game or my birthday. And when Bounder was most overwhelmed by the intensity of our relationship, he stood me up and distanced himself—at least until he decided he missed me too much to stay away—only to do it again and again.  

But the fear comes, plainly, from my childhood and adolescence.

I’ve written extensively about the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. There are at least six years during which I can remember being told, “Don’t tell anyone. You’ll be the one to get in trouble.” Years later, when I did finally tell—in the aftermath of a date rape at 16—I was left to deal with the physical and emotional impact on my own. Both the molestation and the rape were acknowledged very calmly for a few days, but there was no significant follow-up. I wasn’t sent to a counselor or therapist. I was sent, by myself, for my first pelvic exam to make sure I didn’t contract an STD.

My fear and my shame were dismissed, were boxed away so that someone else could handle what happened to me. My emotions were treated as if they were secondary and unimportant—or at least it seemed that way to me. With the exception of one close friend who literally held my hand through the process of telling, I never once felt that I was supported or cared for in those days and weeks.

I was scared and sick and confused and alone. When I most needed to be loved, the person who should have loved me most left me alone in my horror, pretending then and for most of the years since that none of it happened.

So what I learned from an early age, and relearned over and over and over, was that when someone loves you, then they leave you when your emotions are too much for them.

They leave you when you are too much for them.

Because they can’t handle what they’re feeling in response to what you’re feeling, it’s easier to pretend the feelings don’t matter or that there are no feelings at all. So while love is supposed to be this caring, beautiful, wonderful thing, for me it’s also tainted by hurt, twisted up with rejection and carelessness and neglect.

None of this is new. None of this is revelation.

What is new for me is the realization that the subpersonalities are afraid that I will emotionally abandon them. They are terrified that I will decide that they aren’t worth the trouble, that the help they try to provide is too much of a hassle for me to bother to listen to them. They are afraid of being ignored and dismissed. They are afraid that I will shut them all down, in turn becoming exactly what I fear most.

And my choices, my culpability, in all of my relationship failures make my trustworthiness questionable. My complicity in DH’s ignorance of me, which I would go on to rebel against in the most damaging of ways possible. My constantly shifting boundaries, allowing Rango to pull further and further away while I accepted the blame for his distance. And my tortured love for Bounder, whose kiss could make time stand still and the seas turn to sand—who I will still seek out when I feel utterly lost and alone, even though I know he will almost certainly let me down. The multitude of others, who said I mattered but then walked away with barely a glance over their shoulders.

Besides, I was the one who was making out with that guy the night of the rape. I was the one whose tiny body reacted with sexual arousal when touched inappropriately. While that is a totally normal physiological response, the behavior that wasn’t normal became utterly normalized. I knew things at an age when I should’ve been happily playing with my baby dolls and getting hugs goodnight instead of confusion and lies to deflect someone else’s blame.

They won’t love me anymore if I don’t do this thing that feels weird and wrong, being done to me by someone who says they love me.

Hurt was normalized. Secrets and shame were normalized. Pretending like nothing happened, like it didn’t matter, was normalized.

So if I have culpability or complicity in those hurts, who the hell am I to be trusted? How can my internal family trust me to make healthy loving decisions for them when I can’t even seem to make them for myself? How can I be trusted to do the right thing for any of us?

The difference in me and those who’ve hurt me is that I don’t want to be distanced from my emotions or anyone else’s. I don’t want to be ignored or dismissed, and so I try like hell not to do the same to anyone else. To disregard those parts of myself, to act as if my own emotions just don’t exist or matter, inflicts unbearable hurt. Shutting down, being numb again, silencing those inner voices entirely is the last thing I ever want to do.

I have to show myself the love and care that I expect from anyone else.

Integration can only come about if I trust the parts not to hurt me and vice versa. I have to honor what each feels, acknowledge each emotion I am ultimately feeling, and accept that the emotion itself is not the trauma. The traumatic events are over and done; the feelings are ghosts whose chains rattle me in a million directions at once sometimes, making me shaky on my feet. Making me insecure.

I may be moving forward, but I’m not leaving them behind. These parts of me, trapped at different ages and stages of development—disintegrated—deserve the chance to mature. They deserve the opportunity to grown into the woman they would’ve become had shit not gone horribly wrong.

I deserve the same.

Part of that maturation is coming to terms with the fact that it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t allow those other people to hurt me. I didn’t encourage them to devalue me and to dehumanize me. I didn’t ask to be sexually assaulted. I didn’t ask for them not to love and care for me.

It wasn’t my fault.

IT WASN’T MY FAULT.

I am worth love, and I am worth care and concern. There is nothing about me that is so inherently ugly or unlovable to have warranted horrid, difficult abuse. I was a sweet, smart, precocious little girl with Moonpie eyes and one dimple. I should never have been a sexualized object. I didn’t deserve to be molested. I didn’t deserve to be raped. I didn’t deserve to be smacked around and degraded by an angry boyfriend. I didn't deserve to be used and abused and discarded.

I never deserved being the target of someone else’s self-loathing and guilt.

I was worth more than dismissal and ignorance because I didn’t meet someone else’s expectations or conform to their fucked-up, dysfunctional norms. I am worth more than an eyeroll-and-sigh in toleration.

All of those bits inside me have fought to protect me from hurt, from allowing anything in that might cause more damage, But the fracturing of my personality into smaller parts left vulnerable cracks. Rather than fill the spaces with gold, like Japanese kintsugi, I often used whatever I could find: leftover packing tape ripped from an old dusty box… someone else’s half-chewed gum… desperate hope coated in blood and sticky mess.

But I was never going to be able to close my own rifts with someone else’s effluvia.

It’s up to me to find the healing from deep inside me, to let those internal persona who so badly want and need to help do just that. If the end goal is a whole Stephanie, the parts that make her up have to have a role in filling those gaps.

So I’m letting them talk, and I’m listening. I’m hearing what each of them says they need, and I’m doing my best to honor those wishes. I’m giving each an opportunity to share their respective visions of wholeness and then choosing what works best for all of us. For me.

It is a process to pick up the broken pieces and put them back together. It took years for the breaks to happen, for the dust to settle enough for clean-up to begin. But it has.

And it’s up to me to do that work.

It’s up to me to show myself the love and care that I need, and that starts with sweeping away everyone else’s pain and destruction and refusing to force my bits to fit with theirs.

It’s up to me to trust that I can do this.  

 

 

Though you drown in good intentions, you will never quench the fire. You'll give in to your desire, when the stranger comes along.

Break-ups can be foundationally shattering. The end of a long-term relationship can be shocking to the core. There is the grief that comes from severing a deep, meaningful connection, of lamenting what has been lost, but there is also a sudden shift in daily routines that now feel hollow and future plans that will never come to fruition.

The day after Rango came to get his stuff from the house, I struggled just to maintain. I woke early, fed the cats, and cried for a while before falling back asleep. At noon, I realized I needed to get up and do my normal Sunday chores. The boys would be home from their dad’s that evening, and they would be expecting clean laundry and food for the week.

Walking through the grocery store, I felt raw. I felt like everyone who passed me in the aisles could see the sadness dripping from my every pore. I was certain that my hard-fought composure would come undone if anyone spoke kindly or smiled at me.

It’s not just that the sadness is a part of the grieving process. The sadness fulfills a purpose.

When I realized the futility of the relationship, I started looking for a new therapist. Therapy had been incredibly helpful through the demise of my marriage to DH. I was fortunate to have found an incredible therapeutic partner to help guide me through a couple of years of divorce and dating and loss. But my insecurities undoubtedly played a role in the tensions and break-up with Rango, and I knew I never want to feel those things again. I never again want to feel so easily broken by another person, especially when my head knows it shouldn’t be possible.

As I did some research online, I came across the Internal Family Systems therapeutic model developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the 1980s. It seemed to be especially effective in treating anxious attachers and rejection sensitivity. The idea is that we are each a Self, which is the true, whole, spiritual center of us. But we also have these discrete subpersonalities with their own intentions and needs and quirks and purpose. Each part has a specific viewpoint, developed from its interpretations of life experiences. Each has its own memories and interprets them according to its unique perspective:

• Managers handle the way we interact with the external world. They try to protect us from hurt, whether from others or from our own memories.
• Exiles are the parts that feel the worst emotions—pain, hurt, shame, fear—usually resulting from childhood trauma. Managers and Firefighters try to exile these parts to prevent their emotions from coming to the surface.
• Firefighters show up when Exiles break free and demand attention. They try to distract us from the pain, often encouraging unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms.

The goal of IFS is to allow the Self to access and connect to each subpart, healing them one by one. Thus, the Self leads the other parts in harmony and health. We become a whole, heathy person, rather than an amalgam of these smaller bits that exhaust themselves fighting to maintain a losing battle.

I have long believed that we each are made up of various persona, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone….

In an online interview reposted through the band’s Facebook page, Alex Wheeler said the title, Persona Non Grata, referred to all of the unacceptable and unwelcomed parts of everyone—the lurid, the shadowy, the hidden, the broken.

“Each of us has a persona, all the time,” he said. “I’m one persona with the band, someone a little different with my fans, someone else entirely with my wife and daughter. Sometimes that persona is ‘good’ and sometimes it’s ‘bad’. I spent a lot of time exploring the bad sides of normal, everyday people, you know? Not serial killers or rapists or anything. I wanted to look at the things regular people like to hide from the people they know and, most especially, from themselves.”

                                                                                                                                Persona Non Grata (2012)

I have, at times, named some of my subpersonalities, though I wasn’t thinking of them within the context of IFS.

• Cissie is the sweet, blond girl who never seemed to be pleasing to her parents, no matter how hard she tried. She never felt like she was enough. She was also molested for years, and she spent a lot of her time agitated and afraid. She is an Exile.
• Quinn is the rebellious teen who learned to trade sex and secrets for affection, often in an attempt to protect Cissie. She has her own anger and hurt, but she will bear it all to protect that little girl. She is a Firefighter.
• Stephie is a loud ball of angry. She will erupt and tantrum and demand her way when she feels she is being ignored. She is potentially a special subpersonality called a Tormentor. (She secretly wears that like a badge of honor.)
• Sassafras Bombalurina O’Malley is the one who reminds me to be shiny and sparkly and to tell the world to go fuck itself if it doesn’t like it. She is an eccentric, outrageous Manager who knows how to call on the Firefighters to back her up.
• Wonder Woman is the Amazonian princess who does it all, because she has to. She handles the day-to-day business of life, and she is remarkable. She is strong and capable, smart and intuitive, and she can predict everyone else’s needs and desires before they can. She is a Manager.
• Stephanie Quinn Jackson is the writer who sees it all, who arranges it and espouses the shared perspective of the others, who bears witness to it all and gives them a voice when it seems that no one else will listen. She is a Manager.

There are others, nameless but all with some variation of my face. Each has its own role and purpose in getting Stephanie through her life. Not to be confused with Dissociative Identity Disorder, I am not claiming to have multiple, distinct personalities. These are simply facets of my personality, and each strives in its own way to help me be secure and healthy and safe—even when its influence result in dysfunction.

The sadness is tied up with the hurt, and it’s not just from this break-up. This is hurt that hasn’t healed in 40 years. This is sadness that helps me to keep others at bay, or to curl up in bed and sleep when I should be doing productive things, so that I don’t have to feel the hurt. So I don’t have to delve back into every haunting memory and question again why I was both too little and too much. Why I wasn’t worth careful, healthy love.

None of these parts can or should ever be exorcised. Each is valuable and necessary, both as its own part and as a part of the larger whole. But the hurt can be healed enough so that it doesn’t make more hurt, create more sadness, because somewhere in there is joy and beauty. Somewhere in there is a sad and lost little girl who desperately wants to be loved.

I have to find her and help her.

We have to find her together.

 

Related articles

Muchness and Light - But if you'd known how that would sound to me, you would've taken it back and boxed it up and buried it in the ground.

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Save

And as soon as I get out of here, I plan on coming back for nothing.

When DH and I split up, it was devastating for us all. He and I had been together for most of two decades, and even with all the bullshit that precipitated our end, there’s no doubt that it was hardest on our boys. Max and Tricky weathered it all beautifully, for the most part, but their world collapsed in on itself. Their dad exited it for most of four years, whether physically or emotionally. While he and I have battled off and on for much of that time, I can very cautiously state that we have achieved a détente in recent months and have been able to effectively communicate and co-parent. I know it has been good for me and for the boys, and I hope it has been good for DH, as well.

When Rango came into our life, it seemed magical. Not only did he get me, he got my kids. His personal history gave him very specific insight into what my young sons were thinking and feeling. He bonded with them almost as quickly as he bonded with me. We were all happy when we intertwined our households and created an entirely new life for ourselves.

But somewhere, it all went awry. It’s not just in hindsight that I can see the landmarks pointing us toward destruction; I could see them happening in real time and spoke out against them. My aggressively railing against impending damage gave him reason to withdraw, and eventually I found myself with yet another avoidant, who could dismiss me and compartmentalize away until he felt the need or desire to deal with me. When I became an inconvenient reminder of his own damage and shortcomings, I was ignored to the point of feeling as if I didn’t exist for him until he chose to acknowledge me.

I could spend days psychoanalyzing him, breaking down his history as I know it and applying that knowledge to his behaviors, inferring meaning into every action and word ever exchanged between us. I could obsessively reread every email and text message and chat message, listen to the couple of voicemails I still have on my phone. But really, what’s the point? It won’t change anything, and it’s unlikely to offer me an insight I don’t already have.

I have spent days packing his belongings. I cleaned out drawers and closets and cabinets, looking for any lingering reminders that might blindside me if found later. Yes, it’s logistical, but it’s also a reclamation of the space. I have moved my knick-knacks and pictures onto the shelves where his things had been. I am slowly taking over the empty dresser and closet space again. I am gleefully eating glutinous yummies and not worrying about dropping crumbs, in case I irritate his wheat allergy.

When I told my dad that I really am okay, that it has been far less upsetting than other break-ups, he replied, “Well, that probably just means it was time.”

I’m not burying the sadness. The first few days were awful, and I cried a lot. But I also cried a lot during the last year, begging and negotiating and demanding resolution that didn’t come in the way in which I’d hoped. In the way in which he’d promised me when we met or during the first year of our relationship.

What I can’t get rid of yet is the anger. I’m not angry that our romantic relationship ended. I do think it’s incredibly unfortunate, given how wonderful the man I fell in love with was. We both changed in three years, and we couldn’t change together. He has his own damage and his own need for protections, and those needs are different than my own. In the end, we couldn’t meet each other’s needs, no matter how mindfully and intentionally I tried.

But he hurt my children. The last time he saw them, we sat around the kitchen table while he told us that he loved us, that we were his family, and that he wanted to be home with his family again. He asked the boys to think about his moving back home and to share those thoughts with him. But before they could respond, he was gone.

He ghosted on them completely. He told them he loved them and chose them and then never saw them again. He effectively unchose them with no explanation or apology. While losing a beloved family member and parental figure is hard under any circumstances, especially for children, this was eerily reminiscent of what happened with their father. Rango’s behavior mirrored what was the most hurtful and damaging experience of their young lives, and he knew better. He knew the exact way in which to inflict the most damage, both on me and on the boys, and did it anyway. He abandoned two boys who adored him, who relied on him, who loved him and just wanted to be loved back. If it wasn’t calculating and malicious, it was thoughtless and careless, cruelly reckless.

When I finally made the logistical break from his avoidant bullshit, Fluffernutter asked me if I could see the possibility of reconciliation in the future, maybe after a few months of no contact and time to settle and rethink everything. At the time, I ruled out the possibility of ever ruling him out completely.

But last week, Tricky asked me, “Will we ever be able to bring Rango back?”

I realized in that moment, as he looked down at his homework, floppy hair hiding his face from scrutiny, that I am no longer open to that possibility. DH is their father, and Max and Tricky love him very much; they will always find a way to maintain that relationship. I pray regularly that DH does the same.

But Rango was an outsider, whom we chose to love. The boys chose him, every time, until he didn’t choose them back. I introduced him into our world, cautiously and with the reservation that all single parents have in such cases. For me to ever allow him access to them again would open the plausibility of additional hurt, and I am unwilling to gamble with their hearts again.

So for now, for the foreseeable future, it will just be me and my young men. I’m not remotely interested in dating again. I’ll say maybe ever, but I understand the statistical likelihood of that actually happening. But if I even contemplate trusting someone enough to let them past my own mounting defenses, my heart and mind slam up those steely walls, unwilling to consider such possibility even cursorily.

I also remind the boys that this wasn’t their fault. His choice was his choice, and nothing they could ever do would warrant the kind of hurt he has inflicted. I remind them that they did nothing wrong, that their love is worth far more than Rango admitted.

And I remind myself of the same.

 

Related articles

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Huffington Post Article #3

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.

After a couple of intense days of more “discussion,” I took the boys out for the afternoon. It was a lovely afternoon with my men and Max’s girlfriend, Kiki, followed by a delicious if tense dinner with Rango. (The man is a great cook, by the way.) Rango and I excused ourselves to the talk privately, again going in circles about the same issues from the last few weeks. We disengaged, and he went to sleep on the couch while Max and I drove Kiki home.

On the way home, Max asked if Rango and I were going to break up.

“I don’t know,” I replied carefully.

“Well, I want you to do what’s best for you, of course, but I love him to death. I don’t want him to leave.”

And then I remembered exactly how much my relationship with Rango impacts so much more than just me and him.

By the time Rango came into our life, DH had been living out of state for four months. In the two years he’s been gone, he has seen the boys for 34 days. On average, they talk to him every 3-4 weeks. Max and Tricky have very little expectation of their father, other than 1) he will eventually show back up for a brief period and 2) he will buy them something when he does.

For Max, especially, this has been incredibly difficult. He has 4 extra years of memories with Dad that Tricky just doesn’t have. He was hit hardest by DH’s withdrawal. He is also the most willing to seek out a relationship with him, but he tends to do so guardedly, with hope but no anticipation of regular engagement. Having just turned 13 when the move happened, it came at a really tough stage in his life.

Enter Rango, who understood being a child of divorce, being the child of distant and difficult parents, and being a teenage boy in a way I just never will.

And while he fell for me, he also fell for my boys. They hit it off immediately, and he established a solid, loving, imperfect relationship with them that is entirely separate from me.

He did what a good stepdad should do.

They fight sometimes. They give each other shit. But he also brought Max out of his shell, showing him that it was okay to trust someone other than Mom. He is a steady, constant, loving, engaging influence on their lives.

And he does it because he loves them, not because he loves me. (Though he does, certainly.)

So is that a valid reason to stay in a relationship?

No, of course not. But it is a reason to re-evaluate the strengths and reasons for that relationship.

When I got divorced, DH and I blew the boys’ world apart. Max has said before that we are all happier and better off after the divorce, but it has also been really hard on my children. (see above) Rango is a large part of why and how it got better. (see above) And I do not want them to have to extricate another important, loving relationship from their lives. (see above)

So Rango and I have called a détente. We realized how scary this was for the boys, and that’s just not okay. We have issues to work through, but we have agreed to stop them in their tracks and move forward, together and carefully, because there is more at stake than just us.

I’ll be honest (surprise!): it still scares me. Choosing to rely on someone else means allowing for the possibility of disappointment. I’m not one to run from adversity, so why the hell would I choose to run now? In the end, the possible pay-off is much greater than the possible loss, and returns on investment don’t come when you buy high and sell low.

So there are still things to work on, and we will. This was a warning to us both, to remember the lessons of the past. I don’t want to repeat the past, good or bad, and it is unfair to compare Rango or myself to those times.

While I was out with the boys, Max bought me a gift. He saw it and thought of me, even before Kiki pointed out to him that it was Alice:

And on the drive home, he told me, “Just because something doesn’t go the way you want it to, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, even when it feels bad. You can’t appreciate what you have now if you didn’t experience the bad you had before.”

That boy is totally my kid.

Underneath my lucid skin, the cold is lost, forgotten.

During an ongoing conversation with a friend about happiness, I asked him what it is in his life that keeps him from being happy.

“What does this elusive happiness look like? What do you believe will bring that happiness? How will it manifest—will you find it, will it find you, or will you make it? What are you struggling against, that you feel is keeping happy away for more than short bursts? What are you willing to change or eliminate in order to make room for this happiness?”

Of course, this banter comes on the heels of my own burst of unhappy this weekend. I have been frustrated that life isn’t necessarily how I want it to be. Since DH moved out of state two years ago, he has had very little interaction with the boys. Phone calls and email have been sparse, and visitation totaled 28 days in that two-year span. (Though I am happy that he has been making a much more concerted effort to rectify that, as of late. <fingers crossed>)

That has left me with very little time in which to connect with myself on my terms. His absence coincided with my starting college and work, so I have lived in the constant pace of mom and student and employee. Constrained by obligation and time and money, I have had to forego a lot of the time to be “free” I’d previously had when the boys were with their father.

Because the boys were getting older and more self-sufficient, I’d been able to take some time away from them, a few hours for class or work or the occasional (bad) date. Then I met Rango.

“Wow,” he said during our first date, “with so much going on, how do you find time to date?”

“If it’s important to me, I will make time for it,” I replied.

Eventually—especially once GOAL was added to my plate—I started to butt up against real limitations. There are only so many hours in a day in which to accomplish what needs to happen in our life. I had to make serious adjustments.

Of course one of the first things to go was working out. If the exhaustion isn’t enough to drop me in bed by 9:00, household chores or schoolwork keep me busy. Now that I’m at Mercer in a program for working adults, my day starts at 6:00 a.m. and often doesn’t end until class lets out sometime after 10:00 p.m.—plus the drive home and the unwinding before I can even sleep before I get up and do it again. Having the boys for nearly 100% of the year also added substantial additional cost; it turns out teenage boys eat a lot, and their school/social activities are time-consuming and expensive.

This week, again, Facebook popped up with my “memories”—pictures from that day in years past. This time it was from a specific night three years ago with Pandy. I looked at the picture and thought, “I miss my purple hair. And I miss my collarbones.”

Toward the end of my marriage, I rebelled against the domesticity I’d created. I felt trapped and struggled to find meaning or purpose that didn’t stem directly from my role as wife and mother. Never happy in the medium, I swung the pendulum so far in the other direction that it, at times, wreaked havoc on my life.

So while I desperately miss the freedoms that come with fully embracing the Sassafras O’Malley persona, I am also careful to remember the confusion and static and sheer craziness that often came with that liberty. Sassafras has a tendency to be where she probably shouldn’t be.

Right now I’m living the life I need to be living: working full time, taking care of and providing for my children, going to school more than half time in order to finish as quickly as possible, succeeding by everyone’s metrics, including mine. And I have the support of a life partner who helps with as much as he can.

But sometimes, I still feel unhappy.

While doing homework over the weekend, I read a quote by Simone de Beauvoir: “Those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest.”

Because I’m not able to do what I want, when I want, I often feel stagnant. I feel trapped by circumstance that’s changing far slower than I would like, given my incredibly impatient nature. Sometimes I feel resentful when that circumstance is to blame for the lack of freedom and the feeling of stagnation. And it doesn’t matter that my head knows better; my gut is screaming that it feels wrong, that it feels too much like my life before, and my heart gets angry.

When I feel those emotions, I have choices in how to react. I can scream and go off my fucking rails, which very people have ever seen. For everything I have experienced with Rango, he has never been witness to a full-fledge Stephie Meltdown. I can choose to hold it all in and just pretend it’s not there, cycling slowly through more resentful. Or I can feel it and acknowledge it and let it go.

Knowing myself the way I do, I usually choose the latter, but Rango called me out on my methodologies. He complained that I become cold and distant, obviously struggling with some emotion that I refuse to let escape the icy surface. He’s right. I eventually found that the quickest way out of my own head was to jump in, dropping into it as quickly as possible, and then use that downward momentum to push off the inevitable bottom, letting the pressure release as I rise back to the top in a stream of my own bubbles.

But as long as I feel like there are things missing or that I am bound by circumstance, I will still have moments of discontent. I will still have impetus to feel unhappy at times.

Maybe happy isn’t the goal. My former therapist told me once that happiness is a fleeting emotion and that content is likely the healthier alternative I am most likely to feel content when I am living my life on my own terms, in my own way and at my own pace. But because I have relationships with other people, especially those three men who live in my house, I am morally obligated to take their contentment into consideration as well. What I want is sometimes in conflict with what they need.

So for now, I’m trying to make the best of it. I’m trying to make those small changes I talk about in my GOAL speeches, to pick up the pieces I keep dropping and put them together in the ever-expanding mosaic that makes up my disco ball. For once in my life, I’m thankful to have these big hands that let me hold more than seems possible.

 

Related articles

Simone de Beauvoir

Let's have a disco ball, and let's be happy.

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

 

Ain't these tears in my eyes telling you.

I posted a picture to Facebook a couple of days ago, of a cyan-tinted, forlorn, Bitstrips version of Stephanie that said, "Stephanie is feeling a blue."

Several friends immediately commented to inquire about what was wrong. Thankfully no one told me to cheer up. The girls reminded me to moving forward. A couple of people who've had their own sadness in recent months offered sympathetic well wishes.

One friend commented, "Just looking from the outside your future looks very bright."

He's right, of course, but that's exactly what has me in such a damn funk: the future.

I am finishing my last six weeks of my last semester at Georgia Piedmont Technical College. I am finishing my last two weeks as an (unpaid) intern with the ACLU of Georgia. I won this huge award and am trying to schedule the visit to pick up my new car, and I'm appearing fairly regularly as an ambassador for GPTC and for the Technical College System of Georgia.

Under all of that, there is a boatload of fear. I've explored the topic of fear—specifically why it's just stupid to let it hold you down—and I know this is one of those times when fear is not healthy. It's not a warning sign that something is about to eat me or that some berry will poison me. There's no imminent danger that demands I fight or flight.

But there is more uncertainty, more unknown. There is the choice to be made in the next few days of which bachelor's program I'll transition into (the private program that's close to home but only requires 42 hours to complete, or the public college that's an hour away and requires 67 hours to complete but at a third of the cost of the private school). There are the looming issues surrounding the still-jointly-held mortgage that has to be refinanced and the post-divorce credit score that's lower than the number we spend on groceries in a month. Credit takes time to rebuild, even without constant additional damage. There is the question of what will happen to my meager health insurance at the end of the year, tied up with political and financial issues that have embroiled Medicaid and the Obamacare that I still wouldn't be able to afford if I had to pay for it.

And all of that is directly impacted by my now two-month-long job search.

I was told by a hiring-type person (though it was an informational meeting, not an interview) that my qualifications are impressive.

"Until there's a job, my qualifications are worth the spare change in my sons' laundry," I retorted.

On paper, it does look impressive. Even I know that. I'm graduating with a 3.95 GPA from one of the only ABA-approved Paralegal Studies programs in Georgia. I'm a member of three honor societies, and I was named the 2015 Georgia Occupational Award of Leadership recipient by the Technical College System of Georgia, making me the top technical education student of 144,000 in the state. I interned with the ACLU of Georgia, having worked on substantive research issues for litigation and having extensively lobbied the Georgia General Assembly. I've had articles published on DivorcedMoms.com, MariaShriver.com, and The Huffington Post.

But there is no job.

Yes, I have applied for them. Yes, I have reached out to my extensive network of contacts to politely ask them to keep me in mind if they hear of possible positions. Yes, I have reached outside my own box, my own comfort zone, and looked beyond what I think I want to do, willing to consider positions that may be only mildly related if they may ultimately open the door to where I want to be.

But consistently, because I don't have my Bachelor's degree and because I don't have 3-5 years' experience as a paralegal, I am shut out of positions. My skills and talents don't matter, my hard work doesn't matter—it's that one piece of paper that holds me back. And because hiring processes are very often automated now, my application is very often automatically kicked out of employment systems for not quite meeting criteria that I know really doesn't impact what I know or how I perform.

So this starts the cycle of self-recrimination:

This is what you get for fucking it up and blowing your scholarship at 18.

But I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to be ready.

If I'd finished then I wouldn't have gotten married and have these boys now.

You promised these boys you'd be home with them in the afternoons.

I was at home with them for twelve years.

They misbehave, because you're not here like you should be to help them.

I'm doing the best I can. I'm showing them how to be adults and step up to their responsibilities, how not to run to the bottom of a bottle just to escape what is hard.

You're fucking up. You fucked up.

This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't fucked up your marriage.

You're a fuck up.

The constant anxiety has reached a frenzied peak, the likes of which I only saw during the worst of my divorce.

And isn't your divorce at the heart of this?

You fucked it all up.

On and on this cycle goes. My head is relentless sometimes. I get agitated and cranky. I do my best to power through and keep working—homework, household chores, job search, more homework—just to have a reprieve from the constantly animosity.

Lately I've not been very pleasant to be around. It's most likely the boys, or especially Rango, who takes the brunt of that.

I'm sorry.

You're just a fuck up.

You don't deserve him.

This is why DH left, because you're such a fuck up.

I'm sorry. I don't know what I did wrong this time, but I'm sorry.

Right now, it feels like every single nerve ending in me is exposed, peeking beneath the flay that still shimmers with fresh glitter.

 I do know that this will pass, in part because I'm writing about it and dealing with it in the most cathartic way I know how. I know that decisions will be made in a matter of days, which will bring some of the uncertainty to an end. I know that this specific cycle will end. After the last five years, I'm pretty sure there will be another one in the not-too-distant future. If there ever comes a time when everything is easy and I'm skating on rainbows, I have to assume it means I'm dead.

What I also know is that I am not alone in my propensity to tear myself down from the inside. I'm not the only maladaptive girl who sometimes clings tightly to the familiar shards of broken glass, simply because that's a pain you know, which feels far more manageable than the overwhelming uncertainty.

I questioned whether I should even post this publicly. I am representing my college and the system for the next ten months, and this is their shiny champion swearing loudly about her problems. But I'm hardly the only single welfare mom who's gone back to college in her 40s to take care of her family. I'm not the only non-traditional student who has to choke down her fear and step into the classroom and just get it done. I'm not the only one who has to keep fighting while backed into a corner.

If you're there, your shoulders pressing against the jagged walls, use it. For just a moment, let the walls support you and take a breath. Breathe past the tears and the fears. One breath. And then another. And then use those walls for leverage and come out kicking if you have to.

It is your fight. No one else can do this for you.

And no one else can do it for me.

Related articles

Huffington Post Article #3

I'm not here for your entertainment.