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Recovery
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I want my ex to be more involved with the children
17 Oct 2006 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“I wish my ex-husband were more involved in our children’s lives. He pays child support without fail and he sends birthday presents and he phones the children but he doesn’t see them very often. Even though he lives in another town it is not that far for him to come and see them but he only comes down about once a month. The children get so excited to see him but I just wish they could see him more often. He is re-married and has two more children.”
It appears that your ex-husband is meeting his financial obligations and is keeping in contact with his children. This is to be applauded. Of course you (and the children) would like his greater involvement with the children, but it appears that this is something over which you have no control.
Try to keep your focus upon being the healthiest mother you can be given the circumstances you find yourself in with your children. It is understandable that you might readily reflect upon what their father is or is not doing, but this will not do you or the children any good.
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Recovered drunk asks if he owes a woman loyalty……
29 Jun 2006 by Rod Smith / No Comments
I was a drunkard for years but have been clean for more than five years. In my “stupidity years” I had a very supportive girlfriend. She tolerated everything. I keep asking myself whether I loved her then or was it because she had no problem with my drinking. I’ve met someone I communicate with easily. We are friends more than lovers, which was something that was missing from the other relationship. I feel she is not the right person for me. I feel I am betraying the woman who tolerated me all those years. What do I do? (Letter edited)
Congratulations on your sobriety. Drunks use people. The disease of alcoholism makes people very self-centered and it attracts (cultivates) people who are equally ill who “tolerate everything.” You used this woman. It appears she used you. Although she may deeply love you, toleration is no indication of love.
Tolerating someone because they tolerated you is hardly flattering. One would hope a woman would want more from a relationship than the fulfillment of obligation.
There is no “right” person for you. A healthy relationship will shape both persons into being right (and sometimes “wrong”) for each other. Sobriety means you have stopped drinking but it does not necessarily mean you have stopped using people.
You get to choose what kind of person you will be, and what kind of relationship you want. I hope you, and any woman with whom you share life, will always opt for complete mutuality, deeply shared respect and equality at every level of your sober life together.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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