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Victims
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Naked souls before naked bodies and you might reduce the heartache
21 Sep 2011 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Call me old-fashioned but (religious convictions aside) you, who is so hungry for love, you might want to get to know someone rather well, perhaps even have some semblance of a commitment, before you decide to engage in sexual intimacy.
Has he or she ever read a book? Once the heat of an intense physical bout cools, you might want something to talk about and you might find there’s not much of a brain behind the brawn or beauty.
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Jealousy is fools’ gold…..
04 Sep 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I am heartbroken for my sister. I want to know how to help her. She has never married but has been with the same man for years. They are both very jealous. He has cheated twice. She is very possessive. She loves him deeply and is really hurting. He has told her they don’t have a future. He doesn’t love her like she loves him. He is also very insecure. My sister protects him. She wants to move but is afraid. She is crying a lot. I know this isn’t my choice. She has to choose. How can I help her to get out of the situation without it destroying her? I want her to be happy and free?”
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Resist blaming the victim, yet, until the victim takes some responsibility……..
21 Aug 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
It’s easy to play judge. It’s easy to wonder at people who stay in destructive relationships. The patterns, to the outsider, are obvious.
Yet, the man who is with an alcoholic, ranting wife, or the woman who lives with a chronic womanizer, seems to be oblivious to the fact that things do not have to stay as they are.
He or she seems unaware that, at least in some manner, it is also the issue of the person who allows destruction to continue.
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My sons have learned from their father to be cruel to me…..
01 Aug 2011 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
“My two children (male teenagers) have learned from their father to be unkind and often cruel to me. They will mimic my voice as he does if I give them instructions and they will laugh at my face. He knows they are copying him but he can’t do anything about it. They know how he treats me. I feel ganged up on in my own house. Please help.”
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Are you tripping over your umbilical cord?
01 Aug 2011 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
The umbilical cord is infinitely elastic. It’s eternal. Enduring. (Murray Bowen, Rabbi Ed. Friedman, and others).
If any person refuses to come to terms with the enduring power of the umbilical cord, by refusing to make peace with his or her mother, he or she will be tied up with it, will trip over it, in one way or another, for the rest of his or her life.
“Coming to terms,” means honoring the power of mothering, honoring the role of women. It means respecting women as full partners in every area of human endeavor.
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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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