A - HOORAY - MEN, SISTER.

From Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project blog

Interview with Aunt Becky,” a/k/a Becky Sherrick Harks from Mommy Wants Vodka. 

Is there anything that you see people around you doing or saying that adds a lot to their happiness, or detracts a lot from their happiness?

We've all been dealt some pretty crappy cards in life at one point or another. I am the product of two alcoholics, and my childhood was not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, if you can imagine it. But we can all walk around with a big red VICTIM painted on our forehead, expecting people to tiptoe around our feelings and give us special dispensation for our VICTIM status, or we can dust ourselves off, accept that it sucked pretty hard and move on.

The people who have the VICTIM on their foreheads are the ones that I see that are in a cycle of unhappiness because they're always blaming other people. It's hard to get over, I know. I know.
We all have skeletons in our closets. We might as well pull them out and make 'em dance.

L....M....A....O

Ok, so you had to see the widget. That is too too funny. This house is firmly on Team Jacob, thanks to the girl. She did the midnight showing and said it was FAB.

We are both firmly in agreement that TL's ABS are fab. LOL But that just makes me feel like a pervert. I found the widget on someone else's blog today and couldn't resist.

Growing up

AS IF we didn't have enough to deal with in the past year, I had that crazy email from earlier this week.  Said email was from my biological father, from the rehab center/institiution he has been a patient in for the past several months.  Suffice to say that I have not had a lot of contact with him over the past forty years (I could count all of them all on one hand, and most have been less than satisfying and have involved either listening to his litany of all the reasons why the whole world is against him, or him asking to borrow money), and this communication was less than a welcome surprise.

I will say in my defense that I have made several attempts to reconcile and get to know him, but the more I get to know him, the less is there to respect.  I think he's a man with a lot of problems, and I'm sorry for that.  I hope he can get help.

I also know that he's a convicted criminal with a mandatory lifetime reporting requirement.  I know some parts of that story, and frankly, I do not wish to know the rest.

His email involved his desire to 'tell me the long story of his life and all the reasons'. 

I am nothing to this man but something he did as a Senior in High School, and a casual acquaintance with whom he's spent some conversation.  And we share some chromosomes.  I do not bear him any ill will.  I also do not owe him any absolution for what he has done to others.  As far as I am concerned, his crimes are not against me.

I had a chat with my counselor yesterday, because I did not know how to handle his request for a reply to his email.  He confirmed what I already know.  I have come a long, long way in the past few years.  My life is wonderful.  I could never have imagined how incredible this life could be.  My family is cohesive, strong and loving.  I am doing well at work.  I have the love and support of a wonderful man.  Why would I open this Pandora's box filled with worms, by choice?

The answer is, I wouldn't.

I deleted the email.  May God forgive me for not trying to reconcile again, but I am not strong enough to invite this toxicity, this madness, into our safe and secure little world.  This is our LIFE, and I will not allow anyone to harm it.

I am the mother I always wanted to have for myself.  I finally found the man who is the father I wish I'd had.  And my children are thriving in this family, this fertile soil.  I'm watching them grow; like beanstalks in the night it seems like they've gained feet and feet of progress overnight.  I feel like finally I have something to be proud of.  Will they carry dysfunction into their future lives and families, or will they continue the cycle-breaking that I have begun?  Only time will tell.

We are growing up.

No more blasts from the past

I GOT an email from someone yesterday and I'm still trying to make sense of it.  Just when we'd come through the long dark tunnel of our own drama, and were feeling somewhat solid.  B's daughter and her new husband visited last week, we had a nice short week filled with a lot of family and love, and a really nice big family dinner on Saturday night.  Our other daughter is finally doing better with her blood clots and has swung seamlessly back into school.  Things were feeling pretty darn good.

And then an email, uninvited, loaded.  Out of the blue.  Kicking the legs right out from under me.

It is going to take a lot of support and strength to face this one.  Thank God B understands, and does not love me any less for the insanity of my family.  I don't know how I'm going to cope with hearing from this person out of the blue, who seems to want to rehash some long and ugly miles of the past.  I have worked a long time to climb out of the mud and into the sunshine, and I am very proud (and very happy!) with where I am today.  I am so very blessed.

But Pandora has laid a rather large and stinky egg in my inbox, and I have to deal with it somehow.  The subject of the next few weeks of self-reflection and prayer will be what I do with it.  Do I answer?  Do I ignore it?  Do I have a Christian obligation to smile and let him dump a steaming load of self-pity and excuses on me in the name of family blood? 

Do I owe this man absolution?