Have you heard of Susan Boyle? Forty-seven year old, plump, heavy eye-browed Susan Boyle? If you haven’t, you need to. You need to hear her sing. She is the woman who has managed to blow away Simon Cowell and just about every contestant on American Idol with her performance of “I Dreamed A Dream” from Les Miserables on the British talent show, Britain’s Got Talent (American Idol’s parent).
And she’s never been married or kissed and lives with her cat. She has been singing in her church choir, however, since she was 12 years old. And this dear, sweet sister had a dream. She wanted to be a famous singer, like Elaine Page, she said. Page is best known for her performance in the theater musical Cats as the outcast, Grizabella, who sang the very famous song, “Memory.”
That is what my daughter asked me yesterday on Easter Sunday. This following a horrible EF-3 tornado with sustained winds of 135-165 MPH that ravaged a 15-mile long, half-mile wide stretch of the north, northeast part of our town. We live in Murfreesboro, TN, and this tornado hit Friday, Good Friday, at about 12:30 p.m.
In 2005 we lived through Hurricane Katrina, and though our rental home was gutted, my office was destroyed, and the kids' school was flattened, we came out unscathed, and the home we lived in at the time, though a mile from the beach, and a trailer, no less, was undamaged!
Thursday night lightening hit one of my tallest trees, and the top half of the tree fell in my yard Not on power lines, my car or the house, just in the yard.
Less than two weeks ago, a small tornado clipped the edge of my neighborhood severely damaging the Boys and Girls Club, a bank, and a shopping center.
Three weeks ago there was a huge fire in my neighborhood. A neighbor lost his valuable collectible automobiles and the shed that held them.
In 2001, we experienced three earthquakes in Anchorage, Alaska. And we just missed an avalanche.
It was only 400 years ago that most people still believed that the earth was the center of the solar system. You’d think that once we discovered that not to be true, we might have developed a stronger sense of wonder of it all and begin to look outward for ways we might make the world a better place.
The sadness of our planet has me feeling blue. Sons killing their mothers and sisters. A lost soul taking out his anger and fears by blasting the very life out of over a dozen strangers he never met. Groups of fanatics blowing up vehicles and killing dozens and dozens to, what, make a point that they can? Has the world gone mad?
Folks in the Midwest battling freezing temperatures and flooding. An earthquake erupts 150 miles northeast of Rome destroying over fifteen hundred buildings, leaving a hundred thousand people without a home and dozens more dead or missing in the rubble buried alive.
A hostile country defying the rules and simply daring the world to react when they fire their missiles. It is all so un-Godly that it breaks my heart.
I thought I was ready to be off of Prozac. Who was I kidding? I have a Serotonin deficiency – it doesn’t make me a crazy person. It makes me a person with a chemical disorder, and I’m tired of apologizing or being embarrassed about it. As my dear old psychiatrist Dr. Hamilton told me, “If the Serotonin is your problem, you’ll know in about two weeks of being on Prozac.”
He was right.
So why do I still sometimes feel weak and guilty about taking this prescription drug, which does not make me high and does not make me low? It simply keeps me from being anxious, riddled with discontent, and constantly feeling the “flight or fight” syndrome. It keeps me balanced.
I tried to stop taking it when my insurance changed and before my new insurance kicked in. I figured, do I really need it? I mean it’s been almost three years, do I need to take it anymore? Answer: Yes! Most definitely, yes!
It’s becoming increasingly evident that there are simply no cut and dry answers when it comes to single parenting. Lately I have been at such a huge loss for direction and possible actions to take to control of my 12 and 13 year olds.
Some of our experts here at FWW have offered some great pointers and advice; Elizabeth Berger’s insight and words are helpful and this article in particular gave me some clue as to the affects of divorce on my children, but I still feel lost.
And the hardest part sometimes is that there seems to be an issue or issues every single day. Part of me wants to throw in the towel. Part of me feels like crying morning, noon, and night. I feel like I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.
If it’s true what they say — that children need two parents to develop into healthy, productive adults — then I’m screwed.
Being a divorced mother of two younger children (12 and 13 years old) I find that I have to figure out how to separate myself; divide myself into two people. It ain't easy. On the one hand I want to nurture, coddle and offer up the world to my children. But on the other hand I must discipline, guide, direct and forget about being their friend and accept that they may just hate me some of the time. Ouch.
A few years ago, I introduced my two children to Mean Mommy. It worked for a while. Mean Mommy only came out when my children were misbehaving, and she wasn’t very pleasant. Luckily for them, Nice Mommy warned them. “If you don’t stop doing that, Mean Mommy is going to come out.”
I was not in New York City that horrible fateful day in September 2001. I was married, then, however. We lived in Alaska at that time, and I remember watching as our country’s borders were crossed so easily and as those planes kamikazed into our Twin Towers. Things began to change the most, then, I think.
Living in Anchorage, Alaska, at the time, I was slightly removed from the lower 48 states, but it still hurt. It still frightened. It still broke my heart. It was, at that time, I think, that American families began to stop what they were doing and take an assessment of the lives they were living. We began to see the value of nesting. Our homes were viewed as our sanctuaries far away from danger, or so we had thought. I am quite sure that the residents near and around Ground Zero did not feel safe for a long, long time.
Since September 11th, we have watched our world crumble and fall in many ways. WorldCom comes to mind for me. My ex bought 20,000 shares of that stock right before it plummeted and failed. Wow, what a waste of our hard earned money, but my ex always was much more about the future, tomorrow, what would happen years from now.
