Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Families.
from young and madly in love to loving your young, madly.
From young and madly in love to loving your young, madly. there is a time in your life (the twenties) that everything revolves around love. finding love. making love last. accepting love into your heart. you get the idea. it is also around that time that getting into the “right”club or arriving late to the “in”party would harmonize with my pursuit of finding eternal and lasting love. all the sex, and mystery and sex and whimsy and sex and sex. looking at it now it seems a rather odd way of going about trying to make such serious search and ultimate decision. but i am a los angeles native and it felt acceptable almost normal at the time. who was going to question it? i’m a very interesting person and i’ll do what i want. (someone is laughing if he’s reading this) i’m lucky, i found that one true love not once or twice but three times. can i hear a forth? Nope not a forth. while in my early 40′s and on the second love it was never a thought to become a dad. My partner and I never discussed it, i don’t think we did. I’ve blocked so much out. i was getting older, there was a sale at prada etc...point is that fatherhood was NEVER a consideration of mine. not that i doubted my ability. I never thought about it. And it just didn’t seem practical. i laugh now. enter what sorta seemed to be the true love of my life. The man who excites me and challenges me. The man I ultimately left yet oddly find it difficult detaching from. He is 12 years my junior, a thrill seeker. His idea was to have a kid with me nonetheless, WTF? What? are you kidding me? was my first reaction. i somewhat quickly reeled those reactions in and decided to listen to my husbands desire and want for a child or children. queerly enough once i wrapped my head around the idea, i was ok with it. rather excited of a new prospect that didn’t have a revolving credit line. as my current therapist observes in amazement, when i accept an idea or consequence that’s it. the plan is put in motion sans regret. we all know where this one is headed. boy meets boy, falls deep and hard in love. adopts a baby, buys a home and has a destination wedding. a nightime soap right? unfortunately not my story. instead we mis-communicate, argue, take everything personal, experience no less then 5 marriage counselors, argue then separate from each other. enter coparenting! not for the weak at heart. it’s hard! i’m not going to sugarcoat it. the schedules, the communication still with a person you’re not talking to. the nanny(s) schedules, pick ups and drop offs. not to mention providing another safe and fabulous home for you and your part time son. the rest of this is still being written. but somewhere at a point in my marriage and being a father my priorities shifted. from young and madly in love to loving your young, madly. this shift is as meaningful as love itself. i hope everyone can get to a place with this kind of love. i couldn’t imagine my life without TKVW in it. RTVW 2.6.16
By Ronald Todd Woodward6 years ago in Families
Lemonade
Lemonade When the Fletchers decided to move to the small town of Clatskanie, Oregon from Los Angeles, Nia thought her father was crazy. It was a small town of maybe two thousand people; the air was cleaner and while she’d had no indication that people were kinder, they certainly seemed to have more time to talk. The whole town seemed like an uncomfortable sort of place, it looked strange amongst the trees Oregon was known for. Like a dusty town from a western movie--probably one of John Wayne’s, he being the only western actor she knew much about. Her grandfather would have liked the town, but he wasn’t with them to enjoy it. He was back in Anaheim. Her dad insisted that the place wasn’t so bad--there was a castle, even! He’d taken her to see it. It wasn’t actually a castle. The so-called castle was a fourteen roomed house some guy built with two towers on either side of it. There was a huge staircase in the front opening up to the yard like the grand entrance in the Titanic. Nia herself wasn’t so grand: she had straight brown hair pulled up with a spider clip. It stuck up in bent spikes from the clip, giving her a messy look. She had brown eyes, and was in a red casual dress with a white cardigan overtop that reached just past her knees and red Converse sneakers. She had black leggings underneath to face the crisp air of Oregon’s October. It was different than California weather, and she thought it was almost as if her body refused to adjust. She was always freezing. She pulled her cardigan tighter around herself.
By Jennie Demos6 years ago in Families
If Only I Was a Seer
It was 2016 and I was being promoted at work. I can't disclose business names or anything, but we will call the place 'W'. At W I was to become a bakery manager and I was excited to work in bakery. Quickly upon starting the training for my new job, I was informed that I was to be a Bakery and a Deli manager. Two departments for the same amount of pay. This did not sit well with me as I despised everything to do with the Deli department.
By Tayla Bennett6 years ago in Families
Mind Over Matter
I recently submitted a discussion post amongst my peers in Psychology 101 at Strayer University, where we were asked, "Can our personalities change with time throughout our life span, or do we consistently do things similarly throughout our aging process?" An example was included regarding a convicted felon who had committed many murders, but was adamant that his incarceration time had given him the space and opportunity to truly turn over a new leaf and change. Critics argued, saying of course that would be his perception while still inside, as the case study persisted that if paroled his new, exemplary behavior would be his norm moving forward. The question still being, whether or not such a dramatic change in personality and actions was possible?
By Jennifer Brown6 years ago in Families
Going Zero Waste while living with your parents
While studying Urban Sustainability at the University of the District of Columbia, we took an online quiz to check our ecological footprint was. The way it calculates is how many Earths you need if everyone lived the same lifestyle as you do. My results showed that if everyone had my lifestyle, 1.75 Earth would be required to sustain our current population. That's impossible, and I decided to make lifestyle changes to do more for our environment. The catch was, I still live at home, so just me changing my lifestyle wouldn't be as beneficial as my household adapting and evolving.
By Jackie Reyes6 years ago in Families
Why I Hate Living; But Why I am Grateful To Survive
I want to share this story since this is how I feel 24/7 living each day in my dysfunctional family home; and if anyone would care about how I feel on a daily basis and maybe is looking to understand, or to relate to my story. I am adopted, and I have two white parents, and a biological brother currently in my bungalow house in Chicago. Prior to being officially adopted, I have lived with my parents at 3.5 years old and I came along with my brother for an original emergency two-week stay, under the custody of DCFS. This time, it was very challenging since I was critically ill, non-verbal, and poorly coordinated due to the severe neglect I had faced by my biological parents who were both addicted to, and sold drugs. The first two weeks were filled with back and forth doctors, and hospital stays and visits. In addition, I was also diagnosed with Autism, and at the time was non-verbal and without any of the proper therapies and interventions, to improve my conditions, I would have been non-verbal, and in a wheelchair. With the hundreds of doctors appointments and back to back hospital stays with intensive therapies I went from being completely immoble and non-verbal to walking, and talking today. However growing up to now be almost-20 years old has been a curse in disguise. Prior to being 20, and to fill everyone in on being adopted; Anyone can say they love you enough just to give up on you. I had to face this at the age of 15 years old. At the time, I was going through an all-time low on both my mental and physical health. The cause of this was being moved from a Catholic high school, to a public school; feelings of guilt and fear when my sister engaged with drugs, and a possible gang initation, and the effects of my parents losing both their coroporate jobs. We also had a lot of family fights.
By Nikolas Taylor6 years ago in Families
5 best short moral stories for kids
Tales that will inspire you by teaching important lessons of your life 1. Ants and worm Once, while an ant was searching for its food, she saw a worm coming out of a cocoon. He was slowly moving his legs out of the box. Seeing that, the ant said, ‘Oh, what is your condition? I can walk wherever I want. But you have to spend days in this cell. So there is a big gap between you and me. 'The worm said nothing. A few days later, when the ant returned, only the shell of the worm had fallen and she saw that the worm had gone somewhere. She saw a beautiful moth fluttering its wings as it fluttered its wings. He said to her, ‘Oh, you were mocking me that day as a prisoner, you were saying that your own condition was better than mine, remember that I am the worm in the box. If you want to brag that you can go wherever you want, feel free to hit. Until then, I can easily walk around in the sky for a while. '
By Yogesh Sawant6 years ago in Families
