humanity
Humanity begins at home.
"My Cozy Corner"
Our five bedroom home shelters myself, my husband, my daughter, my son in law, and my three grandchildren ages 16,14, and 3. Prior to covid, on any given day, you could add an extra five to fifteen teenagers, (sometimes more!) plus five to ten friends with their children who are visiting my daughter and her husband, at times a friend or two who are visiting me and my husband, oh and my other daughter and my son, their children and their significant others must be added to the total as well! Needless to say our home is active, full of laughter, love and chaos!
By Pamela Walsh-Holte6 years ago 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
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
Hard Times=Desperate Measures
As I, a single mother waited in the waiting room at the Job and Family services office where I had been waiting for hours with my little girl to apply for some kind of help. I sat and watched as many people came in and waited with me for the next available social worker. One family that came in that day caught my attention. I had heard them ask the lady at the front desk if they were in the right place to recieve benefits for themselves and they're new baby, which they had in a stroller and they explained was only a week old. They were new parents and they were in need of the assistance they were looking for. However, this family lived on a county line and the previous office they had went to directed them to this office. The lady gave them forms to fill out but when they returned to her desk they despaired as she told them they were once again in the wrong office. They needed to go to another office. The new parents exclaimed they had already been there and they were sent here and they were running out of formula for their new infant. They needed help. With the mother hysterically crying and the father trying to console her, they pushed the stroller out the glass doors that led to the elevators. I had just received my tax return and had a couple hundred dollars left after paying my rent and other bills. I quickly gathered my things and ran out the glass doors and met them at the elevators. I asked them to please stop and explained that I had overheard the conversation that just occurred between them and the receptionist. I told them that I wanted to help to get them the formula they needed for their baby and some diapers and maybe some other things that could help them until they figured out where they needed to go. I do not drive due to medical reasons and these folks took a bus to get here. So I pulled out my checkbook and I wrote them a check for $150 dollars. I told them that I did not expect anything for this. All I wanted was for them to do it for someone else someday, kind of a pay-it-forward kind of deal. They asked if I wanted their information so they could pay me back or maybe text me a picture of the receipt of what they had bought. I said it was not necessary, the money was now in their hands and for their babies sake I believe they would do the right thing. I said my goodbyes and I returned to my waiting area. I hope one day the deed is passed along and they remember the day someone helped them and they do the same.
By Barbara Lee6 years ago in Families
Hometown Reclamation
When I first saw this prompt I balked at it. My hometown? Special? Yeah, okay. Despite my dismissal the topic kept settling in my mind; putting up photos, adding an accent chair, just making itself obnoxiously at home until I wrote my first draft of this. Except it wasn't this, at all, it was an incoherent rant about the illusion of hometown's mattering about how it's more about the intoxication of nostalgia than actual location, and, yes, there may be a little truth to that, it's not the whole truth.
By Christine Hollermann6 years ago in Families
From the right corner of my front room
If I can see the third set of hills on the right clearly it will be a good day. But it's cold! It was freezing during the night and a heavy frost is still on the cars. My home is in Edinburgh, Scotland and 10 minutes from Blackford Hill., the one on the left.
By Eric Sutherland6 years ago in Families
Mothers' Love
It’s not like I had never hit rock bottom. I had been homeless off and on since I was 19. I usually hid out, couch surfed. Begged. This time it was different. I sat there with two babies in my arms confused to how I’d even gotten there. A month ago I was at my mom’s house laughing and getting to know her for the first time. The next thing I knew I had filed my taxes and my mother was dropping me off to my aunt’s house in Indiana. Her husband wasn’t happy with the new living arrangements. They were moving to Arizona the house was to be closed and given to the bank.
By Hollie Horton6 years ago in Families
