Archive for December, 2009

Is it possible to move forward in life and be free of the past? Whenever you try to work things out, whether in therapy or from books, they go back to your past. I’ve been doing that recently but I don’t know how effective it is really. Everybody struggles with the past. It has affected us in ways that we can’t even imagine. Sometimes we don’t even realize how it affected us and keeps on affecting us. It affects our decisions, our feelings and emotions, everything. But can we really do anything about it? If the guilt of divorce forces a parent to overcompensate, will he or she really change if they realise this? The guilt will still be there. I don’t see how it will change anything apart from making you feel bad that you are doing it.

I’m also wondering how possible it is to rebuild your life with someone when your past has affected you immensely. Especially in blended or stepfamilies. The ex is still present, still haunting. If this person was abusive before, does leaving that person fix it all? Won’t they still keep a tight grip on you forever. Granted, you won’t have to spend every single day being told how awful you are but won’t they find other ways of making you feel miserable. My answer to that would be to fight back. Leaving would give me the back bone needed to put an end to it. I’d want my daughter to know that I respect myself now and that I will never let someone treat me this way. But what if this person is my daughter’s parent?  So complicated…

This website is great! Basically it’s a bunch of letter written by members of a stepfamily. All of this is done anonymously. Some stepmothers write to the stepchildren, ex-wives write to their ex-husbands etc. This morning I was very angry at a situation. I wrote my own letter and it helped immensely. My letter will probably be published in a few days! Since it’s anonymous, I won’t tell you who I wrote to You’ll have to guess! Simply click on the image to link to the website!

The holidays negotiations have been hell. We have finally come to an agreement that seems to satisfy everyone but letting go of particular celebrations and traditions have been difficult for both me and my man. I am now trying to apply the tricks in this article. This article really puts the emphasis on how difficult holidays are for blended family and reflects so well how I feel about the whole thing!

ON ReMARRIAGE: Let little stuff go over the holidays

By Paula Bisacre

Most people would agree the holiday season can be very stressful. Parents often become overwhelmed as their schedules get busier with parties, pageants and concerts. Their normal to-do lists grow even longer with preparations for special celebrations and gift-giving.

For stepparents, this time of year can be particularly anxiety-ridden because they face all of this and more. This holiday season, I am inviting remarried couples in this situation to give themselves a few gifts.

Stepparents often are challenged by holiday traditions. They try to balance keeping old traditions they had with their own children with establishing new ones within their blended family. In the millions of stepfamilies that formed this year, I’m sure quite a few people are standing awkwardly around their first Christmas tree trying to figure out whether they should use “their” tree topper or “ours.”

I’ll never forget how I agonized for three Decembers in a row, wondering what to do with my husband’s first wife’s collection of wooden Santa figurines. My husband, who was a widower, has more than a few of these beautiful decorations. As the one who decorates our home, I worried about what to do with them, going back and forth in my mind.

I thought his children might want me to keep the tradition of setting the Santas out around the house to remind them of fond memories. Then I feared my stepchildren would think I was trying to take over their mom’s things. Then I really cranked up my anxiety level by wondering how many to display. Do I display just one, or would it be insulting to not set out the whole collection?

Finally, before our fourth Christmas, I explained how I was feeling to one of my then-teenage stepdaughters, and she replied it really didn’t matter to her either way. I wish I had given myself a big box of confidence and the skills to initiate good communication directly with my teenage stepchildren a few years earlier.

An additional present I wish I had given myself was the understanding of holiday time in a joint custody situation. When I was going through my divorce, there wouldn’t have been enough wrapping paper on the East Coast to cover the size of this gift.

When I was a child, my family always celebrated Christmas on Dec. 25. I was emotionally tied to having our family celebration on that day, but that was no longer possible after divorce.

I’ve grown to realize that what is most important isn’t the actual date of our family holiday celebration. Having the opportunity to bring all five of our children together at once brings the most joy, no matter when it falls on the calendar.

The third gift I wish I had given myself when I remarried was the ability to let the little things slide and the ability to focus instead on how the holiday celebration would end up. I must admit, this gift still is arriving more like a book-of-the-month subscription rather than in one large package. Seriously, I sometimes wish a delivery person would drop off a package daily.

Seven years later, though, I see it really didn’t matter what time we opened our presents. And I don’t think anyone remembers whether we played a game after dinner or watched a traditional movie. I stressed out about so many things unnecessarily.

Lastly, remarried couples must remember to give themselves the gift of patience. Forming a stepfamily is not easy; it takes years to come together. I had always read that it takes about seven years for a stepfamily to blend and recently read a wonderful and informative Psychology Today blog article by Wednesday Martin, author of “Stepmonster.” The blog stated that stepfamily expert Patricia Papernow suggests that it can take four to 12 years for a stepfamily to blend.

Suddenly, I could feel my shoulder muscles loosening and my jaw relaxing. I hope other remarried parents can relax and enjoy this holiday season, too.

• Paula Bisacre, founder of Remarriage LLC, is the publisher and executive editor of reMarriage magazine (www.remarriage mag.com), which provides practical solutions for the growing remarriage community.

This entry really made me think. When do I actually know I’ve recovered and what does it mean exactl? I’ve been struggling with depression for a few months now and things are looking up, but I don’t know if I’ve recovered. I really don’t know what it means and when I’ll know it’s over. I’ve started thinking that maybe recovery is not something I should look for but rather, depression is part of who I am and that trying to have a better life is more of a life mission than a cure.

From Depression Through Recovery to Life as Creative Experience

I think of recovery as a slow process of change that aims at replacing depression with a new responsiveness to life. A key part of it for me has been deciding that I would not think of myself as always in recovery. Recovery would be the method for getting back to life. As Mary Parker Follett put it, the essence of life is creative experience – the constant interplay between the best we can put into life and all that it gives back to enrich who we are. I couldn’t imagine getting to that point if I thought of recovery as it’s defined in the prevailing medical model.

According to this model, a condition like major depression continues through life, though possibly “in remission.” Recovery means reducing the impact of the illness on daily living through ongoing treatment using medication and therapy. For me that would mean living the rest of my life with major depression, but its symptoms would be managed effectively. As I’ve written before, this sort of recovery is not for me. It’s a way of crippling expectations about my life – much the way depression itself does.

Perpetual recovery is not my goal, but recovery is nevertheless an essential step in restarting life.

I think of the process I’ve been through in terms of three separate types of awareness: the deadly stillness of depression, the reawakening of recovery and the creative experience of life itself.

Read more: http://www.storiedmind.com/2009/12/12/depression-recovery-life/comment-page-1/#comment-7069

I’m actually feeling happy today. I can actually look at things positively. I am looking foward to some things and I see a real change, something concrete.

I have set objectives for myself for work. I don’t know whether it will actually work but having a plan actually helps! My relationship is better. Granted, it has only been a week since our last fight but things seem really different now. My daughter seems happier and I can see a bit of light at the end of all this darkness.

I am working really hard at controlling my emotions and not letting them control me. I still feel sad, angry and hurt but I try to calm down and express them properly. I don’t think I’ll be able to do this all the time but at least I am trying.

So I have set a few objectives for myself:

1) Find a job that satisfies me

2) Have a healthy and happy relationship with my man

3) Have a healthy and happy family (I still have to work out my definition of family but…)

4) Be debt free by next year and not live off credit cards again!

5) Do things that make me happy!

Seems like a lot but I simply want to reach these objectives one day. I have my whole life to reach them!

I haven’t been able to write for the last couple of days. Any topic just depresses me. Everything seems so difficult. I’m wondering right now, how much can one person take. I see and hear about people who have gone through really, truly horrific things in their lives and they seem to be able to get over it. In my case, nothing horrific is going on but just a series of little crappy events that bring me down every time.

Finances, kids, family, relationship troubles… it just never seems to end. I feel as though my entire body is on automatic pilot. Still functionning but no one know how it’s even possible. It’s like the power is off but the tv is still on and nobody can figure it out. My life is like a series of failures, one after another and no matter how hard I try, everything comes back to a failure. Once one issue seems to be better, something else shows up and I just can’t deal with it. I don’t know how to get out of this. I don’t know how to make anything better. I don’t know where to start. I just keep on going for the sake of my daughter.

Right now my days are mostly sleep. For so long I have been unable to find sleep and now that I can, I seem to sleep all the time. It’s as if I want to sleep long enough for the days to go by. I want to my days to have the least hours possible. This way nothing new can fall on my head. Nothing else will be able to happen in that short amount of time. Yet, it still does.

Nothing I do is good enough for anyone. I work my but off but the bank thinks I’m not good enough. I bust my butt at home to make sure everybody has what they need, that our home is welcoming, that everybody feels taken care of and it’s still not enough… nothing I do is ever enough. Yet I keep on doing all of that. I just don’t know how to keep going anymore. This situation is not killing me, it has killed me. It has killed my spirit. I don’t even know how or what I am anymore. I don’t know how to go on…