I Had to Hear His Voice

I was feeling badly after listening to a song my husband and I used to slow dance to. It made me sad to think about the lose of his leg. It also made me feel worse to know I would never be in his arms again.

I wrote about my feelings on Facebook and he replied, "I will dance again."
I wrote: "I believe. Sadly it won't be with me."

It is so sad. I am left with all these feelings and emotions. I have to work on not forgetting it is really over. I could not go back if I wanted to. There is nothing left for me, but work and I have done that. Still, I had to hear his voice. I had nothing I wanted to say to him. I just wanted to hear the tone of his voice. It always soothed me.

He was surprised I really didn't have anything to say. He caught himself complaining a few times and stopped, which I thought was really interesting. Still, I said nothing. I called with that purpose twice this weekend. I will not call again because I could tell he wants to come back and I don't want him back. I want him to stay far away from me. I will not allow myself to be hurt by him again.

I do believe God is going to continue to shelter me and guide me in the right direction. There is nothing for me in his life except to take care of him now that he has loss use of his hands. He says he is embarrassed. So was I when he humiliated me in front of all those people. I am sure he has not given it a second thought. I will stay away from him so I won't have to remind him.

The next time I feel like I have to hear his voice; I'll just do without.

Short Story

Short Story

There was a story about four people
named Everybody, Somebody,
Anybody and Nobody

There was an important job to be done
and Everybody was sure that
Somebody would do it. Anybody could
have done it, but Nobody did it.

Now, when Somebody got angry about
that because it was Everybody's job,
Everybody thought Anybody could do
it, but Nobody realized that
Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed
Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

We have got to wake up people. You can't just sit around and allow children to be hurt. People are witnessing incest, rape, negligence and straight up violence against children each and everyday and not say a word.

This Penn State thing is about all of us. Would you tell if you saw a child being molested? Think about it.

Although

Although we are separated, neither one of us believe in divorce and it has not come up in conversation except to let the other know we do not want one. Even though, I am not looking forward to us living together anytime soon, I still have a deep desire to be there for him and to support him during this every rough time.

His negativity really bothers me and although I recognized it before, now I can barely stand to listen to it for one minute. He can tell and stops whining when I do not respond. What can I say? He is experiencing a lot of trauma in his life, but it didn't have to be this bad. Yes, he was going to have diabetes no matter what, but he could have controlled it over 20 years ago.

There's no way I could leave him completely alone. He doesn't have anyone in this town but his family. Since he's been gone, our son has been helping his dad, but over the past weekend he was unable to, so I had to do it because he had a heart attack and was unable to help himself.

All we have is what we believe in. I believe in being loyal, honest and true. I told him until death do us part and I mean it, whether we sleep in the same bed or not.

My Mind

I seriously feel a cosmic shift in my way of thinking. It seems as though in the last six months something has happened to me. I no longer have that longing I experienced for so long. Something is truly satisfied in my soul and it feels good and scary at the same time.

I didn't realized how much that longing ruled my mind. That constant feeling of needing to do, to be, to go, to learn, to search, could have made me neurotic. Instead, over that last few years, I have been able to soothe and calm my urges, rid myself of the gluttony that was sure to kill me, accept my limitations, and build upon my strengths.

Yes, I do credit the marriage I am in with helping me grow and acknowledge the need to keep doing so. My marriage helped me use my mind in ways that has allowed me to blossom into the woman I have always wanted to be. I'm not perfect by any means, wouldn't know what perfect looked like if it slapped me in the face. I do know that being authentically me has more benefits than seeking perfection.

Being me allows me to reach others because they can tell I am presenting who I am and not who I want them to see. My mind is good and strong and capable. I love my mind.

Another Good Time

My husband has been taking his medication consistently for over a month now. I am very happy for him from the standpoint of his blood pressure being regulated, but what it does to him is awful. We went out yesterday to do some routine shopping. He got dizzy riding around in the cart. He literally couldn't keep his balance sitting up. I am sure anyone who witnessed us thought he was drunk. I stopped briefly to go into a store that does not have the riding carts. He refused to stay in the car. He couldn't leave the counter the entire time. He can't give up living his life, but he is having a hard time living his. On the way, we talked about why were with each other. He tried to make a joke out of it stating that I was with him because no one else was going to love me like he does or put up with me. I challenged his statements and let him know I know there are women out there that would take him as broke down as he is. They might not keep him, but they would still take him and find out later he ain't worth keeping. He then said to me, "I don't wish me on you." I said, "Really! Does that mean I can leave? I don't have to have the experience." He got silent. "Well, can I leave?" He gave me the "over my dead body look." We laughed. I am so interested to see how this thing is going to unfold. I want to know. I am involved in my life.

Really Changing

The other day I cooked breakfast and my husband ate an egg sandwich. He wanted more and got more bread. I encouraged him not to eat anymore bread. I could feel him getting tense, so I just let it go.

When he walked around me, I noticed he was not eating bread. I was so happy. I couldn't believe he really listened to me. I do believe he is beginning to really change. I do believe he is going to allow himself to live.

I gave him his favorite treat which has spawned something interesting; he is listening more. I think I have created a monster, but it is okay if it is going to keep him alive. I have gotten him to take his blood pressure medicine two nights in row. This is very exciting. My husband may really be changing.

My 31 Year Old-Part Two

My oldest has been accepted to one of the best and well-known schools in Kentucky, Spalding University. I am extremely proud of her. I graduated from Spalding in 2002 with a degree in Psychology. She is going for nursing.

Like I said yesterday she is a late bloomer, but has now found her stride and is going for it in her chosen career, which I pegged for her back when she was nine. I paid attention to her and her personality and knew nursing was for her.

I mentioned to her a few times that I thought she should go into nursing, but I never tried to force the idea on her. When she came the the conclusion herself, she came to me and asked me how I knew. I told her I watched her and discovered it.

We do our kids the best favor when we allow them to be who they are and develop on their own as individuals. I am glad I have been able to allow my children to be who they are without reservation.

Now, she is on the right path and will be the better for it.

Waiting On David

As tortured and as painful as my marriage has been, staying has made me zealous believer in the beauty of marriage. It has been six months since my husband has messed up any money. I couldn't hold back; I asked, "What has changed, you don't go to the boat any more?"

"I don't have any money," he replied.

He has the same amount he always has. Something has changed in him, for the better. He readily admitted, "OH, I've thought about, now."

But he didn't go.

I'm still waiting on David.

31 Years Ago

31 years ago on the 15th of December, 1979 at 10:21 p.m. I gave birth to my oldest daughter. 31 years later a marvel at how she turned out and feel blessed to have helped bring her into the world. I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful daughter.

She tells me I am her best friend. It was never my intention. I have always let her know I was not the type of parent to befriend my children. Yet, she claims I am the best friend she has. I accept it. We do get along very well and I trust her completely. She has been a great big sister to her siblings and is always willing and ready to help them in any way.

Now that she is 31, I look at her with brand new eyes, she is a grown woman for sure. I look forward to the next 31 years.

BCS-Basic Communication Skills-6

Constructive Use of Feedback

The next important goal for your group is to discover the use of constructive feedback in small group interaction. Feedback is reporting to an individual the kind of impressions he is making on you or reporting your reactions to him. Constructive feedback is rarely effectively used on the value of honesty. Children are taught their homes and schools that it is bad to lie about their behavior. Stealing, lying, cheating, and other dishonest acts are denounced in every aspect of life. Yet, all of us are guilty of a great deal of dishonestly in interpersonal relationships all the time. (Since children are often very aware of this it makes the learning of the value of honesty very complex.) We rarely express our honest feelings toward others in home or in school. Often this involves simply avoiding the expression of reactions which we feel would be detrimental to others or ourselves. Often it involves what we call "little white lies" when we tell people something positive or reassuring rather than be direct, honest, or critical.

People often feel threatened by the introduction of feedback exercises. The notion that people will be hurt by criticism is very prevalent. Yet, think of how many people you know who have goo intention but irritate, embarrass, or behave in ways which diminish their effectiveness. The range of operating efficiently and productively in many areas of life is seriously hampered if we never have a chance to become are of our impact on others. Most of us are quite capable of improving our styles of interpersonal communication and becoming much more effective as people-parents, teachers, students, whatever, when we really become aware of our impact on others.

Before going on to an exercise designed to give and receive feedback to others in the group, it is useful to think about destructive versus constructive feedback. Feedback is destructive when it is given only to hurt or to express hostility without any goal of improving the communication between people. it may be also destructive when only derogatory or extremely critical statements are given without any balance or positive evaluation.

Principles of Constructive Use of Feedback

Feedback is useful to a person when:

1. It describes what he is doing rather than placing a value on it. Example: "When you yell at me it makes me feel like not talking to you anymore." Rather than: "It's awful of you to yell at me."
2. It is specific rather than general.
3. It is directed toward behavior which the receiver can do something about.
4. It is well-timed.
5. it is asked for rather than imposed.
6. it is checked to insure clear communication.

BCS-Basic Communication Skills-2

Perception Checking

A second basic skill for understanding the other person is checking with him to make sure that you understand his feelings. This skill complements paraphrasing in that it focuses on the affective aspects of the message rather than ideas. To check you perception of the other's feelings, you describe what you perceive to be his feelings. This description should tentatively identify the other's feelings without expressing approval or disapproval of the feelings and without attempting to interpret or explain the causes of the feelings. Checking the feelings of another conveys this message: "This is how I understand your feelings. Am I accurate?

Understanding the feelings of others is a difficult task. Emotional states express themselves simultaneously in words and in nonverbal behavior such as body movements and physiological changes. Quite often the nonverbal cues are the only accurate source of information available for understanding the other's feelings. Instead of resting your fist inference about the meaning of these ambiguous cues' perception-checking allow you to verify your assumptions about the emotions the other person is experiencing. An additional benefit of perception-checking is that it conveys the idea that you want to understand the other as a person. Thus it has potential for improving interpersonal relations as well as increasing clarity of communication.

Success

What is success? It is being the best you can be everyday. It is setting high standards of conduct and achievement for yourself, then striving to live up to those standards and never settling for anything less. True winners in life are committed to this idea of success.

When I was in the 1oth grade, I wrote an essay about what I thought success meant. I basically said the same as about. I have been successful all my life because I have always held myself to an extremely high standard.

Be committed to being successful.

Doing Good

I know I've written about how doing going does not always turn out good. When this happens in a marriage, it is even more devastating. Everyday I am faced with the fact I put forth effort and failed.

I did more than try to change I actually did and although the changes I have made will benefit me the rest of my life, it still does not take away the pain of knowing I will never have a husband in the man I married.

Today I said to him, "Well at least we have a lot of good memories." He said, "Yeah, I have a lot of them." We both put forth effort, it just isn't meant to be the type of marriage we had hoped. We are too different, not enough in common, and marginally compatible, but we managed to stay together for over 25 years. Ours is a true testament to the fact that people can learn to get along with each other successfully, no matter how different they are.

Still, having to change the way I view our relationship is sad to me. I can no longer lean on hope to get me through these last years. I have to face the reality each day that my husband has not grown enough, is not secure enough to be the man he could be if he only had worked harder.

One of the key life lessons I needed to learn was compassion. I learned, but it didn't help the marriage. Doing good does not always turn out good.

Ain't No Body!

I'm putting it down this morning. Let me say this, even if I were to get a divorce, it wouldn't be in hopes of finding a man who treats me differently than my husband does. At this point in our relationship, my husband's problems with me completely have to do with how he feels about himself. Because, after over 25 years of what he has brought to the relationship has made me stronger, he has foiled. He thought who he was would cause me to be other than who I am. He only thought this because he doesn't recognize me for who I am. I only exist to him in relation to what he needs.

I know, this sounds so awful. But I will press you, (and I won't have to do it too hard), to look at the relationships in your life and tell me how many are equal, balanced, where everyone is giving exactly what they are giving. Please send all list to wanda@goosecreekpublishers.com.

Anyway, men need to get off it. They are just as bad as we are when it comes down to letting the other be who they are. Next to coming to an understanding and agreeable, recognizing genders specific traits is paramount to being able to have a smooth functioning relationship.

Things get rough when we try to understand the opposite sex from our perspective. Men are men and they do male things. There are things that only relate to the male species. A woman will not know what it means to be a man, nor can he know what it fundamentally means to be a woman.

What we can do is respect the differences enough to live with the opposite sex.

One of my husbands biggest problems with me is that we can start at A and end up at Z in less than a minute. It all depends on the subject. Most men, on their best day, can't do this, most do not even desire to try, but they grow to resent the women's ability to do it. Any man who has a woman whose mind is as flexible as mine, has made the same complaint, "We will be talking about one thing, then before I know it we're over here. I'm like, what does this have to do with anything?"

To that I say, don't get mad at us because your mind functions best for you in the concrete. The technical term for a women's ability to connect the relavance of subjects, thoughts, possibilities, etc, is absrtact thinking.

Before I say anything else, I will say right off the bat, this ability can be the down fall of women who are not in control of their emotions. That is another blog.

Women use more of their brain than men do when we think about a subject. We're able to rapidly make connections and verbally express them. Sometimes it seems it is happening simultaneously. Some men, and this is not to be mean, like to keep it simple. Then they should choose a simple minded women. Don't reach for the top shelf woman, then fumble with her as you yank her down from the pedastal you've put her on.

I will say I have found a good balance. I have chosen silence to remedy fr actioning his already bruised male ego even more. He reads my silence as distance, when in all actuality I am sparing him the obvious discomfort he feels when he has to "think too much to talk to me."

Why are women attracted to Obama? It is because they know Michelle. We already know she is fluid in thought and words, and he's hanging. He chose a sister from the Southside of Chicago.

We, men and women, have to approach each other as if we were archaeologist. We must allow ourselves to allow our spouse to pick at our bones, down to our souls to really find that which will hold us together. When we allow simple gender specific traits to keep us from getting close to each other, we are either very ignorant, or very selfish. It makes no sense. It is not a legitimate excuse to leave a woman for being female. As her man, if she is flying away in thought, and you aren't ready to leave the ground, that might be a good time to say, "Dear, I really want to understand what you are saying, at this time I'm not making the connection."

If you love her, you will give her that. If it is her just talking to be talking, she'll probably say isn't that important and shut up. At the least you have shown her you were listening. At the most, you just may have to spend a few minutes letting her get it out. But what is wrong with that? If this is the person you want to be with, then you should want them to come to you and be who they are. Think about it.

Anyway, ain't nobody in Louisville ready to take me on. My dreams are huge. My thoughts are rapidly and fluid. I feel the energy of the times. God has revealed so many opportunities. No matter what has gone on in my personal relationships, I have been able to maintain to a great degree. For years I battled with food, but once I woke up and made some better choices I found I could maintain my weight and have done so for over five years now.

I have never compromised my dreams and goals. I never would. I've done a lot of alterations to my personality to stay married. I like how staying married keeps me true to the person I vowed to be. Again, I really wish I could say my staying married had a lot to do with my husband. I do believe God has released me from the marriage to the man I live with, but I have not released me from the vows I took, and as long as I believe I should do what I do, God is with me, no matter who else is, or is not for me.

So, if you don't like that I can think about 95 things and tell you 80 of them in less than 15 minutes, don't talk to me.

I Needed That

A friend told me something that kept me up all night. At 5 a.m., no longer able to stand the rumblings of my soul, I called the same friend who was receptive and willing to let me flesh out what I believe to be God's will for me.

It is time for me to find out who is just with me, and not for me. It doesn't mean I am going to dump people. I think all these people will fall off by themselves. They won't be able to make the climb up the mountain, they will fall off.

There have been so many throughout the years. Some people I really felt close to. I really felt, at the time, they were going to be in my life forever. I learned my lesson the hard way about saying forever, always, coulda, woulda, shoulda. I learned we truly only get one day at a time and that is all we are mandated to deal with. We don't have to solve all of life's problems, if we can just make it through this day and not carry it with us to the next.

When you get stuck on stupid, stand in your own way, you keep out what our Creator has to offer you. I am open. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I think I'm getting closer to my peak.

Believe

It is amazing how you can meet someone who reminds you of yourself. This has happened to me and I am compelled to try to help this person, because she is much younger than I and already has made so many bad choices.



To find the right words is often hard and I really wonder if I should even say anything because who am I to think I know her because she reminds me of myself? She reminds me of when I was unable to focus, having rapid thoughts, and a vivid imagination that took me from one project to the other, never quite finishing any of them.

I want to tell her that there will come a time in life when you recognize you need to take care of yourself. I can only hope it will be sooner, rather than later in her life. I spent so much of my youth angry, lonely, overwhelmed and lacking true discipline. Now that I am 48, hindsight is 20/20; I see where I went wrong, or could have been more patient, or should have just not done anything. I can see how hating myself, even for a minute, casued me undue stress and humiliation.

I want to believe I can help her.