No Expectations

May 14, 2013 by Randi

Take me to the station

And put me on a train,

I’ve got no expectations

To pass through here again

Expectations have caused me a lot of pain over the course of my life. I was often disappointed and hurt when I expected my parents to act a certain way. Boyfriends and significant others, being male, could not read my mind and my expectations of them led to more hurt.

I have had women friends of whom I expected certain things, only to find out that the person I thought I knew did not exist. I had a friend whose parenting style mirrored my own, or so I thought. So when she UNINVITED ME from their family’s holiday gathering because her teenage daughter wanted all of them to visit a family friend instead, I was stunned. Never mind the fact that I dreaded going in the first place! I just could not believe MY FRIEND would allow her daughter to make a decision that would cause the adult in the family to have to uninvite a guest. “We took a vote, and I lost,” said my friend. Excuse me? Since when is a family a democracy? So that friend is no longer my friend, all because my expectations of her were proven to be wrong, and I suddenly saw her in a different way.  Read more...

You Oughta Be In Pictures

May 7, 2013 by Randi

My mother was a movie buff who loved telling me the plots of her favorite films as though they were a children’s story. She instilled a love of movies in me, and I adored watching the great movies she recommended to me. I’m going to share some of them with you!

Now, Voyager (1942): Bette Davis, transformed from ugly and plain to gorgeous and alluring by engaging in psychotherapy! Definitely ahead of its time.

Dark Victory (1939): Bette Davis again, this time with an inoperable brain tumor, going blind. Ronald Reagan was in this movie.

Kings Row (1942): Not only was Ronald Reagan one of the stars of this movie, but there was a female character named Randy, and that inspired Mom to give that name to her daughter (changed to Randi). So I have numerous reasons to dislike Ronald Reagan, and this is only one of them. In this movie, he loses his legs in a terrible accident and exclaims, “Randy, Randy, where’s the rest of me?” Not quite as famous as “Win one for the Gipper,” but a great line anyway.  Read more...

Healing My Relationship with My Mom

May 3, 2013 by Michelle

While my mom and I have a good relationship now, it hasn’t always been that way. For reasons I won’t go into in-depth, we have butted heads for as long as I can remember. We would go through periods of time where our relationship would be wonderful, and then we would go through periods where we didn’t talk to each other very much. This was the case as a teen and for most of my 20’s.

You see, I’m one of 4 kids – I have two sisters and a brother. I fall in the middle of the girls and 3rd overall. Growing up my mom worked full-time in retail and as she says, didn’t get much help from my dad. On top of the general craziness of having 4 kids and working, all of my siblings except for me required more attention because of either chronic physical illnesses or learning disabilities. I was always the one no one had to worry about but kids want to be worried about. I wanted to be thought of as much as my siblings and because I wasn’t, I developed a lot of anger towards both my parents, but for some reason, mostly towards my mom.  Read more...

Vagina is Not a Bad Word

Apr 29, 2013 by Sarah Bourne Perillo

My four and almost three-year old are obsessed with body parts. They are inquisitive about bodily functions, they want to understand how and why people are different shapes and sizes; we have had lengthy conversations about why Mom pees sitting down and Dad pees standing up. My daughters can properly identify their body parts.

The other day the two of them were playing on the porch. My four-year old has a strict policy at her school about using potty words inappropriately, and she has been working on refraining from using these words inappropriately at home and around her younger sisters. In the middle of playing my oldest daughter said something about changing her baby doll and having to wipe the baby’s vagina. My almost three-year old used this as a chance to tattle and came running inside, accusing her sister of using a “bad word.” This, of course, resulted in the classic argument: “did not,” “did too,” “did not.” I intervened and helped to guide the argument into a productive conversation about why vagina is not a bad word.  Read more...

Help Me! I’m Living With Hoarders!

Apr 22, 2013 by Sarah Bourne Perillo

I am a tidy and organized individual. My daughters, on the other hand, are total hoarders! Yes, just like on the A&E television show. They are obsessed with collecting junk and they refuse to throw anything away. Their ‘junk piles’ and purses filled with ‘neat stuff’ are driving me crazy!

My middle daughter is the worst offender. She has three or four special purses in circulation at any point in time. Stuffed inside the purses you will find old marker caps, broken toys, mismatched puzzle pieces, old junky baby toys, wash clothes, slips of ripped paper from school and random wooden blocks. The picture below highlights the typical junk pile she attempts to bring to school, to the grocery store or in the car whenever we are running errands. In this picture you can spot a special purse, broken tambourine and an old necklace with the beads falling off.  Read more...