* January 10, 2013

My sweet Joey. He is my child (out of the four), that makes me most aware of my job as a parent. He is like me in some ways, when I was a child. Sensitive, needs to be wanted, insecure, funny, a smile that goes on for miles, and an attention span of a gnat. 

My parents divorced when I was a child. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that it wasn't going to affect me, it did. I was sensitive, hurt, confused, anxious, insignificant, and lost. Shortly after, my father remarried. This was particularly difficult for me....and no one understood (or in my eyes, cared). I wasn't upset that he was remarrying, per se.....but rather because I was pushed even farther down on the list of important things...the special  that I felt I was, had been erased. I was now....just a 'kid with an attitude problem'. I didn't want to be a problem or burden, I inherently just like to please people. Especially my seemingly unpleaseable parents. Dad was always worried about how step mom felt....and she felt A LOT. Mother was in a deep, dark funk (that she has never escaped from). I was just floating along. As long as I didn't disagree about anything, *feel* any way they couldn't relate to, and kept to myself, all was going to be fine. I just couldn't do it for long...it was a cycle...I would be blamed for things (sometimes accurately), I would get my feelings hurt for disappointing dad, then I would get in trouble for being sensitive and hurt. I HATED it....and I was stuck with it forever. I was a little girl....a daddy's girl, that lost him in that special way. No amount of "fix-it" was out there. We were irreparable.

Even now, I am 36 years old.....much more life has been lived since those days of being twelve. I am a mother myself, and Joe a father. Although I am not happy about my childhood, teen years, or even early adulthood....I won't dwell on those feelings of abandonment, control and selfishness.....I will and have used those experiences in raising my own, tenderhearted children. Joey wants nothing more than to be told he does a good job. Poor kid, he messes up just about everything he attempts.....but bless his heart, he tries....and I really look inside him to see his purpose, his feelings, his love for us...so fierce. Just looking in his eyes, I see me......and I just want to tell him that his life will be just fine. He's momma's boy always...