Kindness, Not Weakness

I am a person who believes strongly in modeling kindness through my actions and teaching the next generation the importance of being kind to one another.  As a teacher I run school wide assemblies and programs to help students understand the impact being kind can have.  With my children I have conversations and read books …

The First Love of My Life

  I learned a whole different definition of love the day my son was born.  I didn't know a human heart was capable of holding so much love.  From the moment he was born we had an intensely strong connection.  Don't get me wrong ... I believe that John loves our son too (to the …

Misplaced Anger

Right before I met John, his mother and father divorced.  His mother is the one who filed.  She never shared with me what went wrong in that relationship, but the few things that John shared with me over the years led me to believe that her marriage had a lot of similarities to mine.  Control.... …

Eggshells

Over the years I started to learn some of the patterns that would set John off... but most of the time I wouldn't see it coming.  As a result I found myself walking on eggshells all the time.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I would question anything I said before saying it.  I …

When Asking for Intimacy is Too Much

I always had a difficult time trying to get John to be intimate with me.  Physical interactions were far and few between, but what bothered me more than that was the emotional intimacy that seemed to be missing from our relationship.  From really early on I would ask John to share stories of his childhood …

Me Too

I have been debating since I started this blog whether I was going to share my story with people I knew or not.  Yesterday I made the decision to share it with people that I have met along the way that struck me as understanding, kind and open-hearted.  It was a tough decision because I …

John’s 30th Birthday

Since I was a young girl I've always been the kind of person who enjoys planning meaningful surprises and gifts for the people that are important to me in my life.  It brings me joy to bring happiness into other people's lives.  So as John's 30th birthday approached I decided to throw him a surprise …

My Wedding Day

Most women I know look back fondly on the time leading up to their wedding day.  I can honestly say that those were some of the worst days of my life.  There's a lot to be said about the family of origin's influence on the relationships you choose and what you think is normal in …

The Day He Proposed

I know looking back and regretting decisions is pointless and that any decisions I made led me down the path of creating two incredible children.., but it's so hard not to feel upset with myself for not listening to what was really in my heart. I knew John was going to propose to me months …

Curtains

I graduated college two years before John did.  I came back to Connecticut and got a job  teaching in a high school in Litchfield County.  The on going dance of nightly phone calls that almost always ended in nightly arguments continued.  Rereading my old journals revealed a pattern of recognizing the verbally abusive way John …