Growing Girls With Purpose
February 23rd, 2012 — Disney Princess Culture & Fairy Tales, LOVE & Other High Risks, Sexualization of Girls, Toys & Games
Love Distortion: Belle, Battered Codependent and Other Love Stories is being offered right now on Amazon’s Kindle for FREEEEEEEE!!!
That’s right. I want to gift a copy of my book to you for free!
AND you can share it with your friends for free!
I only ask one thing. Please leave a review on Amazon.
Now go! Go get your copy! Quick!
February 22nd, 2012 — Family Life, LOVE & Other High Risks
I’ve been reflecting on marriage lately.
I have many friends who have chosen not to get married. They have been in marriage relationships that have all the fixin’s of a “real” marriage, but they have not held a ceremony or signed any legal documents. They don’t want to be “defined by the marriage” or they don’t want to make such a serious commitment with this particular person.
They don’t want to get so invested that they’ll get hurt is closer to the truth.
Like this woman who wrote All the Single Ladies, which tries to make romance and marriage academic. What she is really doing, in my opinion, is waiting to put herself out there for some promise of perfection, a guaranty that things won’t go wrong or some ideal man who will “be her equal in every way.” Which, because relationships are between fallible and ever-changing humans, does not exist whether you marry someone or just shack up with them or just date them indefinately. Not choosing is choosing by default.
The funny thing is that as the years pass you do become invested with this other person. If, of course, you have the emotional guts to get involved with another human being for any duration. You do become financially and emotionally invested. If you have children then you are inextricably tied to the other person. Whether male or female you end up being in some way, whether emotionally or financially, dependent on your partner whether you marry them or not. To think you won’t is self-delusion.
Marriages and pseudo-marriages don’t always work out. As I witness marriages and pseudo-marriages dissolve some realities strike me.
Those in pseudo-mariages are just as hurt and equally angry. They have to start over and redefine their lives in the exact same way as those with legit marriages. The grief cycle is identical. The attachments they shared with the partner, the compromising, the sacrificing, the dependency are mirror images of legal marriages. If they have children, the children are impacted by both dissolutions of the partnership in very similar ways. In other words, not marrying and not making “the commitment” did nothing to shelter them emotionally.
The difference, from what I can tell, is that with the legal document there is economic protection. Those who didn’t marry, but invested in their significant relationship for over 10 years, did not accrue their partner’s social security points while they took time off to raise children. If their partner chose to take back property given them for birthdays and anniversaries, there is little recourse. Property acquired during the marriage is not “communal property,” but divided up randomly, usually without the protection of the court. If there are children shared, the custodial partner may qualify for child support, but spousal support is non-existent even if they were financially dependent.
This is on top of the years spent in the relationship where they might have gotten insurance benefits and marriage tax credits from being married. They didn’t get the marriage points on their car and home insurance. If their partner dies property, bank accounts, investments and life insurance don’t automatically revert to them as the surviving spouse.
Gay people, for instance, though they do not have access to the legal protection, do not have any immunity to being entangled in the other partner’s life in every way. Nor are they exempt from the emotional trauma of a break-up or death of a partner. If for no other reason, this should be enough to allow them the legal protection that marriage provides.
Certainly not every relationship is marriage-worthy. But, in my assessment it’s simply a good financial gamble as long as women take measures to protect themselves.
The only way to protect yourself from any emotional wounds at all is to wrap yourself in a cocoon and refuse to participate in any and all relationship commitments. But, if you choose that you also insulate yourself from intimacy. No Risk = No Reward. To me, even if it doesn’t end in Happily Ever After, it’s a bold and radical act to jump into the deep end in a relationship and give it your all.
August 9th, 2011 — Disney Princess Culture & Fairy Tales, Girl Culture, LOVE & Other High Risks, Media, Marketing and Advertising, Mentors, Role Models, Peers, Mother-Daughter Emotional Osmosis, Victims & Dangers
The Girl Revolution is proud to announce the release of Love Distortion: Belle, Battered Codependent and Other Love Stories.
In this compilation of blog posts, I draw a parallel between the reality of dating violence, domestic violence, molestation, rape, date rape (if there is such a thing) and cohesion with the messaging of todays culture and media. Taken from almost 900 blog posts, I’ve chosen 30 posts that draw a concise and compelling picture of the Girl Traps, most stemming from a distortion of the word Love.
Love Distortion takes a critical look at the Disney Princess Culture and the messages within that set girls up for dating violence and disastrous expectations about transforming bad guys into loving guys, the messages encouraging girls to give up their voices, their talents and their families for the “love” of a boy or man.
Love Distortion also takes a harsh look at other girl culture phenomenon like the Twilight Series and Bella’s willingness to give up her mortality, family, education and future to be with Edward; Gossip Girls, and their emotionally violent and disastrous games to achieve “success” with boys; Hannah Montana and other extensions of the Disney Brand; and posts about dating and domestic violence and the ways in which the word Love is used to coerce and manipulate girls and excuses violent and sexually predatory behavior against girls.
Love Distortion clearly explains the distorted thinking about love on both the part of the girl or woman and the boy or man in a violent, manipulative or abusive relationship. The book makes the connection between the thinking of participants in unhealthy relationships and the cultural messaging we are all inundated with day in and day out.
So as not to leave readers with defeated feelings, Love Distortion provides resources for more positive messages about, what I call, Authentic Love. Readers are given concrete exercises to do with their sons and daughters so as to prevent the distorted beliefs about love that they are inundated with through television, literature, music, Internet, video games, movies, advertising, radio and even, other adults in their lives.
May 2nd, 2011 — LOVE & Other High Risks, Mother-Daughter Emotional Osmosis
Here’s the scene: Grandma and Grandpa have come to visit. We’re sitting around the dinner table.
“Was my Mom a good teenager or a bad teenager?” Ainsley asked with a bit of a mischievous look in her eye.
Pause. Forks in the air.
My parents and I laugh.
“I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it will incriminate . . . ————> HER!” my dad said, pointing at me.
“Come on tell me,” Ainsley implored.
“Is she a good Mom?” my Mom asked.
“What?” Ainsley asked.
“Is she a good Mom?”
“Yeah.”
“Then that’s what matters,” my mom said chuckling.
“I bet she was a bad teenager,” Ainsley quipped.
“Let’s just say, if pay back is a real thing then LOOK OUT!” my dad warned Ainsley.
God, if you’re out there surfing the Internet, please, please please give Ainsley an easier, smoother and more loving adolescent experience than my poor family suffered through.
February 15th, 2011 — Girl Culture, LOVE & Other High Risks, Victims & Dangers
Life Lesson #1 – I do not have the power to control what other people do or how they feel.
Life Lesson #10 – I do not have the power to control what other people do or how they feel. Neither does Teacher.
Life Lesson #123 – I do not have the power to control what other people do or how they feel. Neither does Mom.
Life Lesson #563 through #1,010 – I do not have the power to control what other people do or how they feel. Period.
Until you really, really understand this lesson, you’ll keep learning it into eternity. If you’re emotionally bright, you might really get it and get to start learning something else after your second marriage in your late 30s. (Wait, that’s just me.) If your daughter is really, really emotionally bright, she might actually get it in the 3rd grade, which will spare her the painful lessons around boyfriends in her adolescent years. A mom can dream can’t she?
Bullies are there to teach us this Life Lesson: I do not have the power to control what other people do or how they feel.
Happily, they are also there to teach us Life Lesson #2: I have the power to control what I do and how I feel.
If you’re alive, then you know how tricky it is to control how you feel in the face of a 3rd grade pack of girls who are screaming and running away from you every time you look in their direction. Still, it’s a prime opportunity to learn these lessons. Without this experience, a person might walk around for 50 more years believing they can control other people’s feelings by changing their own behavior and frankly, that’s the recipe for every abusive relationship ever experienced by any woman.
In other words: while it sucks to watch and you really want to stop it, as a parent, you really, really want to help your kid learn this lesson ASAP with the 3rd grade Mean Girls. Before the lesson becomes a battering boyfriend or a manipulative adolescent pressuring her to have sex. You really, really want her to fully grasp Lesson #27: I have the Power to control what I do and how I feel.
So that if that guy shows up , she already knows “he’s lying when he says he will love me IF I have sex with him,” because she already has learned, “I can not control how another person behaves or how he feels. So if he doesn’t love me now, he won’t love me then.”
So, rather than telling your kid you’ll figure out a way to stop the bullying, drill this into their heads: Honey, you can’t control how another person acts or how they feel. You just don’t have that power and neither do I. What you can control is how you react to their behavior and how you feel. You could let yourself feel bad about this, or you could decide that you only want loyal and kind friends, and these kids obviously don’t know how to do that yet. You could chase them and try to make them like you, but that will likely make them meaner. You could just ignore them, and that will likely make it less interesting for them. You can only control how you let this effect you. You don’t have to let it make you unhappy.
More tomorrow.
