Shared from Maiju’s Blog

This is the excerpt for a featured content post.

via I was spanked and I turned out fine? — Maiju’s blog

The First Day

Today is the first day that my son is at my home with just me and himself – without any other transitional person here with him. So far he is doing amazingly well and we are having a great time playing in the yard and throwing tennis balls with the dogs. 

Tonight will be his first night sleeping here without his grandma. We are thinking that the first night of him sleeping alone will be a major step in his transition process. I hope it goes well tonight. 

Yesterday I was able to speak with a congnitive behavioral therapist that will be working along side my son using cognitive/play therapy. Figuring out what he believes about his mothers death is vital in understanding where he is mentally and emotionally. If we can get him to voice his emotions out loud it will empower him through his emotional processes. I feel really good about the expertise and school of thought that this therapist works with. 

We are planning to have a small “party” this Saturday as the final move takes place. All the people he was living with will be there as well as his new family – Maiju and me. A new beginning for him and the start of a new foundation. I know these ground shaking changes can be traumatic for young children so I hope we have eliminated as much of that as possible. 

I am open and honest to him about his situation and what is taking place. I don’t want anything to catch him off gaurd or to be a surprise. Knowledge for children lowers their anxiety of the unknown. Plus I believe children know far more than we give them credit for. If an 18 month old infant is capable of concept formation, I must believe my son knows exactly what’s going on. 

Just a quick update. It’s not drug related but I am dealing with a completely new scene in life and I am doing it sober. I have to and I want to. I have a wife and son who need me to stick around for the long haul. 

P.S. My son’s grandma is currently reading my memoir and it’s a little nerve wracking to know that she will be reading what I wrote about her daughters character. Hopefully it don’t upset her too much. I am certain her daughter died before reading it which is unfortunate. Too many damn people die of addiction. Thanks for listening to my rambling. Hope you all have a great holiday weekend and for those outside the USA, I hope you have a great weekend!

Toy Box

A project I’ve been working on for my son is this toy box. My wife and I priced them and for a big one they were almost $200. I figured I could build one for cheaper. Plus I can up my wood working skills. Like Jesus did. 😬

It’s a beast. It’s about 50 inches wide by 36 inches deep by 38 inches tall. I still need to install a folding arm that will prop it open when you don’t have a spare hand to open the lid and I painted some wooden cut out letters that says his name. I’ll post pictures when I finish it. 

Just a quick post on my weekend project. 🙂

Life Altering

The past couple months have been life altering for my wife and I. I have a son from a previous relationship that lived with his mother. She, (my child’s mother) was going on 5 years of continuous sobriety – as far as I am able to verify. She was a heavy IV cocaine user and would occasionally shoot up heroin to control the cocaine come-down. I wrote about her in my memoir.

She is now dead.

Another person added to the never ending list of addiction related deaths. Another, so close to home. A family torn apart. A daughter gone forever. A mother gone forever. A son, forever without his mom.

My wife and I have made all the necessary adjustments and changes to be the permanent care takers and parents for my son. The transition has been going really well considering what the poor boy has been through.

I quit my full time job and will be a stay-at-home dad for the near future. I want to build a stable bond with my boy. He has had so much change and disarray in his life that he needs a great deal of consistency and care from a stable and sober role model.

My wife has been completely amazing and flexible through this life direction whiplash. I have so much to learn from her generosity, love, and her unshakable companionship. She never ceases to amaze me.

My son’s chances of becoming dependant on drugs and/or alcohol are very high. Both parents’ were drug/alcohol users which covers the gene side of addiction and he comes from a single mother household, now a deceased mother, and already has an ACE (adverse childhood experience) score that is higher than his age. Individuals with an ACE score of 5 or more are 7 to 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs. That covers the environment and statistical side of things.

He has a huge mountain to climb and many obstacles in his path. We will do everything we can to get him through this with only minor bumps and bruises. It will take a lot of work and a lot more luck. Of course I am not a determinist, so I know everything I mentioned does not determine his life outcome, however, for us NOT to look at these things would be cowardly, and very dilatory parenting.

I will try to post another update on things within the week. I know I haven’t been consistent with my posts but things are beginning to mellow out here at home. More to come soon.

Any thoughts or comments in general would be great. 🙂

 

A Walk In His Shoes: One family’s strugg | Dustin John

Download the newly released addiction memoir FREE! The first of its kind to tell the tale of heroin addiction through both the father/family and the addict perspective si

Source: A Walk In His Shoes: One family’s strugg | Dustin John

Drugs and Tampons

I had experienced a very short, yet rather disturbing dream last week. It woke me in the middle of the night so I knew I needed to remember the dream. I replayed each deranged and confusing scene in my mind until I knew I would remember it the next day. Because of the strange and disturbing nature of my dream, I wanted my therapist to help me unravel its hidden metaphorical meaning. Here is the dream, and the conclusion we came to.

The Dream:

I was in my parents basement. I used to live in this part of their home when I was young. It isn’t the damp, unfinished type of basement. The floors are carpeted, walls painted and there are small, half windows towards the top of the ceilings. This particular room looked identical in the dream as it does in real life. The only comparable difference with the room in my dream was this lonely mini-refrigerator against one of the walls. There was nothing else in the room except for this plugged-in appliance.

As I started to walk towards the mini-fridge, I noticed I was not alone. I was being trailed by an old friend of mine that I used to do drugs with, before my addiction took a firm hold. In real life, this friend had gotten sober but later died from an aggressive type of brain cancer.

As we approached the fridge, I told him “don’t worry, I have one for you.” I was assuming he was asking me for drugs or I at least thought he was wanting drugs.

I knelt down on a knee and opened the door on the mini-fridge. I reached in the fridge and pulled out a neatly wrapped tampon. I handed my friend the tampon. He then carefully peeled the wrapping off the tampon but there was no tampon in the wrapper. It was a syringe. He pulled the plunger back on the needle until the black rubber grommet came out of the clear cylinder. “POP!”

He then put the plunger into his mouth like it was a thermometer, or a sucker stick.

This was the end of the dream…

Breakdown:

Possible meanings:

Parents’ basement – Unresolved issues; deep, dark secrets.

Old friend (now deceased) – A quality of the friend that stands out most in myself. Not necessarily about the friend himself.

Tampon – A tampon is a solution to a problem.

Taking something out of a fridge – Is a continuation of a situation(s).

Syringe – Influence/drugs.

Syringe in the mouth – Drugs as a solution.

Analysis:

My friend putting a tampon/syringe into his mouth in my parents’ basement represents either a latent or former desire to turn to drugs as a solution to my childhood/familial issues. The issues remain, therefore the desire remains. It suggests that if the unresolved issues remain unresolved, I may be at risk of relapse. This dream may have been a warning from my subconscious brain.

Disclaimer:

Dream analysis is not science. It’s not proof of anything. It could be complete nonsense. I am fully aware of this. However, I have found this extremely helpful and absolutely mind blowing. I also believe there is utility in analyzing the complex and complicated world that is our subconscious mind.

Have any of you analyzed one of your dreams?

Thank you all for taking the time to read about my strange tampon dream. 🙂

 

Link up with Author Kelly Miles

If any of my followers are not linked up to Kelly Miles, you should definitely stop over and check out her amazing blog. She is the Author of a handful of novels. Montana Sky, Back To Me, and I believe she has an upcoming book called “Blake’s Hope”. Not only is she a great writer, she is kind, helpful, and friendly. If you like reading great books or if you are just looking for a fresh, new, well written blog to read, stop by. You will be glad you did. Here is a peek at Kelly’s “About me” page:

About

KELLY MILES

I am a wife, mother of two teenage boys, and a published indie author. I live in Tennessee and have had the privilege to be a stay-at-home mom for the past thirteen years. Writing stories has always been a dream of mine until one day I decided to bite the bullet and just do it! I’m so thankful that I did!

Writing is therapeutic. It’s a release. It’s artistic and creative. It’s a lot of things and I enjoy every minute of it. Maybe not the editing…. okay definitely not the editing, but the whole process; from the moment an idea forms in my head and then finally graces the pages of a manuscript, feels so freeing to me.

In this life there aren’t a lot of things you can control. Writing isn’t one of them. I love characters. I love building and creating them into relatable persons that everyone can attest to either knowing, or at some point in their life being. I love the escape, even if for only a little while.

When I am not writing (or editing) I enjoy watching sports, mainly college football, and spending time with my family and friends. I also have an eclectic music collection. Music is a must!

Thank you for checking out my website and I hope you will enjoy reading my books!

Don’t delay my friends! Seats are filling up fast! 😉

 

thera-Peas’

I have been seeing a therapist the last four weeks. We’ve been discussing why I have so many issues with food. Because food is the fuel that keeps us alive, this was the first issue I needed to address with him. For the majority of my life, I have been the type of person who sees food as a hassle – a waste of valuable time – a pain in my ass. I have never enjoyed the action of eating food. Very seldom have I been “excited” to sit down and eat a meal. Many times I would go most the day before realising I had not eaten anything. When my dad passed away in 2013, my issue with food became worse.

Being an addict, I often wonder if being addicted to food would be a nice change of scenery. I find that thought so far out of the realm of possibility though. Maybe not. Who knows.

My unconscious is holding the key to unlock my food issue and I am going to find it. My therapist has helped me understand some important factors that contribute to this. As a child, the majority of memories I have about food were quite terrifying to me. Weather it was the notion that I must clean off my plate before getting up from the dinner table or being forced to eat something I knew I would dislike – as a youngster, these were scary situations for me. Do my foul early memories of food contribute to today’s eating habits? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s all very interesting and I will eventually understand it more in the future.

Oh, and I chose the title because I can’t stand the taste of cooked peas. Nasty squishy bastards.

With my food issue typically being backwards from the typical food issues, does anyone else find eating to be such a burden or am I alone on this one? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

What is love

  
If the true definition of love is “our involuntary response to virtue if we are virtuous” I will strive every day to actually mean the words when I say “I love you”

Love is having difficult conversations that provoke anxiety and fear. 

Love is standing tall in your convictions of truth and reason despite the waves of opposition. 

Love is asking questions of curiousity even if it makes you uncomfortable. 

Love is accepting that you were wrong in the past. 

Love is accepting another persons emotional experience with openness and honesty. 

Love is taking responsibility for all your actions. 

Love is allowing another to have inconvenient needs. 

Love is doing whatever it takes to become a better, more virtuous human being. 

“Ill” Legal immigration; or what I like to call “moving”

This post is not my typical genre but it does have a direct and lasting affect in my life – so I will talk about it. 

It doesn’t affect me in the typical, mainstream-political-race-bating-American exceptionalism-xenophobic-vote buying-potential terrorist kind of way. No – it’s much more subtle. And by subtle, I mean not at all. 

When my wife moved to America (from Finland) in 2012 to be with the coolest guy ever, we chose the non traditional form of “immigration”. I think it was called following the law? Something like that. Anyway, the hoops that we had to jump through were oblong and smaller than a cheerio. They were literally that small. Squeezing through them was extremely difficult. Actually jumping through it was impossible. 

The dump trucks that delivered the paper work arrived months behind schedule and they just dumped them all in one big pile on our front lawn leaving large gaping tire tracks into the sunken grass. The wind had picked up and the papers scattered through the breeze like a massive blast from a confetti gun. Then came the rain…

My terrible metaphor is rediculous, but it does describe how government bureaucracies function. When competition is not allowed, there is no need to focus on customer satisfaction. 

When I hear about massive swarms of 3rd world illegal immigrants getting direct access to the government tit, I am astonished. I distinctly recall having to sign papers stating that I alone, was responsible for 100% support of my wife and she MAY NEVER take even a single slice of moldy government cheese and if she was not able to be fully supported by me, she would be on a plane back to her country of origin. Oh, and she is restricted from working in America for the first two years because…we say so. 

I’m not saying I wanted or needed any of the governments stolen money to support my wife but the double standard made an involuntary but audible dry heave sound from deep within me. 

The process to legally move my wife here was not only extremely expensive, it was also unnesassarily complicated. The language on each document was in Sanskrit and wing dings. Because I failed in those two language courses, we had a hell of a time answering what should’ve been simple, basic questions. 

The constant mistakes made by the receivers of our paper piles were simply idiotic. These people do this for a living and they were the dictionary definition of incompetent. When we finally received my wife’s first Green card – which took years to acquire, they put the wrong last name on it which meant we couldn’t acquire a matching social security card which meant no traveling back home for my wife. We complained to them about the typo And they respond with “you must pay $450.00 for a new green card.” Isn’t that lovely! After some internet searches, I quickly noticed we were not an exception to the rule. This was a problem for many applicants. 

One mistake I can understand. But it’s now 2016 and we are still waiting for her properly named Green card. We received a letter yesterday stating they wanted more proof that we are actually married. Seriously? Would a sex tape suffice? Or how about one of your little workers come down, set up some cameras in our home and make a reality TV show about how married we are because we have proven it beyond any other measure possible. 

The incentives to do the right thing are backwards in many aspects of our governing bodies. I don’t have a pull to break the law by any means but many people do. There are a lot of people who have zero moral lines or boundaries and they will do whatever they can get away with. This is even more true for people coming from the third world.