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Domination
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My mother covers for my daughter……..
07 Feb 2012 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I have a difficult situation with a 24-year-old daughter. She was diagnosed as bipolar. Was a difficult teenager, she cut herself, drinks a lot and is a lesbian. Battles to keep a job. For months she has refused to find a job. She sleeps late and watches TV all day. If I attempt to speak about a job she gets furious and verbally abuses me. I don’t know how to handle the situation anymore. I am always the bad mother. My mom lives here and adores her and covers for her. She gives her with cigarettes and airtime. The girlfriend spends every night here as well. I think they enjoy doing this to me. We also have two other daughters who hate the whole situation. These scenes never happen when my husband is home. Shouldn’t he step in and do something?”
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Did you know you are Super Human?
08 Jan 2012 by Rod Smith / 1 Comment
Five super-human powers we all possess, but some ignore
Power 1: Self Definition (day one)
Every one of us has the ability to let the world know exactly we are and exactly who we are not.
This is the power of Self Definition.
It is the capacity to be involved in the development of your own environment, relationships, and ambitions.
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I can’t tell my family what is going on……
23 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I have been married for almost 10 years. We have 3 children. We haven’t always had a great marriage. Three years ago we started going back to church and it turned our whole marriage around and had a marriage to be envied! For about the last 8 months we had some financial trouble. He stopped going to church. Then he started calling me names, being cruel for no reason.
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Is there no room for jealousy and possessiveness?
06 Sep 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“You write about jealousy and possessiveness in a relationship as ‘leeching.’ Is there no room for possessiveness or jealousy and is it never an indication of love? Please say more on this topic. While I find your column interesting I also find it tough and hard.” (Question deduced from much longer email)
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Resist blaming the victim, yet, until the victim takes some responsibility……..
21 Aug 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
It’s easy to play judge. It’s easy to wonder at people who stay in destructive relationships. The patterns, to the outsider, are obvious.
Yet, the man who is with an alcoholic, ranting wife, or the woman who lives with a chronic womanizer, seems to be oblivious to the fact that things do not have to stay as they are.
He or she seems unaware that, at least in some manner, it is also the issue of the person who allows destruction to continue.
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Verbal log-jam
When I was a boy I’d endlessly practice the fluent delivery of my name but it seldom flowed easily from my lips. As if it was new news to me, adults pointed out my stutter. Perhaps they thought I was beginning, at that precise moment, for the first time in my life to spit from the mouth, twist at the neck, jig my head back and forth trying to expel some inane statement log-jammed between my gut and my throat.
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Life in our beloved 122
If the inside of a house (outside, too, I suppose) is a metaphor of the lives of the people who live in it – which is something I once read somewhere – gosh, are we in trouble. Our house is a mess.
I consistently clean it room by room, thinking often of the legend that the Golden Gate Bridge that says there’s some guy constantly painting it. I feel for him. While I am sure the view is wonderful I must believe that the poor guy whose doing it daily from one end to the other must find the wind and the weather quite a challenge.
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Being a white South African can come with complications
Being a white South African reared under Apartheid is no simple matter. It permeated everything for me. While I do not pretend to have been a political activist, I was always cognizant that my privileges, simply a result of being born white, were unmerited, and most unfair especially when enjoyed at the expense of others who were not. I think this unsettling truth (for I took advantage of my station in life) was somewhat of a companion to me from the age of about six or seven.
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Location, location – remembering winter in August
We live very close to our school and church, so close we can hear the school bell from our kitchen and the church bells in my bedroom.
Sometimes we walk to both and we don’t see the car for days.
I like it. I like not having to get in and out of the car. I like not having to negotiate traffic, something as synonymous with life in the USA as Disney, Fast Food, and the Fourth of July.
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Ready to adopt?
If you wait until you are ready to adopt a child you never will because you will never be ready. The baby, and only the baby, will make you ready. Reading the right books will be helpful, but “ready” magically comes upon you when a real baby is sleeping in your arms or crying in the middle of the night. If you are not ready to change diapers – and I always am amused at the big deal about this non-issue – being unprepared will last only as long as a clean diaper.
Life inside the Smith household
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