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Re-marriage
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Planning a wedding?
12 Dec 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
A wedding in the family provides a snapshot view of the wellness and the challenges of any family. Here are a few suggestions if you have a wedding on the horizon:
It’s not YOUR wedding (bride and groom). It’s the merging of several tribes, communities, and cultures. The more you are able to include all of the immediate and extended families, the more healthy muscle you are building into your primary relationship.
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My son (14) comes home with horrific stories …..
07 Dec 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
My son (14) goes to his dad and comes back with horrific stories of his stepbrothers and sisters and their behavior. These children (older than my son) are teaching him things he’s never been exposed to and most of it around technology and games. He likes his visits but I am worried about what this is going to do to him. Do I intervene? (Extracted from a much longer letter)
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You lifted a huge weight off my shoulders…….
22 Nov 2011 by Rod Smith / No Comments
“I read your Mercury column of 21/11 about the child who will not visit his father. A line was of such importance it might as well have been a book. It read: Your son’s relationship with his father is his father’s responsibility – not yours.
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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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Achieving MUCH with YOUR life is a profound act of mothering
01 Jul 2011 by Rod Smith / 4 Comments
1. Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself to her marriage or motherhood. She has a strong spirit of independence while being a loving wife and mother.
2. Enriched is the woman who does not accommodate poor manners (being taken for granted or being victimized) from anyone (not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, or her parents).
3. Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination, and intimidation. Her relationships are pure and open; her boundaries are defined, secure, and strong.
4. Enriched is the woman who does not participate in unwanted sexual activity. She honors her body as her private temple and shares it, even in marriage, only by her own deliberate choice.
5. Enriched is the woman who has developed a strong, clear, identity. She regularly articulates who she is, what she wants, and what she will and will not do. She is unafraid of defining herself.
6. Enriched is the woman who knows that pursuing her dreams to be educated, to work, to accomplish much, to expect much from her life, are profound acts of partnership in marriage and profound acts of mothering. She knows that the woman who “takes up her life” does more for herself, her husband, and her children than the one who surrenders it.
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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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