Category: parenting

Love, Mental Health, parenting

When did wanting love and family become taboo?

Katrina Russell

Hey, remember when being a mom was like a thing women did? Like, when people asked, “what do you do?” and they responded, “I’m a mom” and that was cool. That was enough.. why did that change?

Now, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t work. I think that if you have a passion for something you should go right out and work for everything that you desire. I’m also not saying that if you need the money that working is a bad thing. You have to feed yourself and your family and that is important… but when did it become shameful for a woman to be a mom. Like, a stay at home, take care of your family mom?

From the beginning of time moms have been a thing. In fact without moms there would be no more people. Being a parent and raising new people is the most important thing that there is. Making sure that these new little humans don’t turn out to be serial killers or wastes of space is very important. My father used to say that the most important job in parenting is creating independent people. But that takes a lot of work.

Childcare is a huge industry. Mostly run by women. The service industry is also huge and also mostly employs women. House cleaning companies mostly employ women.. these are all industries that have skyrocketed in the last few decades because women entered the work force.

Now again, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t work, or that all women should be mothers. If a woman decides that motherhood is not for her, by all means.. good on you.. if you decide that you do want to be a mother but you don’t want to give up a career that you love, that’s great too. But how many women out there LOVE their jobs. How many people out there LOVE their jobs. Most people can’t wait till the end of the day or the end of the week. I don’t know why having a job became the goal.. like it’s so prestigious to spend most of your waking hours doing something you hate just so that you can pay someone else to take care of your kids and clean your house.. because guess what? That’s their job.. you pay someone to do the things that you are shamed for doing for free, because it’s not real work. How is this good?

People complain all the time that the cost of living is so expensive. Well, this is because the market follows the money. When most families were one income families the market reflected that. Add a whole knew income and suddenly everything doubles in price. So you’re literally working to buy things that everyone could afford to buy before we all pushed to work jobs that we hate.

Again, I’m not saying that the Women’s Lib movement was bad. I believe women have the right to do and be anything that they want. Which includes being a mother and a wife. We always hear that on our death beds we never regret the deals we didn’t make but the family time that we missed. That we don’t look back fondly at the hours at our desks, but the moments snuggling with out loved ones. Our family and the people that we love are our reason for living… so why should a little girl be shamed for wanting to grow up and get married and have babies? Isn’t that what most of us want? When did wanting love and family become taboo?

bullying, parenting, Politics

I was told that I’m racist

Katrina Russell

So I was recently informed that I am racist. I found this to be a very perplexing statement given that I was told that I was racist specifically because I don’t care about race. Has the world gone mad?

I was born about a decade after The Civil Rights Act. I was raised in a small town. It was prominently white, but there were definitely people of color mixed in. I never really thought about it. I had friends in my building whose parents were from Africa and they had names that we could never have guessed how to spell, but they were just normal to me. I knew them for as long as I could remember. I had friends from all over. It didn’t really matter to me what color you were I was more interested in playing tag or swimming or riding my bike. If you wanted to as well you were my friend. We had kick ball games in the front yard with everyone in the neighborhood. We didn’t break up the teams in black vs white, or boys vs girls, everyone played with everyone.

When I reached my teen years I moved to a suburb outside of Boston that had what was called the METCO Program. This program gave kids from the inner city a chance to go to school in the suburbs for a better education. It turns out I had lots of friends in the programs. I didn’t know that for a good couple of months when I first started at the school. I had never heard of the program before and even when I did hear about it the thought never occurred to me that just because someone was black they MUST be from that program. A friend of mine had a car and we used to go into Boston and visit the friends we had met from our schools. We weren’t their white friends, and they weren’t our black friends.. we were all just friends.

Through out my life I have been friends and/or dated people of many different races, religions, sexuality.. and what have you. I didn’t think of them as my Asian friends, or my gay friends, or my Jewish friends.. they were just friends. I treated all of my friends the same. I have treated all people that I meet the same. I was raised to not judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character and apparently… that makes me a racist.

I’m told now that it is not good to treat everyone the same. It is not good to not pay attention to race or sex or any other immutable trait. That I am to ONLY pay attention to such things and that I am to give special attention to those that are different than myself. Now I’m not talking about getting to know about other cultures. That I’ve always done. I’ve asked my friends who I knew spoke another language to teach me some phrases (not just the dirty ones) or write my name. My dad encouraged me to attend different religious events and festivals for different cultures so that I may learn about things that I may be interested in myself.

I remember once as a teenager I volunteered for a City Year service day. I ended up being assigned to a local inner city Boston school that was being cleaned up, and I was asked to watch the kids that were there while their parents did their work. I was so happy I always loved taking care of kids. This school was in the middle of a section of Boston called Mattapan. It’s pretty much all black people. I was playing with the kids.. I still remember some of their names, and I still use it as an example of one of my proudest moments… not because they were black, but because I used my time there to teach one little boy in first grade who didn’t know how to read how to do a word search. He was so proud of himself that when his friend came over to give him the answers he told him that he didn’t need them and that he had learned to do it by himself. I hope that he took that with him. That he learned that everything that he wants to do it within his power and that he can do it all himself.

I remember at lunch all the tween girls were braiding each other’s hair and one of them came over and asked if she could touch mine. I have VERY straight.. Very blonde.. Very silky hair. She had never seen anything like it before. Her friends all chimed in saying that she couldn’t ask that. They said how rude she was. I smiled and told her “of course you can.. you’ll never learn about anything new if you can’t experience it.”. The rest of the girls were so excited and they all wanted to take turns brushing and braiding my hair. I didn’t think it weird that they were interested in learning something new. I found it weird that they had never known a white girl who’s hair they could touch. I’d known plenty of people of color in my life in a small town and we all played with each other’s hair.

In fact this wouldn’t be my last conversation about hair with a black girl. About a decade later I was sitting at work and someone had come in with a perm. A friend of mine, thinking out loud said, “how do you get the curl to stay? how come it doesn’t just wash out?” Again.. confusing to me how you can live in this country.. watch all the same TV commercials and not know about general products. I explained to her that we use chemicals similarly to how she used relaxers for her hair to straighten it. Her mouth dropped open. “HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT RELAXERS?!?!”, as if it were some top secret information “for black eyes only”. I had no idea how I know about it. I just did. It was part of American culture, therefore part oh MY culture. I didn’t think of it as a black thing or a white thing.. it was just a thing.

I have had many conversations like this over the years. I love to read and learn and grow as a person and part of growing is learning about things that don’t revolve around yourself. Things that are important to other people. People just like you who may experience different things. That’s how I was raised. I was raised to not think about race, religion, sexuality, or anything else that may make us different because in the end we’re not. In the end we’re all the same. And, that, I’m told.. is what makes me racist… at least according to my white friends.

Addiction, bullying, Love, parenting, Politics, school shootings

The world is on fire… and what do I tell my son?

Katrina Russell

The world is on fire, or at least that’s how it feels right now I was born in the mid-seventies. The Vietnam War ended a few months prior. By the time I was in grade school Reagan was president, the cold war was coming to an end and my reference to the whole thing was Rocky IV. I had some understanding of the Berlin Wall that was based on an episode of “Benson” and an episode of “Head of the Class”. By my 14th birthday the wall had fallen. All I knew about the Middle East are have vague memories of planes being hijacked by Iran. if I recall correctly, but for the most part things were fine.

My aunt would tell me about the bomb drills they used to do in 50s, as if hiding under their desks was going to protect them from an atomic bomb. I saw movies, TV shows, and eventually learned about Jim Crow laws, separate water fountains, and bussing. We lived in Massachusetts so it was a part of our past good or bad.Growing up I couldn’t imagine that people of color were ever treated that way, never mind in my father’s lifetime. It was all so bizarre. I was friends with everyone. I had classes with everyone. I had cousins of mixed races. I watched the Cosby show on TV (who knew where that would go). Everyone wanted to be Michael Jackson. I don’t remember a lot of race trouble at all.

Being from the mid-late 70s I was also raised on the record/movie “Free to be You and Me” by Marlo Thomas. speaking of Michael Jackson. He had a clip in the movie himself. pre Thriller. This was all about not judging anyone by their sex and letting people just be whatever they wanted to be. Again I knew that women used to not be able to vote. I knew that the 70s had bra burnings and feminism and all these crazy thing, but when I was a kid no one cared if you were a boy or a girl, you better be studying your math homework. When asked what we wanted to be when we grow up no one ever said that we couldn’t. I came from a time of empowerment for everyone. Well gays still had a way to go, but by the time I graduated from high school in the early 90s no one cared about that anymore either. at least not in Boston.

Then right before the turn of the century. Right before “The Year 2000”, when everything was supposed to be wonderful and futuristic, Columbine happened. I remember sitting in my car and hearing about it on the radio. I remember buying a newspaper. yes, they did exist. and reading about the horrifying events and how they unfolded. This was the beginning of the end of my innocence. Two and a half years later September 11th happened and our country was no longer safe.

This is when race started to become a factor again. I don’t mean just the occasional asshole in the after school special, but real racism. People of a certain look were starting to be hated. They were starting to be attacked just walking down the street. It wasn’t even a certain religion at that point. Anyone who looked like they could be from that middle region at all were the enemy. I remember “Harold and Kumar” made a movie about it. Kumar, who is Indian, is automatically assumed to be an Arab and a terrorist. It was done in a comedic way, but it was still a powerful statement.

From there things have just continued to get worse and worse. I’m pretty sure a big reason for this is the internet. Suddenly everything that happened everywhere was on everyone’s screen. Instead of it being a local story about one bad thing happening to one person it was look at how this happens all the time to everyone. Instead of kids being bullied on the bus, they were now having bullies push their way into their homes through electronics. Instead of the local news only talking about big stories that really mattered, suddenly news was 24 hours a day and needed to be more and more sensational to get the attention of the millions of viewers.When a child shot up a school their picture and name were posted everywhere. This created a perfect avenue for those mentally unstable individuals to claim their 15 mins of fame. When a man raped a woman, it wasn’t just that the man was a dirtbag. it was that ALL men are dirtbags. One story would link to other stories with similar scenarios. Now instead of a half a dozen losers in the whole country, it was, “look at all these guys everywhere. All men are rapists. Instead of a couple of racists assholes who caused problems. and to be honest I don’t care which race, religion, or creed it is there is an example of all of them. And because they all link together it’s suddenly happening everwhere

.I first noticed this when I became a mom and everyone was bashing other moms for feeding their kids grapes, leaving them in the car seat to nap, running into the gas station to pay for the pump while leaving a sleeping kid in a comfortable car. suddenly there were stories being forwarded to all the moms with horrible outcomes. Moms were no longer allowed to pee, or shower, or sleep. If they did they mine as well just give their children to kidnappers who want to either sell them to the sex slave industry or murder them. They mine as well suffocate them themselves, because children die all the time by being left in their pack n play while the mom pees by herself. Here are 10 links to similar stories to prove I’m right and you should have DCF called on you.

We had a black president elected into office twice. A lot of the people who voted for him were white. They did not vote for him despite he was black. They didn’t vote for him because he was black. They voted for him because he was a person whose policies they agreed with. After he was elected the country was suddenly racist. I’m not really sure how it happened. except that the people on the right didn’t like him. So therefore they were racist. Anytime he was criticized it wasn’t because they were being stupid or petty. It wasn’t because they didn’t like his policy. It was because they were racist.

The right tried to impeach Clinton. They dragged him and his sex life through the mud. They attacked his daughter, they trotted out victim after victim of his sexual advances. They made fun of him. They made his life Hell. not because they were racist. He was white. But because they were assholes. Once Obama was in office no one was allowed to just be an asshole anymore. They HAD to be racist. It was the only explanation.

We now have to have laws to make people serve some potential clients no matter their religion, while letting other vendors refuse based on their principals. We have religions we’re never supposed to talk bad about, while other’s we’re supposed to blame. We have races that are always the victims and another that is always the villain. And don’t even get me started on the battle of the sexes. and if they even exist.

I grew up in a time when we were taught to not think about what makes us different, and I’m raising my son in a time when he is being taught that because he’s a while, Christian male he’s basically the devil responsible for the oppression of millions even though he still can’t cut his own PB&J sandwich. I thought it crazy my dad had to hide under his desk and my son is being taught ALICE (active shooter) training.

My son is only in 1st grade and he missed half a year of school because of a global pandemic, and now the world is literally on fire. What is he going to learn from all of this? What do I tell him when he asks why he’s so bad because of the body he was born into, because he was so privileged to be raised by a single mom after he lost his father to the opioid epidemic? What do I tell my little boy when the world tells him how wrong he is? I tell him the only thing that I can. The same thing that I told him when his father died. It’s not his fault. Everyone makes their own choices in their own life and I’m going to teach him to make the right ones. To not judge. To not blame. To love everyone equally.

Addiction, grief, Mental Health, parenting

Just trying to make sense of it all.

Katrina Russell

Conversation with my 7 year old son tonight.

Jason: if you and Da never got married how did you make me?

Me: we just loved each other that much

Jason: and then you didn’t?

Me: we still did. We just couldn’t keep living together

Jason: because he did drugs

Me: yeah, it wasn’t safe

Jason: because if I grew up seeing him do drugs I might do drugs and think it’s ok?

Me: well, that’s one reason.. but he also wasn’t very safe when he used them

Jason: yeah.. like when he punch the wall and stuff. He was really strong. He could hurt someone

Me: thankfully he didn’t.. but we couldn’t have him live with us… But we still loved him and he still loved us

Jason: ok

Love, parenting

Crazy Mother’s Day in Lockdown

Katrina Russell

As everyone knows, last Sunday was Mother’s Day. The day that mom gets to get pampered. She gets breakfast in bed, and flowers, and candy, and taken out to dinner and little handmade cards from the little people she created and carried in her own body and has given up every second of her life to since.

HAHAHA! Most of us get half eaten toast that we have to clean up after. And we love it. We love that our kids even kind of acknowledge that we deserve something for all the things we do for them.

A couple weeks before Mother’s Day I started seeing posts in my feed about “Remember dad’s the schools aren’t going to be helping your children make cards this year. It’s all on you”. I thought it quite amusing that the internet understood that most dad’s have no idea that the holiday is coming, never mind that they may have to do something about it.

My son’s father, unfortunately, is no longer with us. It’s just me and my son.. we are our own little team. I bought myself a little mother’s day present. His school has a collaboration with Artsonia.com to have all of their artwork published onto the site and we can order products with their actual artwork printed on it. I bought myself a couple pieces of jewelry, and I bought his grandmother, his father’s mother, a little wooden plaque.

I thought that would be the end of my Mother’s Day celebration… until the day came and my son asked one of my friends to take him to Target. They put on their masks and walked the isles. He didn’t really know what kind of books I read, or what sized clothes I wore so he he bought me snacks. He bought me Ghiradelli Chocolates, fruit and cupcake. He also bought me the most beautiful garden flower decoration. I was so shocked and proud by his choices.. even though he did eat all the cupcakes himself and told me how much more I like fruit anyway.. he is 7 after all.

For our celebration, knowing we couldn’t go anywhere, we ordered in takeout and watched The Indiana Jones series. It was actually quite nice to just sit and snuggle on the couch. For a Mother’s Day in quarantine.. it was probably one of the best ones I’ve ever had.

Addiction, grief, Love, Mental Health, parenting

Celebrating Life Even When It’s Over

Katrina Russell

My son’s father’s birthday was March 8.. it was a really hard day. My son just turned 7 a couple weeks before and now he was to celebrate his Da.. only his Da died almost 7 months ago.

It’s hard to explain death to a small child. It’s so final. It so big. But my son… he knows death. He has lived through the death of too many loved ones at his young age. When I told my son of his father’s death he was shook.. he was sad.. he was mad.. he was… well, he just was. This was his life now. He no longer had his Da. He never would again. He didn’t have his Da to go Trick or Treating with. He didn’t have his Da at Thanksgiving. He didn’t have his Da at Christmas or his own birthday.. but on March 8.. we were celebrating the birth of a man that didn’t get any older.

This was Da’s first birthday since his death day.. which I have no idea how I’m going to deal with.. but I still felt like the day should be observed. I still felt like my son should have the opportunity to celebrate the life that his Da had. No matter how sadly it ended.

One of Da’s favorite places to go was Castle Island. It’s a little beach area in South Boston, MA. It was a place that he remembered as a child and he loved sharing it with our son. We would go there for most special occasions. Last memorial day was our first chance to actually get a tour of the fort that is there. We spent most father’s days there and it held a lot of memories of the two of them together. I thought it would be a wonderful to memorialize him.

My son made a card for his Da and we tied it to a balloon and we attempted to send it off. I know.. horrible for the environment. Not really my priority at the moment. I’m going to be honest. So my little 7 year old stood in the middle of the ocean bridge and sent his balloon up to heaven for his Da… and it sunk. And my brave little boy was sad… but he knew that no matter what his Da loved him and knew how much he loved his Da.. and after all was said and done my 7 year old little boy was stronger than I’ve ever been.

Watch “Saying happy birthday to heaven” on YouTube

Addiction, Giving, Healthcare, Homeless, Love, Mental Health, parenting

We’re not alone

Katrina Russell

I was shocked when an article showed up on my Facebook page today. Sesame Street has created a character whose parents are  addicts. They are talking about actually drug addiction and the opiate crisis on frickin’ Sesame Street. I couldn’t believe it. Since losing my son’s father I have been very vocal about addiction and how it has affected me and my family. I have been very clear that keeping this kind of thing “hush hush” doesn’t do anyone any good and that mental health in general needs to be the topic of more conversations… but I had no idea how many little children are going through the same thing my son did.

According to the article I read of a similar name, “We’re not alone – ‘Sesame Street’ tackles addiction crisis “,  5.7 million children under age 11 live in households with a parent with substance use disorder. That number is disgusting. I’m sorry. I wish I could say it any other way, but it is. It is disgusting to know how many kids out there have parents who are struggling with addiction and mental illness and can’t get the help that they need. How many parents have kids that are struggling with addiction and mental illness and can’t get the help that they need.

I say that they can’t get the help that they need because I tried. I called every long term rehabilitation center that I could find in the tri-state area to get my son’s father into a real treatment program. Not just a 2 week or 30 day dry out, but a real 6 months or a year program. Of course he protested at first saying that it would disrupt his life to be gone for so long, but I finally made him realize that it was much more disruptive to keep having relapses.. to not actually fix the problem and only band-aid the symptoms. It would have been a lot less disruptive on his life to take a year to get healthy then to die alone in a “sober house” with his family 3 cities away and his sober house manager swearing he’s fine… he doesn’t notice anything wrong with him.

I made at least 20 phone calls to every long term facility that I could find all saying the same thing. Sure.. he’s more than welcome.. that’ll be $50,000… right.. how many addicts do you know that have over $100 in their pockets. None of them take insurance.. and none of the ones that take insurance do any real treatment.. they just clean up their puke while they detox and then then send them on their way telling them to find some sort of out patient program like NA/AA to help.. yeah.. stay away from other addicts… but go find meetings where all you do is meet other addicts.. great idea.

I’m not saying that NA/AA are bad programs. They just aren’t for everyone. They have a very strong link to God and surrendering to a higher power and trusting in that higher power to help. Only problem.. not everyone believes in God or a higher power. I know Neil didn’t. I know he stayed clean out of shear will power. He told me repeatedly that everything that he did was for me and our son. That he was living for his family and he knew that he had to stay clean in order to have us in his life.

Now I read this article about Sesame Street talking to millions of kids about their parents. Millions of kids whose mommies and daddies have to stay sober using nothing but will power. My son is not the only kid I know whose parent has died from the crisis.. my son is not the only kid I know that needed a monitor to make sure he was safe when his Da was using. I do not live in an urban city. My child goes to private school. We love in a small town. We go to church every week. To look at us we are not who you would assume would have an addict for a loved one. But that’s the point. None of us are… and we all need to start talking about it if we want to save the mommies and daddies of those 5.7 million children. If we want to save the life of just one.

Love, parenting

I don’t want to be smart!

Katrina Russell

“I don’t want to be smart!”

My six year old son yelled this at me last night, and it confused me. He is a smart little boy. He always has been. He loved playing math games as a toddler and reading books is one of his favorite hobbies. Now that he is in first grade his whole mindset has changed. He doesn’t want to be smart.

I didn’t understand. This was something that he was always proud of. He would so something we would consider brilliant.. just normal kid stuff, but we’re his family so everything he did was brilliant and we would commend him on being “so smart”. When he started kindergarten he was having a lot of trouble sitting down and doing his work. It was understandable. He was a 5 year old boy. Sitting was not his specialty.

Now that he is in first grade I talked to him about how this was the year that actual grades started and how his work was important. He always loved coming to work with me so I told him that it was “job” to go to school and do his work. I let him know that he was a smart little boy so if he just did the work his grades would be just fine and he didn’t have to worry about that.. just do the work. I wasn’t trying to put the emphasis on the grades. I was trying to help him understand that it was his “trying” that mattered.

Two weeks before he started first grade his father died. Because of this my sweet little boy has a lot of anger and anxiety. This is completely normal.. but very disruptive. We have decided to turn off all electronics in the house because of this. I only use my phone and computer when he is at school.. or for “important” things (like doctor’s appointments, checking in with teachers or activities.. etc.) This has been an extremely emotional time and we are both looking for as much quality time together, even if it’s just snuggling on the couch reading books, as we can.

At school he has been having some outbursts. He has been boycotting his classwork, and even a test. He has been getting into fights with kids who are “being mean to him”. I know these kids.. they’re not being mean, but he is on high alert because of his high stress and everything is upsetting him.

About a week ago he asked if he could home school. I asked him if he understood what that meant. He said, “yeah.. then I could just stay home all day with you”. I explained that he would still have to do all of the work, but that he wouldn’t have any of his friends there to play with at all.. and that.. if I am honest, I am not the most patient at teaching things like maths… I don’t even understand half his homework already. He agreed home school was not for us.

He had a few good days after that conversation and I was hoping that we had turned a corner. Then yesterday he was held back in the classroom at the end of the day so the guidance councilor could speak with me.  She told me that he had thrown papers at a friend and his teacher.. squealed.. and hid under his desk. I brought him home and asked him about what had transpired.. there was some story about the other kid throwing it first.. it not being his fault.. the usual. He told me that he tried to do his breathing but he was just so mad.

Then he told me, “I wish I wasn’t smart”. I was completely taken aback. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said that he was so tired and so angry all the time. That he didn’t want to do any of his work because of it. That if he wasn’t smart that no one would care if he did his work or not and they would just leave him alone.

I’m not going to lie.. that confused me. I couldn’t see where he got this or why he felt this way. I knew that I had said that he just had to do his work and because he was smart the grades would follow.. but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have to do the work if he wasn’t smart.. but then I thought about my own childhood. My brother was always “the smart one”.  He was in all the extra special classed for “smart” kids, and I always had anything better to do than my homework. So I didn’t, and my dad wasn’t great at checking on me. When the teachers would say to me, “you’re so smart if you just do the work….” I would shut down. I’m not smart. My brother is smart.. you’re just projecting. I didn’t want to be smart.. because I didn’t want to do the work.

We always get the threat from our parents that someday we are going to have kids “just like you”, and then we do. And then we say the same things to our kids that was said to us. So from now on, I’m not going to tell my son how smart he is.. I’m going to tell him how proud I am for his effort. Because let’s be honest.. ability is nothing without fortitude. My son is smart, but he doesn’t know everything. Two weeks before school started he lost his father and his whole understanding of life was changed. I can’t expect him to comprehend everything, but I can encourage him to try.

 

Addiction, Law of Attraction, Love, parenting

Is true love actually possible?

Katrina Russell

I had an interesting conversation today with a woman who I have been getting to know. She is currently married, though not very happily, and she said that she doesn’t think she knows anyone who is truly happily married. She said that she is not even sure that true love exists or that any man is capable of truly loving her. This was not said as a self esteem problem. This was not doubting her worth. It was doubting the capability of the man.

I found this especially interesting because I have been in a few relationships over my life, though I am single now, and I know that 3 of them have loved me completely. I know that there is no doubt in my mind that their love was real. The first 2 were mostly timing and growing. We were in our 20s when we got together and though the love and relationships were nice, as we got older we just grew apart.

The last was my son’s father. We loved each other fiercely and unconditionally. There was no doubt in my mind about that. Now, that did not mean that we had to stay together. In fact we loved each other and our son so much that we eventually realized that being apart was the best option. He was an addict. He had demons that he just couldn’t get away from, and eventually they killed him. But I loved him, and he loved me completely.

We were constantly off and on depending on his sobriety. This was very confusing and disruptive to our son. Eventually I had to just put an end to it. Not because I didn’t love him, and not because he didn’t love me.. but because we both loved our son.

I think that the problem with finding “true love” is that people want the fairytale, but no one lives “happily ever after”. There are always problems, and there are always lulls, and people are always taken for granted as time goes on. None of that has to do with love.. I used to say that love is not a feeling.. it is a verb. Love is an action that we have to do everyday. I am a huge Doctor Who fan, and in an episode he states that “Love is a promise” and I feel that too.

When we were first thinking about and discussing having a family Neil and I talked about a lot of things. We were planning on getting married.. we were just saving up. I wanted a HUGE affair.. I never got it. He relapsed and my father died and after a while a wedding wasn’t all that important. But my FAMILY was. That’s what we had decided when we chose to have our son. We are now family. We will love each other forever. There was no leaving. Again.. that does not mean that we had to stay romantically linked or even live in the same house. When it became dangerous I had to tell him to leave.. but it did mean that I was always his first phone call and he was always mine.

I recently remembered a time, about 6 months after my father had passed and Neil was out of rehab and things were getting good again. I had spent most of that time in yoga pants and a messy bun. On this particular day I put on real people clothes.. just jeans, but it was something. I let my hair down AND BRUSHED IT. I even put on a little makeup. I didn’t think much of it. I was just having a day that I could breath again. I walked into the dining room not thinking about it and I heard him audibly gasp. I actually took his breath away. He was even a little embarrassed by it, but he just said, “you look beautiful”. I remember how that made me feel. After months of grieving my father and over a year of heartache over Neil’s relapse I had been in quite a depression.. and there he was. Telling me how beautiful I look.. telling me that I actually take his breath away.

This man had seen me at my worst. He saw our son being sliced out of me “Aliens” style.. and I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He loved me.. and I him… and nothing bad that ever happened between us ever changed that.

After he died I had some conversations with his mother and some of his friends. They told me how through all of our ups and downs that he never said a bad thing about me. That he always talked about how amazing I was. How strong I was. What a great mom I am. He loved me.. emotionally.. and in his words and actions everyday. Even on his worst days.. he kept his promise.

Love is not a cure all. Love is not how it ends.. True love.. is family.. it’s forever. It’s calling them on their shit.. and telling them when you’re proud.. it’s taking the call when they overdosed and crashed their car. It’s cleaning up their sick father’s poop… it’s knowing.. that no matter what has happened between you, and no matter where anyone lives.. that person always wants what’s best for you and always has your back.

Addiction, Giving, Love, Mental Health, parenting

The correct way to grieve

Katrina Russell

There is no correct way to grieve and I have done it all.  Grief is different for everyone. It’s also different for each person at different stages of their lives. I was reading some fan posts about a show I watch in which one of the fans was not happy with how the main character reacted to the death of her husband compared to when she had thought her father had died. This fan felt that because the characters reaction wasn’t a breakdown into tears her love wasn’t as real.

I can tell you that I have had a handful of significant deaths in my life, and I have reacted to them differently every time. Some of the differences are based on their relationship to me, some of them have been because of my age. Some of the differences are just because the more loss you have; the more you get used to it.

My first major loss was my grandmother. She had dementia for many years and when she died I was very sad, but I also had felt like I’d been losing her for a long time. I was in my 20s and that death was more about facing my own mortality. She was the first member of my family that I really knew that died. It was the first time that death really hit home. I went a little nutty about how my life was not going anywhere and I wasn’t married with babies.. and the whole deal. I ended up running off to Vegas and marrying the guy that I had been dating for about a year. Don’t get me wrong, he was a great guy, but we should not have gotten married and after a couple of years and the grief passing we faced that truth and divorced.

My next major death was my mother. One would think this would have been the worst, but it wasn’t. I hadn’t seen my mom since I was a kid. She was schizophrenic and her being in my life was just too hazardous. She had moved to Georgia when I was about 12 and I had very little contact with her while she was there. A few years later she moved back, off her meds, and causing problems. I decided at that point that a mother should not be hurting her children, and that if she were in her right mind that she would agree with me. I never saw her again.

My father googled her every once in a while just to keep me updated. One day, in my mid 30s, I came home to him telling me that he found her obituary. She had died the year before… and I missed it. That was tough. Growing up without a mother was always hard. She didn’t help me pick out my prom dress. She wasn’t there to give me advice on dating, or tell me not to get married. She had never been a part of my life, but I always knew that she was out there, and that gave me a little peace. Maybe someday she’d get herself on track and look me up… but that day never came, and now it never would… and with that I just closed a chapter.

A few years later, 2015, was the worst year of my life. I woke up one morning to find my father dead in his bed. He had been sick for years, which is why I had moved home, but I wasn’t expecting that. His death crushed me. I found him and tears, screaming, horror. It was the worst experience of my life. It was exactly something that you would expect. My son was only 2 at the time, and I had to put on a brave face around him, but there was a lot from that year that I don’t remember. I was on auto-pilot. I had to clear out my dad’s stuff, take over his business, put in order all of his life.. and I did.. because I had to.. but I don’t know how I did it. And I don’t remember most of it.

In that same year my dad’s longtime girlfriend died.. on  my birthday. She was older and had been sick for a while, but that didn’t make it any easier. Losing her was like losing another parent. She was a link to my father. To my childhood.. Hell, she was the one who knew everything about everything. She was my go to in life when I had real questions… now, who was going to be there for me?

A little over a month later and right before Christmas my dog ran out of my front door and was hit by a car right in front of me. And not just hit.. hit, knocked to the other side of the street.. ran over.. then ran over again and dragged away. Some people don’t understand the impact of losing a dog, but for me this was like the proverbial straw… I had to choose. It was either going to destroy me, or I was going to use it to strengthen me. It was 2 days before Christmas and I had a 2 year old sitting in the house waiting for me. I held my breath, cleared up my tears, and did everything that I could to give him the best Christmas that he could ever have.

That was almost 4 years ago, and for a long time the worst of it was over. I was getting on with my life. I could only do what I could do and I was learning everything that I could about helping other people. To me, helping others made me feel better.

A few weeks ago a new phone call came in. This time it was my son’s father. He had been an addict. He had been clean for almost 2 years… he was my best friend.. on his sober days… and August 14, 2019… he was dead. My face went white with that call, but I did not shed a tear in that moment. I looked at my, now 6 year old, who was playing with a friend and I thought, “I need to be as strong as I can… for him”.

I have broken down a few times. My son has seen me cry, and knows how sad I am about Da being dead.. but I am holding it together. Not because I didn’t love my son’s father, but because I still love my son.. and I still love me, and I know that the best way for me to work through my grief is to help others. I have been writing about my experience with death, with addiction.. with loss. I have been helping out with my son’s school, and extra-curriculars. I have been attending to my son’s father’s final estate.. I am going to attend a wedding this weekend.

I am doing all of this because I love my grandmother, and my mom, and my dad, and my Mary, and my dog, and my son’s father… and my son, and my life… and the best way to make all of life worth the pain that comes with it is to keep loving and keep living. I live for all of those that I love that can’t anymore. I am teaching my son to do the same so that one day he will live for me when I’m gone… in the way way future. Because I plan to live and love and help others as much as I can for as long as I can.