Tag: kids

Addiction, Love, Mental Health, parenting, Politics

No one can do everything, and we need to stop telling people that they can.

Katrina Russell

We have to stop telling children, especially little girls, that they can do everything themselves. No one can. We used to understand this. We used to understand the importance of family and marriage and partners, but somewhere along the lines people, and especially girls started being told that they can do everything. That they don’t need anyone else. That, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, as Irina Dunn coined.

In reality everyone needs people. The family unit was set up as a way of complementing each other’s strengths and working together. It’s easier to share responsibilities than trying to do them all by yourself. This seems like commonsense, but somewhere along the line ego got in the way and suddenly “I can do it myself” became the motto.

This is not to say that there are things that women or men can’t do. Of course most people are capable of anything that they put their minds too, but they can’t do everything. There are only so many hours in a day. There is only so much energy to be expended. Eventually you run out and the person told that they can do everything feels like a failure when they can’t.

Telling someone that they can do everything is similar to telling a child that they can have everything that they want in a store. Say you have $300 and you take a child to Target. You can tell them that they can have anything that they want, they just have to choose. Maybe they pick a giant Lego set, and have $100 left to spend and you tell them, “oh that’s great, why don’t you add a book and a game on top of that”. You leave the store and the child is ecstatic.

Now say you have the same child and the same $300 and you go into Target and tell them they can have everything that they want. Now the kid is loading up cart after cart of everything they could possibly desire in the slightest. You head to the register and start piling things out. Then you tell the cashier to stop when they reach $300. The child is confused. They don’t even know what they got. Maybe the thing they really wanted hasn’t even been taken out of the carriage yet. Now the child is devastated and let down. It’s “The worst birthday ever!” even though they got $300 worth of things they kind of wanted.

This is how we treat people, and especially women today. We tell them to go for everything they want. They go to school, they change majors a few times, they date around a bit, they start to work on a career, and everything seems good. They are getting everything they want. Now they’re 35, and single and thinking, “next on my list: husband and kids”. They look around and all the guys are kind of jerks, or giant children because they have also been told that they can have whatever they want and they just spent the last 20 years getting all the hook ups they could ask for without having to put anything into the relationship or grow up at all. Why should they? The women can handle everything.

Now the woman is like, “ok, clock ticking. I want kids, but I need a man for that. I also want to be able to raise my kids myself and not send them off with the nanny.” The world says, “ok, just find a guy and get started”. But those guys were left in the carriage when you ran out of money and some other girl who knew what she wanted came along and bought him already. The woman is left with what ever was the easiest to throw up on the register first and didn’t actually get a chance to choose.

I know, you’re going to say, “Not all women want to get married. Not all women want kids”. That is true, but most do, and all at least want the opportunity to decide for themselves and not just get left with whatever was in the first carriage.

Instead of telling kids that they can do everything we need to tell them that they can do anything that they choose, and then teach them how to make good choices. Otherwise we’re going to have more and more generations of self medicating, drug addicted, miserable people who think the idea of abortion and government sponsored suicide are great ideas, because, “this is the worst life ever” when you don’t understand how to get what you really want.

silhouette of four people against sun background
cancel culture, Love, Mental Health, parenting, Politics

Why is feminism not about empowering women?

Katrina Russell

I don’t know when women went from being a group that was celebrated and protected to a group that is isolated and derogated for acknowledging that they exist and are a real thing. There is a definition to the word woman. There are traits to describe a woman. There are features that differentiate women from men. For years women were held back for these traits and features. Women weren’t allowed in certain clubs or organizations and there was no way that they could compete in sports or the military against men. Then women started to push for more “rights”.

I’m not sure how it’s a right that a person should be allowed into a private club owned by someone else. Men’s clubs were a thing created for men to be men. To talk about things that men want to talk about. There were other clubs that were for both men and women that couples could attend, but women didn’t like that. Of course, there’s still women’s only clubs, but that’s… different. I guess. Or at least it was, because now a man just has to say that he’s a woman and he can enter the club all he wants so there’s that.

The excuse for needing to let women into men’s clubs was the “a lot of business happens in the men’s clubs”. If women weren’t allowed in them, they were being prevented from doing business. Most of these clubs were some sort of golf club, but ironically even after letting women into these clubs only about 22% of all club members are women and half of those are young girls just there to play golf. Not a lot of business taking place there, and not a place most women even care to go.

Then there were organizations like The Elks that were sued into allowing women in the mid 90s, and the Boy Scouts of America that was made to admit girls in 2017, even though Girl Scouts is completely a thing. I don’t know when women became so obsessed with thinking all things male was better.

Women used to be proud of who and what they were. They were daughters, and moms, and teachers, and nurses and they loved using their empathy and compassion to take care of people. They were also brilliant. There were so few female writers, scientists, pilots, freedom fighters and yet everyone knows the names of the brilliant women who did accomplish great things in those fields. Being a woman didn’t stop Agatha Christie, Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart or Harriet Tubman. They didn’t have to pretend to be men. They didn’t have to dress, and act like men or sue for men to include them. They did their jobs better than everyone else and they were accepted and appreciated for that.

People say, “Well, yes, but there were so fewer women in those positions. It must have been discrimination.”. Guess what, there’s still less women in those fields. All the lawsuits, all the campaigns, all the shoulder pads in the world didn’t turn women into men and didn’t make women interested in the same things that men are interested or physically capable of the same things as men. Men and women are different. They just are.

Now, before you freak out, I’m not saying that women are weaker than men. I’m a mom. I know what real strength is. I not only carried my baby in my body, but I had a c-section, and carried that baby for years after whenever he needed me. Whether it was in the first 6 weeks after my c-section, and I wasn’t allowed to lift anything as heavy as him, or the years after when he was tired, or hurt, or it was just more convenient at the time to keep track of him and keep him moving. Let me tell you. Kids are heavy. They may be like 30 lbs., but 30 lbs. of dead weight in one arm and 5 bags of groceries in the other because it’s easier to do one trip and it you let him down, he’s going to run, that’s heavy.

Then there’s the emotional strength that it takes to be a mother. You are the one that is there for that child every day, most of the time all day. You are the one that has to teach these little people to be strong, and kind. You have to comfort them when they are in pain and support them to work through it. You also have to correct them when they are wrong and sometimes that means hurting them as well. We make our children cry more than anyone else because we have to, and it breaks our hearts. “No, you can’t watch TV right now. No, you can’t wear your ballet shoes out in the snow. No, you can’t have skittles for dinner.”. Tears every day. Tears we have to decide how to handle in order to make sure our children grow up to be capable human beings.

Being a woman is an amazing thing to be. We are the diplomats to the men’s warrior. We are the ones they come home to when they want to feel safe. We are the ones that give them purpose when they go to war or to work. We are the ones who create the future they are trying to protect. I don’t know when that became the lesser value in the equation.

Feminism has somehow gone from proving that women are of equal value for being women, through women can and should do all the things that men do, to there’s no such thing as a difference between men and women. Which is just ridiculous, and quite frankly an insult to women, and men alike. To say that we are all just pod people creations with no individuality, with nothing born innate to us, we are all just creations of whatever society implants into us. Which is clearly not true, as there are thousands of societies that have crossed 10s of thousands of miles and 10s of thousands of years, and there has always, in every society, been a difference between men and women.

At one-point women fought to have their own sports. They wanted to prove that they were just as capable of being athletic and competitive but understood that physically they were no match for men. This was a great opportunity for women. They were able to thrive in a physical domain otherwise not available to them. They were able to win scholarships and create comraderies with like-minded other women. They could live out their masculine traits without danger of being with the men who could cause them real harm.

Now that is being taken away as well. Men who just decide they want to be women are competing against women in traditionally physically masculine roles. Men and women are different. Not just in the way they think, not just in their hormone levels. They are different down to their bone structure, their muscle mass, their weight dispersity, and in physical competitions like sports and wars this can get someone seriously hurt, if not killed. It can also take those scholarship opportunities away from women and give it to an actual man.

The other night during one of those award shows Adele got up and said how proud she was to be a woman and how proud she was to win her award in the name of women. This used to be something that was cheered. Now it was offensive. Women are no longer allowed to be proud of themselves. Let’s not even talk about JK Rowling. They are no longer allowed to separate themselves from men. Women have to accept that there is absolutely nothing special about them at all. There is no definition for the word woman. Anyone can be one, and anyone can decide not to be one, depending on their mood.

Political commentator Matt Walsh was on The Dr Phil show with some people who identify as non-binary. Meaning they do not consider themselves either male or female because society makes up those terms. Matt asked them to define the word woman and the response was “womanhood looks different to everyone“. That is not how words work. That is not how reality works.

Let me just state before the crazies come out of the woodwork, that I am not transphobic. I don’t care what you look like, how you define yourself, or what you do as an adult. I have an issue with this idea that being a woman doesn’t mean anything. A few years back Doctor who, one of my favorite shows, decided to swap out the main character who had always been male for a female with the idea that sex doesn’t matter. That there is absolutely no difference between men and women and that it is all a social construct. This was about the same time that the “woke” community starting to change from trans to non-binary and blaming all things gender related on society.

I was annoyed by this. Even though the main character is an alien, he spent a lot of time of Earth (specifically in England) traveling through different time periods. I was afraid that the character was going to be spending too much time explaining why “as a woman” she should be listened to and basically male bashing the whole time. It was much worse. It turned out it was about how sex was irrelevant and his species was so much more advanced than us piddly humans even it had been well established that he was a father and a grandfather, and that their biology was in tune with ours. He had even left his granddaughter on Earth so she could spend her life with a man she had fallen in love with.

They had changed the gender of another main character before this and it was quite well excepted, but it was also played off like it wasn’t common. Then there was some vague mention of it with a background character that most people just ignored. The character even made a comment about “thank God I’m a woman again” or something to that affect. Meaning there was a difference in males and females. The main character who changed gender also changed her name to Missy because “I couldn’t keep calling myself the Master“. Implying that Master is a masculine name, and there was a difference between masculine and feminine on their planet.

I remember the chat all over the internet at the time. So many people applauding the choice. So many people insulting anyone who didn’t agree with it at the time. I remember a specific exchange between a man and a woman. The man said that he hated it, that there was nothing fluid about gender, and that men and women are very different. The woman, of course, just called him sexist. He then replied that he was actually a transman and by stating that there is no difference between men and women the whole movement was invalidating the trans-community of people who feel like that are the opposite gender.

To feel as if you are the wrong gender implies there is a difference between them that is not just how you present and what costume you dress in for the day. Being a man or a woman meant something. There is a direct definition to the word. Now maybe it’s not the same definition that Matt Walsh would give, but most trans people acknowledge the difference between trans and cis individuals. They talk about male and female brains and ways of thinking. Which is different as well, and not just societal. This is why no matter how advanced the society and how much they try to push equality between the genders, more women pick certain careers and hobbies in humanities crafting and more men pick more careers and hobbies in STEM. Men talk about things; women talk about people.

And the thing is, all of that is good. Men aren’t better than women because they like STEM and military type careers, and women aren’t lesser than men because they like helping and teaching people. A person is not more successful if they choose to fight their way through the grind to get the corner office or make the big bucks, and women aren’t less successful if they choose to stay home and take care of the tiny humans they created. Men and women are different. Women have to stop putting themselves and their identities down in order to be more like men. Women have to remember in the battlefield every man cries for his mommy.

person counting cash money
Addiction, Love, Mental Health, parenting

The Love of Money is the Root of all Evil

Katrina Russell

People are born different. Anyone who has ever met children knows this. Anyone that has multiple kids can attest to this. Every one of their babies came out with their own little personalities, likes, dislikes, favorites, what have you. Some kids are relaxed, some kids are bossy, some kids are nothing but trouble. Those are the most hilarious to hear about but the most frightening to have yourself. The point it, people are people no matter how old, and they are all different.

When I was little, I remember having a little field trip with my Brownies group to the local town center where there was a candy store that sold “penny candy” though by the mid 80s it was more $.25 candy. Each of us girls were given a $.25 to spend. I went in, looked around, and found some pieces that were $.10-.15. I ended up with two pieces of candy and my Brownie leaders thought it was hilarious. I was a good bargain hunter and they saw me going far.

My brother on the other hand was all about making as much money as he could. He had a paper route at 11 and forged working papers at 13 so he could get a job at the local grocery store (in our state you have to be 14 to work). He was good at saving and liked the finer things. When we took our first vacation to Disney, he had $555 that he had put away from his paper route money. I had about $3 left over from that week’s allowance.

I wanted to buy presents for everyone I knew so at the end of the day my dad’s girlfriend would give me her left-over change that she had for the say and I would collect it up and find the best things that I could for what little I had. And I did. Even if it was just a magnet or a shoelace, I made it work. Keep in mind this is still the mid 80s, things were much less expensive then. My brother bought himself a couple things and Mickey ears for our 3 little cousins and saved the rest. He was not about to spend all his hard-earned money.

Flash forward, I work hard, I make enough money to pay for what I need, no matter what I need. My brother says, “You’re good at making money stretch.”. He does not mean that I’m good at saving for the future, but I’m great at getting as much as I can with the money that I have, even if my bank account ends up a little low most of the time. I can’t help it. “It burns a hole in my pocket”. As they used to say. Thankfully I make enough so that when something does come up, I can usually pay for it in cash with my next check, but still saving is really not in my DNA.

When I had my son, I had no idea who he would be or what kind of ideas he would have. I started an account for him, that I do manage to save for, and I changed my spending habits a bit to include planning for the future, investments, insurance… you know, grown up adulting things. It’s taken a lot of work and self-discipline to accomplish this goal, but I understand the importance, but I still have a little trouble with Amazon and Target.

He was about 5 when he got some birthday money and I asked him what he wanted to do with it? He responded that he wanted to save it of course. He had to save it for a car so that when he’s old enough to work he’ll be able to get there himself. Swear to God. This is not one of those “kids say the cutest things” made up by a parent. These words came out of my Kindergartener’s mouth. I can assure you; he does not get this from me. He takes his birthday, Christmas, First Communion, and money earned from As he gets on his report cards and puts it in his bank.

Over the last few years, he has spent a little of his saved money, but it’s always a debate. He sees something in the store. Asks me to buy it. I tell him no, but he’s welcome to, and then he decides it’s worth to him. He has trouble saying no to certain stuffed animals. Don’t get me wrong, when he gets gift cards they do get spent in the appropriate place, but always at the appropriate time. He waits till he sees something that he wants, like one of those stuffed animals he can’t live without and chooses to use those instead of cash. Sometimes he’ll even trade me if he sees something at a store not on the gift cards. So, for instance if he sees a videogame at Game Stop and doesn’t have a Game Stop gift card, he will say something like, “Well, if I give you my Target gift card for $20 can you give me the $20 cash and I can buy the game?”. Which I do… because, as mentioned… Target.

I don’t tell this story just to brag about my amazingly perfect son. I tell this story as a reminder to those who may be struggling with money issues or have a spouse who is. Some people are just born with a different idea of money that you are. This does not give them a free pass to spend until bankrupt, but it’s just something that may take more work than you may think. It’s literally a part of them. They have to decide to make a change and learn how to do so. Excessive shopping can be considered an addiction, just like anything else done to access, but it can also just be bad habits.

Habits are the hardest thing to break because it’s not just mental, but it’s physical, like muscle memory. A person who is bad at money has a list of things they know that they want and as soon as they know money is coming in, they have a checklist of what can be paid for with that money. It’s like the food addict who is planning when they can do their next binge. And like any other habit or addiction it is easy to jump off the wagon by simply walking in a store or opening an app and seeing what there is to buy.

If you want to change your money habits it is best to talk to a professional. Come up with a budget and make sure you have some crazy money in there just in case, so you don’t feel deprived. Saving money is the best thing that you can do for yourself and your family. It’s not easy for everyone, but with the right help, it’s not impossible either.

close up photo of lion s head
cancel culture, free speech, parenting, Politics, Prayer

Speak your mind!

Katrina Russell

Yesterday I was teaching my Catechism class where we were talking about Daniel and Esther. For those who don’t remember Daniel was put into a Lion’s Den after he refused the King’s order to only worship the King and other false gods. Esther was the King’s wife who spoke to the King on behalf of her people for him to allow them to worship their one true God. Both of these people put their lives in grave danger for their faith.

After we finished reading and watching a video about them, I asked the children in my class how they felt about what these people did. I asked them if they thought that people have the right to be able to tell their King or government no and do what they believe. I wasn’t sure how they would answer.

This is a time when authority should never be questioned and what is “right” is listening and obeying what the authority deems to be true. When I first said to compare it to today in society there was a big moan of annoyance at the thought of what I may be asking about society today. I asked them, “With everything going on today, do you think that people have the right to protest the government about things they believe, regardless of whether you believe the same things that they do?”.

There was the one smart ass kid who said, “No, you must always listen to the government. They know best.” but seeing as how I don’t think this kid has ever listened to anyone in his life, I knew he was being facetious and stated so after his friend questioned him. After him there were many different responses ranging from, “of course the government is full of idiots” to “yeah, just because the government think they know best doesn’t mean that they do. In fact, of the 17 kids in the class every single one of them agreed that people have the right to criticize and protest the government.

This exchange has given me hope for the future. This was a class full of middle schoolers in a very Left state that truly believe in personal rights outweighing the collective. I wasn’t sure that was a thing anymore. These kids have grown up in a culture full of canceling anyone who thinks outside the box. The box constructed by a certain establishment. The fact that these kids were able to understand the significance of having not only their voices heard, but the voices of those they don’t agree with as well was quite inspiring. Maybe there’s hope for the future after all.

Healthcare, Mental Health, parenting, Politics

When did society start being ok with sexualizing kids?

Katrina Russell

We all remember “The Talk” when we were little. The embarrassing conversation with a parent about “the birds and the bees”. Some of us remember the day in grade school when all the boys when outside to play and all of the girls got the video about how our bodies were changing and what to expect when our monthly cycle started. Quite a few of us remember Sex Ed classes in school. It was all very clinical, basically a biology class. This is how the reproductive system works. These are different kinds of birth control available. These are some common STDs that you want to avoid by using said birth control. That’s it. Maybe there was the occasional progressive teacher that would bring out the banana and the condom, but I really think that was more an urban legend.

This type of sex talk is completely understandable. Children and teenagers need to understand the science of how bodies function. No problem. I have an 8-year-old. I have been updating him on new information about bodily functions at appropriate times. He has a penis. Girls have a vagina. Girls get their period once a month. Girls have the “house the baby lives in in their bellies” aka womb. I remember being at Disney a few months back and having to bring him into the ladies’ room because I wasn’t sending him off by himself and there were no family rooms available. He looked around all confused and whispered in my ear, “Do little girls have vaginas too?”. They do… for those who aren’t aware.

The point is, I’m very open about biology with my kid. He understands the difference between male bodies and female bodies. We’ve talked about all kinds of bodily functions as pertains to science. I’ve taught him about privacy and keeping certain body parts to himself. When he discovered that touching himself felt good. I just said, “yes it does, but you do that in private.” I didn’t hide facts. i didn’t shame him. I didn’t shelter him from discovering things on his own about his own body.

I didn’t, however, give him a book or movie about masturbating and start teaching him about different sexual positions and kink. None of these things are appropriate for children. I don’t know when this became a political issue. This used to be something everyone agreed to. Whether it was the Christian Right or the Tipper Gore Left making sure there were advisory stickers on Rap music. Children were to be protected from adult content.

We as a society used to understand that kids shouldn’t go into a rate R movie, never mind rated X, and yet somewhere along the line people stopped understanding this. It changed to, “oh, they can see worse on the internet… who cares?”. Well, I for one care. Many people care. Many people SHOULD care.

There have been calls to ban explicit adult content books from school libraries and half the country thinks this is censorship. Censorship to keep porn out of the hands of children. Children are to be taken to Gay Pride events and celebrated for watching adults perform kink in the streets. Sexual identity and expression should be taught to kindergarteners. Most children have no idea what any of that means.

I live in Massachusetts. I have many openly gay friends and family members. I have never hidden this fact from my son. He has spent time with my friends who are gay. When he was a toddler and first started getting into Doctor Who and Captain Jack Harkness was an openly OPEN character played by an openly gay man, I would show him videos on Insta of “Jack and his husband”. When my son was watching “The Simpsons” and Homer befriended a gay man and Marge was trying to hint to Homer about the friend being gay my son was confused why anyone would care.

My son does not know one thing about sex. My son knows that people love each other and want to kiss each other. That’s it. He knows that “love” makes a baby. My son is so unaware of how sex works that after his father died, he asked if you love someone in Heaven can you still make a baby. That’s sweet. That’s innocent. That’s how children should be.

In a world full of Epsteins and Clintons you would think that parents would be working overtime at keeping sex away from their kids. In a world in which teachers and religious leaders and sports coaches, and all the other trusted people who we send our kids off to are known to be the biggest predators, you would think that parents would work extra hard at making sure these same people aren’t sexualizing your kids while telling you “It’s no big deal.”

Anyone who thinks that Elementary or Middle School kids should not only have access but be given highly sexual material are people you shouldn’t want anywhere near your kids. If you think otherwise you may want to ask yourself why.

people wearing diy masks
Addiction, bullying, grief, Healthcare, Mental Health, parenting, Politics

Death Happens

Katrina Russell

I don’t know what has been going on in the last couple years that suddenly we can’t go back to normal until all death has been stopped. Well, all covid deaths. They are willing to let kids kill themselves, and overdose on drugs. They are willing to take dying people off of transplant lists if they don’t conform to their politics, because none of that matters except stopping anyone from ever dying of Covid-19 again. We need to stop death itself… in the case of Covid-19 anyway.

The problem is no one can stop death. The more we try the worse it gets. People are becoming obsessed with death. With Covid death specifically. People have locked themselves in their house. They refuse to see family and friends. They won’t work. They won’t go outside in the fresh air for fear it may be contaminated.

Obesity is the number one killer in this country (the US), and yet because of lockdowns weight gain has been skyrocketing. Everyone is so afraid of catching Covid they are making themselves more vulnerable to it. And let’s be honest, when it comes to weight gain Covid is the least of people’s problems. With everyone so obsessed with controlling “The Spread” people have paid no attention to the real killers in this country. Heart Disease, Cancer, and Diabetes are still high on the list.

People are so fearful to live they are missing out on life. When I talk to others about it they say that I can’t possibly understand because I don’t have anyone in my life to worry about. I’ve already lost them all. My grams, and father’s s/o died of Alzheimer’s, my dad died of Diabetes, my mom died of pneumonia, and my son’s father died of a drug overdose. They are right. I’m not scared of a virus. I’m not scared of a cold. I know that life is short, and anything can take anyone at any time.

When my loved ones died, I didn’t fight for the government to make us wear masks so no one would get pneumonia. I didn’t fight for the government to impose restrictions on sugary foods and mandate exercise to prevent Diabetes. I didn’t fight for the government to not allow anyone treatment if they made choices that the government disagreed with. My father ended up with type 1 diabetes, it wasn’t all personal choices, but he still could have taken care of it better. My son’s father was an addict… that’s all lifestyle. Yet the same people saying that no one who doesn’t choose vaccination should be treated, because it’s they’re fault… yet, most heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and certainly addiction is, if not caused, compounded by personal choices. No one would expect the government to not treat or lock down or not give passports to be in society to those with these lifestyle diseases. Don’t even get me started on STDs.

We are never going to stop death. We are never going to save everyone. We are never going to fix the world. The best we can do is live in it, and that starts by opening our doors, taking off the damn masks, and seeing each other again. Before we all die of old age.

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, 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.