I haven’t written here in a while because the last piece I wrote sparked major lash-back from my in-laws. You see, they thought I was stirring up drama about their family, when the truth is, I wrote No Room For Favoritism because I have seen first hand what favoritism can do to a child who then grows into an adult.
The piece wasn’t about them, they didn’t even inspire it. My children inspired it, my friends children inspired it. I write about what is current in my life, and right now I’m struggling to show all of my children equal attention because they are all so vastly different. It is easy to stand on the sidelines of a football field and cheer my little football player and cheerleader on. It’s more difficult to show the same enthusiasm when my oldest child volunteers his time in our community. Am I proud? Absolutely, but cheering him on like a maniac would be, well, a little maniacal.
So the truth is, I write for me, and like all writers, I draw from my own experiences and the experiences of my loved ones when I write. If we are incapable of drawing from those experiences and incapable of admitting where we are weak or where we have failed, we cannot grow. And if you don’t like what I have to say on MY website, you don’t have to read it. As of now, however, I still have freedom of speech.
I realize that not everyone is constantly working towards evolving and changing and becoming better versions of themselves, but I am. I know my weaknesses and I admit them loudly. I know where I have failed and where I have made bad decisions, but I look back on those decisions and learn from them. It’s not always easy to admit you’ve been wrong, but you’ve got to be able to do it or you’ll burn every bridge you cross.
I think it’s human to want to turn a blind eye to your mistakes. Maybe it’s easier for most people to just believe they’re perfect or that every decision they’ve ever made was the right one, but that doesn’t feel right to me because it is not true. I am imperfect. Very, very imperfect.
There was an assertion that everyone who read the last piece knew that I was referring to my in-laws and the way they raised their children, but I’m assuming that out of the 65,000 people who read this blog every month, maybe seven knew that I was drawing from the experiences of my husband’s life growing up. I was careful in that piece not to name names or relations and I felt I achieved that goal, so my guess is that thousands of people had no clue, and didn’t care where I specifically drew these experiences from. But a couple people cared and believed that you *all* knew who I was talking about. Well, now you do.
If you look at my posts about marriage that were written in the last nine months, I hope you can see that despite baggage on both sides of our imperfect little equation, we’re working through it for the betterment of our marriage, our children, and our future. Because denying wrongdoing and believing that things have to remain status quo is unacceptable to me. I want more, so I’ll work for more, but to do that, I have to be able to draw from my own experiences and the experiences of those whose lives directly affect mine, like my husband’s.