Dear sales lady at Dillard's Towne East Mall,
This is my teenage daughter who wanted to try on dresses for an upcoming formal. I found this dress and asked her to try it on. She told me this was not her style, but tried it on for me. I told her how grown up it made her look and she smiled, and told me this made her look too old but still, she let me take a picture. Right after that, you entered and told my daughter she needed to wear SPANX if she wanted to wear this dress. I told my daughter to go change. I told you that she was just fine without SPANX.
You continued to argue with me. We left soon after. I wish I had told you how many girls suffer from poor self image and telling them they need something to make them perfect can be very damaging. Girls of all ages, shapes and...
Family
I once asked my mother why she married my father and her answer shockingly didn’t surprise me. Her marriage wasn’t based on a deep love affair but instead was a reaction to living under her father’s roof. She got married to get away from him.
She explained that during her childhood my grandfather was a strict man. He was a “my way or the highway” type of guy. Not really someone you could have a conversation with. It seems that his controlling style is what pushed her to run away with whoever she could find despite her reservations, which she had when dating my father.
This story is not uncommon and some of you may have been biting at the bit to get away from your prison you call a home. I can empathize. I couldn’t wait to move as far away as I could from Maui. You heard right even...
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Mama,
You always hated when I called you that. At this point my only alternative is to refer to you by name, but that would be potentially damaging to you as a person and I have no intention of doing to you what you have done to me. It is important to me to make myself understood after all these years. In some ways, it is not just you I am addressing at this point. This has become a much larger issue. This affects the entire Autism community, not just our mother-daughter relationship.
It's been almost a year now since I was diagnosed with high functioning Autism, formerly known as Asperger's Syndrome. I was living in adult foster care when I sought and received my diagnosis; the answers to my questions were long overdue. I am well aware, now, that the school system made multiple...
5,423
My Dearest Baby Girl,
I never planned on becoming a full time step mom. I had this image that I would finish school and run away with prince charming and live in a beautiful home and have nice things. (You know grow up the way we are taught to grow up.) Fortunately, for me your father came along and smacked my daydreaming self-back to the real world. We have had many ups, downs, laughs, and cries throughout your little years, but that’s what love is all about. The best advice I can give you for the future is that when you truly love someone and they treat you right; you never let that person go. You fight, sometimes a long battle, but you do it until the win. Everything takes time, but what’s meant to be will always be. As for now, your father and I still have a long road to walk. Yes...
5,002
You may not have given birth to me so long ago, nor were you greeted by my accomplishments of third place ribbons, awards, and macaroni art.
You missed my younger years, in which some might say is a child’s most rewarding time- one a parent wouldn’t want to miss. However, the lacked memories of my tantrums, my mispronouncing of syllables and words alike, and even the day I first learned how to ride my bike, doesn’t matter to me now and it shouldn’t to you.
Those who were there for my progressing years evidently left, including the one who conceived me. I’ve never told you of all the times sadness filled my days from the yelling, the throwing, and the fighting nor did I mention just how bad the swings stung when they reached me.
There were daily moments I tried to hide from my...
4,342
I am Broken. As in "I", I mean we, because I am writing to myself. We've been through a lot in this 20 years we have called our life. Half of that time you were with our mother, and the other half I was with my father. I say you and I as if we are different people. Well, truth is we are different. You were a child, a scared and very hurt child. You endured a lot in just the first 10 years of your life. But, if you had not been through all of the pain and agony, I would not be the same person that I am. I would not be as wise. It's not all good though. If you hadn't have seen so much, or had such a hard childhood, then I would not have been depressed. I would not have gone through middle school and high school always thinking of ways I could kill myself. I would not have...
2,930
You were supposed to be there for me, supposed to be the one who took care of me. Help me when I was hurt. Make sure nobody could cause me pain. How could a mother not care about her own daughters pain? How can you tell people that I was lying when I so clearly wasn't? I was six years old, and your boyfriend molested me. He raped me. He told me I couldn't tell anyone. I was a child. I didn't understand. I just knew that he had hurt me and told me nobody could know. So I kept his secret for a couple years. Thankfully you weren't together much longer, but one day you saw him out. You brought him home. And wondered why I was afraid of him. You told me to stop acting the way that I was, you didn't find it odd that a child was so terrified of a grown man. Eventually when I spoke up about what...
2,792
There are 2 of you. Two men, who are more of cowards. One of you raped and molested me while the other just molested me. And yet I am equally pained by the memories of you both.
Man number one, you dated my mother. I was six years old. How could you do that to a child when you had a grown woman you slept with every night. How can a child satisfy you and a woman could not. I want you to know that I can not ever forgive you for what you have done. You ruined my out look on life at such a young age. I can't trust men still to this day, and its been 14 years now. You raped me, and you molested me time and time again. You made me touch your penis. I was only six years old. You were a grown man. You didn't care when I cried, you didn't care that I was in pain. Now to this day I have not...
3,872
To my dearest little strop-bucket,
Well, today was one heck of a day, wasn’t it? I think we’re both as exhausted as each other right now.
To be fair, I should have known better than to risk taking you to the supermarket. But there was nothing in the fridge and no online shopping slots available, and besides, I thought a trip round Tesco might be a nice little outing for us both.
Ha!
It was all going well at first. I’d even go as far as to say we were having fun. You were sitting in the toddler seat quite happily, dropping the packets into the trolley as I passed them to you, and practising your new words (‘Narna! Brapes! Abbal!’).
But then, somewhere around the bakery aisle, it all went wrong – and man, did it go wrong!
The signs were there; you started wriggling in the...
5,756
Dear Parents of School-aged Children:
CMS needs your help and support. As you probably know, the Board of Education is in the beginning stages of revising our school district’s pupil assignment plan. This process will be challenging; not just for the school board, but for our entire Charlotte-Mecklenburg community. It will stir up painful memories for some and strong emotion for many.
CMS now operates under a plan that basically assigns students to schools according to where they live. As a result, reflecting neighborhood demographics, our children largely attend schools in which they’re separated according to family income and skin color. We have lots of schools attended by predominantly white, middle class and wealthier kids and many other schools filled largely with children of...
2,181