I’m going to try to journal here. I always make everything so hard, so I’m going to try to just write and hope that the theme of this site sort of emerges.
I’m straight/cis, white, female, solidly middle class, well educated, on the verge between young adulthood and middle age. I have two gorgeous, healthy kids in elementary school, plus a tiny dust mop of a rescue poodle mix, age unknown. My partner and I have been married since 200. We live in New England (USA) but have hopped around, from the Southeastern US, to the Southwestern US, to the United Kingdom, to the Mid-Atlantic US, then finally here to New England. I think we’re finally home.
My brother, sister, and I were raised by our mom on her own. My brother is bicoastal, divorced, kids on one side of the country and work on the other. My sister is about 8 hours away, and we’re very close. We see each other several times a year. My mom comes and goes with me. She has a crazy life and her own issues. I love her but keep my distance. We’re great in spurts. Like so many families, we have our issues–I imagine that’ll all come out eventually here.
Primary challenge for me is ADD and cyclical depression. I’m on meds for both, and I seem to have passed both of them on to my 10yo daughter as well, lucky girl. She’s on ADD meds too, but we’re waiting to see what course the mood stuff takes with her. She and my partner are closer than she and I are, although she & I have a very strong bond. We’re both “intense,” and I think that’s too much for her sometimes, which I get. They understand one another, which is a comfort, since I often don’t understand either of them. My 7yo son is just pure joy: solid and easygoing and happy and creative and brilliant and genuine and insightful and communicative.
My partner is smart and supportive, mostly. Maybe on the middleish, mildish segment of the spectrum, but that’s a fortunate balance to my intense emotionality. He has a hard time with communication (especially nonverbal) when emotional content is involved. He struggles with emotional expression, insight, empathy, all that, which can make for stressful moments in a marriage from time to time. But he tries whenever I ask him to, and when he’s focused on the effort (for whatever reason), he almost always pulls it off. I think it’s an attention thing more than an ability thing. He loves his work and is good at what he does. He appreciates us as his base of operations and is a really good, if not the most involved, dad. He knows his limits, and he has just the right amount of interaction with the kids so that they all manage to adore each other without losing their patience or trying to control or rebel or piss each other off too much.
We have a comfortable house, safe schools, good friends. I’m lucky. I know it.
So that’s a start.
Nice to meet you.