Essays

We Don’t Let Go

Last week it was warm enough to wear a skirt without tights for the first time in months. The week before, I went for a bike ride around the park one sunny morning while our babysitter, Mavis, took Jackson to the library for story time. When I came home, they were still out so I took a long shower and didn’t worry about listening for a cry or a wail from the other room. Afterward, I turned on the stereo and danced around my living room. This week, I’ve been working from a new neighborhood coffee shop the two mornings Mavis has watched Jack. No one there asks me where the baby is or how he’s doing or whether I’ve been getting any sleep (they don’t even know I have a kid). Some people ask what I’m working on though. [Click to continue]

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by Wendy on March 14, 2012 · in Essays,It's Personal,Parenthood

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Getting Personal: “My Life as a Prison Wife”

Today’s guest essay is written by Nicki Stapleton (honeybeenicki), who is a contributing writer in the new music magazine The Blacktooth and has a music blog called For The Love of Rock and Metal.

My husband and I wrote our own vows for our wedding. In mine, I didn’t say: “I take you for better or for worse,” but instead said: “We will confront challenges head on and we will overcome them as a team — big challenges, little challenges, difficult or easy,” and I meant it. I stood up in front of our friends and family and pledged myself to my husband for life and never allowed myself to believe that divorce was ever an option. When I wrote those vows, I didn’t realize how quickly those big challenges would come or how hard it would really be to face them.

We got married on April 4th and just over a month later, on May 13th, my husband was arrested for armed robbery of two pharmacies. He didn’t take any money — just pills (and he didn’t actually have a weapon). I knew that he had a prescription drug problem but had been clean for over three years (he got clean about six months before we started dating) and I thought he was still clean. I was livid that he broke the law. I was livid that he didn’t come to me for help, but he said he was worried I would leave him because three things I don’t tolerate are abuse, cheating, and drugs.

I was a criminal justice professional (I lost my job because of my husband’s arrest and conviction) and have a Master’s degree in criminal behavior. In four years of working with offenders, I have seen relationships survive prison but I have seen many more fall apart. If I had known that he was going to be arrested a month after our wedding (or at any point), I wouldn’t have married him. I love him, but love isn’t always enough. Less than nine months after he was arrested, and eleven months after we were married, my husband was sentenced to prison.

The nine months between my husband’s arrest and his incarceration created many struggles for us personally and for our relationship. Right away we had to deal with a custody battle with his ex-wife, which was stressful but by far the easiest part. We started counseling individually and together and started an intensive outpatient treatment program. We prepared ourselves and his children for what might happen when he went back to court. When the Judge handed down the sentence, it became reality that our lives had changed forever. My husband was sentenced to five years in prison and 15 years of probation. [Click to continue]

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by Wendy on February 29, 2012 · in Essays,Getting Personal,Guest Column

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Here Comes the Sun

A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I was depressed, something that took some courage to admit. I say that not to toot my own horn for being brave, but so that others who have been dealing with similar feelings know that the fear they may have to seek help — or to even admit to themselves that there’s something wrong — is totally normal. As it was, my depression was not that bad relatively speaking, and it didn’t go on very long. I’d say that before I talked to anyone about it, I had feelings of “despair,” as I called it, for about two weeks. Those feelings included severe fatigue, anxiety, irritability/anger, hopelessness, and the uncontrollable urge to cry. Oh man, did I cry. It was the tears that signaled that something was really “off.” [Click to continue]

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by Wendy on February 23, 2012 · in Essays,It's Personal

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Getting Personal: We Weren’t Having Sex, But I Was Still Getting Screwed

Today’s guest essay comes from “His Take” contributor, Dennis Hong, who writes about relationships and other topics at Musings on Life and Love.

For months after Julie and I broke up, we remained friends. It was a mutual decision. No, really. We still cared about each other, and we still enjoyed each other’s company. We just realized that, romantically, we weren’t all that compatible. We were like peanut butter and bacon: You love ‘em both. Just not together. We continued to hang out fairly regularly, though. In fact, we joked that we were kind of/sort of still going on dates. Except that they didn’t end in anything physical…Wait, they were exactly like many dates I’ve been on.

I was fine with that. We both knew that muddling the boundaries we’d established wouldn’t be a good idea. So, we continued our platonic dates, going out to dinner, chatting about what was going on at home and at work, slipping into deeper conversations about our lives… our hopes…our fears…

That’s when I had an epiphany: I was totally getting screwed in this arrangement.
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by Wendy on February 8, 2012 · in Essays,Getting Personal,Guest Column

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It’s a Generational Thing

Oh, dear, I certainly opened a can of worms yesterday with my comments about 80s babies, didn’t I? Honestly, it didn’t occur to me that my comments would be seen as so terribly offensive. I didn’t really say anything that hasn’t been discussed in lots more places than DW. I understand feeling sensitive, but this idea that I’m wrong for stereotyping an entire generation of people is a little … well, silly. Entire generations of people have been generalized for decades — it’s why there are names for so many generations: Generation Y or the Millennials (or, as I call them “80s babies”), Generation X, the Baby Boomers, the Silent Generation, and the Greatest Generation. You also have “depression era kids,” “flappers,” and the “beat generation” as well as many other sub-cultures within a specific generation. Say any of these names and people not only know whom you’re talking about, they have an instant idea of prevalent characteristics among that generation.

Is it a gross generalization to associate specific characteristics to an entire generation of people? Of course. But there’s a reason we all do it: because there are trends among each generation that hold true. Because the generalized characteristics often fit enough people to be considered a trend. Because they help us understand behavior of people we work with, associate with and call family. It’s easy to point to a certain behavioral trait that co-workers of a certain age exhibit, for example, and say, “Oh, that must be a generational thing.” Because, pretty often, it is a generational thing. [Click to continue]

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by Wendy on February 8, 2012 · in Essays

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