The Chaos that is Me

What do you do when your children tell you point blank they don’t want to go to their other parent’s for their scheduled visitation and their reasons are valid? I’ve known for several days that Rachel (my oldest) didn’t want to go. Every time this visitation was brought up she complained that she didn’t want to go. At first, I thought it was just because she’s at a stage where she’d rather not go anywhere, and I figured that once she got there she’d have fun. Then Abby started saying she didn’t want to go either… Again, my first thoughts were that they just wanted to stay home but would be grateful for the time with him once they got there. It’s usually how things work: they don’t want to go but then once there they don’t want to come home. Tonight they gave me their reasons for not wanting to go for a week. First off they say it’s boring and there isn’t much to do there. While it’s understandable that they might not want to go, it’s not enough to say no. Their dad doesn’t rea

I try so hard to be a good parent and to give my daughters a better childhood than I had. Call me conceited or selfish but I don't want them to look back on their childhood and think of me the way I sometimes think of my own mother. I want them to look back with fondness and love. I want them to have good memories and to always know that they were loved... I've discovered over the years that this goal is a lot harder than I had ever imagined.  I never imagined marrying an abusive man, a man that thought it was OK to tell a 4-year-old that she couldn't have anything else to drink for the rest of the night because she spilled her drink at dinner, a man that constantly lost his temper at even the smallest things. No, I definitely didn't plan on that... I didn't plan on continuing to have trouble with my back. It started unexpectedly and suddenly when I was 14 or 15 and has continued to cause problems every couple of years or so. It prevents me from sitting on the f