Mom replies

The long awaited reply....


Anabel and your family,


Your Dad and I have been gone for the last few days, but I want you to
know
that I have been thinking about your E mail constantly it seems.  In
the
late evenings and early mornings, in the car, motor home and church.  I
find
that I don't know what the answers are.  They are so simple for you Anabel
You, from the very beginning have given us a fait accompli.  You
neither
wanted or needed our advice or council. Not when you had the abortion,
not
when you were being blackmailed, not when you and J were having
problems
and thinking of divorce, not about your bi-sexuality, not about your
new
family which encompasses your bi-sexuality very neatly.

Your last e-mail puts us firmly in our place.  We have no place. Any
place
we once had you have given to your new family. It's interesting to me
the
way you indicate birth and new family like the love we have always had
for
you has been completely negated by the "love" you have for the "new
family".
You can not imagine the hurt that your Dad and I felt with the complete
disregard you showed in regards to you or the kids care and support. 
I
guess that works two ways and that you are not interested in any care
or
decisions that might have to be made as Dad and I get older.

You have chosen a path that I can not follow and are taking your
children
with you.  You say that you love what they bring to their lives.  I
have to
pray that that is true. My faith and the faith of my mother is slow to
change but I do not believe that if I live forever that it will ever
condone
a tri-sexual relationship. I am also sure that you are right that other
cultures do. But does that justify what we do.  I live in this culture
and I
do my best to follow the "Golden Rule" and the Ten Commandments.  I
would be
a hypocrite of the first order to call myself a Christian and yet
accept
what I consider unchristian behavior.  As a parent we set the examples
for
our children in hopes that they will have a happy life.  In the name of
love
you are setting an example for your children that sow the seeds of
doubt on
what is accepted behavior in our society and will make them happy.

There are very few times that we get together anymore.  Easter, Father
and
Mothers days, 4th of July and Christmas.  Birthdays have been far and
few
between and our anniversary only on the special occasions. That¹s
perhaps
8-10 days out of 365.  All of the other days you have with your  new
family.
In my mind it would seem that isn't too much to ask of you. Perhaps
four to
six days out of a year.  It would be you being uncomfortable versus six
of
us being uncomfortable.

I would also like to add that perhaps you won't always have this
problem
with your "birth family".  Dad and I are not getting younger and after
we're
gone you won't need to justify your life style to us at all.

Dad and I have always loved you, and we have always  been proud of you.
This has been a heart wrenching experience for us.  We have honestly
tried
to understand what you are trying to say, but  to us it is beyond
understanding.  This is your choice, we think you are wrong.  This does
not
stop our love for you.


Mom and Dad

Family Frustrations

This may be my last ditch effort to get my family to understand and try to accept my loving three person relationship that I find myself lucky enough to be in. Father's Day was hard because I decided not to join my parents, sisters and their husbands for a BBQ. They refused to invite my em, eduardo and their kids. It makes them too uncomfortable and they're doubtful this will ever change. Maybe I can let this one go now.

Here's the email I finally got the nerve to send. The names have been changed to maintain the cute blogger monikers we've created. Peace.


Hey All,

I hope you all had a nice Father's Day. Eduardo ended up cooking up some delicious steaks on the BBQ and after I picked up the kids, we all went back for home-made Lemon Merange pie that Em and their kids baked.

I get that you're all having a hard time accepting this relationship. In reality, it's no different than any other commited relationship except that there are three adults involved instead of two. I know the fact that they are "married" is a sticking point for you. With the amount of support and commitment we share, we're all three emotionally "married." We plan to all live together. If I wasn't with them, I'd probably be involved with a woman and we'd be unable to get married anyway. Some have said that if it was just Em, you could accept it easier. So in some of your books, it would be better to, break up an amazingly great relationship to fit this mold. Then I guess I could proudly wear the title "home-wrecker" along with Lesbian.

We're only talking about love here. I love them, they love me, and they love each other. It's the most honest, supportive, caring and emotionally safe relationship I've ever been in. I also love what they bring into my children's life.

But when it comes to you not invititng them along to family get-togethers, I have to remember the Serenity Prayer. "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."

Like I've said to all of you individually, we see this relationship in life long terms. You all say that the idea of bringing them with me makes you uncomfortable. OK so do we avoid this forever in order to avoid being uncomfortable? Is discomfort a good reason to avoid something important? We all feel it and it keeps looming larger the longer we avoid it. Seems to me that this bridge will need to be crossed sooner or later. If I got sick or injured and ended up in the hospital, they would be there and I would want them to be the ones to make any important medical decisions if I couldn't make them myself. (It's important that you all know this and honor this if this situation ever comes up.) What if someone in the family pases away and I need their support at the funeral? Or heaven forbid, if I passed on, I'd also want them to make the arrangements and be there for my kids who they love very much. These seem like less than optimal times for you all to have to be together without much practice.

In this particular culture, this relationship is unusual. Other cultures have no trouble with it. Is this patriarchal society's view the only acceptable way to live?

If love is some finite entity, why do we have more than one child. When you have a second child, does the love of the first get cut in half to make way for the second? No. Love is not a finite resource. Just because most people in this society choose to only be in one loving, intimate adult realtionship at a time does not mean that this three person relationship is impossible, or immoral, or unnatural. In fact statistics prove that between divorces, re-marraiges, affairs, and non-marital relationships, there are very few that fit the "one mate for life" rule. We have always been honest with each other about our feelings and actions. There was NEVER any sneaking around. I realize that this type of honesty is rare.

I would like to be involved with this family but I feel now like I'm in an you or them situation. Eduardo and Em have said to not be concerned with how they'd feel if I decided to go to a family gathering without them. Neither one of them is exactly looking forward to being put in this particular situation. They both encourage me to do what I want without any guilt trips. They love me and want me to do what makes me happy or seems important. So the decisions I make about family gatherings are mine alone. On the other hand, if they were invited, they would come if I told them it was important to me. The would suck it up and venture into this uncomfortable place. That's how much they love me.

I'd like you to seriously think how any of you would feel if you were invited to a gathering but were told to come without your spouse. My situation might be slightly different but the feelings would be very similar. Really think about this. I can't imagine that you'd happily show up alone and not feel some resentment.

You are letting some moralistic rules on relationships keep you from knowing some really great people, not to mention seeing me with the people I love and who are part of the reason that this particular time of my life is the most amazing, joyful and fufilling I've ever experienced. I'm growing in ways that are really hard to imagine. I know and love myself more than ever. Words can not describe how great my life is now. I'm humbled and grateful.

I'm asking you to think about this and try to work through it or at least be willing to put up with some uncomfortable feelings for the sake of allowing me to continue to grow in my relationship with my birth family. I guess we could have our own get together and invite you all to come down here. I did that on Mother's Day when I realized that we weren't leaving for our trip that day. J had already arranged a brunch, so I have no idea if you all would have come or not. We had a really great day!

I was telling the kids, when people tell you things you have three choices: accept what they have to say, reject it, or consider if any part of it could be useful to you. I've got the smallest bit of hope that you at least consider what I'm relating to you all. I also know that I have no control over what anyone else does. This is out of my hands. All I can do is pray that it works out the way it's supposed to. I have no expectations that this letter will make any difference whatsoever. I just needed to share this with you.

I still love you all,

Anabel

Boot Camp

Last week, I started going to this Boot Camp for women. I'm going three mornings a week and getting bossed around. I'm enjoying it very much.

The thing about running a martial arts school is that, yes, I get paid for giving people a good work out and yes, I can work out myself, but this also means I can choose to mostly boss people around or to only do part of the work out then move around and help my students with technique or give them some motivation etc.

At the Boot Camp, I'm only in charge of how much I want to push myself but the actual activity is up to Shannon and Caroline. My ego and my desire for a good workout leads me to push pretty hard; to disregard it when my body says "Hey, this is starting to hurt a bit." My brain says "What are you, some sort of wimp? Forget it and get your ass in gear."

Although the second day I made the mistake of bringing 10 lb. hand weights that were too heavy for the workout that day and I had to admit to Shannon that I couldn't complete my third round of a certain drill. She said that she, herself, doesn't bring more than 5 lb weights because of the number of repetitions that are done.

OK, I learned my lesson. I brought 5 lb. weights this morning. That was plenty. My muscles feel pretty fatigued. They both gave a talk about body type that was very refreshing to hear. They said not to compare yourself to anyone else, especially people in "those" magazines. Also not to compare yourself to how you looked before today such as before you had kids, or when you were in college. They said just realize that we're all doing really great things for ourselves by coming to camp and exercising. Besides that, we just need to eat as healthy as possible.

I'm just hoping to get stronger and increase my cardio conditioning. It sure feels like I'm in the right place. I'm also stealing some of their drills for my karate students and may look into doing this sort of thing myself with a self-defense slant to it.

Shannon and Caroline are a couple and I appreciate the fact that even though they are talking to a group of women, they will say things like "You can tell your husbands or wives that...." When I get the chance I'm going to tell them that I have both!

Out on the Blanket

Hey All,

Sorry it's been so long sonce I posted. So I go off on this adventure, asking for you to send some good thoughts my way, then I don't let ya'll know how it went. I guess it's taken me awhile to process even a portion of what happened out there.

In some traditions this time is called a "Vision Quest" or "Crying for a Vision." Our people just refer to it as "fasting" or "going out on the blanket." Some feel that the first two terms are so grandiose that if some phenomenal, other-worldly experience doesn't take place, you might think that you failed somehow.

Usually you go out for a four day period and pray and meditate without food or water. It's hard for us modern natives to get that much time so many elders allow for two periods of two day fasts. That's what I did. (At least the first two days)

I expected to get really hungry and thirsty but that was not the case. I attribute much of this to the huge amount of support that I had. People were praying for me. They were drinking sips of water or taking bites of food and letting spirit know that it was for me. I had an interesting experience with this part in that one day, I was sound asleep in my tent but was awoken when a large amount of moisture was suddenly in my mouth. I wondered if many people has inadvertently chosen that moment to take a sip for me.

You are supposed to stay awake at night outside your tent and then sleep inside during the day. This was hard! I kept starting to doze off. It got very cold so I grabbed my sleeping bag out of the tent and once snuggly inside it I laid back to watch the stars and pray. The next thing I knew it was probably an hour or two later. This happened both nights. I thought that since I had slept a lot the second day that I'd be able to stay awake better. Oh well, I was trying!

This whole thing was an incredible experience. Much of what happened has had huge repercussions in my life. It has changed me in ways that I only feel from a place that is not connected to my brain. It's hard to be very specific with this stuff and much of it is very personal.

I can tell you that the Earth is alive in ways that many people don't realize and that she wants a relationship with us. I was gifted with a song while thinking about my grandfather's grandmother, who was a Cherokee midwife. I had someone at the gathering help me translate it into Cherokee and I am waiting for the tune to be revealed. It will be sung in Sweat Lodge and it is about birth; physical, spiritual, emotional, and also about the re-birth that happens in lodge. When it seems right, I will share the song here.

Spirit is alive and well and has a sence of humor. I experienced a lot those two days in the Sierra's as well as the rest of the week at the gathering. I look forward to completing my four day commitment.

Thanks to everyone for the support. It was felt and greatly appreciated.