Kids and Crocs

Summer means backyard barbecues, swimming pools, ice cream, and Crocs

By: Howard Ludwig, TheFatherLife.com

Many of the kids in my neighborhood wear uniforms to school. During the summer, they wear a uniform of a different sort – shorts, T-shirts and Crocs.

Crocs are flexible foam shoes often sold in bright colors. The plastic clogs are riddled with air holes. Wearers praise these quirky kicks for their comfort and convenience. Crocs slip on and off quickly, clean up easily and don’t absorb foot odor.

Another equally vocal contingent despises the shoes for their fashion. A Facebook group called, “I don’t care how comfortable Crocs are, you look like a dumbass” has 1.5 million members. “They are the most visually insulting footwear of all time,” writes one Facebook fan. Read more

Do You Keep Secrets From Your Spouse? – Blended Family Differences?

A Dad’s Point-of-View

By Bruce Sallan

Is it ever okay to keep a secret from your spouse? If so, what secrets are okay and which are not? I would suggest there are times where a so-called “white lie” is a good thing while most of the time honesty is truly the best policy. Read more

My Son the Rock Star–Teens Dealing With Their Angst

A Dad’s Point-of-View

By Bruce Sallan

Teen energy, angst, and anger manifest itself in so many ways. Every day it seems that we read about some teen that has done something unusually self-destructive, and occasionally destructive to others.

Columbine was an extreme example of this. Many so-called “normal” teens tend to use or abuse the ol’ standbys of drinking, drugs, and sex to handle these emotions and changes.

For my own 16-year-old, his reaction has been mostly anger. The irony is that I’ve found this to be both good and bad.

How hormones affect the average teen have been studied and documented, but no one really knows definitively their effect since each teen reacts in different ways. The same is true for most women’s experience with menopause, as my wife has suffered horribly while for her mother it was a blip on the screen of her mid-life.

Will has done a little of the aforementioned “standbys” stated above, to some degree. But he’s done nothing extraordinary, over-the-top, or that different from all teens with the possible exception of his recent angry moods.

When I say moods, I mean moods. Let’s try a few descriptive words: sullen, quiet, loud, belligerent, intransigent, stubborn, willful, explosive. His impulsive behavior got him in a mess of trouble when he posted a mean-spirited comment on Facebook. The backlash, as it instantaneously circulated among all his friends and peers, was stunning. It nearly de-railed Will’s wonderful eight-month relationship with his girlfriend, as all her friends got involved, taking sides, and giving his minor comment a true life of its own.

At first, Will just got angrier and angrier before we really talked it out and I got him to post an apology. Sadly, the others that were now involved wouldn’t let it go, but this isn’t the point of this column.

The point is how do teen boys channel their energy, their out-of-control hormones, and anger? For many, sports are the outlet. Banging each other on the football field till exhaustion probably can moderate any teen’s angry mood.

Will never cared for sports, but he did like and then love rock ‘n’ roll. It began with his getting an inexpensive electric guitar as a graduation present from Elementary School. He evolved into an accomplished musician, as he now plays guitar, bass, and drums, and he sings. Along the way, I supported him by taking him to concerts by legendary performers like Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton as well as some of his contemporary bands such as Green Day, Incubus, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name just a few.

Joining a local School-of-Rock type of school where kids get put into bands and perform at local venues, gave him his first taste of performing. In his tween years, at which time he just played guitar, he developed a charismatic presence on stage. Or, as I tend to believe, it just came natural to him.

But, with the onset of puberty and all its attendant hormonal changes, this outlet proved even more vital and cathartic for him. Less than a year ago, he took up the drums. We jokingly say that the video game “Rock Band” taught him the basics, as he almost instantly was a pro. This proved to be the ultimate release for his pent-up anger and emotion, as he’d go and bang on the drums until there was a puddle of sweat accumulated on the garage floor.

His first performance on the drums coincided with his 15th birthday. He had been playing for maybe four months. Now, the inherent charisma he’d shown playing guitar, turned into something deeper and more intoxicating. At this show, the energy and magnetism he displayed clearly took the center of attention completely away from the singer, in this case a teen girl.

Undeterred, she responded with amazing calm and, cool as can be, integrated Will’s energy into her performance. Rather than fight what he was bringing, she interacted with him in an unrehearsed manner as she’d jump on the drums platform and sing to him. Yes, they had rehearsed, but Will doesn’t come out and show his stuff until he’s on stage, so she had no idea of what was to come.

That show was terrific and an eye-opener. He’s now grown into a wildly exciting drummer, guitarist, and more recently a singer. Suffering from a cold and recovering from a broken arm, he did vocals in a Rage Against The Machine tribute concert. In his 10-minute exhibition, he left the audience and himself exhausted from the power of his vocals and showmanship. In fact, halfway through it, during an instrumental interlude, he sat on his haunches and just tried to recover his breath.

This story is really not about my son, but rather about the need for our teen boys, and maybe our girls too, to have that outlet–that passion that will keep their wild puberty in check. Our job as parents is to help our children find their passion and nurture it as best as we can. In my case, I just need earplugs.

Postscript: My son, through his own initiative, made his rock ‘n’ roll dream come true when he got to jam, on stage, with Chris Cornell at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood May 3, 2010 (to read about it, go to: http://bit.ly/RnRonWS).

Please listen to “The Bruce Sallan Show – A Dad’s Point-of-View” Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m., PST on KZSB AM1290 in Santa Barbara or on the Internet via a live stream. For that link and all information about the show and Bruce, visit his web-site: http://brucesallan.com. Bruce’s column, “A Dad’s Point-of-View,” is available in over 75 newspapers and web-sites worldwide. Find Bruce on Facebook by joining his “A Dad’s Point-of-View” fan page: http://www.facebook.com/aDadsPointOfView. You can also follow Bruce at Twitter: http://twitter.com/BruceSallan.

Good Men Step In To Become Dads

By  Peter Ehrlich
Special to Single Dad Life

My single mother collected bottles on Miami Beach for money. I know because she told me.

I was on Google Earth recently to learn more about that “beach-bottle” time. I had a frayed document with the Miami address. After I punched it in, I was beamed down to float right above our Miami apartment.

I hovered over the laneway that my mother had to have walked down to find her bottles. I stared at a great swath of sand at the end of the laneway, sharing the pain, shame and poverty that my mother must have felt. Read more

Single Parent Genie Gives You Three Lovers

By Peter Ehrlich

Have you brought home two or three love interests to seriously meet and hang out with your child?

If “yes,” read on, because your child’s developmental well-being will likely start to be compromised after they meet your next.

A study out of Johns Hopkins University has shown “that a child who had experienced more than three transitions had more behavioural problems than those who had no transitions.”

The research, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was published in the April 2007 issue of American Sociological Review and was peer-reviewed. In it, 2,097 children ages 5 to 14 had been studied since birth until 2000.

Behavioural problems mean delinquent behaviour, including skipping school, vandalism and crime.

The authors also observed that “children who experienced multiple transitions in family structure have lower average scores on tests of mathematics and reading skills.”

That’s a heavy price for children to pay for their parent’s libido.

Think of the transitions our children have gone through just to get to today. First, your children (hopefully) got to experience the “happy family period.” Then they perceived that their parents were falling out of love. That hurt.

Then they couldn’t understand why their parents were less patient with them. Finally, “why is Daddy (or Mommy) moving away?”

Many times I have encouraged you (and myself) to go out and meet someone. But life’s passion-swords are double-edged; its orgasms, sexual or not, carry a price.

The price of multiple transitions is heavy – a dysfunctional child who will become a dysfunctional adult, marooned on an island surrounded by stable people.

Most single parents know it’s unhealthy for children to have unnecessary transitions, but not all.

There are still stories of parents bringing their kids on first dates. Unforgiveable. That’s extreme, but over the course of a dozen years, it’s easy to meet three people who will affect your children.

Life is fragile.

It doesn’t take much to upset the balance – a wrong word, moment of infidelity or violence. We can easily create a situation that will result in a “forever haunting.”

When we choose to bring a new person into the lives of our children, we risk the tipping of that delicate balance our children desperately need – defined by consistency and peace.

Why do children hide behind your legs when strangers approach? It’s because they’re children and strangers are strange by definition.

To go from hiding behind your leg, to meeting your new friend, to feeling comfortable, reveling in the company of, to never seeing again is an arduous journey and children rely on us to take them there with discretion.

When “we” break up with someone, “they” break up with someone. That combined with the back and forth, the lugging of their “stuff” is a helluva lot to ask.

The single parent genie grants us three (transitional) wishes. After that, we bite the bullet and revel in our celibacy until our children can create their own transitions.

Then we’re free to make all the mistakes we still need to make on our karmic wheel.

Feel free to contact Peter at peter@geronimocode.com

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

By Peter Ehrlich

I remember the first time I heard Neil Young sing Only Love Can Break Your Heart, I was in my early twenties. And I remember what I thought about the song. “Nice little jingle, but I should get back to Keith Richards banging out his signature dirty riffs to All Down the Line.

At that time I really never experienced the broken heart thing. Sure I had my breakups with my “girlfriends”, but being so young, I easily subscribed to the Buddhist notion that attachment is the cause of all unhappiness.

I suppose that when you’re so young that you can’t even begin to get a whiff of your own mortality, how much can a break-up mean? After all, you’re going to live forever.

That’s changed, because to quote Frank, “and now the end is near”. Well, the end isn’t exactly near, but it is.

I had my heart broken recently. You all know that. I told you about my animated discussions with my carpet mites, face flat against the floor. I did however leave out other details pertaining to that episode.

• When I did the laundry, after I put the clothes in, I would stare through the plastic top and watch the water rain down, the tub fill up. I found it comforting oddly enough.

• When I took the lint out of the dryer, I held it tightly for a moment before I trashed it. I found it comforting oddly enough.

• The other day I sat in a chair for half an hour and watched a spider crawl up the wall, wishing I could have such a simple life, the same feeling I get when I watch a cat, Zen masters unto themselves, do nothing, which is 99% of the time.

• When I went out, I purposely put on my heavy leather duster coat, just to feel its heavy weight on my shoulders, much the way Robert DeNiro lugged his net of metal objects up the mountain in the movie The Mission, as a way of atoning for the sin of killing his brother.

Breakups are all about penance and redemption, unless you’re the kind of asshole who believes it’s always the other person’s fault.

But I digress. Now I listen to Only Love Can Break Your Heart and understand exactly what that means.

Can the death of a loved one break your heart? No, I don’t think so. It can certainly kill part of you off, in that you’re changed forever by the loss, but it doesn’t break your heart.

(I remember when my mother died, I was seventeen, and I spent hours at a time listening to John Lennon sing “nothing’s gonna change my world”. (Across the Universe) And I knew exactly why I listened to that song, that many times, at that time; Twas because I knew that part of me died alongside my mother and that nothing was going to change that for the rest of my life. Part of my heart died on the day she died, but it didn’t break it.)

Now, let’s go on to the next part of the song, the line that comes after “only love can break your heart”. Here’s the crux of the song, the main theme, the big lesson for all of us, but the hardest lesson of them all; “try to be sure right from the start”.

This is where most of us screw up, because you know what I say. If you mix your genitalia together four times, you’re in a relationship my friend.

And you know what being in a relationship means my friend, it means this: “I am giving you permission to hurt me”. Or put another way, I am giving you permission to break my heart.

How hard is it to apply the lesson – try to be sure right from the start? It’s bloody difficult. It goes against all our primordial selves are programmed to do, have sex and go to heaven.

I’ve never seen heaven. I’ve only felt it.

You’re in your late thirties, or forties or fifties and you haven’t had a hand caress you in months or years. And someone walks through your door who looks just fabulous to you. They look great, smell great and the date(s) was/were great.

And yet, through all that greatness you know it likely can’t work and your gut is telling you why and you know your gut is right, as always. But instead of listening to the little man or women inside of us, what do we do? We turn them off, shut them down and proceed down the shadow of the valley of heartbreak death, all for the sake of serving our short-term needs.

Ok, now would you like to ask me how to walk away from temptations of the flesh in order to spare ourselves of a painful, “watch the spider” heartbreak?

I have no idea! Well, I do, as this column proves, but I’m way too pathetic. I think it’s my Venus in Scorpio thing that undermines all that I do.

I bumped into a stunningly beautiful, brilliant Greek Goddess recently who knew exactly what to do, how to put credence into the “try to be sure right from the start” thing. She left.

After a wonderful night of talking, eating, slow dancing to Frank Sinatra, she got up and left with these words: “I want to sleep with you but I don’t think it can work. You’ll never move to Burlington and I’ll never move to Toronto”.

Is a man even capable of saying “I want to sleep with you but it can’t work”?

I know we can say no, but I’m not sure we’re evolved enough to say why.

As she walked out the door, Frank was singing “Five minutes more”, which ends with him saying these words – “oh come on” with a sigh, which was exactly what I was saying – oh c’mon Angela, with a heavier sigh.

That’s as intelligent as I got. “Oh, come on Angela”. I think my IQ at that moment was 46.

But Angela was a woman who had learned her lessons. What was the point of starting anything if you know it’s only going to break your heart? I had to give her full credit.

And so, when you’re heading out for date four, knowing there’s a 100% chance you’re going to have sex for the fourth time, with someone you know it can’t work with, go to YouTube, find Neil Young’s Only Love Can Break Your Heart, then politely cancel and take a cold shower.

Yeah, right!

If you’d like to contact Peter,feel free to write him at peter@geronimocode.com

Haunted by ExSex

By Peter Ehrlich

I’m haunted by my Ex Katherine. Not by that went wrong with our relationship, but what went right with our relationship – our love life.

After being laid naked, fetal-positioned, paralyzed, and wanting by our breakup, I want to attempt a sequel with my Ex. I am willing to work harder on our vertical life together for the sake of getting back to our spectacular horizontal life together. How much harder? I am willing to change.

But am I being naïve? Or is a fulfilling love life worth fighting extra hard for? Should I be happy with what I had, count my blessings and move on?

Katherine and I were two completely different people with two completely different sets of values. Katherine was whimsical, perky and light-hearted defined by a Martha Stuart palette of powder blues, pinks and floral arrangements.

Until Katherine came along, I didn’t know what the word whimsical meant. The word came up when she tried to tell me what kind of stuff she liked in her home. I actually had to ask her to explain the word whimsical to me.

Once I understood its meaning, I knew that I was the Anti-Christ of whimsical. I gravitate towards mute colours and images that were popular in the Middle Ages –gentle brown tones of mud mixed in with a dollop of existential or “*Eeyorian” angst. (*Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh)

I am more “whimsi-bleak” or “whimsi- the world is a *charnel house” kind of guy. (*Reference = Samual Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.)

I suppose if I asked Katherine what a charnel house was, she would reply, “Oh goody, I’m in the mood for a barbeque.”

Her Hugh Grant, Sandra Bullock-type film choices represented somewhat of a counterpoint to my Stalingrad, The Wehrmacht in Russia, Sin City or Gladiator preferences.

And finally, she loved her two cats the way I love my son, but my attitude towards pets (or people) is; if you can’t flush the toilet, get the hell out!

And so, you would think that breaking up with this woman would be a simple matter. Once broken up, I wouldn’t have to worry about my testicles being slashed by her jealous cats and I could watch whatever movie I wanted in my brown living room.

But it hasn’t been a simple matter. In fact, it’s been living hell. Sometimes I lay on the floor, unable to focus on much. Well, I can do this; Face flattened on the floor, I try to differentiate between the carpet fibres and carpet mites.

Why so f***ed up? My Ex and I may not have been soul mates (whatever the hell that is) but we sure as hell were once-in-a-lifetime sexmates.

Together Katherine and I had a wonderful, unabashed, deeply connected love life that was framed by a natural and mutual caring and trust.

Horizontal we were a match made in heaven and the relationship was effortless. Unfortunately, vertically, we were at odds and the relationship took work. We had a lot of fun together, a lot of laughs, and travelled well together, but our relationship, like many, could only succeed if you “checked in” a lot because we were very different kinds of people, defined by a different set of values.

But I didn’t check in a lot and we dissolved.

Here’s the conundrum. In any relationship, there is always something “qualitative” about the nature of your union. Consequently, there is always room for a sense of doubt. For example, “she does this well, but doesn’t do that well. He makes me happy this way, but not in that way”, etc. etc.

However, when you have a great love life together, that’s not qualitative, it’s absolute! And isn’t absoluteness exactly what we crave in our relationships? Extreme pleasure is absolute and addictive and life seems too short to live without it. Try harder I say.

So here’s the question-how far should we go to try to make a relationship work because you have a great sex life with your partner?

If you’re waiting for me to come up with an answer, forget it.

I haven’t a clue right now. I’m still talking to carpet mites.

How much do I miss sex with the Ex? Let me put it this way; “Katherine darling, it’s done. I’ve piled up all my brown furniture in the backyard together with my testosterone/war-themed DVDs. Got a match?”

Yes, I’m willing to compromise and try to have another go at our relationship, because a day doesn’t pass when I don’t think of my Ex, the road trips, the laughs and of course, our love life.

“Never give up on someone you can’t go a day without thinking about.” I read that from a stranger’s page on Facebook that was devoted to the millions of us suffering from a broken heart.

There’s another reason why I’m thinking of making contact with my Ex again. These words drifted into my head after I made a half-hearted effort to spend time with someone else; “After he kissed someone new, he found himself unintentionally whispering his Ex’s name, out loud, as if he were accepting the moment as a penance for his sins, rather than the celebration of life it was supposed to be.”

Just because I lie on the carpet floor, talk to mites and hear voices in my head doesn’t mean I’m haunted by my Ex does it?

Of course it does.

Feel free to contact Peter at peter@geronimocode.com

to tell him your own haunting story.

Peter Ehrlich’s New Bedtime Fantasy

By Peter Ehrlich
I want to talk about my newest, ongoing, “driving me forward” sexual fantasy. This twisted new fantasy is the new fuel that has launched me to join yet another dating site and contact virtually every single woman between the ages of 42 and 52. I can go to any dating site now and know the bio of most Toronto women right down to their astrological sign. That’s how passionate I feel about doing whatever needs to be done to live my out this perverted dream.

Are you curious to know what the fantasy is?

I thought so, so with no further ado, here it is: A good woman, lying beside me in bed, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up – reading together in silence.

(Ah yes, to be comfortable in your silence together. There is no better barometer for your relationship. The wonderful, kind and insightful Michael Kaufman once told me that – www.michaelkaufman.com.)

Nothing these days is turning me on more than that image. I don’t “take care of myself” to the vision of the image, rather, I may let out a sigh, exhaled under the cool abyss of my blankets. After the sigh, I turn on my side to embrace the only thing I can embrace – my pillow.

Sick eh? I’m a young baby-boomer. My sexual formative years happened during the golden age, a time before HIV, when every girl and they were just girls back then, was on the pill. Evolutionarily speaking, that time came and went in the blink of an eye. But I was in smack in the middle of it, acting out my fantasies like I was a young Caligula, but with a good heart. Back then, my penis made almost all of my life-decisions for me. I’m still playing catch-up.

What happened? I got older. I did. Two of The Beatles have long since passed and there’s no need for another notch on my bed.

A long time ago, I watched lonely, divorced, isolated detective Al Pacino pull up beside a hooker and ask her to get in. She then asked him what he had in mind. “I just want you to sleep with me”, and he handed her one hundred dollars. She was dumbfounded of course, but CUT TO: the hooker awake, spooning Al, who was fast asleep in a fetal position.

I remember what did Commodus told Lucilla in Gladiator when he was watching her son sleep; “He sleeps well, because he knows he is loved”. I never forgot that moment. And so, Al Pacino could finally sleep well. It mattered not that it was a hooker, all women, and I mean all women have a serious nurturing side that begs to be appreciated.

I’m in the mood to sleep well too now. I didn’t care back then. I do now.

My son Noah, nineteen, not only left the nest, but he’s trekking around in Chile and Costa Rica with his girlfriend. The bedroom I built for him stares back to me in mocking silence. His only presence is manifested by the maps of Chile on the wall so I can follow his wanderings from 5,000 miles away.

I never understood why the elderly fed pigeons. I do now.

I never understood the notion that as you got older, “companionship” becomes more important. I do now. It’s the stuff that we who have trod so many miles deserve and require to be happy.

I can go no further with this column without puffing out my chest to remind you, and myself, that when the primal calls for it, this Satyr is still enthusiastic about answering the siren call, to gallop on to fulfill said equestrian duty. But my “performance menu” for an evening’s festivities and frolicking must now include “comfortable in silence” moments and that’s new.

There was a time in my single fatherhood where I could revel in my celibacy. That era is over with now.

Now it’s time to revel and live out my new bedtime fantasy – lying in bed with a “partner”, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up, reading a good book, comfortable in our silence.

I feel so human today.

Feel free to contact  Peter at   peter@geronimocode.com

In Defense of John Edwards

By Peter Ehrlich


For many years I’ve had this fantasy – to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with my teenage son. Climbing this iconic African mountain with Noah would be symbolic in that I would be passing the torch to my son. He would start the climb as a child-man and summit as a man. And as we stood on the top overlooking the Serengeti Plains far away below, we would embrace in loving desperation, the culmination of every mile we ever walked together as father and son. My fantasy mirrored the immeasurable depth of love I have for my boy.

John Edwards lived my dream with his beloved first born son, sixteen year old Wade. They summited Kilimanjaro together. Actually, Wade got there first, while his dad John was vomiting not far behind. I imagine John Edwards was feeling much the way I want to feel when I get to the top with my son-euphoric, a love so strong it could tear his heart away.

John Edwards and son Wade, 15,
at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro
in summer of 1995.

Soon after their climb, Wade Edwards died; on the way to the family beach home when a gust of wind swept his Jeep off the highway. His passenger was unscathed.

Edward’s extensive revelations about Wade during the 2004 presidential race came in his book, “Four Trials,” in which he described the loss as “the undercurrent of my life.” That’s an eloquent way to put it I suppose. Personally, this primitive would simply say, “my son was my whole life and now I don’t care about anything anymore, or whether I live or die now.”

On paper, through the lens of the camera or by the wearing of Wade’s Outward Bound pin, the public message attempted by Edwards after his son’s death was clear; the family will prevail, I will prevail and we will move forward along with America.

But was that too much to hope for? Yes, obviously it was.

I remember reading this 1991 story about a hunter who shot his son by accident. Gene Bulak, 41, and his son Michael, 18, were on the road, riding in their new pickup to a hilly stretch of land fifty miles south of their hometown of Taberg, N.Y. Michael was supposed to be waiting for the deer on the hilltop, but he left his post and his father killed him instantly by shooting him in the head.

Bulak kneeled over his dead son’s body crying, “Mikey, Mikey, my baby.” A moment later, father and son were lying side by side, their faces virtually obliterated by their wounds. Bulak had committed suicide. Loading his son’s shotgun with a spare shell from his jacket pocket, he had knelt down on one knee and placed the barrel under his chin. Bulak was a tractor-trailer driver. He hauled copper wire. And that’s how I suppose most truck drivers would respond if they too killed their first born son.They’d kill themselves.

But John Edwards wasn’t a truck driver. He was a politician, and politicians don’t carry the necessary salt of the earth DNA to be able to commit suicide. But, they can do something else to alleviate the pain they imagined they could conquer for the sake of career. They can commit political suicide. And that’s exactly what Edwards did.

If you’re a parent, on the rare but consistent occasion, you’ve allowed yourself to imagine what you would do if your child died. We delve into this twisted dark fantasy so we may see the light and count our blessings.

What is your image? This is mine. If my son died, I would burn my house down with everything in it. I would rid myself of every possession but the essentials. I would then beg, borrow and steal every cent I could, jump on a steamship and begin walking across the nearest desert, not caring if I lived or died. In order to go forward with my life, I know I would have to try giving up at least once and damn the consequences or whoever got in my way.

Like John Edwards, I wouldn’t have the guts to kill myself. But whether I was conscious of the fact or not, I have no doubt that I would invent my own version of what would be tantamount to creating my own personal scorched earth policy, and destroy something I had built while sharing my life with my son. It seems like the right thing to do, to give something up you once felt you deserved. In Edwards’ case it was his marriage and political career.

After your first born dies, is anything sacred anymore? Ask yourself, if your first born died at the age of sixteen, would you really give a shit about anything anymore? I wouldn’t.

Dear John, yes, what you did was wrong. But I understand. I really do.

You can contact Peter via peter@geronimocode.com

or visit his website www.geronimocode.com

How to reclaim your space after divorce

So your ex has moved out – now what? Our guide to moving your home from “we” to “me”

Article courtesy of  Deborah Moskovitch

* Although written from a woman’s perspective,  this information works for us guys as well. – SDL

It was a dream-like experience. Upon returning from a weekend away with our children, the bedroom closets were empty-my husband, now my ex, had moved out. He took the fabulous living room furniture that we had purchased not that long ago. My world was changing.

The reality was, I wanted to stop thinking about who I had become upon divorce-a single woman-and focus on my surroundings. I wanted my home to change from our home to my home.

I wanted to shape my space to reflect my personality. I wanted to transform it into a space where I would be happy. Slowly, this philosophy would influence the décor throughout my home.

Of course, like most of the things I was dealing with, this was uncharted territory-especially learning to deal with my new budget. The first project I wanted to tackle was my new bedroom. The room which we shared, which was ours, was now mine. As I gloriously celebrated more closet space, I needed to create a room which would provide new memoires of the next chapter of my life. I fantasized about my new seductive boudoir, strewn with rose pedals and candlelight everywhere.

But the truth was, that wasn’t me. Reality set in and I did what I could-cost effectively, changing only my sheets, drapery and mattress. It was a fresh start.

Comfort for the kids as well

I also needed to keep in mind that my children needed continuity. Even if I could afford it (which I couldn’t), I wasn’t going to change everything. After all, what message would that be sending to my children-erasing all memories of their life before the divorce? Letting my personality shine through as best I could, spending as little I could, I would decorate for myself, not anyone else. I bought some new artwork, throw pillows for my family room sofa and a few knick-knacks here and there.

Kimberly Seldon, an internationally recognized designer, suggests: “When you experience a crisis it’s essential to take time to heal before embarking on new projects. I’ve met new clients who immediately want to redesign the whole house. It may feel good to “erase” any trace of him, but you want to make sure you are in a sane and peaceful frame of mind before you start renovating or decorating.”

“You don’t want to make every decision with him in mind. For example, he hated leather so you will “show him” and put leather everywhere. That may not be what you really want. Once you are emotionally ready to heal and move on, then decorating can be an empowering process; reclaiming your own space and your own look.”

Seldon’s top five tips for reclaiming your house after divorce

Seldon offers the following helpful tips to lessen the decorator letdown, and create a space that will become your retreat and your oasis; and a sanctuary away from the hectic life you lead. After all, life post-divorce sometimes seems like huge a balancing act, teetering on the brink between stress and sanity.

Identify priorities. Tackle one small, important space at a time. For instance, if you are going to spend 50% of your time in the kitchen then put your focus (time and money) there. Don’t bother with the living room initially if you don’t think you’ll use it much.

Be yourself. Make sure you are choosing what is authentic for you – not just what he would have hated. You are going to be moving into new territory; a whole new life. You’ll want the new space to reflect the beginning of a new life, not the end of an old one.

Put the war to rest, and be realistic. Put together a floor plan before you hire the movers. It’s too easy during a divorce to fight over pieces of furniture that are really obsolete once you move. Make sure you want or need the items in question before you pay the movers to take them to the new home. If the old pieces of furniture don’t fit, or aren’t right, that will just be one more thing you hate about the divorce.

Be authentic. Seldon comments: “I have a dear friend in LA whose home is very formal, but she’s very casual person. There’s a disconnect when you see her in the space.” Embrace the best parts of yourself and create an environment that celebrates the real you

Let the real you shine through. Seldon learns the most about new friends and clients from the artwork and books they collect. These are the true mirror to the soul. You may not want to invest in a lot of kitsch for your new house, but a funky coffee table book about the subject sends a message about your irreverent side.

Ah, my space, and loving it. Relaxing in the surroundings I call home. I’m doing it in style, my way – and it’s certainly far from perfect. But, that isn’t to say I can’t change my space from “me” to “we” again, but for now, this is what makes me happy.

This article is original content on More.ca provided by author to Single Dad Life

Deborah Moskovitch is a divorce consultant and educator, and author of The Smart Divorce: Proven Strategies and Valuable Advice from 100 Top Divorce Lawyers, Financial Advisers, Counselors and Other Experts. Deborah has become an opinion leader in the media and has shared her insights and research on television and radio to explain that divorce can be managed in smarter ways. To learn more visit TheSmartDivorce.com

Next Page »