Tag: reconnect

All of my Children are HERE!

I am very happy to write that Emily is currently upstairs sleeping in her bed, in fact all four of my children and sleeping soundly under my roof for the first time in several weeks.  It has been one heck of an emotional day that started at 6:30am this morning with tears running down my face as I listened to a very powerful song from Simple Plan called This Song Saved My Life.  I instantly started to think of Emily and how much I missed her..

The first stanza is as follows…

I wanna start letting you know this
Because of you my life has a purpose
You helped me be who I am today
I see myself in every word you say
Sometimes it feels like nobody gets me
Trapped in a world where everyone hates me
There’s so much that I’m going through
I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you
I was broken
I was choking
I was lost
This song saved my life
I was bleeding
Stopped believing
Could have died
This song saved my life
I was down
I was drowning
But it came on just in time
This song saved my life

 

When I picked up Emily today we had a long talk about the last few weeks, I (as nicely as I could without turning it into a lecture) about the expectations of coming home and what I expected of her in terms of behaviour and life goals moving forward.  I will get to those in a second.  I was as open and honest with her, which isn’t easy for me as I have been here with this blog.

 

I told Emily that she was my catalyst for change.  She was the reason that I wanted to change my life, to get better, to be a better father and dad.  Through her actions, and at times her words she was screaming out loud for a Dad that would be there for her.  I had spent too many years wrapped up in my own world, focusing on career and personal gains, wrapped up in addiction to both drugs and stupid iPad games.

 

July 2005 018.jpgWhen in front of me the whole time was this little girl, slowly growing up in front of me and I was too wrapped up in my own shit that I couldn’t see it.  Emily inspired me to make change in my life, to get better not only for her but for me as well.  I have really enjoyed reading about other people’s rise out of the darkness, we all share similar stories of overcoming the darkness in our lives.  The issues may be different, but we all share something in common, that there is something that triggers the change.

To me this was a father bearing his soul to his daughter.  I wanted her to know the power that a child can have.  Any person can have to inspire another to be better than the sum of their parts.  I hope to do that for others one day.

I wanted Emily to have a clear understanding of that, and what I expected from her coming home.  I explained to her that we are in this together, and that running away is just running away from your problems, and that I would always be here for her, that she wasn’t alone, and help comes when you least expect it.  It sure did for me.  In many different ways and many different forms, in places that I never expected as soon as I opened myself up to it.

I would love your thoughts in the 11 House Rules if you will for Emily, Megan, Jennifer, Austin and myself to follow moving forward.  In no particular order…

  1. Have a simple schedule in the morning, getting up with enough time to do what you need to get ready for school, including having breakfast.
  2. Get a minimum of  hours of sleep at night to get the proper amount of rest, phone turned off and put away at least 1/2 hour before bed.
  3. Go to school.  Complete projects and assignments on time.
  4. No drugs or alcohol period.  I’ve done too much research on the damaging effects on a developing brain.
  5. Don’t take things that don’t belong to you, respect others property.
  6. Weekly chore list, including bedroom tidy and laundry done before going back to mom’s house.
  7. We will talk out our problems, anger hostility and disrespect don’t have a place in our life anymore.  Be honest with yourself and others.
  8. Ask for help when you needed.  Don’t be afraid, ashamed or embarrassed to need it.  I was and resisted for too long, we all need help from time to time.  You don’t have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.
  9. Eat dinner and help clean up afterwards.  Your body needs fuel and if you’re not hungry you most likely filled up on junk before dinner.
  10. Exercise, very important for long-term feelings of wellness.  Something as simple as going for a walk will do the trick.
  11. Be happy, enjoy life.

That’s my list.  I also mentioned that I was not going to force family time upon her, and that she was free to choose to do what she wanted as long as the above guidelines were being followed.  I did suggest that spending time with her brother and sisters playing would take her mind off any stress or anxiety in her life.  I know I do…

I ended our conversation asking her what she needed or wanted from me, mentioning that I didn’t need an answer right away and wanted her to think about it.  Tomorrow we will talk about consequences as opposed to punishments.  Everyday moving forward I hope to learn more and more about being an effective, loving and awesome Dad.

Emily Just Asked to Come Home

Emily turned 16 on November 15th and told me the next day that she was moving out and didn’t come home after school.  She spent the next two weeks at a couple of friends houses and she had very little contact with her mother and sister, and even less with me.  Just over two weeks had gone by and in that time I have done a tremendous amount of research on parenting, mental health, the effects of drugs and alcohol on the teen-aged body and a host of reading on legal issues with regards to a 16 year old leaving, rights, financial responsibilities etc…

It has been a very tough few weeks.

I could see the effects on her mother, she was crushed.  I have full time custody of my girls but Mom has remained close and talks to them everyday.  This experience has drawn us closer together in terms of a united parenting team even though our marriage ended many years ago.  And seeing first hand the effects on her younger sister Megan as she has been struggling to understand why her sister left in the first place.  Megan asked to come home from school early this past Friday as she had been sitting in the bathroom crying.  Both are beautiful young ladies, raised in similar environments but have turned out completely differently.

I’ve written a few blogs posts so far about the experiences I have had over the last few years that have led me on a path of self discovery, and also recently realized that the mental seeds to this journey were planted before I even realized it.  In the post, A Letter to Emily I actually foreshadowed what exactly happened a year and bit later when I stepped back from work to re-establish my relationship with her.

The other post of note, The Power of the Nothing I knew I needed to fix me and the way I reacted to and dealt with any and all issues that life would throw my way.  Emily leaving derailed all the progress I’ve made at the gym in the last month, the nothing had me!  It’s been an amazing journey so far, but I am just getting started as I have so much that I want to write about and share with whomever is interested.

I had hoped and prayed that Emily, when she was ready would want to come home and as hard as it was to watch her walk away, I gave her the time and the space she needed to come to that decision on her own.  There were perhaps some legal way to force her home, and force her to get the help she needed, but I feared it wouldn’t last and would only cause further distance between us.IMG_3148.png

So as hard as it was, I patiently waited…

This morning I received this text message from her, and instantly started to cry.  It wasn’t the first time that I cried today.  That happened this morning around 6:30am when I was down in my basement hitting my heavy bag, and dancing around like no one was watching.  A song came on and within seconds I started to cry…

This Song Saved My Life by Simple Plan.

I was dancing around with tears streaming down my face and in truth I’ve never felt more alive.  I missed my Emily terribly but connected with the lyrics in a very powerful way.  Emily was the main motivating factor for me to change my life, she doesn’t know it yet but she saved me.  She really did, you only ever will have one first child and I could see my beautiful baby girl slipping away from me right before my very eyes.

The life choices that I had made, and the things (at the time) that I thought were important to me were the very thing(s) that were pushing her away.  The older she got the faster the divide started to grow, and she was already gone long before I realized that she was gone.  Her leaving the house forced me into old habits and inaction and I started second guessing all my reasons for wanting change.  This kind of thinking in the past has led to long term disastrous result for me, and thankfully a lot of the things I have learned recently kicked in and I was able to get back on track.

No the pain of Emily never went away or lessen in intensity, but I was able to live with it. 

I have so much to live for, three other amazing children who were getting the short end of the stick as their fun loving father has been emotionally crippled and they deserved so much better.  Pain, emotional turmoil and other negatives emotions will always enter our lives, it is how we deal with it determines our strength of character.

IMG_3151.pngI will have setbacks along the way, hopefully minor in nature but I continue to move forward to grow as a father and a man.  To gain a better understanding of how to unconditionally love everyone in this world, to grow spiritually and emotionally and intellectually.  To show my children to do the same.

Emily comes home tonight, I am a little nervous but I am ready to talk about her experience, and to let her know what my expectations are, I need to be to her parent and her friend.

Ready to love her unconditionally, to parent her to the best of my ability, to get her any and all the help that she wants or needs.

To rebuild our relationship and revel in the love between a father and his daughter, the road may be hard and bumpy at times but I know now that I have the strength to stay the course.