This is Number Twenty-One of the Tough Cookie Survival Tips. In this post, I summarize essential takeaways from my childhood and early adulthood to use to keep moving forward. If you read my posts from the beginning to the most recent, you know the circumstances… Read More »How I Earned The Nickname Tough Cookie
Dad’s Secret This is my personal experience of being raised by a father with a high functioning drinking problem. In my post, Supper To Self-Protection, I wrote about my dad always using breath mints and vanishing to the garage for the rest of the evening… Read More »High Functioning Alcoholism
These memories I share today are deeply personal and not meant to dishonor my mother and father. I write about them with the hope of helping anyone who is being abused or someone who is the abuser. This story is about generational trauma and being… Read More »Generational Trauma Entrepreneur
Self-Protection Self-protection and emotional neglect are hard to understand when you are a kid. Deb and I were on our own when it came to doing homework. Sometimes Dad took us to the Bellwood Public Library when we had to do written reports and needed… Read More »Supper To Self-Protection
I remember writing my first rescue story when I was eight. The title was Mr. Skunk Receives a Christmas. It was a tale of hope for those feeling less than and left out. “No one wanted to spend time and have fun with Mr. Skunk.… Read More »Rescue From Less Than
From the womb, until it is time to launch into the great beyond, we all need safe places to escape being emotionally hurt, physically frightened, feeling alone, and endlessly grieving loved ones. Those safety places can be a favorite spot outdoors, a peaceful memory that… Read More »Safe Places
I’m not sure who had more rules-my mom or the Baptists. She had an identical twin sister. My mom was Paulene; her sis was Darlene. Deb and I often called her “Paul.” This was Life According to Paul’s Rules: Remember, we were still kids, not… Read More »Paul’s Rules
My parents met at a bar in Bellwood where my dad worked a second job. He was the bartender. His full-time employment was being a mechanic and the Fleet Superintendent for Goldblatt’s Department Store delivery trucks. Thinking out loud: what do people mostly share after… Read More »The Baptists
I looked up a legal definition of Marital Abandonment. According to Legal Dictionary: 1. The giving up or withdrawal of support from something or someone. 2. The act of leaving or deserting a person or property with no intention of returning. What a sterile, simple… Read More »Blended Abandonment
I grew up in the Midwest near Chicago in a blended family. Each of my parents had been married before to spouses that abandoned them. In my father’s situation, his first wife abandoned their marriage. My mother’s first husband abandoned their marriage and their son.… Read More »Midwestern Backstory