EMILY HAS SOMETHING TO SAY.

This is Emily, or as many of you know, "My dearest Emily." Yes, I'm talking about that stupid Tooth Fairy Letter. I sure have a lot to say about this, so brace yourself and get ready to read it all.

Now, this letter was written to me when I was eleven years old. Eleven!! I wasn't six. I hate to break it to everyone, but, I no longer believed in the Tooth Fairy. I had stopped believing in the Tooth Fairy around age seven, having an older sister, this was reasonable.

When I woke up the morning of the letter arrival, it was taped to our bedroom mirror, a place we were bound to find it. I got out of bed, walked over to the mirror, read the letter, tore it off, and put it on a shelf that was close to my door. I didn't talk to Mom about the letter until I had woken up a little more and had eaten breakfast. I went back into my room and grabbed the letter. Laughing at how incredibly dumb the letter seemed for an eleven year old, I took the letter out into the living room and showed it to Mom.

"Really Mom?" I said, obviously not impressed with the now infamous Tooth Fairy letter.

All she said was, "Gonna clean your room?"

"Maybe," I say, walking into my room, wondering where to start on the disaster we called a bedroom. After many, many hours of cleaning a room, basketball practice, and many other distractions, the room was cleaned. That night, I went to bed, like any normal eleven year old would. The next morning, I did have a dollar under my pillow. We went on with life just like before.

Until, one day, a few months after the disaster bedroom incident, Mom was on her computer and I walked over to her and said in these exact words, "Hey Mom, I know you made that Tooth Fairy Letter famous."

I'm pretty sure she almost fainted. In case anyone is wondering how I know about everything, I will admit, I was a nosy person. Being eleven, I had a fascination with anything and everything Mom was doing on the computer. I would look over her shoulder and on more than one occasion, the Letter would pop up. I would read just enough of it to know what was going on with it, until Mom would go to a different website or tab or whatever. I had known about the letter going viral for probably a month or so. I never did tell anyone though, because that would mean admitting my nosiness.

Mom asked me how much I knew. And I told her. I didn't know very much at the time, just enough to know what was happening. She showed me some of the blogs, posts, comments (rude, funny, nice, everything), and some different websites where the Letter was featured. I read all about it for close to an hour, getting the full story.

And I was shocked. The comments!! "This is emotional violence," "She will need therapy after this," "You are a horrible parent," "You are f***ing up her childhood." Really!?!? In case you guys can't tell, I thought this letter was a dumb, but working, way to get me to clean my room. I didn't need therapy, but I think I should after reading all those comments.

Everyone listen up, the Letter was stupid. It wasn't "emotional violence." It was ridiculous. I thought it was funny, but half the country thinks Mom is evil, abusive, cold, manipulative, lazy, etc. If you ask me, she is definitely the opposite of everything on that list. 

Since the initial blow up of The Tooth Fairy Letter, I've followed along with Mom and have laughed with her at all of the people who think that I am needing therapy now for "such a ruined childhood."

Judging by this blog post, I think I turned out alright. I am not emotionally scarred. I am perfectly happy. 

Thank you for reading!!!

-Emily

What Makes a Hero?

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, I'm sure that you've seen the hoopla created by Caitlyn Jenner's magazine cover. I usually try to avoid commenting on controversial stuff just because I don't like the drama, but there's one aspect of this one that I just can't shove under the rug.

Let me start off by saying this - I fully support Ms. Jenner's right to do whatever she wants with her body. It's her choice. I may not "get" it and I may not understand it, but at the end of the day it's her body.

I fully support equal rights - for everyone.

I don't care what religion anyone is.

I don't care what color anyone is.

It all boils down to this - if you're a good person, you and I will get along just fine. But if you act like a dick, go and do it elsewhere. Period.

I'm also going to say this - my cousin is in the process of transitioning from female to male. So if you're going to bash anyone in the transgender community, you're screwing with my family. Trust me - you do not want to go there.

Now that all of that is out of the way.....

I've seen several memes floating around questioning whether or not Ms. Jenner is a "hero". Generally, it's a picture of her side-by-side with a picture of a war veteran who has obvious injuries.

Is that veteran a hero? Damned right he is - no question about it in my opinion. My father, my brothers, my nephews, and too many of my friends to count have served (or are still serving) in the military and every single one of them is a hero to me.

Does everyone agree with that? No. There are some people who are anti-war or anti-military for various reasons, and they don't believe that these people are heroes. Do I agree with them? No. Do they have the right to believe what they do? Yes.

What about a police officer? A man who had an officer rescue him from an armed robber might consider that officer to be his hero, while a man who was wrongfully arrested for a crime he didn't commit might not think that officers are heroes.

How about a teacher? She might never put herself in physical danger in her classroom, but the little girl who looked up to her and decided to be a teacher herself might consider that woman to be her hero.

What about the neighbor who called 911 when she saw smoke coming from a nearby home? Because of her call, the house was mostly saved from destruction. I wouldn't be surprised if the homeowner referred to her as a "hero" during an interview later that day.

What about the child who was climbing around on his brother's bed and got his leg caught between the mattress and the headboard and had to yell for his mother to come and "rescue" him? What if he brought this piece of artwork home from school a few weeks later and handed it to his mom, proudly saying to her "you're MY hero, Mom"?

Are you going to tell him anything different?

Caitlyn Jenner might not be a hero to everyone. She might not be a hero to the majority of people in the world. But I promise you this - somewhere, there is someone struggling with his/her sexual identity who is looking up to this woman and who is thankful that she has had the courage to take a very private journey and share it with the world. And that someone might just consider her a hero for it.

We don't have the right to tell other people what to do with their bodies.

We don't have the right to tell people that their belief system is wrong.

We don't have the right to dictate who can or can't be a hero to someone else.

What we do have the right to do is simple -

Stop judging. Be nice. 

Seriously. It's that easy.

Keyboard Warriors

So last night, that silly Tooth Fairy letter resurfaced in a really big way. A page on facebook with almost 4 million fans posted it, but of course - without the backstory. Without a link back to my page or my blog. Without my permission.

It happens all the time. All the time. I should be used to it by now, and for the most part I do ignore it. I'll read a few comments, throw the link to my blog up there, and let it go.

This time was different. This time, the comments were mean. Hateful. Judgmental. Way worse than usual. Sure, there were a few positive ones, but they were quickly buried under the ones touting my inept parenting skills.

Of course, since the letter wasn't credited to me, people didn't know who they were insulting. They sat there behind their keyboards, casting stones at someone who wrote a letter to an 11 year old girl as a joke. Even after they read the blog post, they continued.

Emotional violence. She should be ashamed. What a horrible mother. That woman doesn't even deserve to have her kids. She should take parenting classes.

The ones that hurt the most were the ones who insinuated that I was a horrible person for raising my kids in a broken home:

(This thread of comments on the post has since been deleted. I think.)

Broken home. No father figure.

The last thing that I ever wanted was for my family to not be "normal" with a mother and father and kids. I never planned to get divorced, and certainly didn't plan to do it twice. I fought like hell to keep it together, to keep it from being broken, and so I stayed.

But staying wasn't worth it. Staying wasn't safe, for me or for the kids. We had to get out. I had to "break" our home in order to keep them safe. I had to get them away from the violence.

Yes, we lived in an "icky" house for 3 1/2 years. But that icky house meant more to me than just about any other place we've lived. I learned more about myself in that house than ever before.

I know that the hate and the judgment and the Mommy Wars will never stop. As long as there is an internet, there will be keyboard warriors who get their panties in a wad and think that they are better than everyone else and believe that they are entitled to pass judgment on other people without knowing the background. It's never going to stop.

I tell my kids all the time - you can't stop other people from being jerks, but you can certainly control your own reaction to it.

Same thing applies to adults. Don't feed into the anger or the hate or the judgment - it's not worth it.

Sometimes I need to remind myself of the same thing.

Which way do I go?

I could go so many different directions right now. I really could.

I could totally go off about how a certain someone claimed to me that he made all of the necessary arrangements to ensure that his child support payments were being made since he switched jobs - but with one phone call today, I disproved that claim.

I could vent about how I totally rearranged my entire evening (and the contents of the van) so that I could go meet someone to pick up a bookshelf that I was going to buy, but when I got to their house, they weren't home and after I moved the 8000 pound bookshelf across the yard by myself I found out that it wouldn't fit in the van anyway so I had to drag it back across the yard by myself.

I could complain about grocery shopping today, but it really wasn't that bad. After all, I got enough stuff to last us darned close to a month (plus a lot of non-food crap that we needed) for under $300. Not too bad. I should only have to go back to get things like eggs and milk and stuff like that - or at least that's the plan. I did the same thing last month and it actually ended up working out really well.

I'm also glad that I got all of the bills paid today, so that's one job that's out of the way. The girls are signed up for basketball again (yay) so it's just a matter of time until that starts.

There are some really great things going on in my life right now. I mean, really great. I've been able to reconnect with some people from my past. My kids are doing great in school. Things in general are just going well. And for that, I am so very thankful.

And that's why I refuse to allow simple-minded people to bother me. Sure, crap happens that irritates me - that's all a part of life. I might even get downright pissed off at them - but I get over it. And most of the time, I sit back and laugh. I've just gotten to a point in my life where I'm just not going to let them get me down. They can try - they can post snarky comments on here to try to humiliate me. They can try to make me look bad - don't care. They can do anything that they want to do, but they can't get to me.

It has taken me a long time to get to this stage in my life. I used to stress about what people thought about me, but I don't do that anymore. I was always living my life for someone else, and not for the most important person - me. Not anymore. My kids and I come first - no one else. This is my life, and I will live it my way. No one has to agree with my choices - because they are MINE.



Don't like what I have to say? Then don't read it. It's as simple as that.