Hi Tommy

I managed to find blue stuff online! Thanks for your help.

I’m glad that your friend’s relationship improved after having children. I think it is a make or break kind of situation. It can either end the relationship or bring people closer together. I feel fortunate to fall into the latter. I’m not going to lie, it was a hard pregnancy and difficult on the relationship having a newborn at first. But we worked through it and communicated a lot. Perhaps more so than ever before. I think my husband was surprised that I forgave him for some things that were said. And surprised that I took ownership of my own behaviour. And it was good to put our egos aside for something more important than ourselves.

I think that men and women have different experiences and are raised to act and think in specific ways. I appreciate the male perspective even if it doesn’t make sense initially. It is a chance to learn more about someone else’s experience. And every experience adds to the whole which forms the truth. To deny the truth is an exercise in futility.

It is not so nice to be called crazy. To be fair, being crazy is not always a bad thing. My husband is crazy and it is something that I have always loved about him. He is crazy kind to the point where he doesn’t think about his own needs or even try to protect himself.

I think that you might fall into this good kind of crazy category. You certainly do seem crazy kind to me! Perhaps your wife is exercerbated by it sometimes and loves that about you at other times? I think it is a good thing to be married to someone who is different from ourselves. I feel like we all learn from each other.

Bless your soul! That tells me you are a busy man  who enjoys to rest. I think that you deserve to rest. I know that I am guilty of asking my husband to do things too. There is a never-ending to do list that only grows.

I totally agree about learning from life. The lessons aren’t always easy and don’t always come immediately, but they always do in the end.

Nothing about you says awful person to me. I’m afraid that I can’t agree with you there 😊 It is hard to stop blaming oneself. Something that I am working on too. I don’t have any answers. I suspect that it is both a good thing and a bad thing. Well done on working on that and trying to find a balance.

I have been thinking about the cycle of life too. When I was a child it seemed to me that time moved so slowly. I barely had the patience to sit for 5 minutes. Now, raising my son the time passes so quickly. I suspect the years will pass in the blink of an eye. It was my birthday recently and I compared my age to my son’s and I realized that we are not alive for long at all. It would be impossible to attain buddhahood in only one lifetime! It also occurred to me how quickly the world changes.

I don’t know if all will be lost. Some people look to leaving a legacy behind. But I believe that we already have one. We all rub off on each other, passing along beliefs, ideas, emotions, memories and even personality traits. Perhaps the scary thing is losing our sense of self?

Looking at my son, my husband sees ourselves, his sister, brother and his deceased father in him. Looking at me he says good lord he married his brother. 😂

Long after we have passed there will be pieces of us passed down. Memories of love, skills taught. It is easy to not notice what you have given to the world and hard to recognize it.

Dementia is a difficult disease. You are a brave man to face that after seeing it. My husband also has it in his family. He asked me if I would leave him if it happened like with his father. I hope that neither of you get it because you are good people who do not deserve to suffer like that. Perhaps a foolish hope, but the world has a habit of surprising us. It is just as likely perhaps that something unexpected might happen?

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏

Hi Tommy

Thank you 😊 It is definitely a happy thing to have a son. Unexpected and fraught with challenges, but happy nonetheless. You are right about all of the changes that parenting brings.

I think that you said it all with your stories of holding your daughter when you fell and that you moved states for her even when it made your own situation more difficult. As a parent you do things for your children to protect them and it feels like they are more important than ourselves. And they are lemmings, happy to get into everything and anything with no regard for their own safety!

I know I thought well I don’t matter anymore, as long as he is happy that is the most important thing.

I hope that in the long run he may help me to improve my health. I plateaued, because it meant enduring a higher level of pain. He is a very good reason to endure pain.

I’m sorry to hear that you have had chronic back pain since your 40s and a painful injury in your hand. That fall you described was intense. I’m glad that you’ve found ways to manage your pain over the years.

Children are brutal when it comes to bad posture.

Congratulations on your retirement! Do you have any plans for it? It is lucky that your wife is a gardener and grows vegetables. There is nothing better than home grown! You cannot find that kind of quality in a store.

That is very kind of you to say! You are an inspiration to me too! 😊 It’s wonderful to have a male perspective around here. I’m sure that I will learn a lot from you. It will make my husband happy for me to learn more about the male perspective.

I don’t mind hard stuff. I think that I have been through a lot in my life so my scale of what is hard is a bit wonky. 😂

It can be hard sometimes when people don’t want to discuss problems?

I think having a child has helped my husband and I to become more of a team. We are both headstrong and stubborn so our personalities would clash. But we know that we can’t raise a child like that. It has softened us or at least made us a bit more patient. Perhaps both?

If you ever want to talk about anything at all, my door is open. I really enjoy our conversations. You may have been selling yourself short and not giving yourself enough credit earlier. It’s lovely to see this side of you. You made me smile today, so thank you for that! 😊

Love and best wishes to you and your family! ❤️🙏

I read about an exercise that is helpful for people with anxiety. Every day the idea is to pick something that happened that made them feel anxious. The idea is to practice reframing the experience into a positive or a neutral one.

It sounds like a great idea to me.

I’ll go for the difficulties with bottle feeding. On the plus side, my son feels comfortable expressing himself around me and he knows what he wants. And whilst he is still getting used to things at least he is eating something. There is a false focus to get to the end goal. As if it is the outcome that is the important part. But the important part is every day. Just consistently doing the best you can.