I meant to post this almost a week ago, but it took me longer to get the holidays sorted out than I thought it would – you can thank my mother and her ever-looming presence for that, as well as my disorganized life which is getting in the way more than I can stand at this point.

At the moment I’m in the midst of re-reading chapter twelve of The Sitting Swing, a fantastic biopic novel by Irene Watson. She talks in the book about her childhood, a very sheltered and even scary time that eventually led to severe problems later in life that landed her on a journey of, what I think can be called, rehabilitation.

I was really drawn to the concept of this novel, having been a child of abuse myself I understand how it can lead to a mess of personality and psychological problems later in life. I wasn’t in the same boat – cut her 5 miles to school in half and place me in Utah and it becomes obvious that my problems were different. My parents weren’t over protective, I wasn’t sheltered – they were hands-on abusive with my stepfather being so violent that he’d happily turn an oak dresser over on a child because they had a messy room, a room which they then had to clean or they weren’t fed ( no bathroom, no water and no sounds of any kind) until it was done.

The author writes at length about everyday worries and the urge for freedom from an oppressive and sheltering family. Stories about feuds with her mother over friends, school and everything in between and her relationship with religion.

Irene recounts the urge to flee, the hanging on for dear life of a single friend (Margie) and the undeserved vilification of that friend, the put downs and beatings. I over identify with so much of it. Of course, unlike Irene’s mother my stepfather wasn’t worried about whether my sister Laota and I were being poisoned against my parents by a friend, they were far more obsessed with whether or not we’d tell the police what was happening. As crazy as it sounds, we were always too afraid to. Looking back on it, now, I wish we had. I didn’t understand at the time that it couldn’t get worse by involving child welfare.

In The Sitting Swing, Irene also talks about her inspiring road to recovery and the somewhat normal life and easier relationships that people like us strive for.

Throughout the story you come to empathize with Irene. It’s so well and simply written, the story is so easy to immerse yourself in. Her story is very inspiring, I hope you check it out – I can’t recommend this book enough!

Tagged with: Author • Child Abuse • Children • Irene Watson • Recovery • The Sitting Swing

Posted by Faith on at 6:55 am

With my busy schedule it’s managed to take me almost a month to read through the book Complete Without Kids: An Insider’s Guide to Childfree Living by Ellen L. Walker, Ph.D., but I’ve finally managed to and I’m entirely in love with it – here’s why! (Psst! I’m giving away a copy at the bottom of the page!)

For those of you who, like myself, find themselves childfree out of choice this book is a much needed affirmation that what you’ve dedicated your life to – work, a significant other, supporting your parents and/or other family members, or just the plain old want to not be someone’s keeper – doesn’t necessarily make you a greedy, spoiled child who refuses to do what ‘everyone does’ and go to ‘the next step’ aka have a family.

I love children, I do, and that’s why I never want to have any. My reasons are:

001. No child should have me as a parent. Children need love, patience and attention – two things I can’t give them and one I would smother them with. I don’t have time for children, not even a little time for myself most of the time. My life is non-stop work and I’d be depriving them of the one thing they needed the most – their mother.

002. No child should have to starve. Make no mistake, working 14-16 hour days only proves that you have a job – it doesn’t make you rich. It doesn’t even signify ambition when you have no choice. I book, I network, data entry, customer support, troubleshooting, haggling, paperwork, take care of two grown people who need constant care (because they seem to think they’re children, not because they’re invalid). When that’s all done I’m exhausted!

Then I spend my off hours barn raising websites, writing ebooks and maintaining blogs, when I have the time. All of that and I barely make ends meet – how would I support a child? I couldn’t! To purposely have a child when I’m broke would be selfish and irresponsible of me, and not at all fair to the child.

003. I’m not normal enough. Another thing that children need is normality and stability. Stability I can provide, to an extent, but normality? Not in a billion years. Let’s pretend that I started to dress the way my community sees fit rather than like it’s 1939, or that I started talking like a mother instead of like Jay Derris from the Jay and Silent Bob films.

Let’s take away my weird obsessions – bento boxes, Halloween, Disneyland, Hunter S. Thompson, The Might Boosh, Jack Kerouac, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shia LaBeouf‘s jeans – let’s pretend, for a moment, that I only had happy, G rated thoughts and speech. I’m still an Odinist. Now, I don’t have any shame over that – in fact I love it, I’m proud of it and loud about it. But a child needs to be normal, especially during their school years – trust me, I know this.

If you wrote out a fortune cookie fortune for each time I took crap for saying soda instead of pop, and cursing instead of cussing, you could fill a football stadium with it. In fact, the crap I took just for being a Jew was terrifying – so much that it would make me a decent writer, but not a very happy person. I’d never want my child to go through anything like that because their mom raised them to be a freak. I don’t even have children, and I can feel the sharp pangs of guilt for every time some other kid calls them a name because of me – never, ever, will I have children. I already love them too much.

There are all sorts of reasons for not having children, those are just my main ones. And Complete Without Kids, while not naming off my reasons specifically, did manage to go through many reasons I’ve had to deal with plus quite a few I didn’t realize existed from not being able to have children to being too afraid of losing control of your precious life and livelihood.

It also examines the pressure many feel from their families, friends and society to have children after a certain age or stage in their relationship, as if it’s something that you just do at some point, regardless of your personal needs and wants. Living life as a closeted Heathen and outward Latter Day Saint (Mormon), I remember the emphasis on marriage, home, family and children and the pushing from a very young age to become a Homemaker.

After I turned 16 a race started – the other girls my age all seemed to immediately shift towards finding the right guy, trying to get married by 18. I remember two girls, cousins, who were my age and 7 months older than me, actually racing to the isle (both snagged Missionaries, the highest of the high you can get in a prospective husband) then, once married (both at 18), racing to have their first child. I remember their mothers bragging about it, “Oh Jill’s just gotten her teaching job, they’ve moved to Ogden!”, “Really? Michaela’s just taken an internship at a newspaper – in Salt Lake City.”, “Oh… well.. Jill’s expecting.”, “She is!? …Congratulations….”

All I could think of, and sometimes even now when I look back, is that they’ve wasted their lives in a stupid race to be the most ‘family’ they can manage in the shortest amount of time. Last I heard of the girls, almost two years ago, they were racing their sons in soccer. Both boys will be amazing Missionaries some day, I’m sure.

I’m in love with this book, and only have to dock half a star due to some confusing bits about 2/3rds of the way in, but it gets 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 from me – I hope you read it whether or not you have children. If you do have kids, maybe you’ll understand those of us who choose not to a little better.

Now to the fun part!

Complete Without Kids Giveaway!

Pretty simple giveaway rules:

1. Write a blog post telling me why you want to read Complete Without Kids and link it back to this post.

2. Follow @RiotDollie on Twitter. (optional, but I’d appreciate it!)

3. Comment below with the link to your blog post – please make sure to include the full, direct link!

One winner will be randomly chosen using Random.org on September 25, 2011 – good luck!

This review is a book I was sent as a member of Business2Blogger for the purposes of an honest product review. All of the opinions are my own.

Posted by Faith on at 7:30 pm

This one’s a long time coming! I meant to post this ages ago but my tshirt arrived in the middle of what’s literally business rush month for me and I’ve had a hard time finding time to do anything at all, let alone a review on a product – but what a product!
(READ MORE…)

Tagged with: Custom Printed Tshirts • Print TShirt Designs • Review of TshirtPrinting.net • TShirts at a Great Price

Posted by Faith on at 7:29 am

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of goviral. All opinions are 100% mine.

Have you ever heard of the Mystery Jets? I haven’t, not until today at least and I’m kind of ticked at myself for not knowing sooner. They’re amazing, they have a sound that fits nicely between the Arctic Monkey’s and The Shins (maybe even a bit of a Rooney sound there). But still managing to be crazy original, and kind of a mixture of a gorgeous 60s sound and a great 80s sound. I think I may be in love… you can be in love with a band, right? It’s not weird to marry a song? Anyway, if you haven’t heard them, this is a great song called Dreaming of Another World from Stella Artois CO2 Soiree Show, which (as I’m told) was entirely broadcast from inside the “New Carbon-Efficient Stella Artois Bottle” – I love it!

Tell me you don’t love that? It takes me back a bit without being overly ‘retro’ (for some reason people confuse retro and vintage for each other, and that makes Faith crazy, lol). My only issue with the whole thing is that this is only a preview, but they’ve gone and done that because they know I’ve got to buy the whole thing now – tricky, sneaky band! I’ve decided I have to be a fan of them on facebook!

Tagged with: Song Review • The Mystery Jets

Posted by Faith on at 12:14 am