Stepdog by Mireya Navarro

Author:Mireya Navarro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

“Find a way to exercise at least three times a week.”

“Take time for yourself—take night classes, craft classes, book groups, or just sit in a bookstore coffee shop and read.”

“Don’t forgo happy hours after work and shopping and weekend trips with your girlfriends.”

I revved up my social calendar and became a health nut. I drove forty-five minutes in traffic to a Zumba class. I started my mornings twice a week with Pilates. I found a place with forty-dollar-an-hour massages. I breathed and om’ed for dear life. When a literary agent spotted a Sunday Styles story I wrote on environmentally sensitive weddings, she encouraged me to write a book and I eagerly took on what eventually became Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-friendly Celebration. Jim, an author himself (he wrote Burning Down the House, a book about the fall of E. F Hutton), cheered me on. Book writing took over more and more of my weekends and free time. On weekdays, I immersed myself deeper into my work at the Times.

The distractions and work helped, but my beloved husband and I still needed to achieve a workable home life. Suffice it to say that after several years of marriage, I was still not one of the peeps. I hadn’t gotten much beyond the hi-and-bye stage with the kids as they came and went in the endless shuttling between their mom and pop worlds. I helped the kids pick presents for their father. I cooked chicken wings, enchiladas, and other fun dishes for them (even prompting a friend of Henry’s to tell him midway through ecstatic gorging: “You’re so lucky!”). I went to movies and shared dinners with them. But I barely scratched the surface of involvement. There were many lines I felt I couldn’t cross in order to avoid ripples of conflict. Sometimes I felt like I lived with strangers.

I loved my husband more than ever as I lived a double life—half the week, when Jim and I were alone, we were each the person the other met. The other half, I was sidelined in my own home. I found Jim uncompromising when it came to his children. I looked for more ways to disengage and make myself scarce.

But there was only so much escaping I could do. Jim and I agreed we needed to see a therapist. For me, to go to a shrink required outgrowing some cultural apprehensions. The conventional wisdom when I was growing up was that only crazy people needed one. I had never felt the need to pay someone to listen to my problems, even in therapy-happy New York. I had plenty of girlfriends for that. But at some point I realized what an imposition that was, how boring I sounded, and I started holding back. A professional would offer a safe, neutral space to let it rip. I was overcoming my misgivings. There was no way around the need for someone to help us bridge our differences. All the experts seemed to agree that the job of blending a family was often too big for just two people.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.