Give Sandra a big hug for me!

Feel better! In the Flesh will go great tonight.

I probably won't be able to make it, though. Boo to me!

Honey, lemon, duvet, weepy movies on DVD, and a couch.

Feel better.

Good luck with the sickness, and the move, and the Sandra. :)

I love when Buffy says that to monster-Giles! I'm so going to have to watch that ep now.

I got the lowest and yet, I am not a loser. I am glad someone donated from what I wrote! (I bet it was my mom if she knew how to make on line donations.)

Yay for all the money we raised!

Excellent, congrats to all of the winners and everyone else just for participating and generating some donations.

Glad to be a part of it. I hope you're pleased with the results.

Thank you for giving us an excuse to let it all hang out on our blogs. And congratulations on raising the money!

Glad to be a help.

Now that's the kind of busy I'd love to be. I'm looking for writing gigs if you know of any blogs that need writers. I'll do anything. I'm a total whore.

Karl, do you ever keep an eye on MediaBistro.com? They're a great resource, both with their job listings and How To Pitch features.

If you need any help with the house stuff, let me know. It would seem that I have a little free time at the moment.

I am exhausted reading that but at least it's all good, productive stuff right?

I need to nap now.

Sizz - totally good productive stuff.

Bug, I may call you in for packing, but I'm not sure about that yet... I actually don't have a lot of stuff (thankfully I did a massive purge over the last year or so.) And I'm so ridiculously excited about painting by myself that it's kind of funny.

Girl, don't forget to breathe!

Loving and accepting someone for who/what they are is a great thing -- but you know? So is pushing them toward being as amazing as they can be, just as they did you all those years ago. You're allowed to feel bummed out by the situation and hopeful that it'll change.

I'm glad you're feeling better. Don't be embarrassed by what you wrote -- you wrote what you felt. It's perfectly valid.

Sometimes, people can't continue to walk the talk. And sometimes the needs change.

I know I've fought like heck to achieve something I wanted and then found it wasn't all I hoped, and that, although other people thought I was insane to walk away from the opportunity, for me, it was the right thing to do.

I ended up happier and more true to myself by making that choice than the choice which, to others, looked like it was more "me".

I totally agree -- one can't ever stop growing, changing, and learning. And yet, there are also times where we need "time outs" from what's expected, from what's usual, even from our choices, in order to replenish.

Glad you're feeling better.

I have bad WEEKS sometimes, it seems. Bad MONTHS, even. But I know what's good for me, and that's reaching out to my friends. Most of those are online and not local. I know that the more I stay in my house and don't go out, the worse my symptoms get. So even when I don't feel like it, I try to get out, maybe hit the local coffee shop and do my online stuff there instead.

It's a valuable lesson, I guess, to learn that we can't stand in anyone's shadow for too long.

Sandra - true, but how do you tell the difference between the two?

Devon - thank you. I'm really enjoying your insights. They're super helpful.

Karl - but see, that's awesome. You know your limits, and your boundaries, and you don't give up. I say that's admirable.

In high school and college I made most of my spending money babysitting for a couple who had five kids. They were good kids but...two words...CLOTH DIAPERS. Ack!

I love babysitting for many reasons but mostly because (up until now and hopefully further on down the line) it helps me remember that I am just not quite ready for such a commitment.

She sounds utterly adorable.

Emma, cloth diapers would've been a dealbreaker for me. Yikes!

And Sizz, I'm so with you. Someday, yes. Today? Yeah... no. But she really was cute, and I'm so enamored with how miraculous kids are. She's still learning to speak, and she pointed to a pattern on one of her toys and said, "Star!"

And I said, "Are you gonna be a star?"

She smiled and nodded. And I said, "What are you going to do?"

She pointed to her feet. I said, "Dance?"

She nodded and grinned from ear to ear.

Sometimes I think they understand more than we think...

You can't live someone else's life for him or make choices for him anymore than you'd want those choices made for you.

I learned (the hard, painful way), that the best thing that can happen with a good mentor is that you eventually outgrow the person.

As a mentor, when you do your job right, you know when to let your mentees go and not try to live vicariously through them.

People's lives change over time, and their priorities change. Sometimes it's finding out that what you thought you wanted isn't really what you want, and you have to step back and find another path. Sometimes you burn out and need to do something else for awhile and recharge.

And sometimes, some people do just give up. They've used everything up -- usually by not drawing firm enough boundaries and saving enough for themselves, but via the mistaken idea that martyring themselves for others will get them what they want in the end. All it's left them is empty.

I don't know the details, and I wouldn't presume to project which scenario (and it might be none of the above) is your mentor's.

But, even if you disagree with the decision, it's not yours to make. The best you can do, if you really, truly care about this person, is state that you don't agree, but also offer whatever support you can (as long as it's not something hurtful, like self-mutilation or something).

Ultimately, this is not about you. Your life is moving along in ways you want and ways you can't even imagine. It is this other person's life, and this person has to make the choices. It's painful when we believe we see a better path, or if we believe that the person isn't living up to their potential, or, as you put it, the authenticity. It hurts like hell.

But we don't live in their skins, and, ultimately, it is not our decision to make. It's out of our control -- and that's sometimes as painful as seeing someone we care about making decisions with which we disagree.

Yeah, it's hard sometimes to realize just how human our mentors are. I'm up and down a lot, emotionally, at times very motivated and at times barely able to get out of bed.

But being genuine/authentic is very much part of me. I don't always have the funny in me. Those days I blog about depression.

Y'all have inspired a follow-up post. :)

What an awesome trip!

Don't you love it when you reconnect with long-time-ago friends and the connection is still here?

Absolutely!

The worst year of my life was spent in Seattle.

However, I always loved Pike Place Market and riding the ferries for no particular reason.

Glad you had a good trip.

Enjoy Vancouver!

Devon
Ink in My Coffee

Christmas in our house when I was growing up started after Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving that is) and didn't let up until Epiphany (Jan. 6). My mom would bring out the Christmas albums the second the thanksgiving turkey was in the fridge.

Devon - can I be nosy and ask what made it so bad?

Suze - that sounds like my dream scenario!

Yeah with raising money and finding cool new blogs to read, I completely forgot that there were prizes involved as well. I think a lot of people feel the same way. I can't wait to hear how much money was raised.

I'm glad to hear that. We should know before the end of this week... RAINN is just tallying everything now.

This comment is a little late, but I also wanted to chime in that it was such a good experience as a blogger to read from other folks and have a reason to share some experiences that would not normally come up on our blog. It really made me revisit some issues (in a good way, not a ptsd way) and feel like it was ok to write about sexual assault on a sex-oriented blog.

Money aside, I bet many folks will read posts and become more involved with their local shelters and rape crisis centers.

Also! As a new blog we made new friends and had quite a few links from Kevin's page, so that was really gratifying in a sort of selfish kind of way.

Thanks for all your work and for reading all those posts!