Ex's Family Quotes

The whole family is a bunch of dangerous freaks...Most are ex-cons or junkies or deranged from inbreeding. Five have died violently, three are back in prison, two have gone insane from untreated venereal disease, and one writes book reviews.

So who the hell, exactly, are these guys, the boys and girls in the trenches? You might get the impression from the specifics of my less than stellar career that all line cooks are wacked-out moral degenerates, dope fiends, refugees, a thuggish assortment of drunks, sneak thieves, sluts and psychopaths. You wouldn't be too far off base. The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts 'fringe elements', people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong. Maybe they didn't make it through high school, maybe they're running away from something-be it an ex-wife, a rotten family history, trouble with the law, a squalid Third World backwater with no opportunity for advancement. Or maybe, like me, they just like it here.

Feathery Stokers - There is no definitive list but here are some examples. Men who didn’t eat red meat were Feathery Strokers. Men who used postshave balm instead of slapping stinging aftershave onto their tender skin were Feathery Strokers. Men who noticed your shoes and handbags were Feathery Strokers. (Or Jolly Boys.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of women were Feathery Strokers. (Or liars.) Men who said pornography was exploitation of men as much as women were of the scale. All straight men from San Francisco were Feather Strokers. All academics with beards were Feathery Stokers. Men who stayed friends with their ex-girlfriends were Feathery Strokers. Especially if they called them their “ex-partner.” Men who did Pilates were Feathery Strokers. Men who said, “I have to take care of myself right now” were screaming Feathery Strokers. (Even I’d go along with that.) ~Jacqui

Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might by dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

I come from the sort of family in which, at the age of ten, I was told I must always say hoi polloi, never "the hoi polloi," because hoi meant "the," and two "the's" were redundant -- indeed something only hoi polloi would say.

What do you think Mr. Ex will have to say about you while enjoying dinner with his friends or family? Will you be the crazy girl that wouldn’t go away?  Or, will you be the one he regrets losing?

Maybe the trick is not to define yourself as a container for your experiences, your thoughts. Maybe it's to assume you are larger than the things you have felt over a series of years, that your history is not a list of things your body has done or been present for, that your family is not people who you spent a lot of time around as a child or carry your genetic code. Maybe the trick is to push violently at your own boundaries, to find your own contradictions, and use your teeth and nails to destroy what separates you from something else. I am trying.

You're the tattooed, chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, train wreck, son of the movie star who's marrying my family-values, ex Marine Senator father. You're a tabloid headline, standing right here in front of me! Yeah? Well, you're the goody-goody, stuck up, boring-ass virgin who's so uptight she can't find anyone to punch her v-card except the manwhore from her school who will screw literally anyone. And then turns out to be the most boring fucking lay I've ever had.

Filial respect caused Grey to hesitate in passing ex post facto opinions on his mother's judgment, but after half an hour in the company of either Paul or Edgar, he could not escape a lurking suspicion that a just Providence, seeing the DeVanes so well endowed with physical beauty, had determined that there was no reason to spoil the work by adding intelligence to the mix.

In the end, we all die for what we believe in... mostly because we all die.

Out of all the people in this family, you're forcing me to go see a psychiatrist? What about your ex-wife who hasn't seen the sun in two years? Or your daughter who's one heartbeat away from being a necrophiliac! Or your son who think it's okay to molest his sister!

This is from "Marabou Stork Nightmares". Bernard's Poem: Did you see her on the telly the other day good family entertainment the tabloids say But when you're backstage at your new faeces audition you hear the same old shite of your own selfish volition She was never a singer a comic or a dancer I cant say I was sad when I found out she had cancer Great Britain's earthy northern comedy queen takes the rand, understand from the racist Boer regime So now her cells are fucked and thats just tough titty I remember her act that I caught back in Sun City She went on and on about 'them from the trees with different skull shapes from the likes of you and me' Her Neo-Nazi spell it left me fucking numb the Boers lapped it up with zeal so did the British ex-pat scum But what goes round comes round they say so welcome to another dose of chemotherapy And for my part it's time to be upfront so fuck off and die you carcinogenic cunt.

Perhaps the most toxic lie of modern marriage is that it creates a nuclear family unit whole and complete. But it is not whole, it is not complete, and the tasks of life are more than any one family can bear. We need help. We need help at a systemic and personal level. We need paid parental leave, we need affordable childcare, we need childcare tax credits, we need equal pay, and we need a community of friends and family who we can lean on.

My sincere thanks to friends and family, especially my mother, father, brother, and Mandy, who continue to love and support me despite my obsessions.

Are you serious? What did I say that was racist? Is he not from a shitty part of town? Is he not a FedEx guy? Is he not twenty-six?” “Just because his family doesn’t have money doesn’t make him a thug,

How do people leave these cycles when they don’t have the resources I had or the support from their friends and family? How do they possibly stay strong enough every second of the day? I feel like all it takes is one weak, insecure moment in the presence of your ex to convince yourself you made the wrong decision. Anyone who has ever left a manipulative, abusive spouse and somehow stayed that course deserves a medal.

The chorus of voices will grow each year, revealing decades of pain, decades lost, families torn apart, relationships ruined because people outside the ex-gay world can never understand what we patients went through

Many ex-Muslims do have lifelong Muslim friends and family who are supportive, moderate, or liberal, even if they disagree. This was a common theme in the #ExMuslimBecause tweets: most participants, while certainly unreserved in their criticism of the faith, made it a point to differentiate between criticizing Islam (an idea) and demonizing Muslims (a people). Human beings have rights and are entitled to respect. Ideas, books, and beliefs don’t, and aren’t.

Claire was Troy’s ex-wife, once a much-loved member of the family, just like Indira and to a lesser extent, Grant. It was like a death each time her children broke up with someone, and over the years there had been many, many deaths.

I don’t know how much more you can take.” He laughed. “You’re a witch. From a family of witches. My ex-wife is a witch. Apparently literally and figuratively. Plus my kid’s a witch. And I am probably some kind of animal shifter. All that, and I’m still upright and functioning. I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would break me at this point.

Children write essays in school about the unhappy, tragic, doomed life of Anna Karenina. But was Anna really unhappy? She chose passion and she paid for her passion—that's happiness! She was a free, proud human being. But what if during peacetime a lot of greatcoats and peaked caps burst into the house where you were born and live, and ordered the whole family to leave house and town in twenty-four hours, with only what your feeble hands can carry?... You open your doors, call in the passers-by from the streets and ask them to buy things from you, or to throw you a few pennies to buy bread with... With ribbon in her hair, your daughter sits down at the piano for the last time to play Mozart. But she bursts into tears and runs away. So why should I read Anna Karenina again? Maybe it's enough—what I've experienced. Where can people read about us? Us? Only in a hundred years? "They deported all members of the nobility from Leningrad. (There were a hundred thousand of them, I suppose. But did we pay much attention? What kind of wretched little ex-nobles were they, the ones who remained? Old people and children, the helpless ones.) We knew this, we looked on and did nothing. You see, we weren't the victims." "You bought their pianos?" "We may even have bought their pianos. Yes, of course we bought them." Oleg could now see that this woman was not yet even fifty. Yet anyone walking past her would have said she was an old woman. A lock of smooth old woman's hair, quite incurable, hung down from under her white head-scarf. "But when you were deported, what was it for? What was the charge?" "Why bother to think up a charge? 'Socially harmful' or 'socially dangerous element'—S.D.E.', they called it. Special decrees, just marked by letters of the alphabet. So it was quite easy. No trial necessary." "And what about your husband? Who was he?" "Nobody. He played the flute in the Leningrad Philharmonic. He liked to talk when he'd had a few drinks." “…We knew one family with grown-up children, a son and a daughter, both Komsomol (Communist youth members). Suddenly the whole family was put down for deportation to Siberia. The children rushed to the Komsomol district office. 'Protect us!' they said. 'Certainly we'll protect you,' they were told. 'Just write on this piece of paper: As from today's date I ask not to be considered the son, or the daughter, of such-and-such parents. I renounce them as socially harmful elements and I promise in the future to have nothing whatever to do with them and to maintain no communication with them.

The comparison of Lam 1:1 and Re 18:7 cannot be ignored. If Babylon the Great is actually rejected mother-Judah, brought back to life by the United Nations, then Is 47:7-10 connects divorced-ancient Israel to modern-day Israel. Remember, Jehovah removed His name. (Is 50:1) Thus, we see why Jehovah’s ex-wife took on many names from her many husbands, such as “Babylon.” (Is 1:21) Lamentations, pg 2

You’re not even his type,” spat Alethea. “For that matter, he’s not your type either. You prefer humans. In fact, Knox is the first demon you ever slept with. Before him, you were with the guy whose family owns the café over there.” Harper raised her brows. The dolphin had been doing her homework. Devon looked at Harper. “I’ve always said that a crazy ex can do better research than law enforcement.

Some of the subjects of Puppies and Babies may not identify as queer, but it doesn’t matter: the installation queers them. By which I mean to say that it partakes in a long history of queers constructing their own families—be they composed of peers or mentors or lovers or ex-lovers or children or non-human animals—and that it presents queer family making as an umbrella category under which baby making might be a subset, rather than the other way around. It reminds us that any bodily experience can be made new and strange, that nothing we do in this life need have a lid crammed on it, that no one set of practices or relations has the monopoly on the so-called radical, or the so-called normative.

Treat them as you’ve treated me (וְעֹולֵ֣ל לָ֔מֹו כַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר עֹולַ֛לְתָּ לִ֖י) literally; “and-do to-them to-them-as You-have-done to-me”. An odd request from an unfaithful wife—asking her ex-husband to beat up her new husband. Obviously, her mind is still on the kings of the earth, not King Jehovah.

Everett Walsh!" Chloe exclaimed. I fell off the bed laughing. Liz folded her arms and tried to scowl at us, but I could tell she was having a hard time keeping a straight face. "What's wrong with Everett Walsh?" she sputtered."I didn't know when she wrote this in seventh grade that Hayden would hook up with him later.I saw him first." "He's so straitlaced," Chloe said. "Not exactly the ideal hero of a romance." "Watch out for his mama," I advised Liz. "I was answering the question you asked," Liz told Chloe self-righteously. "If your family threatened you with an arranged marriage in the 1800s,you'd want someone on your side who was very mature and organized,who could approach the situation logically and help you out of it.In the 1800s, Everett Walsh would have been a barrister.He'd be perfect for the job." "I'd rather have the evil viscount," I said.

2 Tears of terror came at night. (תִבְכֶּ֜ה בַּלַּ֗יְלָה) literally; “she-weeps at-night”. The word “terror” was chosen to demonstrate she has no control over her surroundings. In the Hebrew—not in the English—the word “tears” was doubled, literally: “to-weep she-weeps”. Note she is no longer in Israel. She is a slave in Babylon. Her day does not belong to her. She must slave for her new master by day, but the night is when she cries for her ex-Husband. In the night, she has time to tally her terrible losses. Lamentations, pg 5

Do you have any idea where she could be? Friends? Family? An ex or a secret boyfriend?” Kenny asked. If I did I wouldn’t be here wasting my time with you, would I? “I

think Wells is a prick ninety percent of the time, but I find I cannot toast to his failure.” He screwed up his face. “Is this what familial love feels like?

Her family was a relay team racing toward Tomorrowland, but her father died, and in their shock they kept losing the baton.

Anyone who decides to leave his country forever has to resign himself never to see his family again.

Families—strangers who knew one well when one was a child.

You don’t want to be caught with your pants down … unless your ex-husband is coming around. Maybe he was good in bed.” “He was. I might’ve mentioned that too.

I hadn’t been out of his bed for three, maybe four hours, Pip. And he went from jizzing all over my face to getting back together with his ex-wife. What the fuck?

He held up his hand, and in it was... Oh, God. The neon-pink vibrator, glowing in the dark now. It was following her, stalking her, all the way down the yellow brick road to hell.

Christiana as much as I still love you and never wished for our marriage to end, you were, you are and will always be a Barrington. Your father has seen to that her ex-husband bristled

Everett and his mom broke up with me,thank you very much." "You shouldn't have made out with him in his mother's scrapbooking room," Liz said sagely. "We're seventeen,"I snapped, "and Everett and I had been dating for two months when that happened.What were we supposed to do,eat dinner with his family and keep our hands on the table where everyone could see them?I mean, you and Davis are Mr. and Mrs. Polite Reserve, and even you were macking in the hot tub an hour ago." I picked up a pink fuzzy pillow that had fallen from he bed and threw it at Liz. "You were?" Chloe gushed. "You what? Hello,I need the details of Liz and Davis." "Hayden!" Liz squealed, ducking behind Chloe. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have made out with Everett.I'm saying you shouldn't have done it in his mother's scrapbooking room.Location, location,location.You might have disorganized her supplies.Some people are very particular about their chipboard getting mixed up with their cardstock." I closed my eyes,inhaled through my nose,and felt my lungs fill with air. My blood spread the life-giving oxygen throughout my body. "Watch out,"Chloe whispered to Liz. "She's doing yoga." My eyes snapped open.So much for controlling my temper. "Why the hell didn't you tell me Nick's mother left before I went into the sauna with him?" I hollered at Chloe. "We didn't know he was here!" Liz came to Chloe's defense. "And if we'd warned you about him before he got here," Chloe explained, "You would have known he was coming.We didn't want you to leave.The two of you are surprisingly hard to throw together,let me tell you." "I'm not buying it," I informed Chloe. "You were distracted.You had your mind on taking inventory." Liz giggled,turned red, and fell back to the pillows. "Taking inventory requires enormous concentration!" Chloe said with a straight face,but she was blushing,too.

Rea­sons Why I Loved Be­ing With Jen I love what a good friend you are. You’re re­ally en­gaged with the lives of the peo­ple you love. You or­ga­nize lovely ex­pe­ri­ences for them. You make an ef­fort with them, you’re pa­tient with them, even when they’re side­tracked by their chil­dren and can’t pri­or­i­tize you in the way you pri­or­i­tize them. You’ve got a gen­er­ous heart and it ex­tends to peo­ple you’ve never even met, whereas I think that ev­ery­one is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but re­ally I was jeal­ous that you al­ways thought the best of peo­ple. You are a bit too anx­ious about be­ing seen to be a good per­son and you def­i­nitely go a bit over­board with your left-wing pol­i­tics to prove a point to ev­ery­one. But I know you re­ally do care. I know you’d sign pe­ti­tions and help peo­ple in need and vol­un­teer at the home­less shel­ter at Christ­mas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us. I love how quickly you read books and how ab­sorbed you get in a good story. I love watch­ing you lie on the sofa read­ing one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other gal­axy. I love that you’re al­ways try­ing to im­prove your­self. Whether it’s running marathons or set­ting your­self chal­lenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to ther­apy ev­ery week. You work hard to be­come a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. I think I prob­a­bly didn’t make my ad­mi­ra­tion for this known and in­stead it came off as ir­ri­ta­tion, which I don’t re­ally feel at all. I love how ded­i­cated you are to your fam­ily, even when they’re an­noy­ing you. Your loy­alty to them wound me up some­times, but it’s only be­cause I wish I came from a big fam­ily. I love that you al­ways know what to say in con­ver­sa­tion. You ask the right ques­tions and you know ex­actly when to talk and when to lis­ten. Ev­ery­one loves talk­ing to you be­cause you make ev­ery­one feel im­por­tant. I love your style. I know you think I prob­a­bly never no­ticed what you were wear­ing or how you did your hair, but I loved see­ing how you get ready, sit­ting in front of the full-length mir­ror in our bed­room while you did your make-up, even though there was a mir­ror on the dress­ing ta­ble. I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in No­vem­ber and that you’d pick up spi­ders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not. I love how free you are. You’re a very free per­son, and I never gave you the sat­is­fac­tion of say­ing it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you be­cause of your bor­ing, high-pres­sure job and your stuffy up­bring­ing, but I know what an ad­ven­turer you are un­der­neath all that. I love that you got drunk at Jack­son’s chris­ten­ing and you al­ways wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never com­plained about get­ting up early to go to work with a hang­over. Other than Avi, you are the per­son I’ve had the most fun with in my life. And even though I gave you a hard time for al­ways try­ing to for al­ways try­ing to im­press your dad, I ac­tu­ally found it very adorable be­cause it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to any­where in his­tory, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beau­ti­ful and clever and funny you are. That you are spec­tac­u­lar even with­out all your sports trophies and mu­sic cer­tifi­cates and in­cred­i­ble grades and Ox­ford ac­cep­tance. I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked my­self, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of my­self, ei­ther. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental. I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.

But two years on, replaying the moment in my head and knowing what I now knew, I realised I’d seen the truth that day. Nick hadn’t wanted a family, not one that included me, anyway. He’d just wanted a baby.

Then Gavin got into his car, and Nick hiked through the snow toward his SUV. "Oh,mo," I mumbled through toothpaste. I couldn't let him get away.Not now. I swished,spat,and ran for the front door,pausing only to shove my feet into galoshes owned by some unknown member of Liz's family.Her stepdad,I decided as I tried to run down the snowy front steps. The galoshes were so big,it was like wading in a Tennessee river.

Returning home to the postwar housing shortage, Weinstein took out a $600,000 loan, built an apartment complex in Atlanta, and offered the 140 family units to veterans at rents averaging less than $50 per month. “Priorities: 1) Ex-POWs; 2) Purple Heart Vets; 3) Overseas Vets; 4) Vets; 5) Civilians,” read his ad. “… We prefer Ex-GI’s, and Marines and enlisted personnel of the Navy. Ex–Air Corps men may apply if they quit telling us how they won the war.” His rule banning KKK members drew threatening phone calls. “I gave them my office and my home address,” Weinstein said, “and told them I still had the .45 I used to shoot carabau [water buffalo] with.

This, Gushee writes, goes well beyond the typical process of adults growing up and charting their own life course, as humans have always done to some extent: “What we are seeing is not just rebellion against parents or normal ebb and flow. We are witnessing conscientious objection. Ex-evangelicals are leaving based on what they believe to be specific offenses against them personally, or against their family and friends, and specific experiences of trauma that have left lasting damage…” Those experiences, he says, include a host of ills within the evangelical community: clergy sex abuse, bigotry against LGTBQ+ people, hypocritical leaders, and more.12

Just looking at her mother made Cami think about how having another mouth to feed in the house would be a huge burden. She was working her butt off at two jobs already as a registered nurse and a waitress. With a mortgage payment, student loan debt, credit card debt, and loads of other bills that she once did not think about twice, her mother was forced to work longer hours after her now ex-husband abandoned his family for another woman.

Vamos a decirlo ya, chicas, todos los tios, cuando nos encontramos con una ex, pensamos en acostarnos con ella. Cuando te gusta una chica tienes que invitarla a salir, contarle mentiras de tu vida... aguantar un montón de charlas para poder llevártela a la cama. Con una ex todo ese camino coñazo ya está hecho. Es como el Monopoly. Vas directamente a la cama, sin pasar por la casilla de salida y sin pagar los 200 euros, que es lo mínimo que te gastas en cenas.

He didn’t want to explain to Vivian that family didn’t necessarily mean people who cared about you. She had Elaine and Gwen. She had love and warmth and home and all the things Rhys had always hoped Simon might be but never had been.

Of course, active alcoholics love hearing about the worst cases; we cling to stories about them. Those are the true alcoholics: the unstable and the lunatic; the bum in the subway drinking from the bottle; the red-faced salesman slugging it down in a cheap hotel. Those alcoholics are always a good ten or twenty steps farther down the line than we are, and no matter how many private pangs of worry we harbor about our own drinking, they always serve to remind us that we’re okay, safe, in sufficient control. Growing up, whatever vague definition of alcoholism I had centered around the crazy ones—Eliza’s mother, Lauren’s father’s ex-wife, the occasional drunken parent of a friend. Alcoholics like that make you feel so much better: you can look at them and think, But my family wasn’t crazy; I’m not like that; I must be safe. When you’re drinking, the dividing line between you and real trouble always manages to fall just past where you stand.

If I could have done it myself, I would have already done it: pried open my ribs and etched the Word onto my heart’s beating chambers. But it seemed my ex-gay counselors were the only ones with enough skill and experience to wield the scalpel.

I'll fix things up with George soon as she gets here," Anthony mumbled. "You may depend upon it." "Oh,I know you will, but you'll have to hie yourself back to London to do so, since she ain't coming here. Didn't want to inflict her dour mood on the festivities, so decided it ould be best to absent herself." Anthony looked appalled now and complained, "You didn't say she was that mad." "Didn't I? Think you're wearing that black eye just because she's a mite annoyed?" "That will do," Jason said sternly. "This entire situation is intolerable.And frankly, I find it beyond amazing that you have both utterly lost your finesse in dealing ith women since you married." That,of course, hit quite below the belt where these two ex[rakes were concerned. "Ouch," James muttered, then in his own defense, "American women are an exception to any known rule, and bloody stubbron besides." "So are Scots,for that matter," Anthony added. "They just don't behave like normal Enlgishwomen,Jason,indeed they don't." "Regardless.You know my feelings on the entire family gathering here for Christmas.This is not the time for anyone in the family to be harboring any ill will of any sort.You both should have patched this up before the holidays began. See that you do so immediately, if you both have to return to London to do so." Having said his peace, Jason headed for the door to leave his brothers to mull over their conduct,or rather, misconduct, but added before he left, "You both look like bloody panda bears.D'you have any idea what kind of example that sets for the children?" "Panda bears indeed," Anthony snorted as soon as the door closed. James looked up to reply drolly, "Least the roof is still intact.

Caroline felt that Malcolm put Joy before their relationship and she was always an afterthought. Truth be told, it’s always been like that between Malcolm, his partners, and Joy. It starts out fine, but before long, they hate her for no other reason than Malcolm loves her more than they think she deserves. Joy isn’t his family. She isn’t some ex he’s never gotten over. She’s just a friend. Just. A just who shouldn’t be important. A just who should be discarded. A just who should disappear. Joy fought for Malcolm, refusing to drift away, standing by him, until he realized she would always be there. Until he believed it. And so far, she had succeeded where they all failed. The greatest love of his life was, as they put it, just a friend.

Okay,” I said, “so what does all that have to do with his dead mistress, her dead ex-boyfriend with the dirty pictures or the entire Rossetti crime family?” Trixie shrugged. “I dunno, let’s go ask him.” “Ask who?” I said, a little lost. “Roger Mayfield,” she said simply. “Isn’t that what I wanted to do at nine o’clock in the morning?” I asked, annoyed. “Nine thirty-seven,” she reminded. “And there’s a difference.” “Which is?” I asked. “When you wanted to do it, it was a stupid idea,” she said with a smile.

Understand that just because Mr. Ex wants to sleep with you does not mean he loves you or is even thinking about a future with you.  And it definitely does not mean that he is seeking a reconciliation with you. When a Man Loves a Woman He’ll put your feelings above his own.  He’ll care about you, your family and anything else you consider important.  He’ll be happy for you when something exciting happens in your life.  And will never want to cause you one minute of pain.  It would actually cause him pain to see you hurt.   You’ll know without

Both Lear and Washington held fast to paternalistic assumptions about African slavery, believing that enslaved men and women were better off with a generous owner than emancipated and living independent lives. Decades later, Southerners would justify the institution of slavery with descriptions of the supposed benefits that came with enslavement. According to many Southerners, slaves were better cared for, better fed, sheltered, and treated almost as though they were members of the family. Northern emancipation left thousands of ex-slaves without assistance, and Southerners charged that free blacks were living and dying in the cold alleyways of the urban North. Many believed Northern freedom to be a far less humane existence, one that left black men and women to die in the streets from exposure and starvation. But

Campbell’s slideshow lists grim domestic violence statistic after statistic: second leading cause of death for African American women, third leading cause of death for native women, seventh leading cause of death for Caucasian women. Campbell says twelve hundred abused women are killed every year in the United States.1 That figure does not count children. And it does not count the abusers who kill themselves after killing their partners, murder-suicides we see daily in the newspaper. And it does not count same-sex relationships where one or the other partner might not be “out.” And it does not count other family members, like sisters, aunts, grandmothers, who are often killed alongside the primary victim. And it does not count innocent bystanders: the twenty-six churchgoers in Texas, say, after a son-in-law has gone to a service to target his mother-in-law, or the two spa employees in Wisconsin killed alongside their client by her ex. The list is endless. And it does not count the jurisdictions who do not report their homicides, since homicide reporting is voluntary through the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reporting Data. So how many people are killed as a result of domestic violence each year? The bystanders, the other family members, the perpetrators’ suicides? The victims who just can’t take it anymore and kill themselves? The accidents that turn out not to be accidents at all, victims pushed out of cars and from cliffs or driven into trees. Tragedies forever uncategorized.

We all have a stake in the truth. Society functions based on an assumption that people will abide by their word - that truth prevails over mendacity. For the most part, it does. If it didn't, relationships would have a short shelf life, commerce would cease, and trust between parents and children would be destroyed. All of us depend on honesty, because when truth is lacking we suffer, and society suffers. When Adolf Hitler lied to Neville Chamberlain, there was not peace in our time, and over fifty million people paid the price with their lives. When Richard Nixon lied to the nation, it destroyed the respect many had for the office of the president. When Enron executives lied to their employees, thousands of lives were ruined overnight. We count on our government and commercial institutions to be honest and truthful. We need and expect our friends and family to be truthful. Truth is essential for all relations be they personal, professional, or civic.

How do people leave these cycles when they don’t have the resources I had or the support from their friends and family? How do they possibly stay strong enough every second of the day? I feel like all it takes is one weak, insecure moment in the presence of your ex to convince yourself you made the wrong decision. Anyone who has ever left a manipulative, abusive spouse and somehow stayed that course deserves a medal. A statue. A freaking superhero movie. Society has obviously been worshipping the wrong heroes this whole time because I’m convinced it takes less strength to pick up a building than it does to permanently leave an abusive situation.

If a forty-year-old ex-drone pilot takes three years to reinvent herself as a designer of virtual worlds, she may well need a lot of government help to sustain herself and her family during that time. (This kind of scheme is currently being pioneered in Scandinavia, where governments follow the motto ‘protect workers, not jobs’.)

Today, you can live the let-go life in your family life because God Himself builds your house and watches over your children. I pray your heart will be more and more established in knowing that because of what Jesus has done on the cross, your children can be blessed in every area of their lives. Just as the children of Israel experienced supernatural light in their dwellings when all of Egypt was enveloped in darkness (see Ex. 10:23), may you and your children also experience the Lord’s protection and supernatural light even in these dark times we’re living in. In Jesus’ mighty name, I speak blessings upon you and your household and declare that your days and the days of your children shall be as days of heaven upon the earth!

am fascinated by this gap in work and perception. The answer, I think, lies in that space between the work husbands do and the work they think they do. What noticing is lost here? In her book The Time Bind, Arlie Russell Hochschild writes that this work is upkeep, it is labor, and much like the work of home repair, it requires “noticing, acknowledging, and empathizing with the feelings of family members, patching up quarrels, and soothing hurt feelings.” In sum, the work of a home, of a life, is paying attention. Knowing that the dishwasher drain needs to be cleaned, that the counter is sticky, that the socks need to be matched: It’s the work of noticing that isn’t being done. And what is lost when the people who love us do not see our labor? It’s our happiness. —

She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily. By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant. She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track. We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis. ‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’ I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it. When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them. And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.

Liberated in Germany by the Americans, seven-year-old Valya Brekeleva and her family of slave labourers went home to Novgorod as non-persons. “Most of the people from our village who went to Latvia survived. But most of those who were sent to Germany had died. For those of us who remained, the suspicion was always there.” Most of her family were killed by one side or the other in the course of the war. Her mother died in 1947, worn out by the struggle to keep her daughters alive. She was thirty-six. Her father completed his sentence for “political crimes” and came home from the Urals in 1951, an old man. Even after Valya had completed university and applied for work at a Kazan shipbuilders in the 1960s, when the manager saw that her papers showed her to be an ex-Nazi prisoner he said grimly: “Before we consider anything else, we have got to establish whether you have done damage to the state.

Communist Romania almost everything was owned by the state. Democratic Romania quickly privatised its assets, selling them at bargain prices to the ex-communists, who alone grasped what was happening and collaborated to feather each other’s nests. Government companies that controlled national infrastructure and natural resources were sold to former communist officials at end-of-season prices while the party’s foot soldiers bought houses and apartments for pennies. Ion Iliescu was elected president of Romania, while his colleagues became ministers, parliament members, bank directors and multimillionaires. The new Romanian elite that controls the country to this day is composed mostly of former communists and their families. The masses who risked their necks in Timişoara and Bucharest settled for scraps, because they did not know how to cooperate and how to create an efficient organisation to look after their own interests.21

Ex-slaves, in large part, shared a different economic vision. They were "always on the move," searching for family, denying their labor to "dishonest or oppressive employers," and asserting their independence through their mobility. Rather than staying in place, working as much as possible for a high a wage as possible, and thus possibly accumulating a greater array of material good, a large number of freedpeople sought not to maximize income but to minimize the amount of "time spent at work on other people's behalf.

I have to address whiteness because Asian Americans have yet to truly reckon with where we stand in the capitalist white supremacist hierarchy of this country. We are so far from reckoning with it that some Asians think that race has no bearing on their lives, that it doesn’t “come up,” which is as misguided as white people saying the same thing about themselves, not only because of discrimination we have faced but because of the entitlements we’ve been granted due to our racial identity. These Asians are my cousins; my ex-boyfriend; these Asians are myself, cocooned in Brooklyn, caught unawares on a nice warm day, thinking I don’t have to be affected by race; I only choose to think about it. I could live only for myself, for my immediate family, following the expectations of my parents, whose survivor instincts align with this country’s neoliberal ethos, which is to get ahead at the expense of anyone else while burying the shame that binds us. To varying degrees, all Asians who have grown up in the United States know intimately the shame I have described; have felt its oily flame.

More often and more insistently as that time recedes, we are asked by the young who our "torturers" were, of what cloth were they made. The term torturers alludes to our ex-guardians, the SS, and is in my opinion inappropriate: it brings to mind twisted individuals, ill-born, sadists, afflicted by an original flaw. Instead, they were made of the same cloth as we, they were average human beings, averagely intelligent, averagely wicked: save the exceptions, they were not monsters, they had our faces, but they had been reared badly. They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries, some frantically convinced of the Nazi doctrine, many indifferent, or fearful of punishment, or desirous of a good career, or too obedient. All of them had been subjected to the terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators, and then completed by the SS "drill." Many had joined this militia because of the prestige it conferred, because of its omnipotence, or even just to escape family problems. Some, very few in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers to the front lines, gave cautious help to prisoners or chose suicide. Let it be clear that to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it must bee just as clear that behind their responsibility stands that the great majority of Germans who accepted in the beginning, out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride the "beautiful words" of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and lack of scruples favored him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by deaths, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game.

In his book, originally titled If I Did It, subsequently published as I Did It when the Goldman family won the rights based on their civil suit, O. J. Simpson recounts the killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman as if O.J. had actually committed the crimes. From my perspective of forty-plus years in law enforcement and behavioral analysis, this book, written years after O.J.’s acquittal for the murders, was just another display of Mr. Simpson’s contempt for moral standards, his sense of power over and remaining anger at Nicole. In other words: the actions of a sociopathic narcissist.

He undid the lock and pulled open the cover to reveal a large stack of envelopes, each one labeled with a different name: Franklin Hobart, Brian Yancey, Everett Singer, Larry Steczynski…it was this last one he grabbed and pulled open, emptying its contents into his wallet and pockets. “Larry Steczynski?” I asked incredulously. Sage smiled. “You don’t think it suits me?” “Oh, I think you suits you perfectly. How many aliases do you have?” “I’m a bit of a collector.” I placed a hand on his wrist, stopping him as he transferred something into his wallet. “Does Larry Steczynski carry a black AmEx?” “He might.” “My mom doesn’t even carry a black AmEx.” “Apparently your mom doesn’t move in the same circles as Larry Steczynski.” “Sage,” Ben called from across the room. He had knelt down to gaze closely at a sculpted figurine that sat on an end table, and his voice broke with awe. “This...this is a real Michelangelo, isn’t it?” “Yeah, yeah it is.” “But it’s a Michelangelo!” “Yep.” “And that painting,” Ben said, nodding to a piece on the wall featuring a sketch of what looked like a somewhat cherubic version of Sage himself. “That’s a real Rubens?” “It is.” “It looks like you.” “Strong genetics in the family line,” Sage explained.

Thought Control * Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth * Adopt the group’s “map of reality” as reality * Instill black and white thinking * Decide between good versus evil * Organize people into us versus them (insiders versus outsiders) * Change a person’s name and identity * Use loaded language and clichés to constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts, and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzzwords * Encourage only “good and proper” thoughts * Use hypnotic techniques to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking, and even to age-regress the member to childhood states * Manipulate memories to create false ones * Teach thought stopping techniques that shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts. These techniques include: * Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking * Chanting * Meditating * Praying * Speaking in tongues * Singing or humming * Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism * Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy * Label alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful * Instill new “map of reality” Emotional Control * Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings—some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong, or selfish * Teach emotion stopping techniques to block feelings of hopelessness, anger, or doubt * Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault * Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as: * Identity guilt * You are not living up to your potential * Your family is deficient * Your past is suspect * Your affiliations are unwise * Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish * Social guilt * Historical guilt * Instill fear, such as fear of: * Thinking independently * The outside world * Enemies * Losing one’s salvation * Leaving * Orchestrate emotional highs and lows through love bombing and by offering praise one moment, and then declaring a person is a horrible sinner * Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins * Phobia indoctrination: inculcate irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority * No happiness or fulfillment possible outside the group * Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc. * Shun those who leave and inspire fear of being rejected by friends and family * Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll * Threaten harm to ex-member and family (threats of cutting off friends/family)

Quite unlike, for example, the British aristocracy, whose traditions put great store by the continuity of ownership of their country houses, the Roman elite were always buying, selling and moving. It is true that Cicero hung on to some family property in Arpinum, but he bought his Palatine house only in 62 BCE, from Crassus, who may have owned it as an investment opportunity rather than as a residence; and before that the house of Livius Drusus, where he was assassinated in 91 BCE, had stood on the site. Cicero’s estate at Tusculum had passed from Sulla to a deeply conservative senator, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and finally to a rich ex-slave, known to us only as Vettius, in the twenty-five years before Cicero bought it in the early 60s BCE.

While there is widespread recognition that the War on Drugs is racist and that politicians have refused to invest in jobs or schools in their communities, parents of offenders and ex-offenders still feel intense shame—shame that their children have turned to crime despite the lack of obvious alternatives. One mother of an incarcerated teen, Constance, described her angst this way: “Regardless of what you feel like you’ve done for your kid, it still comes back on you, and you feel like, ‘Well, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I messed up. You know, maybe if I had a did it this way, then it wouldn’t a happened that way.’” After her son’s arrest, she could not bring herself to tell friends and relatives and kept the family’s suffering private. Constance is not alone.

The heart of the issue is not simply that a group that gets a large portion of its budget from the Walton family fortune is unlikely to be highly critical of Walmart. The 1990s was the key decade when the contours of the climate battle were being drawn—when a collective strategy for rising to the challenge was developed and when the first wave of supposed solutions was presented to the public. It was also the period when Big Green became most enthusiastically pro-corporate, most committed to a low-friction model of social change in which everything had to be ‘win- win.’ And in the same period many of the corporate partners of groups like the EDF and the Nature Conservancy—Walmart, FedEx, GM—were pushing hard for the global deregulatory framework that has done so much to send emissions soaring. This alignment of economic interests—combined with the ever powerful desire to be seen as ‘serious’ in circles where seriousness is equated with toeing the pro-market line —fundamentally shaped how these green groups conceived of the climate challenge from the start. Global warming was not defined as a crisis being fueled by overconsumption, or by high emissions industrial agriculture, or by car culture, or by a trade system that insists that vast geographical distances do not matter—root causes that would have demanded changes in how we live, work, eat, and shop. Instead, climate change was presented as a narrow technical problem with no end of profitable solutions within the market system, many of which were available for sale at Walmart.

Full of remorse and self-recrimination, Remus fled, leaving the pregnant Tonks, seeking out Harry and offering to accompany him on whatever death-defying adventure awaited. To Remus’s shock and displeasure, the seventeen-year-old Harry not only declined his offer but became angry and insulting. He told his ex-teacher that he was acting selfishly and irresponsibly. Remus responded with uncharacteristic violence and stormed out of the house, taking refuge in a corner of the Leaky Cauldron, where he sat drinking and fuming. However, after a few hours’ reflection, Remus was forced to accept that his ex-pupil had just taught him a valuable lesson. James and Lily, Remus reflected, had stuck with Harry even unto their own deaths. His own parents, Lyall and Hope, had sacrificed their peace and security to keep the family together.

Mr. Sturgess ran the classes with iron, ex-military discipline. We each had spots on the floor, denoting where we should stand rigidly to attention, awaiting our next task. And he pushed us hard. It felt like Mr. Sturgess had forgotten that we were only age six--but as kids, we loved it. It made us feel special. We would line up in rows beneath a metal bar, some seven feet off the ground, then one by one we would say: “Up, please, Mr. Sturgess,” and he would lift us up and leave us hanging, as he continued down the line. The rules were simple: you were not allowed to ask permission to drop off until the whole row was up and hanging, like dead pheasants in a game larder. And even then you had to request: “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess.” If you buckled and dropped off prematurely, you were sent back in shame to your spot. I found I loved these sessions and took great pride in determining to be the last man hanging. Mum would say that she couldn’t bear to watch as my little skinny body hung there, my face purple and contorted in blind determination to stick it out until the bitter end. One by one the other boys would drop off the bar, and I would be left hanging there, battling to endure until the point where even Mr. Sturgess would decide it was time to call it. I would then scuttle back to my mark, grinning from ear to ear. “Down, please, Mr. Sturgess,” became a family phrase for us, as an example of hard physical exercise, strict discipline, and foolhardy determination. All of which would serve me well in later military days. So my training was pretty well rounded. Climbing. Hanging. Escaping. I loved them all. Mum, still to this day, says that growing up I seemed destined to be a mix of Robin Hood, Harry Houdini, John the Baptist, and an assassin. I took it as a great compliment.

What are Christians?” “The people in the churches.” “Yes, I know. But why do Christians give money to strangers?” He was getting a little peeved. “It’s just what Christians do. They give things away. They’re not like normal people.” I sighed. “That makes no sense.” The ex-convict tried to explain, but I could see even he didn’t understand what he was saying. In North Korea, there was no concept of doing things for other people out of kindness. Unconditional love was not something I was familiar with. You did things because of family obligation, or because of hunger or greed, or because there was no other choice. But what he was describing—people freely giving their hard-earned cash to complete strangers—was plain crazy. We changed the subject. But the ex-convict’s stories stayed in my mind. I thought of Christians as bizarre people, almost another species. I wanted to meet them, touch them, to confirm that such creatures existed.

Add Healthy Coping Mechanisms Regardless of how much work we do to heal our root issues, we will always need to deal with life, people, our family, assholes, emotions, pain, disappointment, anxiety, depression, loss, grief, and stress. So we need to not only work on the root causes and break the cycle of addiction, but also to replace our crappy coping mechanisms with healthy and constructive ones. Some examples of healthy coping mechanisms are: breathing techniques, spiritual practices, essential oils, chants and sound therapies, supplements, meditations, positive affirmations, and so on. We need to learn how to incorporate these healthy substitutes—not just know what we “should do.” We need to create an existence where we naturally and impulsively reach for something that builds us up or reinforces us or heals us (a poem or mantra, a meditation, a cup of hot water with lemon) instead of something that just takes us down further (a cigarette, a text to an abusive ex-lover, a bottle of wine, a new pair of shoes we can’t afford).

Since your asshole ex-husband took all his shit with him and we have nothing fun to burn, we’ll start with this pile of shitty clothes,” she tells me, kicking the stack with her toe. “We’re not burning my clothes. Do you have any idea how expensive those pieces were?” I argue, even though the sight of all my monotone, plain clothing makes me want to reach for the closest lighter. “Cindy, you had a breakthrough the other night. You are on the track toward recovery and the first step is admitting you have a problem. Repeat after me: I will no longer put things on my body that are golden wheat, ecru, light baby-shit tan, or anything else in the beige family unless what I’m putting on my body is an actual man with that color skin tone,” Ariel recites, putting her hands on her hips and raising one eyebrow as she waits for me to comply with her request. “And we don’t have to burn everything. Just a few pieces to make you feel better. And by you I mean me, because if I have to look at this crap any longer, I’m going to throw up in my mouth. We can sell the rest.

prerelease: Snuggie Bobo grew up in the rural Midwest, but soon became enticed with running the streets of the hood. It became an area to be conquered by all means necessary! This, of course, led to a long stay in ‘upstate’ maximum security correctional college nicknamed ‘Gladiator School’. It was the school of hard knocks where men left better criminals than they entered. In the process of trying to omit the truth of the past years’ regrets, Snuggie became educated, going as far as obtaining a PhD with the hopes to rejoin society. Unfortunately, society tends to look down upon street hoods and ex-felons! Now, Snuggie lives in Chicagoland spinning tales based on this lived history to bring the reader into his world. Sean Jr. was one of the people in this world. He was a gay brother, who lost his father to crack. His father was dealing with their family problem. Sean’s mother abused him due to his forbidden illness: lusting for men. Snuggie knew Sean since he was knee-high to a grasshopper and years later took him in. He was his mentor. These are tales out of Sean and Snuggie’s life. © Snuggie Bobo 2023

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Cue thousands of Instagram posts encouraging the no-contact rule and implicitly shaming anyone who continues a relationship with their ex. But the story of relationships and their endings is far too complex for us to apply solution-focused changes aimed at reducing pain. Still, every one of my friends and every therapist on Instagram advises against talking to an ex. No contact, cold turkey, zero—a crazy idea to me. In my work, I’ve noticed that more than half of my clients will continue to communicate with their former partner, maintaining some form of connection. Even a friendship. This happens despite the discouraging advice recommending a complete cutoff. But we, as a society, might be better off trying to understand our need to continue a connection with an ex than condemning or strongly advising against it. Maybe it’s time we reconsidered our attitude toward post-breakup connections. Instead of dismissing them as unhealthy, we could try to understand the motives behind our choice to stay in touch. After all, each relationship and breakup is unique, and the two (or more) people involved in a ruptured relationship are in the best position to judge what serves their emotional needs and personal growth. The idea of cutting an ex out of your life completely is also extremely heteronormative. Many queer people (like me) don’t have their family of origin to fall back on. Our “families” are therefore sometimes our friends, partners, and ex-partners, the people we form deep connections with. Alex was my family for ten years. So, for me, cutting him out of my life entirely wasn’t so simple.

Because the drug war has been waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color, when drug offenders are released, they are generally returned to racially segregated ghetto communities--the places they call home. In many cities, the re-entry phenomenon is highly concentrated in a small number of neighborhoods. According to one study, during a twelve-year period, the number of prisoners returning home to "core counties"--those counties that contain the inner city of a metropolitan area--tripled. The effects are felt throughout the United States. In interviews with one hundred residents of two Tallahassee, Florida communities, researchers found that nearly every one of them had experienced or expected to experience the return of a family member from prison. Similarly, a survey of families living in the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago found that the majority of residents either had a family member in prison or expected one to return from prison within the next two years. Fully 70 percent of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in the impoverished and overwhelmingly black North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's West Side are ex-offenders, saddled for life with a criminal record. The majority (60 percent) were incarcerated for drug offenses. These neighborhoods are a minefield for parolees, for a standard condition of parole is a promise not to associate with felons. As Paula Wolff, a senior executive at Chicago Metropolis 2020 observes, in these ghetto neighborhoods, "It is hard for a parolee to walk to the corner store to get a carton of milk without being subject to a parole violation.

My favourite part of my new book so far: Chapter 48: Creatures of The Night A figure stood in the stairwell beneath the Smoke's Poutinerie close to Simcoe Street and Adelaide Street West. He munched his pulled pork poutine and watched the strange object glide through the fog that engulfed the tall blue R.B.C. building. “Nice night for a stroll,” smiled The Rooster. Upon heading North, Fred had decided to take a detour and glide the exact opposite way: South. It was why he was now flying through the fog that suspended over the R.B.C. building. Through the billowing cloud he sailed and higher up into the air as he was heading towards the business district of Toronto where all the skyscrapers were. As Fred got closer, he understood why they were labeled as skyscrapers: they basically scraped the sky. But the view from up here was fantastic. It was a rainy and cold night, but Fred felt very warm in his upgraded suit. Soon, he was zooming past the green windowed T.D. building and back towards the North side of Yonge Street. However, as he sailed home, he began to worry about Allen. The Rooster had already cut up his ex-girlfriend so what would he do to Allen? Allen had been a friend to Fred when no one else had been there. Of course, he used to have many friends in preschool, elementary school, and high school but no one he clicked with. Allen McDougal was really the only family he had left and he didn't want The Rooster to kill his old friend in any way. I must radio him, thought Fred as he shot past Dundas Square. But when he pressed the button on the helmet that alerted his Butler's phone, there was no answer. Damn it. They've already got him.

The black magic that evil-minded people of all religions practice for their ugly and inhuman motives. The modern world ignores that and even do not believe in it; however, it exists, and it sufficiently works too. When I was an assistant editor, in an evening newspaper, I edited and published such stories. As a believer, I believe that. However, not that can affect everyone; otherwise, every human would have been under the attack of it. No one can explain and define black magic and such practices. The scientists today fail to recognize such a phenomenon; therefore, routes are open for black magic to proceeds its practices without hindrances. One can search online websites, and YouTube; it will realize a large number of the victims of that the evil practice by evil-minded peoples of various societies. The magic, black magic, or evil power exists, and it works too. Evil power causes, effects, and appears, as diseases and psychological issues since no one can realize, trace, and prove that horror practice; it is the secret and privilege of the evil-minded people that law fails to catch and punish them, for such crime. I exemplify here, the two events briefly, one a very authentic that I suffered from it and another, a person, who also became a victim of it. The first, when I landed on the soil of the Netherlands, I thought, I was in the safest place; however, within one year, I faced the incident, which was a practice of my family, involving my brothers, my country mates, who lived in the Netherlands. The most suspected were the evil-minded people of the Ahmadiyya movement of Surinam people, and possibly my ex-wife and a Pakistani couple. I had seen the evidence of the black magic, which my family did upon me, but I could not trace the reality of other suspected ones that destroyed my career, future, health, and even life. The second, a Pakistani, who lived in Germany, for several years, as an active member of the Ahmadiyya Movement, he told me his story briefly, during a trip to London, attending a literary gathering. He received a gold medal for his poetry work, and also he served Ahmadiyya TV channel; however when he became a real Muslim; as a result, Ahmadiyya worriers turned against him. When they could not force him to back in their group, they practiced the devil's work to punish him. The symptoms of magic were well-known to me that he told me since I bore that on my body too. The multiple other stories that reveal that the Ahmadiyya Movement, possibly practices black magic ways, to achieve its goals. As my observation, they involve, to eliminate Muslim Imams and scholars, who cause the failure of that new religion and false prophet, claiming as Jesus. I am a victim of their such practices. Social Media and such websites are a stronghold of their activities. In Pakistan, they are active, in the guise of the real Muslims, to dodge the simple ones, as they do in Europe and other parts of the word. Such possibility and chance can be possible that use of drugs and chemicals, to defeat their opponents, it needs, wide-scale investigation to save, the humanity. The incident that occurred to me, in the Netherlands, in 1980, I tried and appealed to the authorities of the Netherlands, but they openly refused to cooperate that. However, I still hope and look forward to any miracle that someone from somewhere gives the courage to verify that.

When I was a newly single mom with a toddler and a newborn, I’d cringe when meeting new people, especially other young parents, none of whom seemed to be anything but blissfully orbiting in their nuclear family unit. I’d dance around any pressures (perceived or real) to reveal my marital status, until I’d burst, and a flood of unprompted details would pour out: “I’m-separated-yes-your-math-is-right-my-ex-moved-out-while-Iwas-pregnant-but-he-had-a-brain-injury-and-destabalized-so-it-is-an-unusual-situation-a-medical-crisis-he’sactually-a-very-good-person-I’m-not-angry-about-that-we-are-all-fine!

On alimony: "Why should it be your ex's responsibility to give you a lifestyle that you yourself cannot afford?

After the Accident Before we run out of pages, I want to tell you a little of what happened to my family after the accident. My mother moved to a small house in Western Shore. Her first concern was finding a way to support herself and Ricky. Being an ex-dancer, motorcycle rider, and treasure-hunter was not likely to open any doors, so she decided to go back to school. She enrolled in a business course in Bridgewater and began her first studies since she was 12 years old. Soon she earned a diploma in typing, shorthand, and accounting, and was hired to work in a medical clinic. Ricky had been on the island from age nine to 14, mostly in the company of adults--family members and visiting tourists--but hardly ever with anyone his own age. Life on the mainland, with the give and take and bumps and bruises of high-school life was a challenge. But he survived. In time he became a carpenter, and is alive and well and living in Ottawa. My mother made a new life for herself. She remained fiercely independent, but between a job she loved and her neighbors, she formed friendships that were deep and lasting. Of course, she missed Dad and Bobby terribly. My mother and dad had been a perfect match, and my mother and brother had always shared a special bond. Bobby’s death was especially hard on her. My mother felt responsible. One day, before the accident, Bobby had taken all he could of Oak Island. After a heated argument with Dad, Bobby packed up and left. My mother had gone after him and convinced him to return--his dad needed him. She rarely spoke of it, but that weighed heavily on her for the rest of her years. My mother never left the east coast. She was 90 years old when she died. For the last 38 years of her life, she lived in a small house on a hill, in the community of Western Shore, where, from her living room window, she could look out and see Oak Island.

Fines, often in the thousands of dollars, are assessed against many prisoners when they are sentenced. There are twenty-two fines that can be imposed in New Jersey, including the Violent Crime Compensation Assessment (VCCA), the Law Enforcement Officers Training & Equipment Fund (LEOT), and Extradition Costs (EXTRA). The state takes a percentage each month out of a prisoner’s wages to pay for penalties. It can take decades to pay fines. Some 10 million Americans owe $50 billion in fees and fines because of their arrest or imprisonment, according to a 2015 report by the Brennan Center. If a prisoner who is fined $10,000 at sentencing relies solely on a prison salary, he or she will owe about $4,000 after making monthly payments for twenty-five years. Prisoners often leave prison in debt to the state. And if they cannot continue to make regular payments—difficult because of high unemployment among ex-felons—they are sent back to prison. High recidivism is part of the design. Most of the prison functions once handled by governments have become privatized. Corporations run prison commissaries and, since the prisoners have nowhere else to shop, often jack up prices by as much as 100 percent. Corporations have taken over the phone systems and grossly overcharge prisoners and their families. They demand exorbitant fees for money transfers from families to prisoners. And corporations, with workshops inside prisons, pay little more than a dollar a day to prison laborers. Food and merchandise vendors, construction companies, laundry services, uniform companies, prison equipment vendors, cafeteria services, manufacturers of pepper spray, body armor, and the array of medieval-looking instruments used for the physical control of prisoners, and a host of other contractors feed like jackals off prisons. Prisons, in America, are big business.

After a hellish journey lasting more than a month, the Sobków family was set down at Brochów near Wrocław, only to find that previous arrivals had already helped themselves to all the ex-German properties worth having.64

What was it Tolstoy said about unhappy families?  Happy families are all alike, but unhappy families are unhappy in their own way?  Tolstoy must have had an ex-wife.  She was probably a Tchaikovsky hater.

Manson attracted the attention of another woman, Patricia Krenwinkel, on Manhattan Beach in 1967. Krenwinkel later said that Manson was the first person who had ever told her she was beautiful and that she had sex with him on the first night they met. Thoroughly transfixed by Manson and desperate to become one of his girls, Krenwinkel left her job, car, apartment, and last paycheck behind and returned with the budding family to San Francisco. Krenwinkel gave Manson her father’s credit card and the foursome survived for a while by stealing and writing bad checks. Susan “Sadie” Atkins was the next woman to join the Manson Family. Atkins was an ex-convict who was supporting herself by topless dancing. Manson was drawn to Atkins when he learned that she had danced in a cabaret led by the self-styled leader of the Satanic Church, Anton LaVey. Atkins was a heavy drug-user when she met Manson and was easily convinced to join his family and to set about recruiting more members, preferably male. Atkins was able to lure Bruce Davis to join the family in the fall of 1967, the first male member and a man who was later described as Manson’s right-hand man. Davis met the family when they were in Oregon. Manson had traded his minibus for a full-size yellow school bus and had taken his family on a tour of the American West; he had decided the family should move to Los Angeles. The Haight had become too dangerous, Manson said, life would be better for the family in L.A. What he didn’t tell his family was that the real reason he wanted to move to Los Angeles was to pursue his dreams of stardom. Charles Manson was looking for a record deal.

And then Rosie moved quickly to tears. 'I love them, Rex. I love them [our kids] so much.' All Rosie's anguish, and sorrow, and hopelessness was pouring our of her eyes and straight through the phone. Her suffering coursed through his veins and clung to his heart. And then his ex-wife asked so simply, so innocently, so naively, 'Isn't that enough?" And then Rosie fell into full sobs. ... And then Rex, invoking all the love he still had for Rosie, said something so plan, and so true. But so difficult. 'No, baby. It's not enough..

And then Rosie moved quickly to tears. 'I love them, Rex. I love them [our kids] so much.' All Rosie's anguish, and sorrow, and hopelessness was pouring our of her eyes and straight through the phone. Her suffering coursed through his veins and clung to his heart. And then his ex-wife asked so simply, so innocently, so naively, 'Isn't that enough?" And then Rosie fell into full sobs. ... And then Rex, invoking all the love he still had for Rosie, said something so plain, and so true. But so difficult. 'No, baby. It's not enough..

I don’t have any other family. Only Finn, my brother. My parents were killed in a flying accident when they were caught in a blizzard a few year ago. Most of the bevy was lost, it was so horrible. Then there’s the rest of my herd, eight of us, including me.” Kellan’s shoulders slumped. “Well, seven now. And I guess I should stop referring to them as my herd.” Vic settled on the floor at his feet, the large man gazing up at him with compassion. “You’re not alone, Kellan, I promise. Vale Valley exists for a reason, to be that shining beacon for those of us who’ve been cast aside.” Vic clasped his hand. “I lost my family too when a deadly virus tore through our pack. But I’ve found a home and community and have built a good life here. Everyone’s going to welcome you with open arms, I promise.” A measure of peace filled him. Vale Valley could only be a million times better than living with his rotten brother or any of the other vicious members of his herd. Ex-herd. Kellan smiled. “Thank you for everything, Vic. Especially for staying here with me tonight

Farren realized that her soon-to-be ex-husband’s family did nothing to her or her children, and she agreed for them to spend the weekend with Mrs. Knight.

siblings? With my in-laws? With my other relatives? Do I need to forgive any family member? How do I want to relate to my spouse or ex-spouse with respect to the upbringing of our children? What type of family life feels right to me? — My friends and social life: How much time do I want to spend with my friends and acquaintances? What types of friendships do I want to encourage? Do I prefer one or two close friends, or a group of friends? What qualities and characteristics do my friends and I have? What activities would I most enjoy undertaking with them? What changes do I want to make with the people I currently socialize with? Do I need to set or maintain boundaries with any people currently in my life? Do I need to forgive any of my present or past friends? How much time do I want to spend on the telephone with my friends? What are my true beliefs about giving help to my friends? — My hobbies and recreational life: What do I most like to do? What did I like to do for fun when I was a kid? When I was a teenager? What new hobbies or sports do I want to learn? How do I want to spend my weekends and other free time? What equipment, trips, classes, or memberships do I want to purchase? When will I use them? Where? How often? With whom? — My education: What do I want to learn? What

The ex-convict tried to explain, but I could see even he didn’t understand what he was saying. In North Korea, there was no concept of doing things for other people out of kindness. Unconditional love was not something I was familiar with. You did things because of family obligation, or because of hunger or greed, or because there was no other choice. But what he was describing—people freely giving their hard-earned cash to complete strangers—was plain crazy. We

Mom!” she said, her tone the brightest and cheeriest she could muster. “How are you?” There was a beat of silence before her mother spoke. “Hello, sweetheart,” was all she said at first. But what Grace heard was, Hello, sweetheart. You’ve been avoiding your family for weeks. And if you think you’re hanging up this phone without committing to dinner with us and your conniving ex whom we adore, well then tilt your head up to see the pigs flying, and then glance below your feet so you can see hell freezing over.

At first you may feel shock or disbelief that a loss has occurred or an inability to recognize that it was really a loss. You know you’re hurt, but you want to repress it, suppress it, ignore it, or deny it. Some people can do just that, but it’s healthier to recognize that you’ve sustained a loss. Keep in mind that even if you know it was for the best, you’ve still had a loss. What have you lost? At the very least you’ve lost the time, energy, and emotion you put into the relationship. You’ve also lost the hopes and dreams that you had in the beginning. You’ve lost the identity of the couple, and you may have lost mutual friends or family members of your ex’s that you liked.

Wilson, “whose strange past is darkly troubled” (Radio Life), and Ray Brandon, a bitter ex-con on parole. By the early 1950s, the Bauer family had become the serial’s center: Bill and Bertha (Bert), their 11-year-old son, Michael, and Meta Bauer, Bill’s sister. Three decades later, the TV serial was still focused on the Bauer brothers and their careers in law and medicine. The Ruthledges and the Kranskys were fading memories, and the “guiding light” of the title was little more than symbolic. In its heyday, it was one of Phillips’s prime showpieces. She produced it independently, sold it to sponsors, and offered it to the network as a complete package. Phillips paid her own casts, announcers, production crews, and advisers (two doctors and a lawyer on retainer) and still earned $5,000 a week. She dared to depart from formula, even to the extent of occasionally turning over whole shows to Ruthledge sermons. Her organist, Bernice Yanocek, worked her other shows as well, and the music was sometimes incorporated into the storylines, as being played by Mary Ruthledge in her father’s church. A few episodes exist from the prime years. Of equal interest is an R-rated cast record, produced for Phillips when the show was moving to New York and the story was changing direction. It’s typical racy backstage stuff, full of lines like “When your bowels are in a bind, try new Duz with the hair-trigger formula.” It shows what uninhibited fun these radio people had together.

What to remove? Dairy. From cows, goats, and sheep (including butter). Grains. For the more intensive version of this 30-day diet, eliminate all grains. This is important for those with digestive or autoimmune conditions. If this feels undoable for a full month, add in a small serving a day of gluten-free grains like white rice or quinoa. If that still feels undoable, consider a whole-foods diet rich in vegetables that is strictly gluten- and dairy-free. Legumes. Beans of all kinds (soy, black, kidney, pinto, etc.), lentils, and peanuts. Green peas and snap peas are okay. Sweeteners, real or artificial. Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, agave, Splenda, Equal, NutraSweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Processed or refined snack foods. Sodas and diet sodas. Alcohol in any form. White potatoes. Premade sauces and seasonings. How to avoid common pitfalls: Prepare well beforehand. Choose a time frame during which you will have limited or reduced travel, and that doesn’t include holidays or special occasions. Study the list of foods allowed on the diet and make a shopping list. Remove the foods from your pantry or refrigerator that aren’t allowed on the diet, if that makes it easier. Engage the whole family to try this together, or find a friend to join you. Success happens in community. Set up a calendar to mark your progress. Print out a free 30-day online calendar, tape it to the refrigerator door, and mark off each day. Pack snacks with you, pack your lunch, call ahead to restaurants to check their menu (or check online). Get enough vegetables and fats. If you feel jittery or lose too much weight, increase your carbohydrates (starchy vegetables like yams, taro, sweet potatoes). Don’t misread withdrawal-type symptoms as the diet “not working.” These symptoms usually resolve within a week’s time. Personalize it. Start with the basics above and: * If you’re having trouble with autoimmune conditions, eliminate eggs, too. * If you’re prone to weight gain, eat less meat and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), more vegetables and raw foods. * If you’re prone to weight loss or having trouble gaining weight, eat more meats and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), less raw foods like salads. * If you’re generally healthy and wanting a boost in energy, try short-term fasts of 12–16 hours. Due to the circadian rhythm of the digestive tract, skipping dinner is best (as opposed to skipping breakfast). Try this 1–2 times a week. (This fast also means no supplements or beverages other than tea or water during the fasting time.)

is clear how such a man would feel when news reached him that a child was born who was destined to be king. Herod was troubled, and Jerusalem was troubled, too, for Jerusalem knew well the steps that Herod would take to pin down this story and to eliminate this child. Jerusalem knew Herod, and Jerusalem shivered as it waited for his inevitable reaction. Herod summoned the chief priests and the scribes. The scribes were the experts in Scripture and in the law. The chief priests consisted of two kinds of people. They consisted of ex-high priests. The high priesthood was confined to a very few families. They were the priestly aristocracy, and the members of these select families were called the chief priests.

I had learned firsthand from my first release from prison that living-wage-paying jobs and black ex-felons don't go together in America. (I specifically say black ex-felons because studies have shown that white male ex-felons oftentimes have better paying job prospects and offers than blacks males with clean records or even college degrees. 4)