Filed under: Custody, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Religion, Uncategorized
Golden Girl Miss California, Carrie Prejean, has lost her Tiara. That’s what you get when you try to compete with the Tranny’s for “Most Beautiful Girl” title, Sweetheart. The Gay men are having their way with her. That’s gross.
Prejean lost a chance to win the Miss America (or Miss USA, I don’t know which) Crown by proudly announcing to Gay Blogger and Fat Slob Emcee Perez Hilton that she said she doesn’t believe that Gay People should be allowed to get married. That makes me first wonder, What the Hell is a Fat Slob like Perez Hilton representing the Gay Community for? Geez, the minute people even think about getting the right to get married they just start letting themselves go. Then I think, how can a gorgeous girl like that growing up in a liberal place like California be so narrow minded? Especially one who is so dependent on Gay Men to make her look like a Queen.
Our Princess, Our Queen, Our Princess, Carrie has lost her Crown. Apparently she hasn’t been showing up for her Miss California activities and today she received a letter of termination from Donald Trump. What impresses me is that it appears that the reason why Carrie is no longer appearing is not because she bared her Christian boobies to a photographer way back when, not because she openly spoke her mind in a country which espouses Freedom of Speech, but because the Gays are attacking her childhood. They couldn’t just drop it. They dug up her parents’ divorce papers. Oh yeah, baby, that’s as low as it goes, especially when you hear Carrie’s story.
And so that’s why Carrie’s appearing in this blog. I can’t put her in the Exemplaries Section and I can’t put her in the Bad Section. But, remember how I’ve been pondering whether female Children of D tend to get beaten up more by men? Well, here’s another case. Once the kid goes through that much heartbreak, that much humiliation, that much cover-up, the sewer just seems to keep looking for an inlet.
At any rate, Carrie’s parents’ divorce seems to have been nasty, really nasty. (or, actually, for California it’s pretty normal). And it went on for a really, really long time. Her parents used the custody battle of the kids as a reason to fight with each other for her ENTIRE childhood. This certainly explains why she clings to conservative and uptight values with regards to family. She grew up in Hell. Give her a break. Let her speak.
According to the San Francisco Examiner
Prejean’s parents divorced when she was around 1 year old. The Child Custody fights continued until she was at least 12 years old. The parents maybe, just maybe, stopped humiliating her just as she hit puberty. How generous and thoughtful. At any rate, every single insult they hurled at each was recorded in court documents and among those were allegations that both the Father and the Step-Father were Gay, I think also the Mother. Coming from a bad divorce situation myself I can only think, “So What? That’s normal. People always say shit like that during divorces and the kids are in the middle of it all.”
You’re Gay!
You’re Gay!
You’re Gay! (generally more derogative wording is used)
That’s normal Divorce banter. NORMAL.
So, not only are these creepy Gay guys ignorant of what goes on in Divorce Custody battles (narcissists that they tend to be they think it’s all about them) but now they are dredging that Hell up for Prejean to go through all over again. And all because they are jealous of her and want her title and hips and boobs (and lip gloss).
Prejean’s a Beauty Queen for Christ’s Sake! That’s a shallow, conservative vision of women’s beauty. In the Straight World, if you compete in those Pageants you might as well be announcing that you’re a Republican and Newt Gingrich is God. Apparently the Gay World is just as ignorant about what goes on in Divorced families. You guys are even as far as being equally defective as far as I’m concerned.
As much as I believe that Gays should by given the right to Marriage if they really, really want to, what I’m thinking right now is – Wow, they’re really mean and petty. You think straight people are nasty in a divorce court? Just imagine what Perez Hilton would be like.
Oh yeah, and I checked. Perez Hilton? We can breathe a big sigh of relief here — not a Child of D. Perez’s Mommy and Daddy let him sit in bed all day and watch TV and get all spoiled and depressed. Maybe that’s why the guy has flab where his heart should be. What the Hell is a jerk like that talking about the sanctity of Marriage for anyway?
One of my most prominent memories from my parents’ divorce was the discussion over the Child Support. This is a real bartering tool during Divorce and lets the children know exactly how much they are valued.
So, I was reminded of it by reading this gossip column/forum type thingee concerning a Celebrity Divorce. Although it’s a bunch of anonymous people ranting anonymously on the Internet it actually does remind me of the types of verbal “considerations” that were going on in my family. And no doubt in my community.
The link to the article is here:
http://www.starpulse.com/sp_comments/viewcomments.php?object_id=91276.
The Celebrity involved is Baby Phat dress designer Kimora Lee Simmons. She has two daughters with her ex-husband Russell Simmons. She won a Child Support settlement of $480,000 “for her children.”
The discussion, of course, discussed how the children would obviously be brought up as spoiled rich kids. I doubt this discussion would have happened if their parents had remained married. It just totally amazes me that people will pick on kids who are going through this situation. No one, absolutely no one on the board felt any sense of loss for the children. After Death, I doubt that these people would have discussed the Children’s financial situation.
Of course, the Mother, Kimora was ripped to shreds. All the usual. She was called a gold digger, a slut, a bad mother. People were saying they would no longer buy her clothes. People, I suppose, expect her to be a victim. Women work well in that situation. I assume that most of the people on the forum were females but on the Internet you never know. This may just be a publicity stunt. At any rate, the comments were very accurate discussions of how people in communities discuss their friends’ divorces. Some of the participants were praising her shrewdness. Marriage is a business deal, after all. Everyone took a side.
Filed under: Custody, Exemplary Children of Divorce, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, creativity, separate households
Noah Baumbach is the Director/Writer of one of the few true movies about going through a Divorce, The Squid and the Whale. It is said to be based on experiences he went through during his own parents’ divorce. Baumbach’s biography is a little sketchy so I’m not sure of his age at the time of his parent’s divorce. I’m assuming he was around Age 15 or 16.
The Squid and the Whale is about a family living in Brooklyn in the mid-80s. The parents are intellectuals, both writers, the Father is going through a mid-life crisis and down-turn in his career and ego and the Mother’s career is just taking off. The sons are age 12 and age 16. The movie does a great job of showing the strangeness of going through adolescence while also going through the parents’ divorce.
I saw the movie a while ago and thought it a little dry. The significance of the Squid and the Whale is explained at the end but I was spacing out at that point. Sorry.
Supposedly the first words were the 12 year old Son saying: “Me and Mom against you and Dad.” That definitely sums it up pretty well.
There’s a great article at indiewire which analyzes the relationships. http://www.indiewire.com/article/noahs_arc_noah_baumbachs_the_squid_and_the_whale
Here’s a quote about how narcissistic parents raise their kids in divorce. Can hardly wait for the sequel with Step-Parents and siblings:
“the parental choice to treat children as equals can be admirable but also suggests a deeper selfishness that seems fundamentally at odds with the job.”
Filed under: Abandonment, Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, Courts, Custody, Mentally Ill parents, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Violence, indifferent parents
Tess Damm is the Colorado teenager who allowed her boyfriend to murder her Mother. The teenagers than put the Mother’s body in the car and partied for about a month before neighbors called authorities. Tess’s Mother was what sounds like a raging alcoholic and her boyfriend, an adopted boy from India, had a split personality. I talked briefly about Tess Damm a while back and went back to see if I could find any new information about her situation as regards to her parent’s divorce because obviously this was an impossible situation which led to tragedy.
I found an article about Tess’ Father, Michael Damm, who left her Mother, Linda Juergens, when Tess was around 1 1/2 years old.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/mar/02/damms-father-i-dont-know-those-people/
The Father’s attitude towards his daughter was totally distant. He said that “he didn’t know those people.” As is typical in Divorced families the Father can’t handle the stress of maintaining a relationship with the Mother who is totally insane. And he simply disappears. I tend to see how this is a practical way to lead one’s life. Unfortunately, from the child’s point of view this is very destructive.
According to the article, Tess’ parents married on June 29, 1991. Tess was born a month later so obviously she was a “mistake” child. The Father walked out in September 1992. He tried to maintain a long distance relationship with his daughter and was given what looks to me like very difficult rules to follow in order to do that. For example, he had to give 30 days’ notice in order to visit. Juergens filed for divorce in April, 1999. That’s a long time to remain separated so I sort of assume that he really was having struggling with trying to maintain connection with his daughter at least.
I wonder if it’s easier if these parents just cut the cord quickly. The child then doesn’t build up any false hopes and can live with reality much better. Of course, the best option would have been if he had been given custody since it sounds like he was the more stable parent but who knows? He may have been as unstable as the Mother.
The Father at the time of the writing is now living in Wisconsin, is remarried and has more children with his current wife. He talked very coldly about his daughter’s situation which I think is the attitude that a lot of Children of D receive from the missing parent. The child must suffer the Loss like a Death but also the Rejection of being Unworthy. The Father said he hadn’t talked to her in 10 years and didn’t intend to reestablish a relationship now. At any rate, one can see the Father’s coldness being projected into the mind of a daughter who plotted and carried out her own Mother’s death. He is quoted as saying:
“I have a family, and I’m living and loving life in Wisconsin,” he said. “I moved out of that situation when (Tess) was about 2.”
He is quoted repeatedly as saying that he has moved on in life. His Mother, Tess’ Grandmother, was also interviewed as saying that the family had moved on. Tess really was worth nothing to her family. Most Children of D don’t kill their parents, but they do share a similar style relationship with one of their parents.
The great philosopher Martin Buber said that the greatest evil in the world comes not from bad deeds but from indifference.
Ingrid Betancourt is a Columbian-French Politician who has just recently been released after being held prisoner in the jungles of Columbia by FARC Columbian Terrorists for 6 1/2 years. She was kidnapped while campaigning to become President of Columbia on February 23, 2002. She was the only woman held in the camp and was rescued along with many others being held in the camp (I believe 3 Americans were released as well).
Betancourt just gave an interview on Larry King Live. What an unbelievably strong and beautiful woman. The astrologers have been guffawing over the transits on the day of her rescue which are pretty heavy duty and while reading about her I noticed that she is also from a Divorced family.
Betancourt’s parents, also involved in Politics, divorced in 1975 when she would have been around 14 years old. They were living in France and Ingrid’s father was granted custody of her and her older sister. Her Mother returned to Columbia.
Ingrid married a fellow student in 1983 and through that marriage received a dual French-Columbian citizenship. The couple had two children, Melanie and Lorenzo, and then divorced around 1990 (?). The children lived with their Father in New Zealand after the Divorce. Betancourt remarried in 1997 and seems to have entered Politics around that time. I believe she was elected into the Senate.
Betancourt began her campaign for Presidency for the Green Party in 2001 and was kidnapped on Feb. 23, 2002 for campaigning in areas that she had been warned were dangerous. She was rescued on July 2, 2008.
Her Father passed away a month after she was kidnapped but her Mother is alive.
A book called Letter to My Mother was published a year or two ago that included a letter she wrote while imprisoned. It was apparently released along with a video of her. Her children wrote letters back to her which is included in the book. Betancourt has also written a memoir of her life called Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Columbia which was a bestseller in France and Columbia so she has a strong International following.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article4264852.ece
Finally located the Raymond Carver story that I had been looking for. It’s called “Little Things” and it’s about a couple fighting over their baby in a custody battle. They pull the baby apart. The story is very short and is written in Carver’s minimalist style. Trust me, this guy could pack a whole lot of story into a couple of pages.
“Little Things” is included in a short story set called Where I’m Calling From.
Today’s San Jose Mercury News is running the first part of an expose on how the Family Courts fail. The story, written by Karen de Sa is called “How Rushed Justice Fails Our Kids.”
It’s a typical morning in the court system designed to protect California’s children from abuse and neglect: Justice is being strangled by the clock.
In this Sacramento courtroom, attorneys spend two minutes on the case of a 3-year-old sent to the children’s shelter after being found in a filthy home. The case of a teenager anxious to reconnect with lost siblings gets three minutes, yet his desperation cannot be felt; he’s absent from his own hearing. Should a mother’s right to her child be terminated? The court date opens and closes in 60 seconds. Parent and child are legally severed for life.
By 11:30 a.m., 14 cases into a 21-case morning, Sacramento Superior Court Referee Daniel Horton is anxious. “C’mon folks, we can do this! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” he shouts. “OK, counsel, we can do this, let’s go, let’s get it done. It’s like driving a car. Sit down and buckle up.”
Filed under: Abduction, Alcoholism, Bad Children of Divorce, Birth Order, Custody, Mentally Ill parents, Parents and their Dates, Suicide, money, self-absorbed parents, separate households
Marlon Brando’s troubled Son, Christian, passed away yesterday in Los Angeles, California. He had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Christian was 49 years old. May he Rest in Peace.
Christian was the eldest of Brando’s nine children. His Mother, Anna Kashfi, was also an actress. She separated from Brando when Christian was 5 months old and the couple divorced on Apr. 22, 1959 (can’t vouch for any dates here). The couple remained in a custody dispute over Christian until 1972 when Kashfi abducted the 13 year boy and took him to Mexico. She was sent to jail and subsequently lost all chance for custody. His Mother had drug and alcohol problems.
Christian dropped out of High School and held minor acting jobs. As can be expected he had emotional problems and ended up killing his sister Cheyenne’s boyfriend while arguing over whether the boyfriend had beaten his pregnant half-sister. He spent 5 years in jail for the murder. Cheyenne gave birth to the baby but hanged herself at Age 25. Christian was recently divorced for violent behavior to his wife and her daughter.
This is a description of his childhood from www.astrotheme.com. (Date of parents’ separation is different from one mentioned in obituary in newspaper (www.mercurynews.com):
Kashfi turned to barbiturates and alcohol and the couple divorced a year after Christian’s birth in May 1959. Christian was passed between the two as their relationship became more and more hostile and abusive. The author Nellie Bly claimed that “When the Brandos quarreled, Anna displayed a ‘frightening’ rage,” and that “Anna left baby Christian alone in her car parked on Wilshire Boulevard while she confronted Brando in his office, ‘beating at him with her fists, in a frenzy of rage.” There was a protracted custody battle between Kashfi and Brando until he eventually won custody of Christian aged 13 after an incident when Christian was taken out of school to Mexico by Kashfi without Brando’s consent.
Christian had little good contact with his father, being raised by nannies and servants, moving between Hollywood and the private island near Tahiti. A reluctant witness to his father’s sexual exploits and bizarre behavior, Christian complained that:
“The family kept changing shape, I’d sit down at the breakfast table and say, “Who are you?””
Last night Dateline NBC aired a really crazy story about a Child Custody case that has lasted for 10 years. The daughter accused the Father of having molested her and the Mother has been smuggling her underground ever since. All 3 of them seem really whacked out. The Daughter doesn’t look people in the eye because she says that she has Asperger’s Syndrome but in all of her childhood photos she’s looking straight into the camera, no problem.
The Father has been awarded custody of the daughter because the Mother is thought to have mental problems. They say they can’t come out of hiding because the Mother will have to go to jail. There was discussion about “Parental Alienation Syndrome.” This is where one parent alienates the child from the other parent. This behavior flies around in Divorced families out of control like the bird flu from Hell. Mind you, everyone’s intelligent and everyone knows it’s a Bozo NoNo to work one person against the other but I doubt the behavior will ever stop. Both parents do it and then when the kids do it they are considered “manipulative.” And then you add the stepparents, ohmigod. This went on really badly in my family. My Mother was doing this before my Father left but after the Divorce anything I did with my Father made me a “Traitor”. “Traiter” and “Betrayer” are major parental terms of endearment during Divorce.
What was chilling about the Dateline show was that the Mother seems to be doing this but in the interviews she sees herself as loving and rational. I remember my Mother putting on that face. I remember my Stepmother putting on that face. I remember my Father putting on that face. Everyone’s a martyr. The Daughter in the show looks like she’s never going to calm down. (Well, her Father announced on Air that the psychotherapist had told him that she figured that his daughter would stab him in the back with a knife if given a chance. That’s a wonderful thing to be accused of. Another example of crappy psychotherapists saying the most obnoxious thing possible.) The daughter has been diagnosed with Asperger’s but I tend to just think that it’s some kind of bizarre behavior that comes from living in such an intense situation. Well, and then there really could have been the sexual abuse thing. On the other hand, kids now have to turn to whatever keyword will work into the heads of the adult figure and society can only compute “Sexual Abuse” at this point. They went around and around with the legalise and the psychobabble and the truth is the situation is just really fucked up.
Here’s another link to a writer discussing this “Syndrome.” http://www.parental-alienation-awareness.com/mediacoverage.asp.
