Lessons Learned from Tori Spelling

Preamble – First of all I have to say that I am addicted to Tori & Dean Home Sweet Hollywood. I have watched since season one and will watch til the last episode. I think she’s fascinating. Maybe its the poor little rich girl thing, but Tori’s so real about who she is. She isn’t ashamed of her flaws. She embraces who she is. I love it.

Now onto the real blog post.

Last week was the season finale of Tori& Dean Home Sweet Hollywood, with Stella’s one-year birthday party. The big question was, will Candy show up? You knew she wasn’t. She said it was because of the cameras and she didn’t want to be on the tv show. I think that’s crap. If you want to be in your daughter’s life, for real, you do whatever it takes. There are no strings. There are no conditions. There is no question. You show up. You’re there, regardless.

So, when she didn’t show up Tori was devastated, again. She was crying. Dean was frustrated. But in the end, during one of the last interviews of the season Tori finally got it. She finally had a way to deal with her mother and it started with her. She realized that she had to stop being a victim. She was in a position to be hurt because she put herself there. She had unrealistic expectations. It was time to own it and deal with it privately. No one could stop the cycle but her. She had to stand up for herself and her family.

OOoohhhh! That’s it. A light went off for me. This so related to my life. I have to stand up and take responsibility for my life. I can’t keep waiting here in Ohio for my family to be a family. I”m here because I made the choice to come. I have to step up and take my life back. They are who they are. They are going to keep trucking down their road and I need to get on mine.  Now to figure out how and what and where.

Another benefit is that by owning my actions and emotions it helps avoid anger, bitterness and resentment. It doesn’t mean I’m not hurt, but it makes me step back and analyze where I put myself in an unhealthy situation. I have to draw better boundaries. I have to be true to me. I have to stand up for me. UGH! All of that is much harder than I thought. I still want them to love me so I hesitate everytime I need to say something. Baby steps. See because love is conditional you don’t have the freedom to say no, it comes with great consequences. So, learning to stand up for yourself and say, in the immortal words of Baby in Dirty Dancing, “this is my dance space and that is your dance space.”

Now, for some this is a no brainer. But when you grow up in a dysfunctional family where love is conditional and often manipulative it’s not so cut and dried. You have to learn on your own, with therapy and through the friends that become like family, how to be a functional, healthy adult. These things do not come naturally. We have to be told not to give until you’re depleted. We have to learn that co-dependence does not mean they love you. It takes time to figure out that even though we change and work through our junk, they may continue in the same crap that you drug yourself out of, it’s called denial.

So thank you Tori Spelling for sharing your ephiphany with us and allowing me one of my own. See God will use any means necessary to speak into our lives, even through Tori Spelling.

Filed under: Pop Culture, Psychobabbling , anger, bitterness, boundaries, daughter, family, mother, Oxygen, parents, Tori Spelling, victim mentality

Grand Trip to Dover, OH

Desperate for something to do I started flipping through the Entertainment Book for ideas. I discovered that there were TWO activities in Dover, OH that looked interesting.

Now, Dover is a village of 12,466 people. So it’s quite amazing that there is one something to do, but TWO, that is just phenomenal. So we had to go.

The first stop is the Warther Family Museum. When I first saw it in the book I thought it was the Werther family. You know the caramels. But instead its a family full of carvers and knife makers. I had no idea what to expect. It had a high potential of being very lame, but it wasn’t. It was really fascinating.

Ernest Warther was quite the man. He only had a 2nd grade education but transformed his hobby of whittling into a passion that became a celebrated career. that is still earning money for his family. In the 1920’s he was declared a master carver after his ebony, walnut wood and ivory mini trains toured the United States on a special train exhibit . Every train is intricately carved inside and out. They are an exact replicas of the original, operating on a leather pulley system with actual working parts.

What was most intriguing about the Warthers is their commitment to family, tradition, and love. He didn’t carve these beautiful pieces for the money but his love of his craft and trains. He refused an offer of $50,000 plus $5,000 a year in the early 1900s to keep his trains in Grand Central Station. He said nothing shouuld live in NY for more than a week. He also said that his family was not hurting for money, so if people wanted to see the trains they could come to Dover. 

And we did.

 Second, on our grand tour of Dover, was the J.E. Reeves Victorian mansion.  I had no idea who J.E. was or why he could afford a mansion. It was all a mystery.

Turns out he was from England and was a trained boiler maker. He and his brothers settled in Ohio and took over a failing steel plant. Together they turned it around and made a ton of money. The brothers then opened a bank and hotel. Times were good for the Reeves, hence the mansion.

When arrived and a small wedding was taking place in the side yard. So we were ushered into the carriage house. It seemed like everything was really casual. There were no set tour times, they just offered them when there were enough for a group or you’d been waiting a sufficient period of time.  After a short 10 minute wait we began our tour, around the wedding photos.

Reeves purchased an 1870 farmhouse and created a beautiful Victorian masterpiece. He spared no detail on moldings, furnishing or woodwork. He even put a bathroom in his study. As a member of the Electoral College he held many business meetings in his large study and his private restroom showed his wealth. What as really amazing to me is that they have original Edison-designed lightbulbs in the study, which have been burning since 1976. I think we’re getting robbed with new technology.

AAAAAHhhhh what a delightfully rich day in the land of Dover. Downtown is picturesque. It is mere moments from Amish country and contained so much history, who knew. We even got a treat on our way home. The GPS took us a funky way back to Canton for some reason. We went surface streets instead of on the freeway. About two minutes outside of town was the Dover Dam.

There’s a dam in Dover?! YES! It was a relic from FDR’s New Deal. Built in 1935 on the Tuscarawas River.

Not much else to say about dam. There was no dam tour. I did take some dam photos. LOL had to do it. National Lampoon Vegas Vacation, if you’re wondering where those lines are from. However, in researching the dam history, I did discover the Zoar Village nearby that looks interesting. It was founded by German separtists escaping religious persecution. The Ohio Historical Society owns most of the village now and has restored the buildings and gardens. The village is open from April through October.

Another day trip to be had.

Filed under: Living in Ohio , Dover, Dover Dam, J.E. Reeves Mansion, Ohio, trains, Tuscarawas River, Warther Museum, Zoar Village