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
What did you say?