The Great Adventures of Milly and Grandy Frank I

Just some thoughts after seeing so many opinions on the student debt relief.   First, (disclosure) I will benefit from this...why?  Why didn't I work "hard enough" to pay off my student loans.  Being a person who got pregnant in college and choose to carry and raise my daughter and then marry her father keeping our family together I needed financial assitance with the idea that once I graduated I could work as a teacher. My husband working hard at an entry level IT job to provide for us. Both his mother and my mother passed away over the next few years and my mother had told me she really wanted me to finish my education and I honored that.  I started college in 1996 and it would take me until 2010 to actually finish that degree.  During this time we were led to adopt and instead of the 1 newborn we had planned on we ended up adopting 5 children because of our refusal to break up sibling groups, and our willingness to adopt older chldren.  I put my deg...

We are always taught to aim high, to reach for the stars and go big or go home....but how that translates into our current world which is ever changing has created an impossible situation and has created a lost generation.  A generation that can reach out in a moment and talk to anyone in the world, who can post a video or picture and be seen by hundreds or thousands of people is suffering from extreme loneliness.  Before this access, when I was growing up or my parents or grandparents, those mantras made sense because the only way to move up was to be a part of a smaller unit and make a difference.  For example, before we would have to engage in our school, neighborhood, community.... to move up to bigger things and through that making meaningful connections we found that we made a difference, was important....right where we were in our little corner of the world.  Now the ability of the internet, social media, reality tv, we see the very few skip that and rise to t...

 Before I was a Milly I was a Mom, which is usually how it goes.  We have raised many children from some hard places.  Most of the time we did have challenges, adjustment disorders, tantrums, rages.... all comes with the territory of healing.  But healing is the operative word, over time, hearts healed and the children and us developed bonds.  So when I call myself a RAD mom, I am not referring to the 80s rad...I am referring to a specific disorder Reactive Attachment Disorder.  Something that we have dealt with for the past 15 years.  It is far beyond the typical adjustment disorder, depression, anxiety that is to be expected in the course of an adoption.  As even the best adoption begins with the traumatic event of being separated from a birth parent.  The best way I can explain RAD's affect on a parent is a miscarriage of the heart. As I experienced an actual miscarriage, you carry a child and you dream and imagine all the things you will ...

 If you have had children in your life you have had this experience.  You find a gift for them, something perfect, something that suits them and you know they will love it.  You have the anticipation as you wrap it up and tie the bow.  You get so excited the day arrives and you give them this gift.  As they unwrap it they are wide eyed, mouth open or perhaps a shout of glee! They wrap their arms around you or give you that big smile and you know in that moment they know they are loved....keep that word in your mind...moment.....because if you know children that is how long the magic lasted.  In a matter of time, they still love the gift, but at times it will become the main source of their frustration, especially if its a video game...., It will become their biggest heartache, picture a lost teddy bear, or their forgotten item under a stack of other items when they are bored....  What happened.....what brought them excitement and joy has now fizzled to...