Keepers and I have a dream, that someday soon I will be able to work here at the studio with them on a daily basis instead of needing to work at a regular 8-5 job and helping in the evening. It has been our dream for quite a while now. It is a big dream we know, and to many it is probably unrealistic, but we had a lot of other dreams that were also, but they have come through. Some did not for various reasons. Like becoming a 501 (c)3 charitable organization due to IRS rules and regulations that would have required us to change our site drastically and our gift giving methods. So we chose to remain a Missouri recognized not for profit and leave it at that.
We hoped to build the studio and the office for Keeperskorner and we have now! The studio has a drafting table, a large wooden easel, computers, printer, and the office has a huge wooden desk and file cabinets and shelves and then we have a storage room with more art supplies, paper, the mat board cutter for preparing Keepers framed art, all has become a reality.
At time we ourselves doubted it could happen but we decided a year ago this past July to make it our ministry, for multiples and survivors, to be a source of hope, instruction, information, friendship, and caring. We have met a great many people through Keeperskorner, many of those people live in other countries, and we have learned about them and their countries and their habits and customs, some are different and some are similar, and all have been interesting and friendly, hopeful and in doubt, struggling and thriving, as we all are at one time or another.
Our dream is continuing onward, some steps seem to be excrutiatingly slow and awkward and others seem to be rapid and awe inspiring. Our personal dreams and our dreams for Keeperskorner are very much intertwined, and we feel on some days to be failing and on others to be succeeding, and the frustration can be offset by joy and the happiness by sorrow. We have lost friends over disagreements, due to death, and we ache for those we lost and treasure those we have. We pray for all and keep them in our hearts and thoughts.
Keepers continue to offer their experiences for others to look at and compare and draw from, to take what they can use to help themselves on their road to recovery. Sometimes I am asked for my viewpoint from the vantage of being the significant other, more or less an outsider due to being a singleton, and when I can I do. It is a teamwork here, not only between keepers and myself but between us and our visitors, our friends, our, what I can only call, family. There is a closeness, a bond, an affinity that only family can perceive, and I am not talking blood family, but family of circumstance and experience, of people who understand a commonality they share, a need they all have, a road they are all on, walking it together, with different people at different times, but all on the same journey, a journey of healing and recovery and yes, I do daresay, thriving.
Happy trails
JM
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
One Week From Today
One week from today keepers and I will officially be the same family! Every keeper from baby right on up will be family with me. We will have our ceremony presided over by Pastor Brown, and we will all sign a Family License for all to see, hanging right here in the Keeperskorner studio, so that littles especially can look up and see it and know they are are a part of this family.
A few days ago Jennifer asked me if she was going to be a part of the family and if not she understood. I could only reassure her that she was definitely wanted in the family, that I had no intention of leaving any keeper out! Even now after 30 some odd years many of them feel as though they are not wanted, not accepted or just hangers on because of them being a part of the entire group of keepers. I hope and pray this ceremony and license will finally let them all know how much I want them all to be a part of the family. How much I love each of them, respect each of them, want each of them to feel wanted and accepted and respected and loved and not only loved but liked.
I think that is why our marriage has succeeded and thrived and next week will be our 38th year, because love is not enough, you have to like the partner(s) also, if you like them and love them I think the respect comes along. Just loving someone, in my opinion, is not enough, you have to like them also.
Keepers have some painful days to get through before our ceremonies next week, our son's birthday tomorrow and our granddaughter's birthday next Friday, so I know their hearts will be aching, a mother's heart is much more fragile in that way I believe.
Anyway, one week from today we will have reached a milestone, those I married and all those who will be "adopted" into our family! Welcome to all keepers, you always were, but now it will be official so you can know it and see it and feel it. I am sorry it took so long, maybe we had to find the right person to officiate, and I think we do have that person now. Pastor may not understand all of the multiplicity and what it entails, but he is trying to learn, he is open minded, and he cares, he really cares about all of us and we for him. As far as he is concerned, him, keepers and me are family, and I think he is right!
Happy Trails!
JM
A few days ago Jennifer asked me if she was going to be a part of the family and if not she understood. I could only reassure her that she was definitely wanted in the family, that I had no intention of leaving any keeper out! Even now after 30 some odd years many of them feel as though they are not wanted, not accepted or just hangers on because of them being a part of the entire group of keepers. I hope and pray this ceremony and license will finally let them all know how much I want them all to be a part of the family. How much I love each of them, respect each of them, want each of them to feel wanted and accepted and respected and loved and not only loved but liked.
I think that is why our marriage has succeeded and thrived and next week will be our 38th year, because love is not enough, you have to like the partner(s) also, if you like them and love them I think the respect comes along. Just loving someone, in my opinion, is not enough, you have to like them also.
Keepers have some painful days to get through before our ceremonies next week, our son's birthday tomorrow and our granddaughter's birthday next Friday, so I know their hearts will be aching, a mother's heart is much more fragile in that way I believe.
Anyway, one week from today we will have reached a milestone, those I married and all those who will be "adopted" into our family! Welcome to all keepers, you always were, but now it will be official so you can know it and see it and feel it. I am sorry it took so long, maybe we had to find the right person to officiate, and I think we do have that person now. Pastor may not understand all of the multiplicity and what it entails, but he is trying to learn, he is open minded, and he cares, he really cares about all of us and we for him. As far as he is concerned, him, keepers and me are family, and I think he is right!
Happy Trails!
JM
Sunday, August 12, 2007
What Do You Do?
What do you do when the one person you love more than life itself is not happy, is not fulfilled, is a victim of evil and hatred and you can do absolutely nothing to help? What do you do when their dream is slowly crumbling in front of them? What do you do when you see their dream, which was actually coming through, fall apart? Not just one dream but several, one after another. What do you do?
Everyday I get up and go out the front door knowing full well they have nothing to get up for. They have no one to see, no one to visit, they are alone. Yes, they have people they call, and they IM and they email but they have no one to see face to face, no one to hug in friendship. They had a website, created to offer their artwork and poetry and articles and links to other multiples so they too could find help, support and information that may offer them the strength to go on, to continue on their journey of healing. Then the site was corrupted, we had to start over, then the blog on the site was no longer supported by the software creators so we had to move the blog offsite and now, the site's number of visitors is decreasing rapidly. Why? Are websites passe? Do only blogs garner visits on the internet? Are there no more multiples looking for information or loved ones of multiples looking? Or significant others either?
I have been visiting other website lately, trying to get some clues, I have even sent emails to sites we have links to to see if they have blogs now, and if they have noticed a decline in visits.
I have also been searching for new sites also. It seems from what I can gather so far is that sites in general are not being updated unlike keepers korner, they do not have blogs, unlike keepers korner, and as best I can tell, no one is answering their emails.
The attacker also killed their ability to paint, to draw to write and nothing I do can restore it. Maybe, just maybe if and when the state ever gets it's red taped ass moving and finally finalizes
the discipline and judgement in their case against the former therapist those things will be restored. It has been way too freakin' long, they gave their testimony in January and this is August, seven months later, seven months and still nothing. That is pathetic. I will be sending a letter to the State Attorney General tomorrow, because this is ridiculous, especially when they say they need more people to come forward in cases like this, and yet they let these people, the victims, hang there for years waiting for closure.
It is just the same old shit coming from somewhere else.
What do you do?
happy trails
JM
Everyday I get up and go out the front door knowing full well they have nothing to get up for. They have no one to see, no one to visit, they are alone. Yes, they have people they call, and they IM and they email but they have no one to see face to face, no one to hug in friendship. They had a website, created to offer their artwork and poetry and articles and links to other multiples so they too could find help, support and information that may offer them the strength to go on, to continue on their journey of healing. Then the site was corrupted, we had to start over, then the blog on the site was no longer supported by the software creators so we had to move the blog offsite and now, the site's number of visitors is decreasing rapidly. Why? Are websites passe? Do only blogs garner visits on the internet? Are there no more multiples looking for information or loved ones of multiples looking? Or significant others either?
I have been visiting other website lately, trying to get some clues, I have even sent emails to sites we have links to to see if they have blogs now, and if they have noticed a decline in visits.
I have also been searching for new sites also. It seems from what I can gather so far is that sites in general are not being updated unlike keepers korner, they do not have blogs, unlike keepers korner, and as best I can tell, no one is answering their emails.
The attacker also killed their ability to paint, to draw to write and nothing I do can restore it. Maybe, just maybe if and when the state ever gets it's red taped ass moving and finally finalizes
the discipline and judgement in their case against the former therapist those things will be restored. It has been way too freakin' long, they gave their testimony in January and this is August, seven months later, seven months and still nothing. That is pathetic. I will be sending a letter to the State Attorney General tomorrow, because this is ridiculous, especially when they say they need more people to come forward in cases like this, and yet they let these people, the victims, hang there for years waiting for closure.
It is just the same old shit coming from somewhere else.
What do you do?
happy trails
JM
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Hidden Faces
Hidden within are pictures, of faces, partial faces, and who knows what else? See what all you can find.
Happy trails to all
JM
Saturday, August 04, 2007
I See . . .
The bridge disaster in Minneapolis just brings to the forefront our countries lack of funding for our very own infrastructure. Our bridges are in terrible shape and more of this will happen, our children and women are not protected from abusive people, our prisons are overcrowded and need to house even more, which in turn makes me wonder, where are we heading? Our health care is a shambles, costs are exceeding incomes, foreclosures are up, and the middle class is not growing, it is disappearing.
Do I have answers? No, I wish I did, but I do see what isn't working. I do see big companies, corporations, gobbling up more and more companies and corporations, I see foreign based companies gobbling up what was US based corporations.. and eventually where will we be?
I see my income not rising enough to meet cost of living year after year, I see medical costs so prohibitive we avoid medical care, I see insurance costs so high but we cannot afford to get medical care because of what is not covered. I see people eating less so they can pay their electric bills, I see people being approved for loans they cannot afford, i see children just now growing up that I thank God I am not them, because I would have no hope.
Sorry for the negative blog but sometimes the bad things are piled so high the good things are blocked from site. Oh I still have the love of my life and our friends but I see little to be hopeful for the world itself. I see global warming and massacres in foreign countries, genocide in others and I still see racial discrimination everywhere from one race to another. I see churches that still cover up the abuse their clergy participates in, I see nations that still promote female mutilation and countries where dictators rule with iron fists and do as they please to their fellow countrymen.
I see mothers walk away from their children for a fix, or babysitters selling those they are supposed to be protecting to their own boyfriend for his sick perversions, I see .... I see too much I don't like, too much I cannot change instantly or even in my lifetime, I see a whole hell of a lot that needs to be changed and I have no idea what to do about it, except pray we wake up.
happy and safe trails to all of you
JM
Do I have answers? No, I wish I did, but I do see what isn't working. I do see big companies, corporations, gobbling up more and more companies and corporations, I see foreign based companies gobbling up what was US based corporations.. and eventually where will we be?
I see my income not rising enough to meet cost of living year after year, I see medical costs so prohibitive we avoid medical care, I see insurance costs so high but we cannot afford to get medical care because of what is not covered. I see people eating less so they can pay their electric bills, I see people being approved for loans they cannot afford, i see children just now growing up that I thank God I am not them, because I would have no hope.
Sorry for the negative blog but sometimes the bad things are piled so high the good things are blocked from site. Oh I still have the love of my life and our friends but I see little to be hopeful for the world itself. I see global warming and massacres in foreign countries, genocide in others and I still see racial discrimination everywhere from one race to another. I see churches that still cover up the abuse their clergy participates in, I see nations that still promote female mutilation and countries where dictators rule with iron fists and do as they please to their fellow countrymen.
I see mothers walk away from their children for a fix, or babysitters selling those they are supposed to be protecting to their own boyfriend for his sick perversions, I see .... I see too much I don't like, too much I cannot change instantly or even in my lifetime, I see a whole hell of a lot that needs to be changed and I have no idea what to do about it, except pray we wake up.
happy and safe trails to all of you
JM
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