Girls on Fire

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I sped through this book and had a hard time putting it down. The events were kind like watching 48 hours or a crime scene, unsolved mystery, 60 minutes about teenagers all rolled into one. Robin Wasserman wove a tale of dark reality was that was to believe was non-fiction while I as immersed within the pages.

Hannah Dexter aka Dex, and Lacey both live on the fringes of the high school social scene. Did I say fringes... what I meant was that they don't fit in for vastly different reasons. Hannah, because she harbors a lot of feelings of injustice and just doesn't have the right look, and Lacey because she is the new girl in a small town, who brings big city Grunge attire and an extreme obsession with Kurt Cobain (the book is set in the early 90s). Lacey takes Hannah and gives her new confidence as she becomes Dex, the trusty sidekick. A hatred of the ultimate mean girl Nikki bonds them together in a girlhood crush on life and hating anything the "plebs" may deign to do or like.

I can honestly say that on the outside look in, that EVERY one of these characters is despicable in some way. Probably Lacey's mom the most for me, with the small glances we get into her selfish thoughts towards motherhood that made me want to beat the crap out of her. Nikki was a CLOSE CLOSE second, especially with the "sleepover" incident.

There is a lot of harsh realities of small town, overly religion, teenage life on these pages. A lot of topics that parents don't ever want to think about happening to their child or have their child out doing. Unfortunately, we can all hide under the blanket of suburbanite life or we can face the fact that things like this will happen to some kids. I wanted to smother my child and home-school him after reading this.

**Sensitive topics such as drug use, underage drinking, "satanic" rituals, rape, emotional abuse and death do occur in this book so be prepared.

With all of the horrors found within, this is also a book that feels so real it is scary. Such as the author either personally experienced these horrors from some point or was privy to someone who did. The book is written that fantastically that to give it anything less would be a travesty... 5 stars for me.

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Emotional Abuse Is...... Part 1

Emotional Abuse Is....  part 1 written in October 2015, but I am only now able to post this, Part 2 to follow soon.


Finding another girls underwear in your live in boyfriend's underwear drawer, confronting him about it and by the end of the argument he makes you feel like it was your fault for finding them and you are in the wrong.


Taking two days to even ask about the underwear because even though you know this is the end, you don't know if you are really ready for it.


Leaving out details such as finding the underwear from people you would normally tell everything to because you know how it sounds and you aren't ready to face that because some part of you still wants to find a way for this to all be a big mistake, and you want to hide in denial.


Knowing deep inside that something is wrong and still needing validation, even with validation from phone proof, instead he says he would be sorry for the video chats with another woman he says he wants to be in bed with that went on in the living room while you were in the bedroom and somehow the argument gets turned around on  you for violating his privacy and being nosy.


Finding phone messages make you feel so physically ill you actually stand over the toilet wondering if you are about to throw up. 


Going through your phone/email/chat to find someone that is not close to situation to talk to about finding phone messages so that you can hear the truth and have it laid out to you, but not actually have to act on it. 


Rationalizing that the person is going through a lot and things will get better.


Another person making you feel crazy and second guessing your intuition.


Having someone throw your help back in your face and make you feel like a bad person for caring and wanting to do things for them.


Violating another person's privacy to get information because you still NEED to see them bold face lie to your face about a woman (another one), from their past that is sending emails about planning their future together as recent as less than a week ago, and him telling  you that he hasn't spoken to them in over four months.


Reading another woman's messages and feeling as thought she is a kindred spirit with the way that they echo your own thoughts and insecurities because you can read in her words that she also feels a wrongness with the same man.


Having someone manipulate your words and turn them against you, constantly calling you untrustworthy and a liar to the point that you start to question yourself and revisit situations in your mind.


Loving someone else's children with so much of yourself that you try to look past the other person's faults because it is not their children's fault and then having your parenting techniques constantly criticized and having them tell you that they hope their daughters never turn out like you. 


Spending more than one second wondering if this person even likes you. 


Hearing your words and descriptions of incidents spoken allowed and knowing how wrong it is, but still rationalizing and envisioning a future with this person.


Beginning to avoid talking to people the closest to you altogether, so that they won't know how bad things are, because you still feel like you need to protect this person.


Having to write this in the first place at a low point to be able to come back and reread and stay strong and remember that you are an amazing woman, that you allowed this man and his children to come into your life with open arms and a welcoming home to try to do everything for them and have all of your efforts thrown back in your face.

Can we change our personal ethical beliefs?

What happens if we were not taught to be what others deem to be ethical in our youth? Is it too late or can we change?

I think that we are constantly changing in tweaking our minds, sometimes in large ways, usually in small ways.  As we grow and experience new things, and acquire new information, we are able to process this in our minds.  Once the new information has been analyzed we can decide (subconsciously or not), whether or not it is something that we wish to align with our values or ethics.  Surviving a horrific car accident with a drunk driver or being hit by a drunk driver may alter your ethical view of the situation.  You may look at drunk driving, road safety rules and even car safety rules in a new way, or you may hold onto the same ethics.  If you find yourself or someone close to you in an abusive relationship, you may have a new look at the situation.  If you are raped and have to look at possible pro-choice options, it may change your views again.  As someone in a hostile or wartime environment, the experiences you are immersed in are always evolving your ethical view of the world.  We are given a basic ethical blueprint as children, but each layer of life expounds upon and at times changes the ethical values that we hold dear. 

I know that I personally have a strong ethical view of different things to do with women; specifically topics such as abuse, alcoholism, codependence, lack of standing up for oneself, parenting values, marriage, etc.  Living with certain experiences within my own families and of those of close relatives shapes my ethical values of basic things.  I saw a lot of people doing things or not doing things when they should be that felt wrong to the core of my being.  Witnessing this and living through first-hand accounts largely shaped my basic core of ethical values.  However, someone experiencing the exact same things may have come up with completely different ethical values.  While my father is a recovering alcoholic, he did go to treatment and remained in remission for decades, I attended AA meetings with him and learned a lot about the disease that he fought, this helped me know the dilemma in an intimate way.  I could have instead become desensitized to this issue if handled or viewed from another way and not have seen alcoholism as an issue, but rather as a way of life.  There are very few things in our society that do not, in one way or another, include alcohol.  Does that make me anti-alcohol, no, but it could have for someone else.  Our personal ethical beliefs are comprised of the totality of our personal experiences, knowledge and our perception of such.

Little Things

I received this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest response.

Little Things is the first book in the Second Chances series and written by Madison Street.  It is told from the point of view of two high school seniors Duke & Raya.  Raya has an abusive step father and Duke is the all-American lacrosse player. 

I have waited a few days upon completion of this book to write a review, mostly because, I really had a hard time with this book.  I don't want to start out with negativity so I will start with pointing out the positive aspects of the story.  Madison did a good job of showing a timeless love from the point of view of Duke.  She also did a good job of describing scenery.  In times of abuse there was a great amount of detail, that perhaps speaks of personal knowledge. 

Apart from the abuse, the book starts out quite explicitly, but not in the sense of a romance novel.  The sexual scenes (apart from abuse) seem to be written in a way that does not make the reader feel knowledgeable about the passion.  Also HUGE issue for me was that we know Raya is 17, but we don't know the ages of Duke or Melanie, who are in a weirdly abrupt sexual experience that may or may not be considered child pornography in many states.  Not knowing for sure if they were of legal age was very awkward and uncomfortable for me to read.  I almost put the book down at this point, it made me feel gross.  I tried to revisit it and give it another try with the vow that if anything started to get explicit that I was immediately deleting it from my kindle and giving up on it.

Luckily there were no more sexual encounters for the duration of a possible underage issue.  The beginning of the book was quite awkward unless it was speaking of well-detailed abuse.  The flirting and relationships came off as quite immature.  I couldn't tell if this was deliberate or just the take that I got from the book.   The story gets dark around the 30-40% mark and then goes on to get worse.  There were a lot of detailed and horrendous scenarios and I almost feel bad for saying that the dark parts are when Madison wrote the story at its best. 

When in dark times, I could really see Madison's talent shine through to the point that I the thought of whether or not personal experience was intertwined was relevant or not, given the excellence at getting the feeling across.  Unfortunately (well fortunately of course, but not for the story telling), there is some light, but the events in the the third part of the book didn't really add up with a realistic timeline of how someone going through such awful things would recover and move on with life upon  actually opening up about them. 

I tried to write this in a way to not spoil anything for anyone else.  Suffice it to say that Madison does have a gift for story telling,  but it seems to be limited to darker content.  Perhaps she should focus more on this in future writings, because she does so fabulously.  Unfortunately the rest of the story just wasn't doing it for me.  I felt like the rest of the book was written almost at a middle-grade level.  It made the rest of the novel feel abrupt and awkward in many places.  I would request more villains from Madison as she paints them beautifully.  Overall though I have to go with a 2/5 stars given the weirdly possible child porn the awkward abrupt shifts in the story and the typos scattered throughout. 

Humility in Life

Today was another one of those days where everything seems to be going wrong and it feels like a "Monday."  I woke up 20 minutes late, I was rushing all morning and finally getting back to schedule, drop Liam off and come out to leave for work and my car won't start.  It was obvious that my battery had died, so I went back inside and asked if anyone could help me jump start my car.  I had jumper cables and just needed another car.  It was all women that I could find and they all found ti hard to believe that I would know how to use jumper cables and wouldn't assist me.  Everyone just kept telling me to call roadside assistance and couldn't fathom that I only had liability on my car like I was a crazy person.  Eventually a man in an Air Force uniform came along and offered to help, I told him I just needed a car and I could do it, he insisted that I go sit in my car and he would handle it.  Unfortunately I come from somewhere where people do know how to use jumper cables so I was too trusting.  I was trying to watch from under the hood from the inside of the car and something seemed to be off.  The guy was seeming a little too nervous to me.  So I got out of my car to assist him when my car started smoking and there were sparks.  It turns out that he had hooked up to my fuse box instead of my battery.  Although I am grateful for his effort in trying to help me, I wish he would have decided otherwise if he didn't know what he was doing.  Needless to say this ended up costing me close to $250 and a few hours of my time, but luckily it appears that my car is drivable again.


At this point I was definitely not feeling at the top of my game and wasn't in the greatest mood.  I was doing my best to try to look at the bright side of the situation when I heard a man speak that changes my day and my attitude around completely.  This man was in a very sad state of mind.  He was a low point in his life and he chose to be brave and share his struggles and he talked about having lost everything in his life that mattered to him, his job, his home, his wife and most of all his children.  This story touched my to my core.  Here I was down about something so trivial when I have so much to be thankful for.  I get to wake up to my amazing son, I get to laugh with him, hug him, kiss him, and put him to bed every night.  I get to watch him learn and grow before his eyes.  I could lose everything in life but as long as I still have him, I will always have something to be thankful for.

Since we are on the topic of humility I came across something else the other day that also touched my heart and made me so sad in less than one minute.  I feel like this message of this video definitely needs to be shared, and so I am now sharing it with you.  I could go on and on about this message, but for now I will let the video tell the story and we can address this topic at a later date.  Take this powerful message to heart.