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Below is an Interactive Board sampler. A fuller listing is found in the "Stories" menu above.

4/14 Interactive Board: Codependent Partners

3/23 Interactive Board: He's Changing... I'm Not...

3/1 Interactive Board: D/s Lifestyle

1/14 Interactive Board: My Purrrfect Husband

12/12 Interactive Board: What if He Could Have Changed?

10/23 Interactive Board: Quandary Revisited

8/24 Interactive Board: Quandary! What's Going On?

7/20: Dr. Irene on cognitive behavior therapy and mindfulness

6/12 Interactive Board: Unintentional Abuse

11/7 Interactive Board: Is This Abusive?

12/29 Interactive Board: There Goes the Wife...

11/4 Interactive Board: A New Me!

10/8 Interactive Board: Seeming Impossibility

9/8 Interactive Board: My Ex MisTreats Our Son

5/1 Interactive Board: I feel Dead - Towards Him

4/26 Interactive Board: Why is This So Hard?

4/19 Interactive Board: I Lost My Love...

4/7 Interactive Board: Too Guilty!

Poem: Half Moon Beach

Poem: I Walked Again to Half Moon Beach Tonight

by Sharon Stockdale (missing link removed)

April 10, 2002

I stumbled on your site about verbal abuse and it has helped me to understand my relationship with my second husband. It has been a year now since we have separated and I have returned to writing poetry as my own form of therapy. I'd like to share with you one of my poems written during the past year. As you can see, I was well on my way to sorting things out:   Thank you for the beautiful poem.  Dr. Irene

"I Walked Again to Half Moon Beach Tonight"

  

I walked again to Half Moon Beach tonight.

My favorite thinking rock, I settled on

to contemplate your question as the light

diminished with the setting of the sun.

 

You ask if I'm still happy on my own.

Yes, truly I can say that I'm content.

But my good cheer comes not from being alone,

but from release from constant curtailment.

 

Unsuitable, I came to think I was

as I incurred each petulant retort

and edited myself to cut the cause

'till plying me became his favorite sport.

 

Yet in my misery, I chose to stay

rather than face the threat of solitude.

I feared that if I sent him on his way,

I'd have to face my own ineptitude.

 

In the faith of my child, I found the will

to pull away before it was too late.

So, bolstered by the confidence of Gill,

I set upon the course to separate.

 

For loneliness cannot be more profound

when looking at that stranger in your bed,

the one you'd hoped would turn your life around

but changed it to captivity instead.

 

It's right that I should isolate as I

recover bits of my identity

discarded in attempts to mollify,

until I'm truly back to being me.

 

Now I can hope to meet that one who'll be

enraptured by each little thing I do

while I'm contented simply being me.

Yes, I'm alone and yes, I'm happy too.

 

 

Copyright 2001 by Sharon Stockdale. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.