The following is an introduction to the series “Relationships and Dominoes” by Jennifer Michaels.  Jennifer runs Worn Ballet Shoes, is a blogger, and  a social media aficionado. Aside from Worn Ballet Shoes you can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Every relationship we make is a building block in our lives.  They help shape our minds and thoughts, our actions and reactions.  Being close with our families and making close friends is so important.   We all want to share our fears, hopes, dreams, and faith with the people who are most important to us and to build those connections we so long for.  But what’s harder for a little girl to deal with than a halt to a relationship being built?…especially when it comes to someone passing away.

I found out at a very young age about what it meant to lose someone I loved.  A child’s capacity to love is the most unconditional and forgiving because children don’t understand judgment or opinions.  As a little girl my grandparents were the most important people to me, and I had the pleasure and convenience of being able to walk through a single door to their house whenever I wanted to see them and spend time with them.  Smelling the scent of their cooking across the house, sneaking into grandma’s bed in the middle of the night, and climbing onto their couch to watch The Price is Right every morning are just a few of the memories I hold dear for them.  Grandma took a lot of different medicines, and had a nurse come by a few times a week.  She wasn’t doing so well.  The one great memory that I hold onto is when we would look out of the window together, and she would put her hands under mine so I wouldn’t feel the cold of the window sill.

The next thing I know—she’s in the hospital, and my mother told me that she isn’t awake.  She was there for Mother’s Day, and she had slipped into a coma.  That was my first permanent good-bye.  I was only seven years old.  But the only thing I could think of when my mother told me that she had died was… what about Grandpa?  I didn’t want him to get lonely since he didn’t have Grandma there with him anymore.  So every chance I got, I was with him.  Every day after school, every weekend, and every time I thought of him—I’d be there.  We would sit outside together on sunny days, and he would ask me the strangest things…would you like it, if I died?  I didn’t want to think about him dying.  I wanted him to hold on and stick around.  I would tell him…you have to see me graduate! And this coming from an eight-year-old…could only put a smile on his face.

Grandpa died two years later.  And while that hit me harder…I knew he was where he longed to be—with my Grandma.  I couldn’t hear him tell me to put my slippers on every time I ran around the house barefoot and not to sit so close to the television set.

Looking back now, on these things that happened nearly 20 years ago, it’s still hard to think about them.  We don’t get over our pasts, but we take the important lessons, the love and laughter-filled memories, and choose to push forward.

By the time my grandpa had passed, I realized that I didn’t have a very involved relationship with my parents.  My dad worked for a company that opened an office in Dallas, TX and we moved there when I was just a baby.  But just a few years later, they closed the office and transferred him back to the north east.  I couldn’t really build a relationship with someone who wasn’t there.  Most of my memories of my father encompass telephone calls and a check in the mail.  And oh yea, he would come home once a month.  In ’95, just after school started that year, my parents’ divorce was final.  I didn’t see him for four years….that is until ’99 when I was told that I needed to live with him.  I was 14, going on 15, and wishing that I didn’t have to leave.  I held onto everything and everyone that I could.  I asked my mother “isn’t there someone I can stay with until I can live with you again?”  And as much as we tried, the lawyer drew up custody papers…and I packed everything I could into my father’s green Toyota Camry, and we set out on what was the longest and most quiet 1600 mile drive from Texas to New Jersey.

There I was, alone in New Jersey.  No friends, no one to really talk to… my mother called me once a week and all I could tell her was how unhappy I was.  My father would yell at me for talking to my friends on the phone for as long as I had…racked up a pretty hefty phone bill.  And it was like this every month for a while.  I never really got settled in.  It wasn’t a home I could call my own.  Actually, it was a studio apartment on the first floor of a three story, two and a half family house.  It had one bedroom… and my dad gave it to me.  I supposed this was a pretty huge deal.  Every night my dad would pull out the sofa bed and go to sleep, and every morning he would put the sofa back together again so we could sit and watch TV.  Three years of this routine: wake up, put away the sofa bed, get ready for work, me for school, work and learn, come home, cook dinner, eat, and he would pull out the sofa bed, and I’d go to my bedroom and watch television until I fell asleep.

I made some friends along the way of this routined journey… but looking back now, there wasn’t anyone I had specifically held onto.  I learned that if someone I called a friend wanted to hold onto me and my friendship…they would put out the effort.  They would make some phone calls and write response letters to the ones I poured out to them.  It was hard to tell myself to let them go.  Friendship more often requires tangibility.  And don’t forget, relationships are always on a two way street.

During the time I lived with my father, I learned a lot about sacrifice—humility and generosity.  Family can often feel obligated to these.  But sometimes we don’t understand what we have until we see other families who don’t have that kind of love.  When someone makes a sacrifice in their life, obligation or not, it holds more weight than we tend to realize at the time.

While I spent so much time and dedicated so much energy to building friendships and relationships with my family, I forgot to work on the one that matters the most—a relationship with myself.  If I can’t do for myself and live life for myself before I add to that equation, then I can’t expect to build strong lasting relationships with other people later on.

Reflecting on and remembering these times in my life have made me have a deeper understanding.  And I’ve heard friends tell me that they think that if only they could have realized the lessons and the value of the challenges they were going through during the actual experiences, that they would have felt they gained more from them.  I think that even if it takes ten years to learn a lesson, as long as it’s learned that’s all that matters.  Now let’s hope they don’t all take that long, but it is important to challenge ourselves, make mistakes, and learn from them.  We shouldn’t punish ourselves with regret.  Living with any level of regret is just punishment to ourselves and can be seen and heard by the people we surround ourselves with.

So I visualize myself as the leading domino, and if I fall then so does the rest of the chain.  If I build myself to be strong with strong connections, then I have less of a chance of collapsing.  After all that hard work, energy, time, and perseverance, the last thing I’d want is a big fall.

Click here for an exercise that made me think.  Make a picture made out of dominoes.  It can be anything you want it to be.  One small click on the ball, and the picture collapses into something beautiful.  Penny for your thoughts.

Amanda Abella

Amanda Abella is a freelance writer and language instructor based out of Miami, Florida. She has been writing professionally since 2009 and holds a degree in English Literature from Ave Maria University. Amanda Abella is available for freelance work, why not hire her?

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