As hard as these relationships are to reconcile, the fact is you can gauge its potential by staring it right in the eye and accepting the ugly truth. Whether or not there is a future in the affair hinges on knowing if your affair partner has a future in their current marriage/relationship or if they even want one with you with the knowledge of a previously failed commitment. If they are single things can become more complicated.

I believed I was head over heels in love with my mistress, but also much to content to consider leaving my girlfriend. She was my stability and I wasn’t about to give up a sure thing for something wild, lusty, oddly intense and equally uncertain. There were just too many maybes and what ifs but ultimately I knew better – that leaving stability for uncertainty was no way to end a relationship and begin a new one.

The realization that my mistress was starting to move on, talk to other people romantically, and eventually date was just the jolt I needed. I couldn’t believe the woman I once felt so much for was moving on. But in the end, I realized it was exactly what I needed so that I could begin the tumultuous journey of rational, clear thought devoid of misdirected passion and its disastrous ramifications.

When dealing with instant attraction in affairs, whether physical or emotional, or what many describe as “lust at first sight,” its hard to keep in mind that like attracts like. The law of attraction dictates that our relationships are highly influenced by our expectations, focus, energy, consistency and how we feel. Eventually, you get what you ask for so be careful what you ask for.

Separating wants from needs to get to the root of the addiction and its behavioral manifestations (infidelity) is crucial. You must make yourself believe that to continue the affair will only bring heartache and sorrow because in the end, and it will eventually end, that’s is exactly what you will feel. Sad and heartbroken and only yourself to blame.

One way to address the root of the behavior doesn’t only involve you. It includes your affair partner and your significant other. You must find a way to unincorporate your needs from your affair partners lifestyle but that can only happen if it’s what you truly want. You have to want it without question, practically forcing yourself to do the right thing in the short term to reap the benefits in the long term.

If certain aspects of your relationship with your significant other have become stale and you begin looking elsewhere for intimacy and understanding, then fixing one part without working on the other will create ample opportunity for a blindside. When you’re putting tons of effort into adjusting thinking patterns with little to no adjustment as it relates to physical actions… you’ll end up right back where you started.

Honestly ask yourself if you want to be married or in a committed relationship, because that is the most important question you will need to answer before anything will truly change in your life.

Affairs are addictions and the temptation will always be there. For some, affairs are attempts to escape feelings and circumstances that are uncomfortable or not readily understood, coupled with a lack of desire to properly address the real underlying issue. A person with unresolved issues including past hurts that haven’t healed and/or needs that aren’t being met often escape to indulging in a number of vices. Things that can be deemed as addictive. Affairs are no different. Sometimes the escape is to another person. Addictions, like affairs, are entirely unhealthy.

As the person who has betrayed a significant other or spouse, it is your duty to seek an understanding of your own behavior. To simply concentrate on the behavior without understanding why you’ve done what you’ve done or what led to it it is counter productive. The lies and betrayal are morally wrong and there is no way around that but you’ll need to seek forgiveness from not only the one you betrayed but also yourself. This will come in time.

The road to ending an affair is a long and difficult one. You will grieve and sometimes the period of grief is long and drawn out. So getting your emotions under control is vital to gaining the knowledge and understanding necessary to figure out why you did it and how you can prevent it from happening again.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. How Long Does It Take To Get Over An Affair?
2. You Can’t Escape Your Cheating Past
3. The Dark Side of Affairs IV

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. I Want You
2. Your Sexy Intellect
3. Love Story

in late August

The lake water shimmered against the sun’s gaze

fall was upon us

And I stopped to lean against a tree

It was the farthest one I could find

You leaned against me and a passerby said something like,

“It won’t last ladies” as if there was something we were hiding

When it was their own love that was washed away with the tide

Long ago along the way when running laps through hearts lapsed

But we enjoy the playful breeze and embrace in practice

And pretend not to listen as thoughts run through our heads

And we enjoy the disguise of being one with one another instead

Tip-toes arch, arms out stretch as I press my body upon her

We gaze deeply while set ablaze letting our desires run asunder

Full of life as we touch every sense is ignited

Ignoring glares and stares of lives left unenlivened

Having never experienced the passion incited

With flailing hearts set to stone

Engulfed within the bodies of ice cold people

In spite of

This love we find ourselves dabbling in

By those same critics

Recusing when love reaches in

Yet somehow our feelings are mental holograms

Situated in a place they can’t conceive of when

They know love can’t be cloned so they remain discontented

Like people trapped inside of aliens

When aliases break down – they condense

But we are signed, sealed and delivered – for love is like that

It is senseless when it triggers

With every kiss that we extract

The most intense feeling that ever existed

Outside of pain anyway

Which most of them are inflicted with

I think as I press my lips to hers once again

And listen to the thoughts fluttering in

Silently uttering something reminiscent of

“Poor them…”

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Times Waits For Love
2. The Transformation of Lives
3. To The One Riding Shotgun

“You can close your eyes to things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to things you don’t want to feel no matter how hard you try.”

That quote is in reference to just some of the things I have been feeling quite deeply lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind, and much of it has to do with cancer. I can’t remember the last time my mind wasn’t focused on my partner’s battle with this destructive disease.

It’s been a little over seven months since the day she was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer following the removal of a lump in her right breast. Fear of what the future held and of the unknown immediately set in. And then chemotherapy began, which we were ill-prepared for. It was rough. No other words can accurately describe the process, but like everything else, she handled it better than most. Being surrounded with positive people, the love of family, and a unquenchable thirst for life inspired and motivated her to get through it. It was difficult but together we rode the tides, tamed the chemo dragons, and to this day continue the fight to conquer this beast called breast cancer.

There was medicine for the side effects, and more medicine to help alleviate much of the discomfort and pain after the chemotherapy concoction would rear its ugly red head which was almost always immediate. When the effects of the chemo wore off, which would only be for a day or two – she would always say something like, “I almost feel normal again”. She couldn’t handle the heat or the sun and her bones ached constantly. She walked so slow and rigid during chemo, which was a natural side effect of the achy bones, I thought she’d need a cane at one point but she overcame that hurdle.

Through the nausea, fatigue, hair loss, bone pain, muscle pain, dizziness, constant aches and emotional turmoil, her body grew weaker and her mind grew stronger toward the end of treatment. By then she was able to mentally prepare for the invasive surgery that was to follow. Surgery required the removal of several malignant lymph nodes under her right arm and both of her breasts. She’s now approaching the end of radiation therapy which is taxing but not nearly as debilitating as chemotherapy. The scars that come with radiation are more physically visible than with chemotherapy, but she’s been able to slowly return to work which she sorely missed and her optimism is just as strong now as it ever was.

There are days when I hold her tight and gaze into her eyes so she can see the love in mine. As strong willed and beautiful as the day we met – I try my best to make her see and feel that I am only doing for her what she would insist on doing for me. There was a period when she’d apologize for having cancer so often that I finally mentioned off-hand that a blind man doesn’t feel the need to apologize for having no sight – and that was the end of that.

Often, I use my dry humor to keep us going. I hold her close in bed at night because even when she seems to be in some other place emotionally, I want her to know and feel that she’s loved. I comfort her when she feels like crying her eyes out because she’s blue about something having to do with the cancer. And then I’ll try to make her laugh because I know she’ll smile again and I hate to see the light leave her eyes for even a minute. When she underwent the double mastectomy I was afraid of what it would do to her self image. I was afraid of her losing whatever it was that made her feel feminine and like a woman, but those fears were quickly alleviated.

There were a few things I had to learn to understand, accept and eventually live with. The first was mourning the onset of cancer and the loss of what our life was before its arrival. Next was mourning the loss of her breasts while celebrating the things that mattered most. Life. She wanted both breasts gone at the onset of cancer. No reconstruction was decided so there would be less headache and worry later on down the line.

I learned that breast cancer serves as a major catalyst for women and their loved ones to change how they are living. I was in shock for the most part in the beginning. I’m finally at a place where I’m finding my bearings and learning how to navigate in this cancer culture which I now recognize as an epidemic. It would be awhile before I resigned myself to the facts of what was happening to our lives. But by then I was already determined to see her through every step of the way.

Myself and so many others have prayed that she have the strength to endure this battle and so far she has. Together we learned to decipher what things we had control over and what things we didn’t. Life becomes so much clearer once you begin to understand your role in it in so far as what ever it is you’re going through. The unexpected is the worst when it comes to cancer, so knowing as much as possible about what she’d potentially face became a driving force. Still, the learning curve processes on a daily basis.

I learned to listen to and adapt to my partner’s wants and needs all over again. Not only to her vocal demands but also to what I could see and feel just by looking at her and seeing with my own two eyes what signals her body was sending. She doesn’t always complain about the discomfort and pain but most times she doesn’t have to… I can see it in her eyes.

Any cancer diagnosis is scary but the more educated you are about the particular type the less frightening it will be. It is a lack of support and the unknown that can do you in before the cancer

Cancer hasn’t destroyed us, it’s made us stronger.

My partner and her parents will be walking in a half-marathon taking place on Feb. 12, 2012 at the Breast Cancer Marathon in Jacksonville Beach, FL. Here’s where you can donate directly to the cause:

This wonderful organization helps women and warriors of all kinds in their fight against breast cancer.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. A Labor of Love
2. Breast Cancer Blues
3. Relationships: Cancer Changes Everything

By then I allowed uncontainable passion to penetrate my deepest cores while I pretended I was experiencing love instead of lust. I’d bide my time in the worst ways, juggling between feelings of self-inflicted loneliness – isolation, apathy and sexual frustration that would all converge upon me at once. And just like that my world would take on a whole new meaning only to come slowly crashing down at some future time – after the affair was over.

There was a deliberate aspect of premeditation to my cheating that I compartmentalized for years before forcing myself to come to terms with it. Before you can begin to take the necessary steps to rid yourself of the feelings that open to the door to cheating – you have to determine what kind of cheater you are, determine where you fall within that spectrum and then cross off a few places on the checklist that don’t apply to you in any way. People place all cheaters into a “once a cheater, always a cheater” box but fail miserably at differentiating between the different types, of which there are many. The romantic cheater who’d become emotionally vested, which often had a tendency to end up becoming a long term affair with the possibility of morphing into a long-term relationship – that defined me.

Most people would be surprised to know that cheaters are able to have and maintain long-term relationships, marriages, dating relationships and so on because they typically know what they want, what they’re missing and if they happen to be cheating at the moment then this much is true – they’re getting their selfish needs met. They become major go-getters once they’ve reached a breaking point. It’s important to note that just because a person is seemingly committed to the relationship’s longevity doesn’t mean that commitment extends into and out of the bedroom. Commitment is more than mere words, the passing of time, promises of love, monogamy and sticking together. Commitment is putting all of the aforementioned into play in a relationship. It is the action that constitutes the commitment.

There is always an underlying reason why cheating occurs which in no way constitutes as an excuse to cheat. Rarely does one cheat with the intention of causing a partner heartache and pain. They cheat because they can and because they’re selfish and insecure.

Take for instance the sexual aspect. The sex drive is one of the most powerful and natural primordial forces on earth, but if one commits to the relationship but doesn’t learn how to reign in desire and lust for others, that commitment is worthless. This is a serial cheaters greatest enemy. Not only the physical but most importantly the emotional sexual drive. After all, our brains are our biggest erogenous zones.

At times, I was blatant about my disregard for anyone’s feelings including my own, not to mention the lack of respect I bestowed upon all parties involved in the affair. That in essence was one of the reasons I mourned the loss of those relationships so intensely. The loss of control – followed by a loss of self that slowly, excruciatingly creeps up on a cheater to such a degree that I could find no way to exhaust those feelings except to carry on con-questing. I firmly equated those losses to losing a part of myself. Therein lies the kicker. With every failed, catastrophic bout of infidelity, you lose a part of yourself because you’ve given a part of yourself that you didn’t have to give in the first place. You’re bargaining with your emotions when the only sure thing about love is the fact that it’s a gamble. You stretched yourself too thin and your mind reacts in agony, pain, heartbreak and heartache that even cheaters feel to varying degrees but become masters at compartmentalizing. The loss of trust and respect is the worst.

Never quite understanding that you can and should have both control of self and actions as often as possible, there were times when I struggled intently with trying to reign in both from potentially troubling affairs. Why? Because long term affairs take time, unsustainable amounts of energy and motivation to accomplish. It takes determination and a particularly audacious use of an already weakened mental state to put in the emotional and physical energy required to carry on. Particularly the times I felt my deepest emotions building and rising from a place within that could no longer be contained or satisfied by my partner, I choose to devote that time to fulfilling my wants and needs with another woman. At the affair’s end – emptiness and guilt, as expected begin to fester.

Most sex addicts who are also cheaters have multiple one night stands and multiple affair partners. I never bothered engaging in quick flings and never experienced the makings of a one night stand. I wanted more than that. I was doing a good enough job convincing myself that the af-fairy tale, although in no way real, just may possibly be, if only. I would become emotionally involved because I could not fake having a sexual relationship of any sort with someone I wasn’t emotionally vested in to an extent.

I knew my problem was not sexual addiction and for the most part sex addicts don’t make themselves emotionally available. They don’t need to. They experience feelings of euphoria after the conquest has been met and there is a chemical dependency inherent in most, almost akin to a compulsion that’s a staple in the mind of the addict. Sex was not a motivator. Affection, attention, living in the “glow of constant compliments” as one of my readers so accurately put it, the conquest of relinquishing passion onto my lover who in turn reignited it every time was always the force that motivated. Feeling wanted and adored in a way that most profoundly affected me and not so much the one doing the complimenting was also a major factor.

No matter how good it feels to be dotted on and worshiped to a degree, ultimately you know it’s not good for your soul and will likely tear you apart inside eventually. My problem was that I grew accustomed to learning this lesson the hard way, and I came to accept the consequences I would be met with each time the affair came to light.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Unconditional Love and Self-Forgiveness
2. When The Mistress Feels Cheated
3. Once, Twice, Three Times A Cheater

image from canslerconsulting.com

They put on a big production staring all the famous political actors, and then go on about the business of deciding which non-defense related discretionary spending programs to freeze or cut. Now, mind you, they’re talking about a paltry 10% of total federal spending budget. In retrospect, it’s a tiny the part of the budget but the GOP seems hell bent on revamping it by excluding programs that benefit the poor and working classes and refusing to raise taxes on anyone to protect Americas wealthiest corporations and people.

A whopping 10% of the budget includes services for the poor, senior citizens, women and children yet the unemployed are being considered to go up on the chopping block. How interesting that a little over a year ago both parties sat their happily disgruntled asses on the floor of Congress and agreed to increase the debt by upwards of 337.5 billion dollars in 2011 by allowing tax cuts to go the wealthiest people in our nation. President Eisenhower taxed the richest Americans at 92% during his entire time in office. Were they simply naive then?

Let me follow that up with some proven, researched, facts and figures before I continue. The wealthiest 400 Americans have more riches than half of all American households combined.

Let me repeat that in layman’s terms. According to a very knowledgeable source, “the top 1% of households also known as (the upper class) own 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) have 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people own a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). Payroll taxes, are mostly paid by those with incomes below $100,000 per year.

I would like to add that the majority of income taxes go to the military (or rather the military industrial complex: owned by the wealthy. Since the rich have more to defend, should they not pay more in “defense spending?” Here’s a concept; taxes should be commensurate with wealth. The more you own the higher a percentage you should pay in taxes. And corporate welfare should be completely eliminated, not reformed.

Recently, there has been massive cause for shock and awe with the blatant attack not only on the middle class, but on societies most vulnerable and lowest class; the poor. This collective attack is no longer a stealth, camouflaged effort like with politics of old but one that is indeed weighing heavily on the minds of most Americans today because politicians have yet again made it seem as if caring for those who cannot care for themselves has somehow led us to the place our economy is currently at. The bottom of the barrel. This attack on the poor has trickled on up and is bound to affect the middle class because so many former middle class Americans now find themselves shopping at places like Walmart, Target, and other major discount retailers. They’re patronizing the local Aldi, Dollar Store, and Food Pantry because they’ve found themselves in a situation they’d never thought they’d be. They’re going without.

They are not without education, but they are without jobs or have seen their income severely reduced. They have lost their homes or they are on the brink, and their personal finances and savings are all but gone, reduced to the most common of denominators due to Wall Street executives purposely taking the American economy on a collision course with history. They, who’ve driven their stake into the American dream and were once considered apart of “the haves” cool clique are fast becoming one with the “have-nots”. Even those with jobs rightly feel the effects, having taken a bite out of politics and coming away with a terribly bitter taste in their mouths.

There was once a time when the attack on the poor was masked with political double talk, dodge ball tactics and screwball antics that made Congress resemble that of a largely divided middle school playground at recess. Gutless  attempts at major and minor regulatory changes that often face ridiculously fierce resistance, to debating the importance or lack thereof of things like block grants and welfare reform, as if these terms and programs aren’t solidly in place because they are dire necessities. Specifically, the poor and working poor (working class) have bared the brunt of this nation’s addiction to excess. Wall Street caused a crisis of epic proportions that the middle class is still paying for. Political administrations coupled with careless legislatures and lackluster regulators are at the root of the problem.

When you think of programs like Head Start, Earned Income Credit, school lunch programs, Medicaid, TANF, subsidized housing, WIC, and child care assistance, you don’t think about how pertinent it is for those services to be reduced or terminated because the need has always been great. Even 70% of Tea Party supporters don’t want to see  Medicare cuts. You think about the fact that those services are not often readily available to those falling within a certain need based demographic but they are put in place for the sake of importance and justification. These services are in place because of moral responsibility and duty. A need to prevent or curtail poverty, despair, homelessness, lack of access to health care for routine and emergency care and it’s safe to say that reducing aid to the poorest and most vulnerable in society will result in more people living miserable existences, more families going to bed hungry, and a growing lack of quality education because one is not afforded to them, etc.

Cutting spending to services that help the needy does not stimulate job growth or economic growth nor will it reduce the national debt by a long shot.

Final words:  This budget crises is a moral issue. Our elected leaders and career politicians have been corrupted by money and greed. Politicians are regularly caught up in a system that rewards baseless contempt for the little guy much in the same way that athletes get caught up in steroid abuse. The mindset is if others are doing it, why shouldn’t I.  Our government is riddled with junkies and nothing matters except ensuring a steady supply of the drug, which in this case purely equates to money. People need to understand that the flow of money never stops. One mans gain is another mans loss. When the stock market crashed, people made money and lots of it. When companies fail, if you play your cards right, you could profit hugely on their failure. And corporations are more than happy to be the drug – I mean money dealers. They own and control the cash flow . The only way to free our politicians and ultimately ourselves from the current level of corruption that has plagued every facet of corporate America reaching all the way up to our elected government officials is to take the faceless global players out of the politics game and revert back to governing for the good of the people of the country they purport to serve.

We have become a nation that idolizes wealth and because of that we are losing our connection to community, family and country. If we continue to equate being rich as virtuous and the primary testament to personal success we will continue on a collective decline, with more losers than winners just like the game is currently designed to project.

The super committee was created to reduce the federal deficit to the tune of over 1 trillion dollars but I would not be surprised if it ends up increasing it instead.

To monitor the Super Committee’s progress proceed to their website at http://www.deficitreduction.gov/public/.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. The Tea Party: A Misguided Movement
2. Tea Party Express Leader Mark Williams Booted For Racist ‘Satire’
3. Pissed Off Republicans And The Audacity Of The Tea Party

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Deciphering A Purpose
2. Thoughts In Constant Motion
3. How’s Life Cheating You

People have an inherent desire to believe in something that is clearly too good to be true. Where do we develop this warped sense of trust? It is the humanity that some of us were born with.  A gift that has been taken for granted and advantage of since the beginning of time. Gross incompetence allowed Bernie Madoff & Co. to thrive financially while bilking people, including family and close friends out of billions of dollars. The SEC, whose job it is to regulate the financial matters of the country, would rather adopt a skeptical approach to smaller investment companies who can easily dip under the radar, even when numerous people have filed complaints against them.

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. – Woodrow Wilson

Who does the government really protect? Is the importance any less because the entity is smaller than say a company such as Enron or Lehman Brothers? Corporations are allowed to cause harm to many, pay fines, get bail outs because they’re considered ‘too big to fail’ and yet they continue polluting, scamming, swindling and bilking Americans under the umbrella of those who are supposed to protect us – the little people. We have been lied to and people are finally waking up. They are tired of the blood, sweat and tears being toiled in the name of the almighty dollar when they’re told time and again that they are, in fact, small enough to fail and many do. Far too many Americans have suffered financially over the last decade. Those people are waking up.

Occupy Wall Street is what I like to describe, for the time being, as a disorganized protest and a stark rallying cry. This is one of the most unpredictable types of protest. It has the potential to balloon into something much greater than itself. Why? Because when protesters are willing to put themselves at risk without fear of retribution, absolutely anything becomes possible. When moral outrage begins, all it takes is heightened emotion to fuel the fire that will spread that outrage like a plague.

I estimate that this protest will do more in the way of actually helping President Obama’s re-election bid in 2012 than making sleazy Democrat and Republican legislatures (and their fundraising camps and lobbyists) truly understand the message – because neither party has any control of the movement at present time.

The Tea Party movement was infiltrated in the beginning and I expect the same might happen, if not already in process, with the Occupy Wall Street protests. This could have a domino affect on the 2012 election if President Obama starts vocally and publicly supporting the seeds of discontent that were planted and have grown ever since he took office in ‘08.

The real movement begins when people start to understand that there is a one party system in American politics – and it is run by an oligarchy. The party swap changes that happen every election cycle or so are nothing new. Case in point – since Obama was elected to office we’ve engaged in yet another military campaign – against (Libya) on the recommendation of Newt Gingrich, extended the Patriot Act set in motion by the George W. Bush administration and expanded TSA – airport pat down anyone? Facts likes these are hard to swallow no matter how small you cut it.

While chewing, ask yourself why the government which includes the current administration has failed to prosecute some of the biggest financial fraudsters that are largely to blame for the current state of the economy. It has been in perpetual upheaval since Bush left office and distant cousin Obama took it over. If you get an actual answer instead of the standard side by side comparison based excuse of  – ‘Bush did it way worse so we win’ – then you’re off to a pretty good start.

Next up: How to rebuild a civil society that has been deliberately and systematically dismantled from the bottom up.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Pissed Off Republicans And The Audacity Of The Tea Party
2. The Tea Party: A Misguided Movement
3. Politics As Warfare

I was full of anxiety in the beginning. As you may know, fear of the unknown can bring about its own self-destruction if you allow it to. Thoughts are that powerful, especially our own, and mine were getting in the way of my happiness. Instead of going with the flow I sort of, for a while, helped the darkness descend by thinking of the worst possible scenarios imaginable. I let fear dictate instead my steps instead of allowing love to lead me. And I learned a valuable lesson.

My biological clock or my logical brain, whichever, would not allow me to forgo the opportunity to raise a child, although I would have waited another lifetime or two to enjoy the experience under the most perfect circumstances possible, I knew that this was my time.  Nine months later the most beautiful and complete love I’ve ever felt for another human being came to fruition. My daughter is my heart and soul, and the deep love I have for her makes me feel more spiritually alive and aware than I have ever felt.

My relationship as her second parent and other mother is simply too beautiful and unique to be contained; I honestly don’t know how I do it sometimes. But ultimately, I had to be comfortable with being a parent before anything else would truly matter.

My girlfriend continues to be a super supportive of our unique little situation, and although she was recently diagnosed with breast cancer that role has not changed. In fact, everyone has had to make some serious adjustments, but the labor of love continues, and stops for no one. The cycle of care and healing has shifted from mommy and baby Zoey to my girlfriend who is now fighting for survival. From supporting my decision to co-parent with my ex-girlfriend who has remained a close friend – to doing everything she possibly could to ensure that life at home was comfortable for all of us. In essence, she has been a pillar of strength – she’s ride or die to the very end. She was in the delivery room as I stood bedside and watched my daughter being born, so standing at her bedside while she has endured multiple chemotherapy treatments, a multitude of pokes, prods, and some seriously major surgery -  has been more so eye opening.

Honestly, as unique as our situation may be, my daughter is the happiest baby I know – and I may or may not just be saying that because she’s mine, but I really mean it. And I can’t help but be thankful for the role that our nurturing natures and our positively fueled environment, which we all contribute to,  plays in her life.

With my girlfriend’s constant battle against cancer on the daily horizon, some days are tougher than others, and Mama said there’d be days like this, but she never said that a baby’s precious smile and laughter had the propensity to make everything okay in that moment. Thankfully, my daughter is extremely ticklish, just like her ‘boppy’.

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Preparing To Be A Lesbian Dad
2. Video: The Birth of Zoey
3. From Smooth Operator To Soldier Of Love

©2012 The Swag Report. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Straight Married Life by John Drew
2. You Can’t Escape Your Cheating Past
3. Of All Things