Exerpt from "Birches" by Robert Frost

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth for awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear me no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
It would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Guilt and Motherhood

Let me get this straight....  Because you abandoned your children and went on a meth binge.... because I ended up having to raise them for the first 6-7 years of their lives..... because they think of me as a mom and not your typical "stepmom"..... I am wrong.  You blame everyone else for the situation you find yourself in. It was some one else's fault the judge thought your children were better off with their dad, the attorney appointed to act specifically as a buffer and in the best interest of the kids thought they were better off with their dad... But it's because they were ripped from your arms for no reason at all that you went off the deep end. You refuse to admit that you did anything wrong to lead up to your husband leaving and taking the kids with him.  I mean after all judges DO tend to side with biological moms unless there is compelling evidence against them.

So we are all supposed to act like that part of our lives never happened. And all the damage that was done by you to those kids means nothing. And the bond that I created with those kids in having raised them is supposed to just go away like it never happened. Like I was just babysitting all those years and now you are home so here are your kids back... FUCK YOU!!!!!!

I will not stop saying they are mine. I will not stop bragging about being their mom.  I will not stop. The bed you made you lay in and consequences are real and lasting and some can't just be erased or forgotten. I take care of them every day, send them to school, do most of the work with them.  It is because of MY hard work that they are who they are and NO I am not a perfect mom. I am far from being a great role model, but I am the one who was here to fill in for your absence and just because you feel guilty and can't bear the thought of them loving me and looking up to me doesn't mean I have to go out of my way to ease your conscience.