So, found a great tutorial online for a room divider that includes branches and xmas lights.
That just gave me a flashback, I'm an architect and many years ago I was involved in a Neiman Marcus renovation. Stanley Marcus likes to go shopping around the world, and he brought back these crazy tribal masks from Africa for the store we were working on. They were hung over a beautiful, vintage hardwood floor installed on sleepers over a slab. They were hung there probably 5 years before our renovation. The floor was supposed to remain in place, but some of the boards were loose so they had to be refastened. Except the nails wouldn't bite. They pulled some of the boards up and the wood sleepers underneath looked like sponge. Turns out Stanley had brought back some kind of evil Amazonian termites in those masks, LOL! They completely destroyed the wood floor. So yeah, check those branches before you bring them inside
Originally Posted By: Maika
In case of W, I feel that she deeply betrayed me and broke all the bonds of trust and reliability. My natural instinct would've been to cut her out - and I probably would've gone that way if we didn't have kids. However, kids aside, I realized that I have to learn how to create some type of relationship with W for my own sake of personal growth and development. Would this relationship resemble a friendship? I can't envision that right now because I need trust, reliability, and safety as important core ingredients in that friendship - something I am unwilling to create space for and I don't expect her to do either.
I'm a little farther along in my timeline so I can relate to your thoughts on this as I went through the same thing. I would not call the relationship between XW and me a friendship. We are coparents, we are friendly and cordial towards one another, but she is about the last person I would confide in like I would a friend. You'll get to the point of "acceptance" which is the final stage of grief. You'll accept your sitch as it is, and you'll learn to be at peace with it, and you will move on. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll be friends with your W, but when you get to that point you'll realize you don't need to be friends with her to be friendly with her (if that makes sense). It's like that "friendly neighbor" analogy you hear mentioned here now and then.
