Ernestina
2 min readJul 26, 2022

ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching

Book Two, Chapter 305: On, and On, and On

When I read John and Linda Friel’s Adult Children: Secrets of a Dysfunctional Family and realized I was an Adult Child, everything fell into place for me. Their book gave me the information I needed to begin the work of building myself, of making myself whole. Of healing myself.

In slowly releasing myself from an addiction to relationships, I find myself better able to detach from other things. I haven’t bought semi-sweet chocolate morsels or a jar of Nutella for weeks — not that I’m off sugar completely. Just two days ago I stopped by my favorite bakery for three dozen fruit slices, which the bakery makes only during the holiday season.

I mailed a dozen in a Thanksgiving package to my sister Tish and her husband, David, who live in Virginia, and took the remaining two dozen to my Twelve-Step meeting last night. I’ll eat a sweet if I’m able to eat it slowly and in moderation. If I can’t, then I don’t bring it into my home.

I’m building relationships with others — something I didn’t bother to do before Ernie died. He was enough for me. All others were either superfluous or incidental, brief encounters. Mostly, I was a phony.

“Quit fooling me, Ernestina,” Ernie said to me in the hospital.

I don’t want to fool myself or anyone else ever again.

I’m more at peace. I trust that happiness will come. Or, perhaps what I feel is a quiet kind of happiness.

I accept my life as it is now. I work on my spiritual progress, and that work goes on, and on, and on.

Ernestina
Ernestina

Written by Ernestina

My writer husband’s favorite nickname for me was Ernestina, so in this 2-book memoir, he is Ernie. This is his story, our story, and my story. I invite you in.

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