C Hardy, I think it is wonderful you have childhood friends. I don’t even know where the children I grew up with are. I was just trying to get you to have some compassion for the circumstances of others. In my particular case I agreed to let my not quite ex-husband use most of our mutual assets gathered together over 28 years to buy a ranch. I was going to spend the next four years going to college. I believed we could both come out of the end of our marriage as winners. We had raised two incredible children, we had gotten him through college, he’d played college and pro football, we had gotten him a job as a commercial pilot. I had started my own company at 29, we’d moved around the country in pursuit of his contentment. The last move together meant giving up my last company, the dream home and all the mutual investments we had and the purchase of our first ranch. It should have been perfect but he was miserable. Miserable people create a nightmare and after 2 yrs 10 months I left . That ranch was sold and he came to me and said if I didn’t let him buy a ranch, using most of my share of our money then, he’d never own a ranch. Then I made a fatal mistake, I said okay. We purchased a ranch. My name was on everything so he couldn’t saddle the place with loans without my permission, knowing he didn’t want to share with me I felt perfectly safe and enrolled in school. In the night before midterms of my very first term in school he woke me up with a phone call telling me he’d made a mess. He had started a remodel on the ranch house with money from sale of a herd of cows with a government lien on them and now the bank wouldn’t loan him money to remodel the house so he could actually pay the government loan on the cows we no longer owned. We were caught up in that mess of the early eighties. I left school and took control of his ranch so he couldn’t make it any worse. I endured his attacks, his blaming me for his mistakes and finishing the house he started and overseeing the parts of it I couldn’t do myself, for five years as I lived on 310 acres by myself. I went through all his paperwork and never did figure out where $30,000 of that money from the cows went. At the end of five years the contract on the original ranch paid off and I got all bills paid that had my name on them. I put the tax money owed in an account he couldn’t touch. Then we split what was left. It amounted to less than on third of what it would have been without all grief. I was 49 years old, I didn’t have a home, I didn’t have an education, I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have much money. I had survived but there were times during that five years when he was at his angriest that I wasn’t sure I would. No, I couldn’t sue and destroy the father of my children, my personal ethics prevented that. Friends don’t drop away they just get on with their lives. Friends we had at the first ranch were 500 miles away, ranchers don’t travel they are too busy. Friends that were connected to the airline were 2000 miles away. They go do things that are fun they don’t visit someone stuck on a ranch miles from nowhere..Friends made because we owned airplanes were still his friends. He still had an airplane I didn’t. Friends made around skiing were still skiing. I couldn’t really afford to ski anymore. Friends that we had because of his college, which made up most of our long term friends would probably say they still are my friends, but during the years when he was behaving so badly I had to back off, I couldn’t trust him to not drag them into our drama. I still attend weddings and funerals but that is about all. See how it happens. I’ve spent the last 23 years working like a beaver trying to get myself in a financial position so I don’t become a burden on my children. I had a long conversation yesterday with their dad. He sent me some pictures of them when they were small that he found in a box. He apologized again for that period but he hasn’t changed and he has no idea what he is apologizing for.

The point I was trying to make was none of us can walk in someone else’s shoes and to point your finger in blame and accusation is dangerous. Also this will fracture families and friends will fall away especially if they aren’t affected by the present financial troubles. Friends are often build around jobs that are gone, clubs you will no longer afford to belong to, activities that you can no longer afford to take part in. People pull back from what they are afraid of. You might not like hearing this, but if you are no longer able to afford the airplane or the gas to fly it, your friends who still can are probably not going to buy you gas so you can join them but most likely will look away when they see you. That is just human nature. That way they don’t have to admit they may be next. None of us know what our breaking point is. I promise you at 45, no one could have convinced me that anyone could bring me to my knees. One year later someone almost did. That didn’t happen because I was extravagant or full of myself but because I was trying so hard to be fair and equitable and left myself open to someone else’s destructive behavior. I got there by being honorable and was stuck there because I believed I had to be honorable in untangling the financial and emotional mess we were caught in. Just today that individual apologized again. That happened 26 years ago and he still doesn’t know how close he came to breaking me. I haven’t admitted this to many. I’m sharing this with so you can have some of the wisdom I had to learn the hard way.

Bella Mia, Thank you for the link. I bookmarked it so I can go back and read it. FDR would not be surprised by result. I recently read his bio by Conrad Black. Roosevelt was talking to a man he placed on the NY supreme court while he was governor, the judge told him to gather together all the economic professors in the state and talk to them before he was to run for president. That way he would at least have some ideas if he should be elected. Roosevelt never believed he had the answer to the depression. He had a list of things to try. All they knew was what Hoover was doing, wasn’t working. That’s what they did. The minute the supreme court or congress would knock something down they would just work their way down the list. This particular bio is incredibly well researched. I kept imagining a army of researching for Black. Recently I read the reason he had so much material, he bought all the Roosevelt family papers. It is a huge book but really worth the effort.

deber, Very well said!

Belinda, All of what you said could be true, but I wish you hadn’t said it. How many times have you had to start over in your life? I mean completely start over? This is just a different kind of Katrina. Some people will never get over this just like some families will never get over Katrina. I imagine the ones who were responsible for financial decisions that affected others will be the most vulnerable. Those who get through this with families intact will probably do the best. You see friends will disappear. It is a lot more than just the stuff.

Lizzie, I don’t know a lot about therapy, but aren’t there other treatments besides cognitive therapy. How about something more pro-active like learning or teaching coping skills, or examining past experience for strength. Teaching people to do with less. I know that it is a huge shock for those who have had a lot, to adjust to live like the rest of us, as Muggsy says, in steerage. When you haven’t had much, losing it hardly brings on a shock when you thin the soup. Maybe what I’m looking for is more philosophical than therapy. Maybe therapists aren’t trained to help people adjust to a changed landscape, or help them make plans for the future altered in ways they can’t imagine.

Belinda. From your keyboard to God’s eyes. Thank you.

Oh Frank, It’s true, most of what he writes doesn’t make any sense.

Merrell. I agree with you! Most particularly about Cheney. Bev.

I said do your homework!

Deni, Well said! Bev.

Frank, Thank you. I’m so tired of the hyperbole that gets spewed here. I love a good discussion and a good debate by people who have different views. I have conservative friends who in the last few years have become so intellectually isolated that they aren’t capable of seeing any view but their own, It is so sad and numbing. I work hard to read all sides of an issue in search of the truth. I believe that search is my life work. Bev.

PS, Mr Henley, I also recommend “Legacy of Ashes” and the Cheney profile published in the Washington Post June 24 2007. It will give a better picture than I ever could. No, Cheney isn’t the devil incarnate, he just a man with a different world view, who was a survivor of the Nixon Watergate mess. I feel sorry for him and us because he held the position he did when he did. They engaged in group think! We all suffered for the lack of light and air in their environment. If McCain hadn’t changed his political positions to satisfy people like you, to get nominated and not chosen Palin as a running mate, I probably would have voted for him this last election also. Mr. Henley you have some homework to do!

Mr. Henley, If you were smart enough to read what I wrote and had time to read the material I referred to you would be embarrassed by what you just said. I’m not a blind obama supporter. I’m a lifetime Republican who voted for McCain 8 years ago. You Twit!

deber, If you read Bob Woodward’s books on Bush at War and the present article in Vanity Fair called “An Oral History of the Bush White House”, you will get a better Idea of how this happened. I’m not going to tell you in my words but send you to these sources. It wasn’t a conspiracy as some claim, but it was stupid. It was a group of men who believed one way and were able to cut out those who disagreed from the decision making process. In my opinion one of the reason I respect the group of people I’ve seen Obama nominate. It doesn’t look like there will be any group thinking. One of the reasons Powell supported Obama was He was one of those people the cut out and he didn’t even see it coming.