Starting Over 3, 02-10-06 – Catching Upby LauraBelle
I guess it's time for a little catch up today. I seem to have gotten woefully behind! It's a good thing, though. Being busy is rough, but it sure beats the alternative of not having anything to do. So let's just do a little catchup and call us even.
After being caught by Rhonda emailing Mr. Internet, Lisa1 goes on a date with Chris, after just getting off the phone with Rhonda and crying her eyes out, saying she just wants to end things with Mr. Internet on her terms. I don't know what the girl was thinking, but she spends the entire date telling Chris about her problem with Rhonda and emailing Mr. Internet. He doesn't want to come in and say goodbye, and this should be Lisa1's first clue. She manages to steal several meaningful kisses at the door, though.
The next morning she receives a note saying she will need to sell at least $250 at her Tupperware party, and it can't be to her roommates. She spends the day getting ready for the party, and as it gets close, she totally freaks out, screaming and yelling at everyone because the house looks like a mess, and she isn't going to be ready on time. There is a major rainstorm going on in California, and Lisa1 can't believe this has to be the one day it rains in Sunny California. While the other ladies, save for Kim, hide upstairs in a bedroom, Lisa1 goes on a wild rampage about not being able to find her Chinette plates.
We never see the Chinette plates at the party, so we're left to wonder if she ever found them or not. However, tons of people show up, more than expected, despite the heavy downpour. Lisa1 does very well with her presentation. As Jodi counts up the receipts at the end, she finds Lisa1 exceeded what she was asked. She made $285.11. She's feeling really good about herself, until the next day in Group when she finds there is a Board of Review that night, and she is the only housemate confirmed as going up.
Iyanla asked Jill to write a letter to her father introducing herself and telling her feelings of what she has been going through all these years. Jill does as asked, but leaves it a little dry. Iyanla wants more, as always. She wants Jill to write down her feelings, and to get to that point, she asks Jill what her father missed out on. When Jill starts recalling things like her first date, first love, etc., she starts crying, and gets to the meat of what is making her upset. She resolves to write a new letter.
After reading the new letter to Iyanla over the phone, and having it approved, Jill meets with the private detective. He said they found a match on her father's name, and after her mother said that could be the right birthdate for him, the private detective is ninety-eight percent sure this is Jill's father. He has an address for her and everything, and suggests she make a videotape to send to him before cold-calling him.
Jill meets up with Iyanla after her meeting with the private detective to let her know how it went, and walking into the room, she sees the video camera set up, and knows Iyanla is plugged into the program. Jill shares with Iyanla her fears about contacting her father. She is afraid of being rejected yet again by him, just as she was before she was even born.
The next day Iyanla leaves Jill alone with the video camera, with the promise of making the video. Yet when she returns later to check on Jill, she is on the phone with her mom. Iyanla makes one of her famous comments, and sniffing Jill, says she smells resistance. They have a good laugh, and Jill begrudgingly goes off to make the tape for her father. She tells her father on the tape that she would like to meet him. Jodi goes with her to the post office to mail the tape.
Christie meets up with a gastric bypass nutritionist, and hears pretty much what she already knew, except for one thing. She is shocked to learn that most post gastric bypass people gain up to fifty percent of their weight back! She realizes she is on her way to that, and shares with the nutritionist some of her bad habits, especially her alcohol consumption. Meeting with Dr. Stan later at the house, he reinforces all that, and requests that Christie keep a food diary. When she says she already does, he amends it to an "emotional food diary."
Lisa2 meets with Rhonda and talks about her broken relationship with her sisters, mainly the one with Ida. She finally admits that the reason their relationship broke down was because she was jealous of Ida. When Lisa2 finally starts speaking the truth about her jealousy, and that she didn't think she was good enough, but thought Ida was beautiful and smart, Iyanla mentions that Lisa2 makes up a lot of stories about her life, not being able to face the truth.
Iyanla wants Lisa2 to begin to be able to tell the truth, so she reveals a story board that starts off with "Once upon a time ..." and wants Lisa2 to finish the story with the truth. Iyanla leaves her as she has her first line of the story, saying she wanted to be somebody rich and famous, but an ugly thing came and told her she would never become anything. As Lisa2 works on it, she says the story has a sad ending.
By the time Iyanla returns Lisa2 has finished her story, and says the problem lies with the fact she always wanted to be somebody, yet her husband had all the tools to be somebody, but never did anything with them. Iyanla tells her the truth will set her free, and Lisa2 has in her hands a magic potion that is supposed to prevent her from returning to her old ways, and help her to always tell the truth. In addition, she has to make copies of her letter, and send it to everyone she knows. Yikes!
Iyanla meets up with Lisa2 again. Kim has a phone conversation with her husband, Jeff, and is upset when he can't devote his full attention to her because he is dealing with their son eating dinner in his high chair. Later, Rhonda meets with her, pulls down a window shade, and instructs Kim to write down the times in her life she has felt unloved, and by whom. Kim gets a pretty good list going, and Rhonda leaves her alone with this for awhile, and when she returns, she finds Kim has a whole laundry list going, with things like feeling unloved when a neighbor brought over a meal after Jax was born, and Jeff ate it all without thinking of her, and her aunt going shopping at Banana Republic and not thinking about Kim and how that is her favorite store.
Rhonda brings the window shade into the living room, so that everyone can help in a little role-playing game. The times of Kim feeling unloved are confined to four people – Jeff, her aunt, and her Grandma and Grandpa. Rhonda has Kim choose different housemates to represent each of these four people, and she confronts them one by one, telling them how they have made her feel unloved. Before long, Kim is letting out some real, honest-to-goodness emotion, for the first time. Her roommates, posing as her loved ones, get her to see that the things they have done are not because they don't love her. They all apologize to her for hurting her, and say it was never their intention.
Kim is also called up for Board of Review in a surprise move. Everyone knows that Lisa1 will be called up, but no one knew who the other would be. Kim received positive feedback from all around, and recognizes she still needs to work on opening up and allowing her emotions out. Rhonda is quite proud of the process Kim has made in the house, especially with her housemates, and Kim received an A.
You can cut the tension with a Ginsu knife as Lisa1 takes the podium for her second turn at Board of Review. She reports on what she has done well, such as her Tupperware party, dating Chris and connecting better with housemates, both old and new. Rhonda wonders what that has to do with her goal, and Lisa1 says all the right things, pretty much just repeating things Rhonda has told her these past few months. As for a grade, she would give herself an A, but because of falling off the wagon and emailing Mr. Internet, she changes it to a B.
All of Lisa1's roommates recognize her improvements, but also there is more work to be done. Jill thinks she needs to be hit by a mack truck to get it. Iyanla wonders about Lisa1's biggest fear, and she says she is afraid to move back home and be alone without the great support she has found at the Starting Over house. Well, that was a mistake. She is thereby granted her biggest fear. In the morning she is being forced out of the Starting Over house. She is not graduating, but is not being kicked out either. She is being given thirty days to live on her own back home, to see how well she does. She is to then report back, and if she did well, and flourished, and faced things she hasn't wanted to, she will graduate.
Lisa1 is very sad to face leaving the house. She has obviously found something she has always looked for, but doesn't know how to transfer that to her life back home. She is especially sad to leave Jill, and knows she can only blame herself. As if she is graduating, the show provides lots of flashbacks to Lisa1's biggest moments in the show.
The next morning the other women sign a lunch bag for her with good wishes, and pack it with lots of goodies. They should have used Tupperware, not a paper lunch bag! She leaves in her limo, without her trophy, hoping to be back in thirty days.
Within thirty minutes, the new housemate arrives, and is sitting down in Group with her five new housemates, Rhonda, and Iyanla. She introduces herself as Kelly. Her parents split up when she was a teenager, then got back together years later, and it makes her feel odd about it and left out. When her parents began having problems they went to family counseling, and everyone went for individual counseling as well. One day her mother and father went to counseling, and her father came home alone, without her mom. Her mom never came back, being admitted to a hospital with bad agoraphobia and panic attacks.
Kelly's father never seemed to mention her mother much, and even from the first moment when he walked back in without her, he just wanted to know who was going to do the cleaning and cooking now. The worst of it for Kelly was that the counselor had told her she was trying to "seduce" her father back when she was thirteen. She asked what that meant, and was told to look it up. She did, and was shocked and horrified.
This label placed on her at such an early age has had an effect on how she handles relationships, touching and closeness. It doesn't affect her relationship with her husband (who is old enough to be her father. Nothing wrong with that, but because of the seducing her father thing, it takes on a different edge to it), but does affect her relationship with her two sons, ages seventeen and thirteen. Once they turned thirteen, she stopped wanting to touch them, afraid of being told she is seducing them.
Kelly's self-portrait is very self explanatory. It's a picture of her with a barbed wire fence around her. 'Nuf said on that. Jill, though, notices that the picture of her doesn't even look like her, and thinks it's interesting that she doesn't see herself for who she really is. Her goal is to "Reach Out To Life".
I have a stinky feeling there is a lot more to her story. There's some gaps there, I think. There has to be a correlation between being told at thirteen you were seducing your father, then ending up marrying a man old enough to be your father. This one is going to be interesting. And I am not sure what feelings I have about Lisa1 leaving. I wish I could know everything would work out, but for know I just feel very, very hopeful.
You can email me at LauraBelle@realityshack.com
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