Codependence can be defined as basing my own happiness on someone else’s happiness or sense of well-being. Or expecting my act of service or self-sacrifice to cure someone else’s unhappiness. I think when the validity of my act of service is determined by the outcome of another person’s feelings then that is unhealthy codependent behavior. I readily admit that my definition of codependence and unhealthy codependent behavior is a work in progress. Because I find that I, like many, many women, have a very real issue with codependence.

That said, I want to teach my children to make acts of service an integral part of their lives. I think service is a cure for depression and anger and becoming self-absorbed.

I also want to teach them where the line between self and others is. And most importantly for my daughter, I want to teach her to avoid codependent behavior while participating in acts of service. It’s a balancing act, and I believe it’s one that can either result in great happiness from selflessly helping others or great misery in being unable to “fix” others.

I clean for people a great deal. My mother-in-law has fibromyalgia, a condition that causes a lot of pain when she cleans her floors. So, I regularly sweep, mop and vacuum for her. For a while, I was throwing in the cleaning of her bathrooms as well, until she said that chore didn’t particularly cause pain and she didn’t mind doing it herself. Then I stopped that because it’s important for me to not expend all of my energy on needless tasks. I usually take my kids over to do this act of service and require that my daughter help with the chore. I talk to her about why it’s important to help people and how we are doing this because we love Nana and she finds cleaning her floors painful.

I’ve discovered that there are cues that this is becoming unhealthy codependent behavior for me.

* If I am resentfully wondering why her husband isn’t doing this chore.

* If I am worried about getting my own housework done while I’m doing hers.
* If I am in any way angry, upset or resentful that my other sisters-in-laws are not participating in this chore, for example while I was pregnant.
* If I’m expecting some sort of transformation in her pain level or self-esteem or happiness because of this act of service.

I also find in other relationships that I will do less definable acts of service or compassion. For instance, I have a person in my life that is perpetually depressed and tired. I find that when I invest my time and attention on her or her children, by seeking her out or inviting her family to activities or events, I fall into codependent behavior. I can recognize this by tuning into my own feeling that my energy is being wasted.

While deeply involved in this behavior I can’t see it with any clarity. I believe that I am helping to socialize her children, relieving some stress for her by giving her things, supplying her with information that might help her situation, or encouraging her to find a better job because I believe she can. But, then I notice that none of what I’m doing is having the intended result.

So I try to step back and look at the situation with impersonal eyes and can see that what she might be getting out of the situation is attention for her depression and misery. I chase her and engage her, she rejects me and takes my efforts for granted and then I feel bad that she doesn’t appreciate me or my friendship or my many acts of giving. She mouths the words: lets get together, hang out, have more play dates, go do something. But she rejects my advances of friendship and invitations 95% of the time. In fact, when I take a step back I realize that she never asked for my help or my friendship. Never gave any indication that she wanted to make any actual changes in her life, she just wanted an audience for complaining.

Then I think back to what a therapist once said to me, “you can’t go around fixing people that don’t want to be fixed.”

So, I stop the codependent behavior of making her my "project" and she doesn’t even miss me or my presence or all my concern or my help. Turns out that’s okay with me. I feel a bit relieved to have more energy to spend on my family, my career, my self and people who are actually appreciative of my attention or kindness.

There are acts of service that I generally do not participate in. Making dinner for people is one of them. I have learned this about myself – I don’t want to do it. Everything about it annoys me. I don’t like having my limited supply of pots or Tupperware all over town. I don’t like having to know that some family doesn’t like onions in their spaghetti. I don’t like remembering when to take the food. I don’t like remembering to buy enough food, or running back to the grocery store to get more food. I don’t like chit-chatting when I drop the food off. I don’t enjoy chasing around my food belongings. I’ve learned that this is an act of service I don’t enjoy. So, when the sign-up list gets passed I just pass it on without signing up. I try to limit my guilt about that to 2 seconds. Instead, I might show up with my Magic Erasure and scrub their bathroom down, a chore which I do not mind at all.

Another situation where I need to monitor my codependent feelings is in my mentoring. I mentor four 15-year-old girls. They are at-risk of teen pregnancy and drug addiction and come from some pretty sketchy homes with few positive role models in their lives – that’s why they are in the program. These kids need “fixing” if anyone does. But, I have to remind myself that I am not their parent and can not set boundaries for them. My power to affect their lives is limited by their ability and desire to receive what I have to say. I can tell them the truths I’ve learned through experience about boys and love and sex and drugs in the most honest way I can. But, I have no control over their behavior, or the consequences of that behavior, in the end. For me to continue to be an effective mentor I have to accept that fact and be okay with that. I am.

As I learn to be less codependent I am teaching my daughter the lessons. I try to participate in at least one act of service a week. But, I limit it to an act of service that will be emotionally safe for me. And throughout, I try to teach my daughter the skill of giving of one’s self with no expectation of an emotional payoff.

By Tracee Sioux

A few weeks ago I was at a mentor/mentee slumber party when a fellow mentor mentioned that she was trying to decide how to tell her nine-year-old daughter where baby’s come from.

My five-year-old knows where baby’s come from, I said. She doesn’t know how they get there but she knows where they come from.

All eyes turned to stare at me – adult women and 14-year-old girls alike and all had something akin to shock written on their faces.

What am I going to do, tell her a stork was bringing the baby? I mean, she could SEE my stomach growing and knew it had to come out somehow.

When I was pregnant last year we watched A Baby Story all the time and they show you exactly how babies are born.

They show everything? Like the crowning and everything? My fellow mentor asked.

Well, the crowning is about the only thing they don’t show, they drape that part with a sheet, but they show the pushing and the cutting of the cord and pretty much everything else.

We watched it all the time when I was pregnant and the interesting thing is that the whole process doesn’t scare her one bit. I’m pregnant out to here and getting more afraid by the minute even though I’ve done it before. But to a four-year-old it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. To her it was like, “Of course, that’s how babies come out.”

She wasn’t worried about you hurting? The other mentor asked.

Well, they show natural labor and labor with the epidural. I told her I was going to have the medicine so I wouldn’t have that kind of pain and she was pretty good with that decision. She was really comforting actually, saying things like, “Don’t worry, Mommy, it will hurt but then they will give you the medicine and you’ll feel better and then we’ll have Baby Zack!”

She had this little doctor’s kit we got at the dollar store and she came up with these scissor type tweezers things and started making cutting motions at my crotch. I was pretty uncomfortable with that, so I asked her “What are you trying to do?” and she said, “I’m cutting the string, I’m helping you have a baby!”

I even caught her playing on the bed with her cousin, whose mom was pregnant at the same time, and she had a soccer ball under her shirt and she was grunting and pushing away, “UGH! UGH!? I’m pushing the baby out my bum.”

She thinks it comes out of the bum. At this point she’s aware of a pee hole and a bum hole. She thinks her vagina is her pee place. She’s not aware of a third hole for sex and babies and her period yet. I suppose she’ll find out about that later, when she’s closer to her period. So, she thinks baby’s come out of the bum hole, I think.

How does she think babies get in there? A 14-year-old mentee asked.

God. Which is pretty accurate considering we tried to put one in there for a year-and- a-half, but it didn’t happen until God decided it was time, I said. She had been praying for a brother for a long time, so it makes sense to her that God would put a baby in my tummy as an answer to her prayers.

Later reflecting on their first look of shock that my little girl would know how baby’s come out I started examining why we keep such things, natural biological things, a secret. Was there a good developmental reason for such secrets?

Frankly, I can’t think of any.

I thought back to when I was a kid and my mom gave me and my same-age, same gender cousin the sex-baby-menstruation talk while my dad gave my brothers the same talk in another room. Wisely, they assumed the two older girls would spill the beans to the two younger boys so they did it at the same time. I think I was about 9 or 10. I remember the whole thing being rather shocking, like a huge secret about my girlness had been kept from me.

In the Bible, menstruation and birth is referred to as “unclean.” I think that’s rather archaic. So did Jesus, as he touched and healed the poor woman who had been banished because she bled her whole life, and therefore was considered unclean.

I think it’s actually taken this long – from Biblical days until the present day – for our collective consciousness to come to terms with the basic biological facts of femininity. Why else would we be keeping menstruation, birth and sex such forbidden knowledge?

I can’t think of a legitimate reason to keep such things from our daughters. My daughter sees my body and she wonders things like:

Am I going to grow boobs? Will I have hair on my bum too?

(For the record, I have pubic hair and not a hairy bum.) I just tell her the truth:

Yes, you’ll grow breasts and hair when you are a teenager.

She inevitably asks, Why?

Well, the breasts are to feed your babies with, like I fed you and Zack, after you’ve graduated from college and gotten married. And I’m not really sure why we grow hair.

She’s probably too young to know that she’ll spend a good deal of her life trying to rid herself of the pubic hair. We’ll save that for swimsuit season 2015.

By Tracee Sioux

Hey Ladies!

I've got some great news about a new writing gig at www.blogfabulous.com!

I've been hired by b5media to write an existing blog called BlogFabulous. The focus is on empowering women, right up my alley, and I'm super excited about the opportunity. You can read my introduction and first post today at www.blogfabulous.com .

Please take a second to log on and subscribe to the RSS feed, it will be a shorter, but more frequent, posting schedule. Should you wish, you can even leave comments for the new (existing) readers about how witty and insightful I am. (I'm only half-joking.)

I will, of course, continue with So Sioux Me.

I am what Darren Rowse at www.problogger.com calls "monetizing my blogs with multiple income streams." Otherwise known as multi-tasking, hustling the freelancing world for gigs and following my path as a writer.

By Tracee Sioux

I’m up in the gym working on my fitness too! That’s right, Fergie. . .

Yeah, I’m not here for your entertainment either! You tell ‘em Pink, . . .

If everyone cared and nobody cried . . . we’d see the day no body died . . .Okay, Nickleback good point, good point . . .

Scream! Graphic violent beating of a woman who looks like a poor dog scampering to the four corners of the room, futile escape. Flash to sociopath watching the beating on monitors, obvious voyeuristic sexual pleasure from beating. Kicking, punching, Is that this hotel room? Asks actress, who is evidently next. Vacancy, coming soon.

Flash of violent attack on faceless woman. Dead bloody woman in slinky slip thrown on floor like useless garbage. Coming soon.

Has anyone else noticed that commercials, especially for movies or television programs, have become disturbingly graphic? With a very clear dynamic of sexuality and voyeuristic misogyny? The message being that horrendous and unspeakable crimes, especially against women, are entertaining. Worse, a turn-on.

I became seriously disturbed about a year ago when I saw a commercial for a crime-solving drama during some innocuous program I was watching with my four-year-old and the words, You raped her and then killed her unborn baby before you strangled her, was screamed into my previously peaceful house.

I wrote the Federal Communications Commission (FCC, the federal agency which is responsible for monitoring our communication channels, including television) to find out what could be done about the graphic violence aired on commercials.

They responded with a form letter explaining that it is their responsibility to monitor only the actual programming, but that each network is responsible for monitoring their own commercial content.

What? Why? Says who?

The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America upholds freedom of speech:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Obviously, I love this constitutional right. I’m a writer, so I make my living using my freedom of speech. It is, I believe, the most vital freedom for a democracy.

Yet, according to the FCC website: http://www.fcc.gov/eb/oip/FAQ.html#TheLaw

Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1464, prohibits the utterance of “any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication.” Consistent with a subsequent statute and court case, the Commission's rules prohibit the broadcast of indecent material during the period of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. FCC decisions also prohibit the broadcast of profane material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Civil enforcement of these requirements rests with the FCC, and is an important part of the FCC's overall responsibilities.

Now that I’ve stated the technicals, it becomes a matter of semantics.

What exactly is obscene, indecent or profane?

Am I the only one who would rather see Janet Jackson’s accidental flashing of a breast than a decapitated head, a woman’s body floating dead in the bathtub, or a woman being beaten like a dog for sexual pleasure?

It seemed the whole entire world stood up in indignation over a little booby, but 30 - 60 seconds of gratuitous graphic violence is totally acceptable in every genre except perhaps The Wiggles.

I’m totally on board with CSI: Special Victims Unit being allowed on TV. I think its 55 minutes of blatant, graphic, and violent misogyny and 5 minutes of punishing the perpetrator. But, if you want to watch that, okay. It’s your choice. I believe in your choice. I believe in the network’s choice to air it. I can change the channel. And I do. No harm done.

But, during a commercial when I’m watching something I choose to watch, like VH1’s Jump Start during my morning workout at the gym, I am a captive audience subjected to gratuitous violence.

Whether or not to fill my mind with images of violence should be my choice. But, it’s not my choice if it’s popped on the screen with zero warning while I’m watching something else. Even if I change the channel as fast as I can, there are already enough graphic images coming into my brain for me to be pissed off that my mind has been polluted without my consent.

What to do about it?

First I’m writing the FCC again explaining my position that, in fact, it IS their responsibility to monitor commercials according to Title 18 of the United States Code, Section 1464, prohibits the utterance of “any obscene, indecent or profane language by means of radio communication.”

Obviously, commercials are by means of radio communication and that falls under FCC jurisdiction. The FCC websites states it will attempt to respond to my complaint in a swift 9 months. Join me in my campaign by filling out this electronic complaint form http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/cib/fcc475B.cfm. It takes about 2 minutes if you copy and paste paragraphs from this story right into the comment portion.

Reading the published FCC statistics (of the 327,198 complaints in the first six-months of 2006, they took action on 7 – yeah seven). I feel sure the complaints will be promptly discarded without adequate action and I’ll get another form letter telling me it’s not the FCC’s problem. But, I’m saving my ever-important confirmation number (FORM475B: 07-WB12918467) just in case they don’t contact me with an adequate result in 9 months.

Simultaneously, I’m going to write my representatives at http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/. If you copy and paste directly from this story it takes about 2 minutes to write each of your elected officials an email. Type in your zip code and they'll link you to the form you need for the people who work for you Don’t forget to remind them that 2008 is an election year.

Since 2008 is an election year I’m also going to write those who wish to become my elected officials: Hillary Clinton http://www.hillaryclinton.com/help/contact/ , Barack Obama http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/contact2 , John Edwards http://johnedwards.com/about/contact/form/. (Obviously, if you intend to vote for a Republican you’ll have to research how to contact them about this issue – just Google their name).

Lastly, I am emailing VH1, help@vh1mail.com , which claims on its public affairs page http://www.vh1.com/public_affairs/ : We are committed to providing meaningful, pro-social initiatives, using the reach and power for VH1 to create awareness and motivate action for current issues affecting society, with this message:

Please stop airing violent commercials during Jump Start. I’m trying to start my day with a positive, empowered, I-can-handle-anything-that–comes-my-way attitude. Gratuitous misogynistic violence is a buzz kill and I’m fairly sure all the sociopaths who like it went to bed a few hours ago. Stop it! Please.

Now, maybe I can’t change the whole system, but I bet if everyone who reads this takes action it will be a lot more effective. I’ll post any replies or answers I get from these organizations and elected officials as a “comment” to this story. So make sure you check back and subscribe for email updates on new postings.

by Tracee Sioux

I am not a smoker.

I have been writing this message on my wrist for the last year on and off. I read in a magazine that it's supposed to help me kick the habit. It's supposed to help me redefine myself as a non-smoker. It's supposed to change my identity from one as a smoker to a non-smoker.

Other methods I've tried include:

• Nicotine gum - disgusting. (yes, in my opinion more disgusting than smoking - have they ever heard of a flavor?),
• Nicotine patch -most effective, but eventually you stop using it and then the cheating starts,
• Acupuncture - ridiculously ineffective,
• 2 pregnancies - you think this is the answer cause it's 9 months of not smoking, but eventually you're not pregnant and the stress of a newborn baby and the desire to lay claim to your own physical body overrides the fact that you are no longer physically addicted to nicotine.
• Self-Loathing and the Loathing of Dependency - really it just makes you feel bad about yourself while you smoke for being so weak and fallible.
• Single-cigarette purchases - this is pretty effective for the weaning time because if you buy a pack you will smoke a pack. This allows you to buy a single cigarillo to get your nicotine hit and feeds the psychological need to make the hand-to-mouth motions. However, I find myself buying them two at a time and then smoking them while wearing the nicotine patch.
• Goal Setting - the latest one was to give up smoking for Lent. Heck, it's only 40 days, surely I can do that for God and all.
• Psychological Conditioning - supposedly if you snap your wrist with a rubber-band then you will condition yourself not to want a cigarette. Whatever.
• Sunflower seeds and gum and computer solitaire - The notion is that if you keep your hands and mouth busy you will not need the hand-to-mouth motions of smoking.

I used to say, in defense of cigarette manufacturers, People have a right to kill themselves if they want to.

In walks the five-year-old conscience, Mommy! Please don't smoke that cigarette. You'll DIE! I don't want you to die! Who will I be with if you die! No more smoking Mommy! Throw it away! You said you wouldn't smoke anymore!

I would like to slap the crap out of whoever it was that told my kid that I will die if I smoke! Seriously - if I find out who did this to me, you're in deep, deep $%&#.

So, since I can not tolerate the deception of hiding behind buildings and sneaking around to smoke I resolve every single day to quit. To never smoke again. Because it seems I have actually lost the right to kill myself, at least peacefully, by becoming someone's mother. Unfortunately, I very often feel like a total failure for my inability to stick to it.

I don't smoke everyday anymore. Sometimes, I'll go a whole week without a cigarette. I've gone months without buying a pack of cigarettes. I'll see liberation from smoking on the horizon. And then when true freedom is within my grasp, I'll let myself believe in the alluring, yet delusional, notion that I can smoke sometimes without the consequences of a full-on addiction to cigarettes.

I'll bum one off a known smoker. Just one - okay, maybe two. I've even pulled up to a gas station and bummed them off a stranger, just one. I'll pay you $1 for one - see I'm trying to quit and this way I don't buy a whole pack.

Ah, but that one was so good. It made me feel like my old self again. You know, the girl who could smoke if she damn well felt like it? Her, I liked her. I miss her. Maybe just two then.

Or maybe only when I'm not around the kids. Or only when I drink a few beers. (WARNING - This logic will turn you into an alcoholic. Really, who needs to fight more than one addiction at a time?)

The road to my addiction to cigarettes has been incredibly long. I thought the guy who sat in front of me in 7th grade English class smelled divine. Camel cigarettes on a Levi jacket. Yummy! I thought it was exciting to take a drag off a cute boy's cigarette, yeah I'm cool like that. Erotic beyond belief when my boyfriend would blow a drag into my open mouth (nauseating what used to be a turn-on isn't it?)

And I smoked unapologetically for basically two decades. I never, ever felt bad about it. I LOVED it. Cigarettes saw me through every drama, crisis and celebration of adolescence and early adulthood. I only tried to quit once, when I went on vacation with my family trapped in an Oldsmobile and I swear I would have hitch-hiked home had I thought I could make it out of the state of Texas in under a week. After that, my family was happy that I was not attempting to quit smoking in their presence.

But, now I can't even smoke in peace. One can not enjoy cigarettes while their child is crying about how Mommy is going to die. And if I'm not enjoying it - what is the point of doing it? I've kicked the physical addiction. It's just the psychological bond that remains, like shackles around my printed on wrists.

This is about my freedom - I can if I want! Evidently, what I don't have is the freedom NOT to smoke.

According to Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, the secret to life is to fall down seven times and then get up eight.

Okay, off to buy the nicotine patch again. After just one more drag . . .

Read more about the success of a new smoking cessation pill called Chantix at Blog Fabulous. I tried it, cheated a time or two, and then a miracle occured and I quit smoking. So did over 600 other lifelong smokers. I really can say that I'm a non-smoker and so can you!