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Note: There are a few times today where Jessica was talking so fast, or over other people, I was unable to make out what she was saying or what they were saying. In that case I noted that I didn't catch everything that was said...
We begin with Jill in confessional. Jill says “Lisa and I have conflict over her just, irresponsible use of language. We resolved that issue that we had but our “issues” are not resolved.”
Lisa in confessional: “Jill and I tend to be loners. We’re not like girly girls, we say what we have to, we get it out there, and then we’re over it. And we’re fine.”
Jill in confessional: “How do I deal with this like mold that just won’t go away? How am I going to be her accountability partner, how are we going to be close if everything that comes out of her mouth makes me want to smack her?”
Lisa sits with Allison in the kitchen and says “I want to be a cool stepmom when I grow up one day. What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a cool stepmom.” Allison says nothing. Lisa laughs and Jill rolls her eyes from where she’s sitting at the computer.
Dr. Stan in group: “I want to talk about power today and I want to talk about what empowers us and whether I’m sitting with 6 powerful women or 6 powerless women.” Christina says she feels powerful, just feels like she’s been using her skills in the wrong way. Jessica says she feels powerful on some levels, she really wants to be defined by external things, like the fact that she was really good in school, had a really great career for her age. Allison says she does feel powerful in the way she has a gift in helping others and herself in exposing her cancer to the public and going through her treatments, it’s a way of showing vulnerability and strength. Jill says “I feel that I’m powerful, I have a strong sense of being and confidence and strength.”
Lisa in confessional: “Much to my surprise, everybody thinks they’re powerful but me. So I’m looking at everyone and wondering if you’re so powerful, why are you here?” She laughs.
Back in group, she tells Dr. Stan when she starts feeling like she wants to be powerful and speak her mind, she ends up being aggressive and going to the other extreme because she hasn’t found the balance yet. Dr. Stan asks, so are you a powerful woman? Lisa hesitates and says well, no. Dr. Stan: “Okay, so this seems a little backwards, but think about this. Sometimes we feel that we’re very powerful, and we’re not, sometimes we feel we have no power and we have a tremendous amount. So who’s the most powerful woman in the group here today?” TJ says she thinks it is Jill, she looks very powerful, but she also sees Allison as powerful in another way. Jill laughs and agrees, “We are like night and day powers.”
Jill in confessional: “When people want the truth, they come to me. When they want sympathy, they go to Allison.”
Dr. Stan says that power also has the ability to change other people’s lives, hopefully for the positive, that in the Habitat for Humanity exercise, look at the incredible power the ladies had in helping this family build a new life. It’s the most powerful thing they can do and this is where self esteem plays such a role because he’s always telling people to build your self esteem by doing things that make you feel good. Dr. Stan: “So there’s lots of power in this room and I want you ladies to continue to find and discover your power and to remember there is power in being powerless, especially if you can acknowledge it, that’s what makes you powerful. Hope you have a great day, there are some surprises for you today, see you later.”
Dr. Stan in confessional: “I want the women to be able to embrace their total power to integrate the emotional and intellectual aspects with their physical aspects of power.”
Marcus Pierce, fitness instructor, comes to the house and they all meet on the tennis court. Marcus talks about having power inside and having an energized workout connected with power. They march on their toes and say they are powerful. He makes them yell it out loud. “So how do you all feel?” “Powerful!!”
Jessica and Christina are talking with Allison. Christina says, “Do you know what Lisa told me? She said that she emailed the picture of me, TJ and Lisa, all three of us, (something inaudible was said) and he writes back, don’t send me any more pictures unless they’re nude. And she laughed, she thought that was funny.” Allison said that was not funny.
Ilanya and Jill meet. Jessica says last night there was a little “conflama” (conflict/drama) and Lisa and I had words and it was something that before I would let it go, and let it go, and it came back and I reacted. And while my recovery time was much better, afterwards it was more that I know that I can be of help to her and I can’t find a way to do it. Ilanya: “Because you’re judging her, you’re judging her. Compassion. How would you treat someone that you saw bandaged from head to toe?” “With compassion. Gently.” “You wouldn’t jerk them around, you wouldn’t push them, you wouldn’t demand that they do things. You would even speak in a certain way to them and be of service to them.” Jill: “It’s challenging to move toward a relationship with someone that I feel is constantly pushing me away. But I know it’s for the greater good, I just gotta keep going. It’s going to take time.” Ilanya: “Suppose I treated you the way you treat her?” Jill cries. Ilanya says, yeah…
Dr. Stan meets with Jessica. “So let’s talk about something we haven’t talked about in a long time, your dad and your stepmom.” “Stepmom? I’m working on that. I get that just referring to her as my dad’s wife then she doesn’t have a connection to me and my family. I knew she was really struggling with our relationship and she sent me a card and that really upset me. She said yhat she was praying for me in these difficult times.” “She sent you a card to show you that she was thinking of you, trying to do something positive.” But I didn’t think that it was sincere.” “Okay, so you didn’t think she really wanted things to get better? In a way, maybe you were looking for a way to reject her because it felt so uncomfortable for you. Your father found another woman and it’s uncomfortable and is replacing your mother in some strange way, even though he can’t really replace her, so maybe there was a part of you that needed on some level to find a way to reject her.” “I didn’t know why when I asked for support towards …” (inaudible) Dr. Stan, “but you know what Jessica, she wasn’t the person to give you support about your mother.”
Lisa is at the computer and talking about some man she found on the internet. “Mr. Internet lives in Monte Carlo, he has a glamorous life, he sends me emails, tells me about what’s going on on his friends’ yacht, he’s a well known billionare. Mr. Internet feels safe to me because he represents the fantasy that I’ve always dreamed of.”
Ilanya and Jill: “Yesterday you had a very profound awareness about your great grandma.” “I felt that she sacrificed her life for her family, that she was a really exciting and vibrant woman and everybody came to her house with their problems and never left and destroyed her house and I just watched her get smaller and smaller.” “So what is the distinction between her sacrificing herself for her family and you sacrificing yourself for what you think you owe your mother? You watched 3 generations of women slaughter their dreams. How do you make the distinction between supporting your family and sacrificing yourself? How do you know when to say no?” “I don’t have a clue.”
Ilanya in confessional: “Like so many other women, Jill has held a belief that sacrificing herself to help others was a good thing. Now that she’s been indicted for pre-meditated self-denial, she realizes she was mistaken.”
Ilanya tells Jill she has a new opportunity to visit with her next two expert witnesses on personal power and authenticity. “My hope is when she visits the next two expert witnesses, she’ll come to the realization that the strongest, most powerful, and authentic people in the world are those that know how to take care of themselves before they take care of anyone else.”
Back to Dr. Stan and Jessica. “How are you feeling about your dad today?” “Really positive. I sent him this forgiveness letter and I talked to him about things since I was a little kid and I feel it’s more open and real than it’s ever been. Not judging the way he gives his love to me.” “But it’s not totally gone. Your eyes are so expressive. You talk through your eyes, you know.” “I’ve been told that.” “What brings you to emotion?” “I invited him out here, I called him and left a message and I didn’t hear back so I sent an email and I included Vivien. She responded and he still hasn’t.” “Do you think he’ll come?” “Yes”. “What’s the tears for then, why the sadness?” “It’s just so hard. About inviting him, a little part of me still wants it to be just him.” “It’s okay to acknowledge that you would still want that. Give Vivien a call and talk to her about anything you want that’s meaningful to you.” “I’ve never talked to her.” “ I want you to start building a bridge.”
Allison and Ilanya meet. “How are you going to live large Allison?” “Be clear with my vision, stop sweating the small stuff.” “Okay, the expenses of living large, what do they look like?” “You don’t want to know. I live beyond my means. I need to plan for my future, have a budget.” Aside to the camera, Ilanya says that Allison has a champagne taste with a beer budget. In fact, she’s used her victory over cancer as an excuse to reward herself for things she really cannot afford and now her financial life is in ruin.” Ilanya tells Allison that she has an assignment to make a pie chart of her expenses. She will meet later with a debt management counselor.
Lisa drives Jill to a spiritual center to meet with a reverend to discuss her not being authentic. She discusses with him her harboring a distorted vision of herself. She really wants to change with the best opportunity for living a purposeful and joy filled life. The reverend says to her, “Personal power is your willingness to release life’s energy, or release your gifts to the world. What people tend to do is make excuses why they can’t do that or they look for the world to do that for them to make them happy, to give them something. Personal power means you get to choose from your potential, from the infinite possibilities.” Jill says to him, “What about that little slice of fear that once out of this environment I won’t be able to hold on?” He says, “Do you know what fear is? It is paying attention to what could possibly go wrong, putting more attention on what could possibly go wrong than holding on to your vision. Fear is misdirected intention. Be able to say, my vision is to live a fulfilled life, I’m going to be delivering my gifts and my gifts include, my health s going to be vibrant, my life is going to be filled to overflowing with love and compassion and kindness. You want to be able to articulate on a moment’s notice what your visions is, to write it down, talk about it, and when fear comes, then it’s trespassing.” Jill says to him, “As you’re speaking about my vision, I would be like ashamed, that is associated with saying that’s what I want for my life.” “You’re afraid to say that you want your life to be that good?” She cries and nods her head. “It’s a lie if you progress, become better, start improving? Don’t you think you’d be able to lift people up? You bought into a lie. Shame and guilt are tricks of the ego that keep you stuck in the same place and has a lot of ramifications for your physical body and mental and emotional body so all that life that wants to come through you and express itself with beauty and love and success is now turned in upon itself and becomes disease, discomfort, and blockage of prosperity. You’re breaking a cycle and breaking a habit of not having what you need when you need it, of not necessarily being happy, and developing a habit of a highly evolved being. Welcome to yourself!”
Jessica, TJ and Lisa are outside. Jessica: “ It’s impressive my dad waited 3 years. He was a mess, a hopeless mess after and I know a lot of guys that got married a year after (9/11). My siblings especially were pushing my dad to start dating but I didn’t and I didn’t want to know the details. He took that as I don’t want to know. We rented a place on the Cape, my mother always did that, and every summer in July we went there the first week and she (Vivien) came the second week. We went to a jewelry store and Omar and I were looking at engagement rings and I said jokingly, ‘Yeah, we better get married before my dad does’ and he said I wouldn’t count on that. When I found out my dad was planning on marrying Vivien, my uncle had just died, we had just identified my mother’s remains, everything was out of control, and to suddenly have my dad getting married was overwhelming and I had no idea how to deal with it. Suddenly she was in my mom’s house with her daughter. He told me right before Thanksgiving he was going to propose to her. And I said don’t do it this weekend.”
Allison is making her pie chart. She is trying to pay down debt and a vicious cycle of paying off and not getting caught up. The debt counselor arrives and Allison shows her her take home pay, spending and that she is about $1000 in the red. The counselor says she likes her clients to give her an idea how they got to the position they’re in today. Allison says she was living on credit cards and her credit score was too low, too much debt was extended to her on credit cards, and interest is too high. She tried to apply for lower balance credit cards and they keep giving her higher balances and she’s in a vicious cycle of just paying minimum charges, even charging groceries. The counselor asks her to make some compromises, like can you do without a cell phone or maybe without the land line phone and then replace that later? She asks, what is your goal? Allison says she wants to pay down debt but plan for my future for emergencies. She is told by the debt counselor that she has a very good platform to go to her hospitals and credit cards, tell them about her situation and ask them if they have any kind of hardship program. There are times when hospitals will forgive debts completely or not require you to pay it back for a certain amount of time. You can also look at whether they give an offer in compromise, which is offering them an amount of money as a compromise between what you really owe and what you can afford to pay. She tells her the most important thing in dealing with creditors is communication. Allison says her credit number is around 620 and she thinks it’s really poor. The counselor says that the amount of debt you’re dealing with is not bad at all. She would have expected it to be less. It is recommended you pull your credit report at least once a year because there can be mistakes that could bring your score down, everyone has the ability to pull that report for free once a year. The first step to getting control of everything else in your life is to get control of your finances. Allison says she is pretty devastated that this cycle is vicious and there’s no easy way out.
Jessica tells TJ she has to call her step mom. She says, “Vivien came into my family and I don’t think she realized how hard this was on me and my family. I just expected more sensitivity and understanding the first time she came into my mom’s home and the first time we saw her with my dad, but unfortunately I didn’t see any evidence of that. And it was really hard. The fact that she sent me a card really pissed me off but I knew when I told Dr. Stan…unintelligible. TJ says, “Here you are just coming to a place with your grieving and now you have to accept the stepmother.”
Jill is introduced to a colleague of Reverend Michael and meets with another reverend (woman). She asks Jill, “What does fear get attached to for you?” Jill: “A lot of things that stop me I’ve been afraid to share because I think it sounds silly.” “I know you’ve heard the saying that thoughts are things, and that whatever it is we’re thinking of tends to show up in the law of attraction in life. So if I’m continually thinking that there are things for me to be afraid of, I have to experience fear. If I’m thinking that my life is really good, and I have so many things to be thankful for, then I have more and more things in my life to be thankful for.” Jill says, “Let me ask you about history and tradition and legacy, where does that fit in your life so you respect it but you don’t run your life by it?” “You must, and I think you’re declaring your freedom to choose for yourself. I think you honor your family by being your own individual self. Sometimes our family is not willing to be with us in a new way and they want us to stay in the little box. But you’re just saying I’m done with it.” They hug.
Jill in confessional says, “I’m not on trial anymore, I’m there, and she was really helping me see the finish line.”
Allison is cleaning up the kitchen, says in voiceover that she gives beyond her means, buys everyone a gift for Christmas, if someone loses a tooth she buys a gift, it’s very therapeutic for her, she loves to spend and give and that has to stop. Ilanya walks by her bedroom, which is where she is now. “What are you avoiding, get your butt in here.” I’ve been on my hands and knees cleaning, my bathroom smells so good.” Ilanya asks, “Why are you cleaning? This is not large living so how do we get from $1000 in debt to living large? You have to figure it out, have a plan, live in balance, live in joy, it’s living large. You will never live large as long as you’re depending on a residual income. What other ways are there for you to earn more income and still have a vision? Allison says, “Some consultant work on the side?” But Ilanya says that would take too many hours and she would not have time for self care. Ilanya wants her to create it the way she wants it to be and then work backwards from that and make it work. Clarify the vision and focus on her future. Ilanya then tells her to pack her bags because she and Allison are going to Houston to help with the Hurricane Katrina victims. “You said you want to help people, well there are thousands that no longer have a home and you’re going to go help them.” Allison is excited and tells TJ about it. TJ says it is too cool and is excited for her too.
Jess calls home and talks to her dad. He’s been moving meetings around, wants to know if the 22nd is okay to come to the SO house and that he’s anxious to spend time with her. Jessica tells him that it won’t be so bad coming out. He says he is game and would jump off a cliff for her. She thinks the fear of coming here was just overwhelming and paralyzing him so just hearing he’s committed to her healing and growth means a lot to her. And he needs to know it’s on her, it’s not on him and she’s not critical of him. She asks to speak to Vivien to thank her for the gifts she sent. Jessica is nervous because she hasn’t had a real conversation with her prior to them getting engaged. Vivien comes on the phone and says she was thinking about her all day on Sunday and Stephanie cried when she was there and Jessica and Vivien both said they’d never seen her cry. Jessica thanked her for the soaps and Vivien was glad the housemates liked it. Jessica is feeling satisfaction that she can speak her thoughts, share her vision, proud she has been able to talk to her stepmom, and feels more in control of her own voice.
Next on Starting Over: Lisa confronts her painful past. We see her in tears, talking to a woman about her molestation and that “he told me he was going to kill my parents, that he would kill them.” She is sobbing. Allison prepares for a life changing journey. She says she is scared but excited. Christina has serious doubts about her future. Someone we don’t see asks her, “Where are you enrolled?” Christina answers, “I’m not enrolled.” “Okay, so actually you’re not getting your GED yet?” Christina says she feels as though she’s not as prepared as she intended to be.
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