>Can you please fill me in on what happened today? President Bush is giving a speech.
>I'm missing the show, figures with the new HG coming and all. : o(
The new housemate's name is Kim. When she comes to the front door, she's greeted by Allison, who hugs her, and makes a comment about the housemates being big on hugging. They are then joined by Lisa, who also gives her a hug. They start showing her around the house and they introduce her to Jill and Christina, and eventually (I think when their group session begins, she meets TJ).
Jill comments in a confessional that it's good to have the new housemate here, and she says that she wonders how Kim will adjust to this "motley crew" of Starting Over housemates. She says that the housemates have decided that the new housemate is just going to have to adapt to them.
Lisa, in a confessional, comments that it's a relief to see that Kim doesn't appear to be a psycho or anything.
Kim's "story" begins with her showing a photograph of her husband, a clean-cut, reasonably good-looking guy and their son, who's about two years old.
She speaks positively of her husband and indicates that he's been supportive of her.
The second photo we see is a 1960s snapshot of toddler-aged Kim with her parents. They appear to be outdoors at a park or some type. Her parents are both clean-cut looking. Her father's wearing a plaid shirt, has a short haircut and her mom's wearing a sweater set-kind of thing.
She says that her parents divorced when she was young, and that her mother had primary custody. Her mother remarried and it seems that she and her husband decided that a child didn't mesh with the lifestyle they wanted, so Kim's mother called Kim's father to arrange for her to spend a weekend or a day with him -- I can't remember the specifics -- it was a short, defined period. Kim's mother didn't return, and she ended up being reared by her father.
When the life coaches probe Kim for how she feels about this, she gives a very reasonable, but nonemotional answer about how, since she's become a mother, she's found it difficult to imagine how her mother could have abandoned her. She figures that her mother must have had problems and wasn't equipped or ready to be a mother.
Kim identifies the next photo, of a house, as being the house where she grew up with her father. She says that her father was physically abusive and that she used to layer on clothes -- bikini bottom under sweatpants under whatever pants she was wearing as an outer layer -- so that the beatings wouldn't hurt as much as they would if she'd been wearing less clothes. She says that sometimes he grabbed her by the hair.
She shows a photo-studio portrait of her at about age five, which she says is about the age at which her mother abandoned her. She's not smiling in the photo. She's sad-eyed. She says that she remembers that the photographer had asked her to Smile! as he shot the photo, but that at that age she had no sense of how to put on a smile.
She feels that she's now learned to slap on a smile and pretend that everything's OK, even if the smile doesn't reflect what she feels inside.
Her self portrait has the word "WORLD" written at the top. There are three concentric circles. In the middle circle is her husband. She says that she doesn't really feel whole or happy -- can't remember the exact wording here -- with her husband. In the inner circle, she's drawn herself and her son.
After Kim tells her "story," we have a confessional from Allison in which she comments that she can relate to being mistreated and abused by one's father.
Jill, in the group meeting, is visibly upset and can relate aspects of Kim's story to herself and other aspects to her mother.
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Bookmark this topic (Registered users only)
