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Walk a Day in My Shoes 👠

This is a true undercover story. I decided to become as one of the disadvantaged members of our society to gain compassion. Well, I wish that were true. But the sad truth is this is a story about my life.

I went to law school, married a man there with a similar level graduate degree. We married, had five children. He was the breadwinner. I was the stay at home, homeschool mom. And one day he quit his job. Just quit. With no intention of finding a replacement position.

One day my husband is top dog at a huge international company and my family has full medical and dental coverage. And the next he quits and we have NO insurance coverage.

I jumped through hoops and was finally able to get the other two covered. It took so much time & energy. Then in 2020, we’ll what can we say about 2020? “Bad year” would be an understatement. The kids were kicked out of Healthy Kids and down to Medicaid. I was mortified. Here I am an attorney and my kids are on Medicaid!

When we divorced a few years after living this way I agreed in our settlement to provide their health coverage because he refused. After paying private insurance for a while I applied for Florida Healthy Kids. Since my ex has three kids for tax purposes while I have the other two, the two who are under me did not qualify because of my income. The other three qualified because his reported income made it possible (while he took at least 5 international trips).

The two kids who I had worked so hard to get covered under Healthy Kids now ended up in a version of Medicaid with a $3,000 per month deductible. Not a misprint. Y’all, that’s $36,000 a year one could spend before coverage would kick in! Is there any private insurance that would rival that kind of cost?

Before the change in coverage I had been seeking medical answers to an issue my oldest son was having, while at the same time exploring natural options. We had been issued cards bearing a new PCP assignment. I contacted them at the number on the card to restart the process of investigating the issue.

After giving my address , the receptionist asked me which office in a city at least 5 hours away I would like to visit. What?! How did we get assigned to a doctor there?!

Remedying this situation took more calls and time which involved going through an automated system to try to change the PCP which did not list the old PCP…whose office said they are a provide under the coverage.

Now I will tell you another story. It is called Going to the Medicaid Dentist. A new experience. Three children and I arrive. With the above shuffling we had been required to switch to a different dentist. I complete massive amounts of paperwork of course. Then I am informed by the receptionist that today will be x-rays, then we will come back for the cleanings. Have you ever heard of such a thing? This is the way the Medicaid contract works they explained. Finally B is called back. The girls & I are told to wait. I have never been asked to separate from a child before and didn’t like it one bit. We wait. Wait. Wait. And Mama Bear erupts and demands to be shown to her child this moment! I tell them we are All coming back this time. Oh, there was a machine malfunction. Great. So someone couldn’t come and let me know? And what exactly does a machine malfunction mean when that machine is a special machine that targets radiation at your body? (Oh, BTW, this dentist requires 6 x-rays every 6 months!)

The x-Ray visit took 3 hours! Three hours of missed school instruction, and three more to come at the cleaning!

What it brings to light is…INEFFICIENCY! Seriously, no wonder poor people can’t work! They spend their days waiting at the freaking doctor & dentist!

Yes, but more. Here I am an educated mom who is having to use every brain cel possible to figure out how to get through this system. How does the average Medicaid mom do it? I’m a lawyer & I can barely figure out how to move forward on behalf of my family. Meanwhile, of course I am using my education and abilities to adjust and build up and be able to provide without any government support. But not everyone has that.

Shame on my kids’ dad. Shame on our government for mucking up this health care system. I believe it is one of the systems we will be seeing come down and I celebrate the prospect. This is not the way health care should look.

Below is an update from a s he dukes dental office visit for 4 of my children. After taking them out of school for the appointment I was told by the dental office manager that we would need to separate, the children being taken one by one into the back for treatment and others left in the waiting room. I politely asked if we might all stay together and assured him we would stay out of the way. I was told that if I wanted to do that I should have brought someone else with me. I have never had a pediatric practitioner insist on testing my kids without my presence or worse leaving them in a waiting area alone. So I wanted to share. Do not settle for this type of practice. I can tell you as a mom and trained lawyer this is Not right.

Video from dentist visit where the dental office manager demanded I separate from my kids
The dentists
(None of them talked to us about this policy, only Jorge Perez, the Manager. He gave me the number for Daisy his boss in another office, but she has not returned my call.)
The office. Scary that they have a sign that warms people not to threaten the staff…why would I leave my children alone in a waiting room if people have been threatening the staff?! This is not a normal dental office.

#healthcare #dayinthelife #family #singlemom #undercoverstory #medicaid #dentist #customerservice #parentalrights #familyfirst #momlife #teamkelly #standup #savethecountry #savethechildren #commonsense #kindness #dowhatsright

The unbelievable letter I received yesterday

Understanding Parental Alienation and Its Impact on Children

Few experiences are more painful for a child than feeling that they have lost a parent who is still alive.

After separation or divorce, children may sometimes become resistant to or fearful of one parent for legitimate reasons. But in some families, a child’s relationship with a parent deteriorates in the context of persistent hostility, denigration, pressure to choose sides, interference with contact, or repeated messages that the other parent is unsafe, unworthy, or does not love them.

This phenomenon is commonly described as parental alienation.

The consequences can reach far beyond a disrupted parent-child relationship. A growing body of research examining family dysfunction, parental attachment, and adolescent suicidality raises an important warning: when a child experiences severe disruption of attachment, belonging, family stability, and access to a loving parent, the child’s psychological vulnerability may increase.

This does not mean that parental alienation causes suicide. Suicide is complex and almost never has a single cause. Mental health conditions, trauma, bullying, social isolation, substance use, genetics, and many other circumstances may contribute to suicidal thoughts and behavior.

But the research makes one point increasingly difficult to ignore:

The quality and stability of a child’s family relationships matter to suicide risk.

Children are biologically and emotionally wired to form attachments to their parents and other caregivers. Those relationships provide a sense of safety, identity, belonging, and continuity.

Research examining parental attachment and suicidal ideation has found an inverse relationship: adolescents reporting lower-quality parental attachment tend to report more suicidal ideation. Particularly strikingly, a 2022 three-level meta-analysis involving 31 studies and more than 12,800 young people found that suicidal ideation was more strongly associated with parental alienation than with parental communication. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34964432/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

That finding should not be interpreted as proof that alienation causes suicide. The studies cannot establish that causal conclusion.

It does, however, underscore something important for parents:

A child’s relationship with each parent is not merely a custody issue. It can be an important part of the child’s emotional world.

What happens when a child feels forced to choose?

Children caught in intense parental conflict can experience a painful psychological dilemma.

They may feel that loving one parent betrays the other.

They may worry that enjoying time with one parent will hurt the other parent.

They may believe they must reject one parent in order to remain loyal to the other.

They may begin suppressing their own memories, feelings, or affection in order to avoid conflict.

Over time, this can create profound emotional strain.

A child may also lose more than a relationship with a parent. They can lose access to grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, family traditions, photographs, stories, holidays, and parts of their own personal history.

For a child, rejection of a parent can therefore become intertwined with questions of identity:

Who am I if half of my family is unacceptable?

That question can become particularly painful during adolescence, when young people are already developing their identities and searching for belonging.

The broader research on family dysfunction and suicide

The connection between unhealthy family dynamics and youth suicidality is not limited to parental alienation.

A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 38 prospective studies involving more than 101,000 children and adolescents found that negative parenting and family dysfunction were associated with later self-harm and suicidality. Family dysfunction was associated with an increased likelihood of combined self-harm and suicidality, while negative parenting was associated with increased likelihood of combined self-harm and suicidal ideation. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40812960/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

Another systematic review and meta-analysis of 12 cohort studies found that adolescents experiencing family dysfunction had substantially higher odds of suicidal behavior than adolescents experiencing normal family functioning. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39542110/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

And a 2026 systematic review of 94 studies found that adolescents exposed to family hostility and poor family communication were at increased risk of suicidal ideation, while emotional support within the family was associated with lower risk. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42420943/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

Taken together, these studies reinforce a fundamental principle:

Children need relationships in which they feel loved, accepted, heard, and securely connected.

Alienation can attack a child’s sense of belonging. One of the most concerning aspects of severe parental alienation is that it can affect a child’s fundamental sense of belonging.

A child may hear, directly or indirectly:

“Your father doesn’t really care about you.”
“Your mother chose her new family over you.”
“You don’t need him.”
“If you loved me, you wouldn’t want to see her.”
“Your other parent is the reason our family was destroyed.”
“You can’t trust that side of the family.”

Sometimes these messages are explicit. Sometimes they are communicated through behavior: refusing to facilitate parenting time, becoming visibly upset when the child leaves, withholding information, interfering with telephone calls, repeatedly discussing litigation with the child, treating the child’s affection for the other parent as disloyalty, or ridiculing the other parent.

The child can become responsible for managing the emotional needs of an adult.

That is an enormous burden for a young person.

One of the strongest protective factors for a child in distress is connection.

When a child believes that one parent is unavailable, unsafe, unwanted, or forbidden—and simultaneously feels unable to talk honestly about loving or missing that parent—the child’s support system can become smaller.

The child may stop talking.

They may become angry.

They may withdraw.

They may develop anxiety or depression.

They may begin self-harming.

Or they may insist that they do not care about the rejected parent at all.

That last response can be particularly misleading.

A child’s apparent rejection does not necessarily tell us what the child is experiencing internally.

Children are remarkably capable of adapting their behavior to survive difficult emotional environments. A child may reject a parent because that rejection feels safer than expressing love for that parent.

That is one reason adults should be cautious about interpreting a child’s words in isolation from the circumstances surrounding them.

Parents should take significant changes in behavior seriously, particularly when they occur in the context of family conflict or disruption.

Warning signs can include:

withdrawing from family and friends;
sudden loss of interest in activities;
significant changes in sleep or appetite;
declining academic performance;
increased anger or irritability;
substance use;
self-harm or unexplained injuries;
statements about being a burden;
expressions of hopelessness or worthlessness;
talking about death or not wanting to be alive;
giving away possessions;
saying that people would be better off without them.

A child does not have to say, “I want to kill myself,” for adults to take the situation seriously.

If there is concern, ask directly and calmly:

“Are you thinking about hurting yourself or killing yourself?”

Asking the question does not put the idea into a child’s head. It creates an opportunity for the child to tell an adult what is happening.

If the answer is yes—or if the child appears to be in immediate danger—do not leave the child alone. Contact emergency services or call/text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States.

Parents cannot control every aspect of a high-conflict family situation. But they can control how they respond to the child.

  1. Do not make the child choose

A child should not have to prove loyalty by rejecting a parent.

A healthy message is:

“You are allowed to love both of your parents.”

  1. Do not use the child as a messenger.

Children should not be responsible for communicating adult grievances, financial disputes, legal issues, or parenting disagreements.

  1. Protect the child’s relationship with safe family members.

When a parent is safe and appropriate, maintaining that relationship can provide continuity, identity, and emotional support.

  1. Listen without interrogating.

A child needs a safe place to speak honestly.

Instead of asking, “What did your mother tell you about me?” consider:

“How are you feeling about everything that is happening?”

  1. Obtain appropriate professional help.

A qualified child or adolescent mental-health professional can help assess depression, anxiety, trauma, self-harm, suicidal thinking, family conflict, and attachment issues.

Importantly, the child’s mental-health needs should not become another battleground between parents.

  1. Treat suicidal behavior as a health emergency—not a custody strategy.

If a child is suicidal, the priority is safety.

Arguments about custody, blame, litigation, or who caused what should never take precedence over stabilizing the child.

Families experiencing alienation often become trapped in competing narratives.

One parent says the child has been manipulated.

The other says the child has independently rejected the parent.

The child may be placed in the position of proving which adult is telling the truth.

But when suicidality or self-harm enters the picture, the focus must shift.

The central question should not simply be:

“Which parent is right?”

It should also be:

“What is happening to this child’s emotional safety, attachment, and sense of belonging?”

Research increasingly supports the importance of family functioning and attachment in understanding youth suicidality. (PubMed (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42420943/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)⁠)

That does not mean every estranged parent-child relationship is the result of alienation. Nor does it mean every child who rejects a parent has been influenced by the other parent. Children can have legitimate reasons for distancing themselves from a parent, including abuse, neglect, or other harmful conduct.

Those possibilities must always be taken seriously.

The point is that the child’s voice, safety, mental health, and relationships must be evaluated carefully rather than reduced to an accusation by one parent against another.

The goal should be restoration, not victory.

In the most difficult family cases, adults can become focused on winning.

Winning the custody dispute.

Winning the argument.

Winning the child’s allegiance.

Winning the court case.

But children do not need one parent to win.

They need adults to protect them.

They need permission to love without choosing sides.

They need adults who can separate their own anger and grief from the child’s emotional needs.

And when a child is showing signs of depression, self-harm, or suicidal thinking, they need immediate support and protection.

If your child has become distant from you, do not assume that the relationship is necessarily lost.

If your child is rejecting you, resist the temptation to respond with anger or pressure.

If you believe your child is being alienated from you, document concerns appropriately, seek qualified professional guidance, and continue communicating a consistent message:

“I love you. You do not have to choose between your parents. I am here when you are ready.”

And if your child is showing signs of suicidal thinking, do not wait for the family conflict to be resolved before seeking help.

The relationship can be repaired later. Safety comes first.

⸻

Important note

Research concerning parental alienation and suicide is still developing. The available evidence supports an association between parental alienation/low parental attachment and suicidal ideation, as well as stronger evidence linking family dysfunction, negative parenting, poor communication, and disrupted attachment with youth suicidality. It does not establish that parental alienation is, by itself, a direct cause of suicide. Suicide is multifactorial and requires an individualized assessment of the child.

If a child may be at immediate risk of suicide, call or text 988 in the United States or contact emergency services.

On Feeding Teenagers

When your children are little you have a lot more control over how they eat. I liked to feed my kids healthy. Vegetables, fruit, home cooked as much as possible. I always had some picky eaters so I did need to disguise a little and leave some things more plain, hold the sauce, etc.

But fast forward to the teenage era, it is a whole other ballgame. First of all, you need to get comfortable with the fact that your kids are going to eat some junk. Ok, probably lots of it. You can’t be too restrictive because this will just make those things more attractive. Especially once they can drive they are going to gravitate to the fast food restaurants that give them an affordable opportunity to exercise their freedom.

One thing that helps combat the potential effects and concerns surrounding this is for your teens to be involved in sports. Mine are student athletes so I feel they can withstand some junk because they need a lot of calories in a day and as long as the foundation is healthy they are going to be able to maintain a healthy body even with a good amount of junk thrown in.

If you have little kids, try not to freak out. When mine were little, I used to be so concerned because every holiday seemed to involve candy.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t supply a lot of junk at home. I do provide snacks. You want to make your kids friends welcome. You want your house to be the house to be as much as possible. So you’ve got to have some hands on food like frozen pizzas and things like that. But you can gravitate toward the fruit snacks rather than actual candy, capri sun or flavored sparkling waters rather than soda, healthier chips.

Control what you can control. Stock your fridge and pantry with mostly healthy foods and staples will allow you to provide healthy options alongside the inevitable junk.

Where we live high school starts super early so the kids are starving when they get home. Sometimes they don’t feel like much breakfast when heading out but I try to have some on hand breakfast bars or fruit they can grab and go. Smoothies are great too. We have some from Costco that my kids love. But if you make your own at home you can sneak a lot of good stuff in there.

On a good day, depending on my work schedule, I will try to have some healthy food prepared when they return from school. Crockpots are great for this.

And there you have it. My tips and tricks for feeding that difficult breed, teenagers. Let me know yours!

On Unaccompanied Minor Travel

Typically my family travels together so this has never arisen for us previously. But this summer I learned everything I needed to know about minors traveling as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to share in case it can help anyone else unfamiliar with this term and what it means in the travel context.

Here is the background. In the U.S., carriers will not let children travel alone until they are 15. This could vary airline by airline but this was the understanding I gathered from our experience.

In Europe children can travel alone at age 12. I don’t have an understanding of the ages that would apply in other areas beyond this.

So as you can see, there is a three year gap.

The way we discovered this issue was through my 14 year old daughter’s travel to an E F language program in Germany this summer. Note that she is one year under the U.S. requirement.

The program had recommended against using the unaccompanied minor status.

We reserved travel from Florida to Germany through Lufthansa. No problem.

However, on the way home, my daughter’s flight that was supposed to come directly back Germany to Florida was canceled at the last minute. She was rebooked by Lufthansa on a flight from Germany into North Carolina. From there she was to fly the last leg home on American. She made it back fine to the U.S. But while she was en route over the Atlantic, a lovely Lufthansa representative from North Carolina was helping me to try to head off the issue that had reared its head. Since American would not fly a child without unaccompanied minor status the last leg of the flight was in danger.

I contacted American but they said I needed to address it through Lufthansa, the airline that I had booked through. I called Lufthansa and they said I could not add the status because the flight was already in progress. Can you see the dilemma?

Well, in the end, I had to fly from Florida to North Carolina to collect my daughter. As you know, last minute flights can be extremely expensive. Lufthansa is supposed to reimburse but I haven’t seen it yet.

So, moral of the story, if you have a child under 15 you will most likely want to add the unaccompanied minor status when you book their travel.

Ahead of time you need to figure out who will be collecting them at the other end of their travel because the airline will need this person’s name. (This is why the language school does not recommend it because they are organizing a lot of students arriving and may not have the exact person assigned to pick up ahead of time.)

For departure, when you drop your unaccompanied minor at the airport you need to go through the security with them and wait at the gate until their plane is in the air (or some airlines require 10 minutes past takeoff).

And that is everything you need to know about flying unaccompanied minor status, or at least all I have learned so far….

On How to Find a Lost Pet

Recently we lost our sweet little kitty Farah, who slipped outside while I was taking the trash out. Here are the steps we took, many shared with us by those who have helped to bring lost pets home over the years.

  1. Take your flashlight in the morning before it is light and at night just after it grows dark and shine it into the bushes and even the trees. The light will reflect off is or her eyes.
  2. Walk your neighborhood and look in every nook and cranny. Even if you’ve already looked in the same spots, keep checking. Talk softly to your pet and if it is a cat, meow.
  3. Go door to door and show your cat or dog’s picture to your neighbors and ask them to contact you if they find him or her.
  4. Make brightly colored fliers that have a couple of photos of your pet, including his or her face. Include your address.
  5. Post your fliers throughout the neighborhood. Post online on neighborhood groups like Nextdoor and Facebook. Get the word out however you can.
  6. Call your local animal welfare agencies, humane society, and county animal agency/pound.
  7. Put some of your pet’s items like favorite toys outside. Also put out some items of your clothing or laundry to make your scent present.
  8. Leave your garage door open a crack, or in my case, I left my lanai door ajar.
  9. Put out food, treats and water.
  10. List on Paw Boost.
  11. Most importantly, never give up! I found my baby after two days in the same area I had been searching several times daily. I believe a neighbor had taken her and only let her go once they saw my signs and knew I was searching and would not stop.

On Mental Health – Part III

Quite honestly, when I begin writing my Mental Health awareness posts, I knew there would be three and stated this. Parts I and II came easily. But I struggled a bit with Part III. That is why it took me this long to post. I really wanted it to be encouraging not depressing. And finally I believe it has been revealed.

There is a book I used to read to my children when they were little. It’s called We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury. The mantra throughout the repetitive structure is: “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! We’ve got to go through it!” And I think of this often with regard to living in the wake of my family members’ suicides. And it applies as well to many of our challenging situations in life. It is the thing everyone needs to know. Sometimes there is simply no easy solution. Life can be crappy. Really crappy. I’ve experienced many of the common crappy experiences that affect our human society. You know of my experience with the death of family members. By the way, my sister’s death occurred between my two boys’ if I did not mention that previously. She was 46 and died in hospice due to liver failure. I’ve also experienced the financial difficulties that can affect single mom providers and business owners.

I’ve been sued. I’ve lost money in business. I’ve woken up feeling the panic and oppression of debt. Each instance was super stressful. Everyone has such experiences. And every time life presses us down all we can do is make our way through, step by slogging step.

Don’t get me wrong. The loss of my two boys dealt what I thought was a death blow to my lifelong Christian faith (Catholic for the 9 years prior to their passing). I am only just now starting to allow myself to be open to the idea of a caring God again, which was for so long a foreign concept to me in the wake of my overwhelming grief.

I met with my priest earlier this week and he prescribed a book for me, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. I have only just started but the priest believes it will help and I have to trust him because I don’t know what to do but accept the help that comes my way in whatever way it comes. I cannot be choosy. I have since the passing of my first boy taken any advice, any suggestions that are offered because I have felt that nothing can hurt. In the beginning many people offered the Bible, or verses of it or other faith based commentary, as well as other books that I politely thanked them for and then put away because I was in a faith crisis. I think many people thought that I maybe hadn’t had a strong enough faith but the fact is I was a practicing Christian all my life, doing all the things one is “supposed to,” and had sought to raise my children in the faith as well, reading them bible stories, blessing them at night, praying ceaselessly for them. And then one died. Inexplicably. And then 10 months later another one was lost, even more inexplicably. And I was lost along with them. I questioned my once deep, strong faith. It was shaken to the core. How could I continue to believe in a God who is said to care and who is supposed to answer us when we call, and most importantly, is said to protect our children when we ask? And yet he had ignored my nightly prayer, my daily repetitive mantra to watch over my children, to protect their once tiny, then more grown, minds, bodies, spirits, souls. I felt he had completely abandoned me. How do you go on in faith after that kind of a blow, that kind of a perceived betrayal by a God who in the Christian Bible is likened to a father. What kind of father refuses to answer such a pure prayer? That has been my struggle, but I am trying one step at a time to dig out, to trusts blindly beyond what my reason can do. We will see how that ends.

So, today, what I want to say is, in answer to my own question, which is “What do you do when everything makes you sad? Cooking because you remember the meals you cooked for your loved one….going to the school because you remember your happy senior about to graduate…eating because your table was once full of happy, laughing children…watching a movie because you last watched it with your lost loved one… reading because it is a book that was on your loved one’s to read list and he never got to read it… working because it is where you were when your loved one died even though you didn’t know it yet…. going to church because you had to plan two funerals in one year….and I could go on. There is only one thing you can do. You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. You cannot escape it. You must go through it. But you can slowly begin to trust and hope and maybe even pray a little. And maybe just maybe there is a God who will hear. You can look at one thing of beauty in nature like a flower or a beautiful sunset and you can find focused enjoyment. You can accept the hug of a friend or family member. You can help those who need someone in their life. You can just put one foot in front of the other and get good sleep and eat good food and breathe good air and try to open your heart to love even when it brings pain. You can just go on, one tiny step at a time.

On Mental Health Part II: Firearms and Suicide

Warning to readers: This article addresses a very serious and disturbing cultural trend.

In our last article, Part I, we addressed mental health generally with encouragement and (hopefully)helpful ideas. Now we will address a specific area of mental health which is suicide prevention. This is a bit of a misnomer and I generally prefer the term suicide awareness. However, for purposes of this article, you understand the gist.

The fact is we cannot always know when someone is suicidal and many people take their own lives without having a history of what we might consider suicidal ideation or behavior. In my experience with my family members, this was the case. It was sudden and out of the blue. Especially in the case of teenage boys or young men, who disproportionately comprise the suicide completion statistics, multiplied where firearms are used, the decision and action can be very impulsive and seemingly sudden. And yet there is a period of premeditation in which the plan is put into action. It can be minutes, hours, days, even longer. Oftentimes these plans may be concocted in secret but there are still actions we can take as family members, loved ones, or even members of society that can help reduce the likelihood of a completed suicide act.

Of course we can talk to the person and ask if they are ok. Maybe share a meal or treat, spend time with them. Maybe we have the answer to whatever is troubling them. Or even just talking with us can help them feel better enough to continue on, to press forward through the life challenges that have presented, real or imagined.

We can also take the practical step of removing harmful objects from their sphere that are typically used for suicidal purposes. This could be lethal medication or other substances, toxic cleaning products, sharp objects and most obviously firearms.

Especially for teen boys and young men, firearms are a very common form of suicide. And where firearms are used, the completion rate is 90% as opposed to a much lower rate with other methods. In my opinion and tragic experience, it is extremely inadvisable to have firearms in a home with teenage or young adult people even if they seem happy, normal, healthy. In my situation, my sons obtained both of the firearms they used from their father and his girlfriend’s home. The firearms were unfortunately not securely stored. Even though I reasonably requested that they safeguard their home after the first tragedy, they refused. Even after our second son lost his precious life, in a court hearing the girlfriend argued in her testimony in support of keeping her firearms: “if it is not a gun, it’s going to be something else. Do I need to lock up a knife or rope or a dog leash?” This, as we have illustrated above, begs the question because the point is that a firearm increases the likelihood of success of the plan. Keeping firearms in the home when you have teens at home, especially males, compounds the risk of suicide, and is, pardon the pun, simply a Russian Roulette.

Preventing suicide death in teens and young adults is different from preventing firearm accidental death, especially with younger children. With young children, perhaps storing the firearm unloaded with ammunition separate may be sufficient. With teens and young adults, if they have access to the firearm they may be able to obtain ammunition separately on their own. They are also smarter and more observant, and unfortunately, able to keep better secrets, than younger children. You may not be aware that they have observed how you access your firearms and ammunition. In fact, perhaps you have even shared that with them and they have used your firearm with you at target practice. Familiarity with firearms may help to prevent accidental death but it is not going to help prevent death by suicide and may even contribute to it. One does not have to be expert at firing a firearm to compete a suicide when the intention and impulsivity is there.

I myself used to maintain a firearm and was properly trained to use it, and kept up to date with the intention of protecting my family. However, since my first son passed I no longer keep a firearm in my home, recognizing the risk for my other children is greater than the potential good. I have some other methods of security such as cameras and a watch dog (well, he is a golden retriever but hopefully a potential intruder would not realize this). I also have pepper spray for when we are out. I live in a state where firearms can now be carried openly, but I see it as too much of a risk for our family and would caution others with teens or young adult children in their home to avoid it as well.

I understand nostalgia of firearm culture in our country is strong but we are living in different times right now when our young people are facing such strong negative influences. They are still affected from the shutdown that caused so much isolation. They are facing the pressures of constant social media attention. And the environment for attaining college is very competitive.

I hope my personal narrative has been helpful to you as you navigate this heavy issue and that we can continue to improve the state of mental health of those around us and prevent needless tragedies.

In a crisis situation, call 988.

For more information you can see: Means Matter, https://hsph.harvard.edu/research/means-matter/means-matter-basics/firearm-access-is-a-risk-factor-for-suicide/; https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10233739; https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/research-and-discoveries-articles/firearm-related-suicide-trends; https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/data/annual-gun-violence-data; https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/generalpsychiatry/83665

And please visit the blog my friend started in the wake of my son’s passing, which has more practical information as well as more personal stories. teensuicideandguns.com

Be safe. Be well. Come back for what I hope will be an encouraging Part III.

The Narcissist Does Not Want to Let You Go

Tonight I made a dinner that I used to make early in my marriage. That marriage ended 20 years after it began and it has been officially over for nearly 8 years. In those 8 years I have learned much through reflection and study. When I divorced I had never heard about narcissism but as I read about it I saw my situation in the examples of others. As the connected community of the internet world can do, it provided first revelation and then comfort that I was not alone. Circling back to my opening mention of the meal I used to make, my spouse would request that meal and then complain that my breath smelled like garlic (even though we had eaten the same thing and he knew it contained garlic).

If you have experience being in a relationship with a person with narcissistic tendencies you will understand how these constant mind games cause you to question yourself. In my case I felt I was so faulty, not at fault one time or in an instance but faulty by nature. I struggled to correct myself, through reading books, prayer, meditation, and much effort. In the lens of my religious outlook at that time, I viewed myself as having a mirror on me once I had married and had children, which spotlighted the faults I had hidden as a single person. In retrospect, this was completely false. It was my spouse casting doubt on my thoughts, my ways, my character. And this continued throughout the marriage., unrecognized by me until after my divorce.

When I divorced I only knew I would not continue to survive in my marriage, so miserable was I, feeling completely incapable of being a good mother due to constant criticism from my spouse.

But once you leave a narcissist they can never let you go. Your hopes of being able to coparent peaceably now that you live separately will never come to be.

In my case, my narcissist has gone to every length over the last 8 years since our divorce. When he realized I was never coming back, he continued to undermine my relationship with the children. This resulted in alienation and estrangement and ultimately the death by suicide of my two oldest sons.

He would literally set me up to be arrested for “drunk driving” on St. Patrick’s Day, when I had been at a church event with no alcohol. He would send photos of the booking photo of me to my law firm.

He would side with his girlfriend as she sat in my seat next to my children at the funeral, stalked me, put nails in my tires, and sued me. Together they would tell the community my children were theirs together and demonize me to the children.

On the night our son died (with my ex’s gun, obtained from the girlfriend’s house where he lived) he would have me committed to the insane asylum by telling the authorities that I had no friends to come and be with me and needed to be locked away instead.

And most recently, he would concoct a story for the department of children and families involving violence and drug abuse and send them to the schools to interrogate my already traumatized children. (I have never used drugs, legal or illegal.)

In your own case you may receive accusations of sexual promiscuity, which is another favorite go to of the narcissist.

This may seem farcical. The fact is that my resources including being a professional and an involved member of the community have helped me defend his arrows. Not all may have this in their favor and I am sure many fall to the narcissist’s tactics.

It is never ending but I continue to stand strong to protect and defend my kids and be the best mom I can, constantly having to remind myself that I am not that person I was cast to be for the years I was with him and instead choosing to view myself through the eyes of those who know me and love me. It is a continual journey. If you are on it, I accompany you and send you strength.

The Absolute Horror of Coparenting with a Narcissist

If you have not experienced “co-parenting” with a narcissist you cannot begin to understand the horror of it. Not only has your authority likely been chiseled away by them during the marriage so that by the time you divorce the children may have little respect for you, but there is more. They will likely continue to portray you as the “bad guy,” playing into the children’s reactions to your attempts to assert authority. It will be fine for them to leave the children unattended but if you let the children walk about or ride their bikes they will be yelling that you are not properly supervising. They will force the children into the activities they want them to participate in (likely those their new significant other is involved with) and portray any you suggest negatively. They will pick and choose what they want to pay for regardless of court orders that provide that they share equally in expenses. And mostly they will rush to the courthouse if you speak the truth like this.

Listen to more about narcissists from two of my favorite sources: Rebecca Zung on and Renee Swanson!

Focusing on Mental Health: Part I

This is Part I of Focusing on Mental Health. Encouraging people to focus on mental health is a passion of mine, borne out of the untimely loss of my two teenage sons to suicide. I learned from this that even when someone seems fine on the outside you just don’t know what could be happening on the inside. So it is imperative to take a measure of our own mental health as well as those around us, and to pay attention to the details.

So how can we support our mental health? There are a many ways as there are differences in people. Some of my personal favorites are walking in nature – sometimes the boardwalk surrounded by pines or mangroves, sometimes on the beach. Even if I don’t have time for a very long walk I like to place my bare feet on the grass or sand. This grounds us and is very healthy mentally and physically. Since the connection between the physical and the mental is so strong I also make real plant based food and enjoy it with my family. Yoga or stretching, meditating, and breath work are also very important. And at the most basic level, when I am feeling despair, I go to bed, with an effort to support a full and healthy sleep, knowing that after a restful night, somehow everything will seem a bit more bearable and conquerable. After repeating this many times we learn as adults that this is the case. But it is important to instill this in our young people who don’t yet have this experiential maturity. To them (and to us when we were their age) anything could be the literal end of the world. So exemplifying this behavior before them as we make our way through life is really key for them.

I hope you enjoyed Part I. Stay tuned for Part II where we will get a bit more specific.

On the Evils of Guardianship

What is guardianship you may ask? In the state of Florida, where I practice as an attorney (thankfully not in that arena!) it is the mechanism by which a person is appointed to make financial and healthcare decisions for someone who has been deemed incapable of doing so themselves.

Let me tell you… it is something to be avoided! Not only do you lose complete control over your assets and your healthcare decisions, but the process results in lining the pockets of facilities, professional guardians, their attorneys and other attorneys involved in the process. If you hated attorneys before you will hate them even more if you enter into this arena. Believe me. 

It is a process bogged down with inefficiencies where very little can be accomplished.

I am happy that I do not practice in this area. Today however, I had a little window to peer into this unseemly practice area. Yikes! I wish I’d never looked. I cannot unsee what I saw.

How did I find myself in this situation? You may wonder since I do my very best to stay out of court, representing only trust in a state planning, probate and corporate clients. Well, let me tell you. This is how it happened,

The proceedings of a guardianship touched on one of my probate estates as the ward passed away, and my client was appointed the personal representative to handle the estate. How naïve I was to believe that at that point the words monies should be tendered to the personal representative to administer on behalf of the beneficiaries. Oh no, no no that is not how the process goes laughed, the guardians, Attorney and the judge who retained $50,000 of the wards monies in the guardianship account to go towards the guardian and her attorney who already received vast sums.

 I used to be a commercial litigator, but I had not been in the courtroom for sometime still, I do not consider myself naïve however I was ill equipped for the judges, complete refusal to listen to my pointing out potentially fraudulent activity in the guardianship and excessive attorneys fees. court. We were told that this is just the way guardianship goes and the attorney would indeed be entitled to the $80,000 of attorneys fees or so for working on the case representing the guardian for two years. This does not even include the fees paid to the guardian herself. Oh yes, it is a lucrative business to be a professional Professional Guardian, and even more so to represent one as an attorney.

Let me be clear … the work of a guardian’s attorney appears to consist of mainly compiling bank statements and cancel checks and attaching them to a form pleading. Not high-tech, not brain surgery, certainly not rocket science. But apparently worth top dollar. 

While we were there, we had the opportunity to observe another matter where apparently the ward was trapped in a psychiatric facility often referred to as a “rehab facility or, as many would refer to it, a nursing home, who was unhappy with her guardian, and had an attorney appointed for her. So now we’re talking about layers and layers of people “working” on this matter or should I say parasitically attaching to the ward’s funds. The ward’s attorney could not even contact the ward as the facility refused to grant access to her. Read more about that in my related post upcoming on mental health facilities.…

Suffice it to say that you want to do your best to avoid getting into this arena. Believe me, you don’t want any part of this! When I asked the judge when the guardianship would be wrapped up she laughed at me. It was akin to the star of A Christmas Story when he asked Santa for the Red Rider BB Gun and Santa said you’ll shoot your eye out kid and shoved him down the spire with his boot.

Let me tell you… if I were to tell a client that they would have to wait several months for a project I can tell you they would not remain a client very long.

I am so happy I don’t have to be part of that system with all of its inefficiencies and fraud. There are many articles out there that detail the fraud involved in professional guardianships in the state of Florida that you can read about. It has been in the news quite a bit.

How to avoid? Stay physically and mentally fit, have at least one trusted person in your life and make an estate plan.