Not about the election but other tough stuff

This is Level II stuff. Please don’t read if you think everyone can just get along after divorce. This is not everyone’s experience although it is what I hoped for and jealously long for when I see it in others’ post divorce lives.

I thought long and hard about posting but this is for those who have been where I was, am, and feel alone. If it can help one person, I can be vulnerable. I stayed quiet for so many years, trying to preserve a facade.

Here is a truth. When you have kids and you divorce an abuser, you are more free but you still face it, whether it is directed at you or your children (way worse!!) constantly.

The worst is when others join in. Perhaps a girlfriend (or boyfriend) of your former spouse. Perhaps third parties. Perhaps even institutionally.

One day you go to the park to run with your kids who have been stripped from you every other week and they are not there like usual with their dad and instead a big man approaches you and tells you to stay away from the park. He is a hired “hit” man doing the bidding of the abuser. Someone who bought that guy’s story like so many do, and even you used to.

He threatens your children. He threatens you. You try to report it to the police and they say well you are not in harm, call us back when you are.

Staying away, forgetting your kids, is not an option when you are a mom. You are always mom. You don’t just take off every other week and forget about your precious ones.

You tell others and they say it will all work out.

Listen to me. This is how women and children end up dead. Because no one listened, no one believed them.

The abuser will convince anyone he can that you are the bad, crazy one. He will make you doubt yourself.

The story is not hypothetical. A man was sent to threaten me to stay away from my kids. A big man. A man who wouldn’t identify himself but gave his name as Joe Smith. I now know his true identity. He and his cohorts made fun of me for being a lawyer, an old line borrowed from my ex I used to hear frequently. He stalked me halfway home.

You cannot make this stuff up. I am sharing so you know what can be in store if you bravely step out. The less you let them control you, the stronger you become, the more harassing and threatening they become. You have to stand strong for your children. And never stop watching, protecting and standing for them.