It’s my birthday and I am sat in my own without any contact or card from my little children. I’ve tried to post or ask for advice or help as to how this has come about but because those who haven’t been in family court or under SS radar (due to DV) the assumption is always that ‘there must be more to it’ or that the horrific kafkaesque living nightmare I’ve experienced, and the ongoing aftermath, must be a complete lie, improbability, impossible to have happen or a definite fault of mine of which I’m blind to, lack insight, can’t accept and so on. You know I wish this was true so badly, because then I could fix it, work on it, learn from it, if I knew what it was.
my biggest mistakes were the relationships I had and the people pleasing, lack of boundaries and self respect that lead to my children living with my abusers and weaponising them to the max by alienation and cutting contact in every which way (I am back in court)
I chose my relationship over my children, even though I had no idea at the time, that this is what I was doing. I thought that domestic abuse didn’t impact the children because they were always away or it was via WhatsApp, and didn’t see it.
I thought that if I sacrificed myself after abusive incidents; we could keep the family together, be happy. I allowed serious physical and psychological abuse and I went back for more.
I was in denial because I was selfish and wanted to believe that I was able to fix him.
I didn’t realise that with every incident and cycle that passed, that the cumulative impact of stress hormones upon my body was breaking my physical health until I could no longer function.
I didn’t realise that by minimising, retracting statements and trusting that he and his family would stop hurting me, would ‘owe’ me I suppose in some respect for keeping quiet.
When I allowed and encouraged access after incidents or even with MIL and FIL despite their contempt of me, because I felt that the children’s relationship to them was not mine to interfere with, that instead of gratitude for doing what I thought was the right thing, it actually eroded the speck of boundaries that I did have; and allowed them so much power that they managed to manipulate professionals and to such a point it begets belief.
I never thought such ‘evil’ as I call it, to take a mother’s children, to take a children’s mother away, would exist in this world.
Not unless there were actual risks.
And there’s not. The first few months, without them, I had an operation. In Mother’s Day, I lay on my own. No call, nothing.
No contact allowed. Birthdays, I cried myself to sleep on Christmas, you name it.
The system doesn’t work, being secret, family court, it is scarily easy for you to end up in my situation. One day I will go public with my story, even though it would likely make things ten times worse, but when you haven’t got anything to lose anymore then why not?
I want to shake myself so so hard when I look back.The guilt, I will take to my grave.
I implore you, if you are in any kind of abusive relationship and you have children, run.
The system might protect you, depends on if you have a social worker who aligns with you or not. Depends how you present emotionally, depends on your health needs.
Depends on frivolous transient non issues that ought not to define a seismic shift as losing your children. The system can’t change if it’s in the dark. But don’t even get to that point, I beg of you.
know the signs - freedom programme, victim support, stop believing his potential, a future that’s promised.
Leave. I know it’s hard. I know post separation abuse gets ten times worse when you do leave. I know that there’s a million barriers to do so.
But if I had the knowledge I know now, back then, I would have ran like the wind with my babies and never looked back:
I still have a fight ahead of me. And nowhere to turn. Because when you’ve been written off with a narrative created about you that isn’t true; nothing you do or say or prove makes an iota of difference - it hasn’t so far. But im not giving up on my children, or on myself, or on fighting back within the system.
even if you do leave and go through the toxic dance of ‘co parenting’ with a narc, it will damage your children far more than you can know. On a cellular level, I have had NO idea the physical damage ongoing adrenaline cortisol and the extreme high and low of these relationships and how catastrophic it impacts your health.
it isn’t you, it’s him. He won’t change. It WILL happen again. It WILL get worse. And the risk is that you will get smaller and smaller, weaker and easier to manipulate and you could end up like me.
Please love your kids more than you love what you think is love - it’s not remotely conscious, it wasn’t at all to me; I had zero idea that technically dancing in that dynamic WAS putting my need for this fantasy family first and I let my children down.
one day I hope to change what I can for the next mother in my shoes, and I hope anyone reading this living in an abusive relationship in whichever way if it manifests, to take those steps to leave.