Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers without their children

I know, as a mother who does not have my children with me, that Mother's Day is not always the happiest day that it could be.  This is the time of year that I miss them most of all.  For me, it is bittersweet, because I do have a lovely daughter with my current husband, but I am also missing her brothers and her older sister, with whom it barely seems to register that I even exist in many cases.

However, just as we are supposed to be taking this day to remember our own mothers, let us also remember that we are mothers, too.  No judge, no vindictive ex, nor stepmother can take that away from us.  Those are the people who may have forgotten, or tried to help our children forget that we are their mothers, but that does not discount us as mothers or people in our own right.

Take the time to think about your children.  Think of the things that you love about them today.  Even if they never call, and never write, you can never forget.  Love them, and remember that even if they are adults, it is still not really their fault.  Many have had false memories of us implanted in their minds that seem as real to them as the truth is to us.  Many of our children have been brainwashed through no fault of their own, and of course they'll deny it, because the funny thing about brainwashing is that you don't realize that you have been brainwashed until you have been deprogrammed.  However, still love your children and think of them and the good times with them as a way to honor yourself.

If you can, take a little time to pamper yourself today.  Even if no one else realizes that today is your day, too, you still deserve to be honored as a mother, even if you have to do it yourself.

I have just signed several petitions on a site called Petition2Congress.org.  These are regarding child support, parental alienation, and allowing children to be with abusive parents.

I'm aware that often it seems that I am merely whining about the unfairness of the system.  However, I am also sending letters to my congressmen.  I'm signing petitions.  I'm writing articles that point out the flaws in the system.  I'm only one person, but the more people that see what needs to happen regarding the family courts and child support laws, the more things are likely to change for the better.  I would ask each and every person who reads my blog to look for these petitions.  Sign them, even the ones that say they are only for father's rights.  Truthfully, what I am fighting for is what many fathers fight for.  I'm fighting for access to my children without dealing with the hateful, vengeful actions of my ex and his wife.  I will admit that 3 out of 4 of my older children are now grown, but they are still under that influence, and thinking that the break-up of our marriage was 100% my fault.  I won't say I didn't share fault, but to say that I wasn't fed up with his treatment of me as a second class citizen (and he was responsible for the way he treated me), would be a lie.

The thing is, we all need to take action.  Our rights as citizens are slowly being eroded, and if we allow that, we are just as culpable as the leaders we elect, if not more so.

Sign the petitions.  Get involved.  Learn the Constitution so that you actually know when something is unconstitutional.  If you don't want to be a forgotten parent, don't allow yourself to become a forgotten citizen.

The catch 22 of being an alienated parent

I love my children more than anything else in this world, and I hope they know that, although I'm not sure they do.  You see, I'm in a catch 22 when it comes to being able to get the message across that I do love them.  Their father and stepmother both like to "interpret" the messages that I send to my children, whether I'm talking to them on the phone, or sending them a message through email.  Inevitably, their interpretations of my messages turn them into messages of hatred, or possibly indifference, but definitely anything but love.  Since my children are not with me, and I'm only allowed very limited access, if any access at all, I cannot undo these messages that they are getting from them.

There is also another catch 22 that I'm stuck in.  I cannot talk to or email my children.  If I email them, there is no way to be sure that they get my messages, and there have been several messages sent that my children claim not to have received.  I'm not saying that they have intercepted them, and I'm not saying that they haven't, but the circumstances do seem suspicious.  Much as when I keep running into their stepmother each time I see the children, I may not be able to prove that she is following me, but I don't think that any sane person could think that she wasn't under the circumstances.

The problem that I run into with the catch 22 that I'm in is the fact that the children will ask me questions when I talk to them that I cannot answer truly honestly.  If I do answer the questions honestly, there is no doubt that I am badmouthing their father and their stepmother for creating a hostile environment for me each time I try to see my children.  If I answer dishonestly and come up with some stupid excuse, I'm accused of lying, and they wind up blaming my current husband, who is actually pretty innocent in all of this except for the fact that he doesn't like to let my ex hurt me (that's part of what I love about him).  If I stay silent, I'm accused of having something to hide, and they still try to blame my husband.  I think that nothing would make my ex happier than to drive a wedge into my current marriage by that behavior.

I was angry about this for quite some time, because it keeps me away from my children, and keeps them thinking that I don't love them.  However, I've been doing some soul searching, and I have realized that there really is no reason to be angry about it.  After all, putting me between a rock and a hard place is all that my ex knows.  He has done this all the time that I have known him, and it's also a part of the gaslighting that he has done for so long that I don't even think he realizes what he is doing anymore.  During our marriage, he would tell me one thing one day, and then another thing the next day that directly conflicted with what he had said the day before.  Now, he doesn't do it himself, but instead, manipulates his current wife and our children into doing it for him.  One of his favorite lines is to have our daughter go on about how noisy I was during our "lovemaking" nearly every night and then he tells his wife about how I withheld sex from him.  The truth is that he became angry if I wasn't noisy, and I never withheld anything from him, so my daughter's version is closer to the truth, but still not the whole story, because my daughter was not in the bedroom with us.  Of course, that would have been a whole different set of issues, but you get the idea.

Another thing is that anytime they don't like what I'm saying, they accuse me of telling "bold-faced lies."  First of all, I take issue with the spelling as it should be "bald-faced lies," but also, it's not true.  Just because they don't like something, that does not make it a lie.  They accused me of lying for saying that I was living in a 3 bedroom home when I was staying with my father-in-law for a few months.  It was true that it was a 3 bedroom home, and when asked whose home it was, I was honest in saying that it was my father-in-law's home, and that he lived there, too.  Now they claim that they have to "inspect" any home that I live in if I want to keep my kids overnight, because of a lie that was never told.  Because I will not allow them to inspect my home, or even enter it for that matter, because I need my privacy, and it is not mine alone but also my husband's home, they pretty much keep my kids away from me.

I could probably try to start seeing them again, but I feel as if I'd just be setting myself up again for another trip to the courthouse over some trumped up charge that they come up with.  Literally every time I let down my guard and see my children three times in a row without fail, they take me back to court to reduce my visitation even more.  I have gone along with it for the longest time, even to the point of reducing my visits to 3 hours a month at the mall, but when I try to buck against that and ask for more, they accuse me of not keeping up with my visitation, but if I do keep up, they take me back to court, over and over and over again, usually costing exorbitant amounts of money, because the judge is also at her wit's end, not that I blame her.  I am too.  They refuse to give me the opportunity to prove to both the children and to the judge that I can indeed keep up my visitation if they do not interfere with it, but that would require not interfering, and they just cannot do that.

Here we go again

Well, it starts again.  I said something on a website about how my ex kept me from the children toward the beginning of my divorce, and my children's stepmother stepped in to say that I was making a generalization based on a single event.  I'm not sure if I should say "if only I were," or "if only she knew."

I left my ex husband at the end of 2005.  I moved into my own home, and from that point forward, before she was involved with him, he started taking the children when it was not his turn to have them.  From January of 2006, until she moved in, and even on occasion after she moved in with him, he would come over to my home, while I was at work, and demand that the children go with him.  I have a journal of all the times that he decided to pick up the children from my home, and refused to give them back.  It is tucked away in a corner somewhere now, as I prefer not to relive those days, but many nights were spent crying because he had taken away my children yet again.

Other times, when he was supposed to have a "date night," from 5:00pm until 7:30pm, he would pick the children up from school, and keep them out until 11 at night, when they had to attend school the following day.  Apparently he has conveniently left this information out of what he has told her, and has only told her how bad I was and how good he was.

I have been accused of not feeding my children properly, and that they were starving to death with nothing to eat in the house.  Well, that, too is a bit of an exaggeration.  It's true enough that I did not have the kinds of food that my children were used to eating.  When I was cooking for my ex-husband, about 75% of our meals were very greasy and very unhealthy.  I stopped cooking that way when I was on my own.  I replaced chips and cookies with fruits and vegetables.  I replaced fried chicken with grilled chicken.  I replaced Koolaid and soda with water and milk.  Even the milk was 2% milk rather than whole milk as they had been drinking previously.  There were things like cottage cheese and peaches for them to enjoy, and I suppose that because these were not what they were used to, they pretty much felt that there was no food in the house.  When I did allow junk food in the house, I asked my children to pay attention to portion sizes, so that they would not fill up on junk food alone.

I have also been accused of sending them out of the house in dirty clothes.  Once again, a problem that is greatly exaggerated.  I washed their clothing every week at the laundro-mat, because I didn't have a washer and dryer, and no money to afford one.  I expected my children to dress themselves, as they were all of age to do so.  I did my best to provide clean clothes for them.

After a while, I did just give up.  I had no fight left in me.  The only fight I have the energy for anymore is in this blog.  I would be happy not only if other parents who are being alienated from their children read it and can take comfort in the fact that they are not alone, but I would be even happier if just one alienating parent read it, and rethought his or her actions because of what's in this blog.  I will see my children again this weekend, and all but the youngest are now over 18, which means that they are free to set their own schedule with me, which I intend to remind them of when they're willing to speak to me.  Of course, my ex, as usual, will say that this is putting them in the middle, but I think he forgets that my relationship with my children is between me and my children, not between him and me.  Except for with the youngest, he and his wife are pretty much nothing but fifth wheels, totally useless, and just in the way.

Child support court

Well, today was another day in child support court. I have yet to be able to find the judge's name, but at least this time she wasn't quite as rude as the last time I was in front of her. Apparently, when I was unable to go to court, my ex informed her that I was blogging about the "unfairness of child support." What I think not even he realizes is that there's a lot more to it than just being unfair.

Just for a moment, I'd like you to take a look at the problems with child support. For one thing, as much as the public at large claims that it's for the children, and that is their battle cry, it's really not. When you look at it, it's actually a reward for obtaining custody of the children, even if the payer winds up being the one with fewer job skills and less money to live on.

Secondly, it does not take individual circumstances into account. Many child support orders are the product of divorce, and there is only one person that needs to be paid. Sometimes those child support orders come after a lengthy child custody battle, where one parent has been pushed from the children's lives and the other is put in the position of having to pay for it all. There are even times, as is the case in my situation, where the parent who has more money is the one to be able to keep up the fight and therefore get custody of the children, but the child support system does not take this into account. I was a stay at home mother and homemaker and proud of the job that I did for my children, so by stripping me of my children, my ex also successfully stripped me of my identity. 

Third, child support enforcement seems to me to be counter-productive. If you take away a person's driver's license, how are they supposed to get to work? If you take away a person's professional licenses, how can they do their job? If you put a person in jail, they are likely to lose their job. It becomes a vicious circle that if you get caught up in, never seems to stop. The judge likes to say that people suddenly cough up the money if they are in cuffs, but does she really think about where that money comes from? I know that in my case, it has occasionally had to come from payday loans. For others, it may come from friends or family, or even out of their monthly rent money. The judge also asked me what I would do to enforce child support, and I didn't have an answer right then, as I was not expecting the question. I would make a terrible lawyer, because I'm not good at thinking on my feet, but that's beside the point.

 My answer is in my petition at change.org. I would make it so that there were alternative forms of child support for those who truly did not have the money. I would count providing child care as a part of child support. I would count providing necessary food and clothing as a part of child support even if some of those clothes happen to be hand-me-downs. Those things are a large part of caring for the children and should count for something. Of course, I would not count things like extra-curricular activities, or anything that is not necessary for the child to have as part of the child support. That is up to each parent to decide what they can or cannot afford when it comes to wants rather than needs, and if it's something that you want your child to have, you should not rely on the other parent for it.

 If all else fails, I do believe that community service would be a better option than jail. I also believe that if jail is even going to be considered an option, it should not be without due process. It's completely unconstitutional for anyone to be sentenced to jail without due process of law. This means that if someone is going to jail for past due child support, they should be entitled to a lawyer, a trial by jury, and all the rights that are afforded those that we consider to be criminals. Without that, they system will never be fair or right. 

We live in America, and it's time that we are able to enjoy that fact. There may be precedents set. There may be laws already in place, but that never means that they cannot be changed, and they should be. Please join me in helping to change these laws, and make the laws truly about the children, not fighting between the parents.

The DA's empty threats

This last week, I was supposed to go to court, but my daughter got sick, and we were up all night with her.  I called the DA's office to let them know that I was not able to make it due to my daughter's illness, and was threatened with a warrant for my arrest because I was unable to make it, in spite of the fact that I have been making payments.  Granted, they are not full payments, but I have paid all I can afford, which has been all of my income, and part of my husband's income.

I have to admit, it scared me slightly when I was told that a warrant would be issued for my arrest if I was unable to make it to court.  Being arrested is not really high on my bucket list.  In fact, it's not on any list of things that I want to do at all.  However, my daughter was more important than the court to me, and going to court made little to no difference in anything, because I am paying as much as I can anyway.  I took care of her instead of going to court, and I can't really say that I'm sorry, because she is finally feeling better after several nights of staying up, coughing all night long.  All of us, my husband, my daughter, and myself have lost a great deal of sleep.

Anyway, a couple of days later, I got a letter in the mail from the DA's office.  I had expected this to be the warrant that was going to be issued for my arrest.  However, I was pleasantly surprised when it was just a continuation of the court date.  The DA had made an empty threat, similar to any other bill collector.

It really is unfortunate that they are able to hold these things over your head when you owe child support.  The enforcement of child support involves some truly draconian measures that do violate the payer's due process rights.  Non-payment of child support is punished like a criminal matter, but is still considered a civil matter.  Because it is considered a civil matter, this is what allows them to violate due process so completely, and without any punitive measures taken against them.

To look at many of my articles, you would think that I was angry about child support in general, but truly, it is the draconian and largely ineffective methods of collection that bother me.  I don't believe in throwing people in jail for being broke.  I don't believe that it is okay to separate children from parents who love them and essentially charge ransom for them to even be able to see their kids, because although legally the two are separate, it's pretty hard to see your kids if you have a warrant out for your arrest, or if you have no driver's license to even get to them.  If you lose a job, even it is just to general layoffs at a company, you are likely to start racking up arrears, and it is difficult if not impossible to get your payments lowered.

I do think that child support should depend more on the income of the custodial, as well as the non-custodial parent.  I also think that if someone is absolutely dead-set on sole custody when the other parent is not unfit, they really have no right to child support at all.  It is not right, nor is it fair to willfully exclude a parent from a child's life, and then expect them to pay for that pain.

The Sandy Hook tragedy

Upon learning of the tragedy that occurred at the Sandy Hook elementary school on Friday, I was beyond devastated.  It has taken me days to even process and think about the heartless nature of a person who could coldly kill so many innocent people, let alone children.

I cried on Friday when I heard the news, and then avoided the news for the next 2-3 days, because I could not even bear to think about it.  In the meantime, more news was coming out about the tragedy, including the fact that this was well planned in advance to target the most innocent of innocent victims.  It was devastating to say the least.

I was actually fortunate to see one of my sons from my previous marriage that morning, and I will always cherish that opportunity that I had, because I love him so much.  I also had my little 5 year old who I am able to see at home with me, and I just held her a little bit tighter that day, knowing what those other poor children have been through.

I would like to send my thoughts and prayers to all of those who lost their children to this horrific event.

Even as a "forgotten" parent, there is always a glimmer of hope that my children will return to me, and I will not give up that hope.  However, these parents have lost their children forever, because somebody had access to assault rifles that were purchased legally, but used illegally.  It is time to ban assault rifles, and to be more diligent about watching people who may be mentally ill.  The solution is not just one thing, but multiple things, and I hope that people realize this.