Someone to You

  Case #3- Custody Before I continue with Adam’s juvenile case, I really need to tell you about our custody case, because the two are about to be intertwined in the story. As I shared, I filed for full legal custody of all 4 kids on the Monday after I had discovered the abuse. I hired the smartest attorney I knew, and she was extremely helpful and sympathetic. As soon as John was notified of the case against him, he hired an attorney and the fight began. Things move slowly where we live. The courts are overbooked and there aren’t enough judges/courtrooms to hear them all.   It was 4 months before our first hearing. Nothing much happened, and the judge pushed it off for a few months. Another hearing, another “nothing to report” from my attorney.   The judge encouraged us to hold a pre-trial conference where our 2 attorneys and the 2 of us would all meet to discuss the issue and try to come up with ideas for settling it.   I went into this event prepared and calm...

It was all so much. SO MUCH. There is no playbook for this. Looking back, I am not sure how I functioned day to day. I know I was emotionless, except for anger. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I know friends and family helped. It reminds me of when the twins were babies and people would say, “I don’t know how you do it!” I would reply, “I don’t have any choice.” Remember there were basically 3 court cases/legal issues running concurrently at this point. I addressed the first in my last post. I wanted John to be charged with a crime, but there was no law in our state to allow this. Our area is one of the darkest places in the world- backwards thinking, lack of cultural sensitivity, and all the patriarchal belief systems. In John’s case, the white middle-age, middle-class man had gotten away with a crime and had no consequences. Not yet anyways. As for Adam (Case #2), he was getting adjusted to his facility and new therapist. We had weekly Skype calls to compl...

  I used to have faith. I had faith that truth would win. I had faith that the justice system would provide actual justice or fairness. I had faith that in general, people are good. I have lost all of that faith.   My faith in God held on by a thread when it was all over. The Bible tells us that “The Lord Himself will fight your battles- you need only be still.” (Exodus 14:14). I waited for God to take up the sword. I am still waiting. When we got home from Florida, I told the kids that if anyone- a judge, a lawyer, a counselor- anyone- asked about what had happened, they had only one job: Tell the Truth. This has become our family mantra and our most deeply held value. That is all I ever “coached” them to do. My first order of business was to deal with John. I started inquiring about when/how he would be charged with a crime. I was told I had to file a separate report on him- the DFS case had nothing to do with charging adults, and they don’t turn over info like tha...

  It has been a hot minute since my last post. Recalling all the details of this is very tiring. Not as exhausting as living it, but it still makes me weary. As I mentioned, there is everything in my family’s life before January 22, 2022, and now everything after.   Here is how the beginning of the “after” went. There were an unbelievable number of phone calls I had to make/receive in the first few weeks after it happened. Schools. Doctors. Residential Care Facilities for Adam. Victim Advocacy groups for Honey. A lot of people asking if we were “ok.” I was alive, breathing, and sober- so I was “ok.” I switched something off inside myself and put up an emotional shield. I told several close friends, but not everyone. As I dealt with things, my sisters knew immediately that I was going into “fight” mode- one of them said, “Are you dealing with the emotional side?” I said, “Oh no, not at all. I will process that later.” If I can “do” something, I don’t have to fall apart. ...

  This is a departure from my storytelling, but not completely unrelated. The last few weeks, there has been so much discourse about women’s feelings, the roles of women/men, and the way things should be. And it is exhausting. All of it seems like a big adventure in missing the point- mostly men, but also some women. I posted a few innocuous articles/videos and made a few comments here and there. And in every situation, there were supportive comments, disagreeing comments, and downright attacking/demeaning comments. As has been stated over and over, people have a right to their opinion and a right to state it. My questions, after all of this discussion, are: Do people actually want to understand? Are people open to listening and processing and deciding that maybe they are wrong? It really, really doesn’t seem like it. But the biggest question is: Are you willing to believe someone when they tell you how they feel? That is not up for discussion. It is not up to you to tell t...

  Trigger warning: everything From here, I’d like to ask you to take everything you’ve read before and convert it to this: instead of Adam struggling with p*rn and inappropriate s*xual behaviors, I want you to think of it as smoking. Suppose he had started smoking at a young age, and no matter what I did, he continued to find ways to get cigarettes and smoke them. Suppose we had gotten him therapy, done treatment programs, tried to help him quit in every way we could find. Suppose this is a child/teen struggling with nicotine addiction. You also need to understand that I was following all our plans to prevent Adam from smoking, but that John had relaxed his standards and rules, and it was well known that Adam was smoking at his house. Suppose every time I brought it up, John lied, and/or told me I was overreacting. Suppose Adam had tried to offer cigarettes to his sister. Suppose he got caught at school smoking. Suppose he was using his cigarettes to burn holes in his clothes, ...

  The Tumultuous Time Trigger warning: physical abuse, suicidal ideation. Forgive me, but I have to fast-forward the story a bit. Just as I told you in my first post, there are people who don’t want this story told. I have once again been threatened and bullied into not telling the story for the sake of the kids. The reality is, they don’t want the story told for THEIR sake. It is hard to know how to summarize what happened, but I am sure you can let your imagination fill in some blanks. As for me, I can tell you some facts that led up to this Big Bad Thing. John and I had gotten divorced, and John did not take the parenting classes that are court-ordered to any divorced families with children. If he had, he would have learned that communication between the two houses is IMPERATIVE for the safety and welfare of the kids. It doesn’t take more than a google search to see what people have to say about helping kids through a divorce and living in two houses. He made no effort t...