Reflections in First entry

Here I am. Two years removed from when it all started. A lot has happened since I last wrote. I suppose this may or may not be a long post. Let’s see where it leads.

Two years ago today, my wife of almost 16 years walked out on our family. It was a long and ugly fight, that resulted in me being granted Sole Legal and Physically Custody of our children. Fast-forward to today. I’m married again and it is so different. She is calm, understanding and so often, I find myself in a state of confusion. I am awaiting the time where I am going to be told of all of my imperfections. I’m just waiting to find the next thing I need to do to please her. Yet, I’m left to my own understanding. She doesn’t judge or berate me. She doesn’t make me feel as if I need to earn her approval. I find I’m often waiting on hiw I should respond, but she handles herself and I handle myself. It weird. We are complementary. I struggle to trust that I can let things go. For example, cooking dinner or doing thing around the house. Before I felt comfortable that we had established roles and then it was all of a suddenly dumped on me without warning. Hiw do do youbgp back to that? I’m working on myself because my wife is a good woman.

Here’s a 30k synopsis of us. We met. I didn’t hide my mess; which I would saybopened the door fornher to be honest. She watched me go through the permanent custody hearing. We continued to build. We were extremely deliberate because she has 2 kids, I have 2 kids and all 4 are subject to our decisions. We discussed the different topics as much as we could that would impact us all. Naturally we didn’t have all the answers, but we did have a strong consensus of values, finances, parenting and so on. We have both been deliberate in establishing relationships with eachother and eachother’s kids. I presented my vision of what family life would look like and she agreed. For me, it was 3 additional mouths to feed and 2 additional children to develop. For her, it was 3 additional people to nurtur and care for. Thankfully, she’s a great mother and the kids are making progress in learning the life skills a mother teaches. So far, we are on our way. It takes work and I am thankful of the time I took to heal and move forward. I can and hopefully will write a post on my own personal growth in this journey.

I’ve come to realize some are here for the dramatic history that has unfolded. Again, I’ll provide a high level overview. The day by day is boring. September of 21 I was granted Sole Legal and Physical Custody of my two children. Since then, I have tried to continually get them into counseling. I have endured many situations of attacks. Motion after motion I stood the barrage of attacks. Christmas disruption, 4H, counseling, even an attempt at disrupting counseling after accusing me of intentionally delaying. I stood on truth and fact and won. After the Permanent Hearing I faced these things.. She took me back to court at the start of June. It didn’t go well. One by one I showed proof that her accusations were false. I maintained the custody arrangement. Yes, I can dive deeper and one day I may, but right now , I won’t.

That bring us to today. The counselor I was finally able to get them to see is able to see the picture clearly. She has tried to get K to engage, but she won’t. Personally, I believe that she has checked out and is ready to walk away completely. That’s a whole post in itself. The Parenting Coordinator had told her that she can’t talk about court proceedings, finances, she can’t use profanity towards me, and a list of other things.

B wants to be a Marine Biologist and E wants to be an artist, Pokémon Trainer and vet. B starts Advanced math and advanced Reading next year. Meaning both, because he’s in advanced English already. I’d love to take the credit, but he has worked so hard and deserves all the credit! I’m merely an airbag, a device to minimize the trauma of the past two years.

I’m sure this will spur more stories, but tonight we reflect on the history of our family and the amazing trauma we survived.