When I first made the decision to cut contact between my son and his father, I was plagued with guilt & self-doubt. I kept wondering if I was making the right decision, what if my son resented me? What would be the emotional impact of him not having his father in his life? The thoughts were so consuming and debilitating, I just felt like no matter what I did I could not get away from them.
Then one day I came across this blog post, it most certainly was not a coincidence, I hadn't searched for it and I very rarely click on random blogs as I just think they are click bait, but something told me I needed to read this. So I did and it quite literally changed my world.
I copied and pasted it to my notes on my phone & every time I started to doubt my decision I would read it. Every time I was bombarded with a hurricane of abuse from my son's father & his family I would read it. Every time people would question my decision, I would read it.
I don't even know the name of the person who wrote the blog, but I just want to say thank you, this blog post has helped me to be the brave, resilient, strong mother that I am today and for that I am forever grateful.
For anyone who needs it, this is the blog post that shaped me into the mother I am today:
Here we go again. It’s 09:26am and I’m sat here once again with a coffee in hand, admiring my daughter playing with her toys, fighting back the tears, wondering what my child did so badly to deserve to be put second by her ‘father’. He was supposed to be here at 08:00am. After two weeks working away and missing his daughter, he couldn’t make it last night because he was stuck at the barbers; a BARBERS. No awful road accident, nobody had died, he hadn’t lost a limb and he was still very much alive. These should be the only things stopping a parent from seeing their child, the only things. I did my usual and offered him a time slot for this morning; I compromised, because that’s what co-parenting is about, right? So, yeah, he’s not turned up at the agreed time. Why? Because he’s in bed after going on a drink and drugs binge last night, so he’s not fit to even care for my child. This isn’t the first time it’s happened, but it’s the last; I’ll make damn sure of that. Nearly two years of inconsistency and excuses – how long am I supposed to wait for someone to change? If they don’t want to change for their child, who will they change for? I’d have agreed to a later time, but he’s in a hurry to visit his new girlfriend at 12pm and she’s a 5 hour drive away – now tell me, who comes first? Call me a bitch, whatever – I’m out of f***s now. Why are people so quick to call a mother names for stopping contact between a father and their child? “Don’t stop contact, she’ll find out for herself when she’s older.” I would usually apologise but I’m past giving a rats arse – why do I want to give my daughter a childhood that she has to recover from? Why should I place her in to the firing line of an emotionally abusive, lying, manipulative and drug abusing, lousy excuse for a human being? She won’t thank me when she’s on medication or in therapy, when she goes through endless toxic relationships because she thinks this behaviour is normal. Why would any parent allow this?! In actual fact, I’m a bad parent for allowing contact if anything. Children aside, do you have any idea how much damage this also does to the mother? The person actually taking full responsibility of the child takes an emotional beating too, because all she wants to do is protect their child from hurt, pain or sufferance and she has to constantly pick up the pieces all the time. How can a mother be happy if her children are hurting? It’s a mother’s instinct to prevent unnecessary injury to their child; physically and emotionally. You wouldn’t allow another child to bully your child and you wouldn’t encourage them to be in their life, that’s for sure; so why is this different? In fact, it’s worse. It’s worse because a parent is supposed to be a role model; they’re the people who set examples for how we’re supposed to be treated – how can we do that if our own parents have no respect for us? Do I wait until she’s old enough to understand or do I shield her from years of disappointment, lies, hurt and wondering why she’s not good enough? You’ve already answered that yourself. No child should ever feel like they’re not worth it and I’ll fight until my last breath if it means them never having to feel like they’re not good enough.