My Children Are Choosing Freedom

Inch by inch and step by step they are facing reality

Photo by Sear Greyson on Unsplash

My headline is full of the hope I have for my future with my children. They are very slowly facing reality and choosing their own paths to freedom.

I am moving ahead with my life, finally. It took over three years to get the mess of divorce and custody taken care of. I am ready to leave it behind me.

I am packing up my evidence binders and legal papers. It’s time to place them out of sight. It is time to move forward and live without a court case weighing me down.

Some day I might face all of the invoices I received from my attorney and add up all I spent to receive a resolution which was what the narcissist wanted in the first place.

I learned an expensive lesson about family court by fighting for all of my children to stay together. They will remain separated in spite of my wish for them to grow up together. My children do know that I wanted them to be together and their father did not. I think that will matter someday when they are old enough to look back and reflect on their lives.

I have let go of the older children and will trust them to go on this journey they have chosen. They know I am always here for them with an open door. They know if they ever want to change how things are I will do everything I can to make it happen.

I have done my best to make my home a place where they can be themselves. They are free to be loud, listen to music they choose and test my love for them with some of the words they say. It seems to be working. They are now treating me more like their mother and less like a stranger. They make the choice to spend time in my home.

The pain will always be there in my heart for all that we have lost. I remind myself that I am an adult and they are children. I had them almost completely to myself while they were young. I have to trust that they will remember that time when I was their whole world.

They are not free yet and I am. It may be painful for them to be around me because I have chosen freedom over continuing to live with their father as a family. They don’t understand that they can choose freedom too.

I can continue to live free and offer a taste of freedom when they are with me. I have hope that if the younger children live free of narcissistic abuse most of the time they will never choose to go back to it when they are old enough to make the decision of who to live with.

Now that I have let go my older children seem to be coming back to me. I don’t know if it’s because they can finally see who their dad is or because I let go of the tug-of-war rope between their father and me. Hmm, maybe he fell flat on his back in the mud while I turned to walk away.

The distance between their healthy parent and unhealthy parent will continue to grow. They will see more and more which parent truly loves them and has their best interest at heart.

Their eyes will continue to open. Just like me, they will reach a point when they can no longer remain in denial.

I pray all children in these circumstances can choose to be loved instead of used.

❤ Julia