Things have been challenging in our household to say the least. Lockdown isn’t helping but there have been issues for a while and when I look back, none of us can truly put our hands on our hearts and say we’ve been happy for a long time.

An incident between the kids, which had reverberating effects on our relationship hit our household a few weeks ago and it’s really helped clarify things:

• The relationship we had isn’t the relationship I wanted.
• My partner isn’t wholly who I thought he was.
• If you give someone the tools to hurt you and they’re in pain themselves, they’ll use them.
• What looks like the end isn’t necessarily the end.

Ok bear with me here. I’m not going to go into detail about most of those points but the bottom one is the pertinent one. After the incident between the kids we needed to make changes in our house which also meant changes in our relationship. I once said to my counsellor that a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child and I stand by that. The distraction and helplessness that comes with attempting to deal with a child’s pain, whilst knowing only they can do it and they will be more resilient for it, is one of the worst parts of parenting. (Bedtime is the ultimate worst, followed by having to cook for them every damned day).

Abandoning the dream of the blended family we’d been trying to build was a massive weight off my shoulders. Suddenly all the drama that used to accompany everyday life had gone. Pretty much overnight. It was just me, the boys, the baby and my partner and life feels very simple. As with any change there was trauma. I believe the people most affected by the changes are me and my partner. We battled amongst ourselves, we battled each other and we hit a point that our relationship became toxic and there was nothing else to do but to leave it.

Leaving relationships is a pattern of mine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a flippant statement – I really do give the relationship everything I’ve got but when it reaches the stage where it’s seriously not working and I’ve got nothing left to give, it’s time to go. We had reached that stage. There was nothing else to give, nothing else to bring to the table and all that was left was a lot of pain which wasn’t going anywhere fast.

There was a difference this time though. I thought of how much I love my partner, all the good times we’ve had, the daughter we planned (and created) together and knew that I didn’t want to leave him, but I wanted to leave this toxic, has-been relationship as it had played itself out.

It was the first time in a period of very intense ill-feeling that I had some clarity. Having thought on it some more I sat him down that night and said: ‘this relationship has become toxic. I’ve chosen to leave it. However, in all of this I choose you. I want us to build a better relationship, one we do want to be in.’ It’s the first time I’ve ever been able to separate a person from the relationship, rather than seeing them almost as one and the same.

It led me to reflecting on how long term marriages survive the distance. My parents divorced when I was 3 and neither of my parents remarried until I was in my late 20s so there’s no influence there to look to. My own marriage lasted 5 years, the relationship, 8. When I realised I didn’t want *that* relationship with my partner anymore but I still wanted him it made me think that maybe the success of a long term relationship is that it’s actually built up of lots of smaller relationships. Everyone’s heard of the saying ‘you either grow together or you grow apart’, maybe this is what it means. Rather than having one long relationship, you have different relationships along the road according to who you are and what your life experience is at that time.

A few weeks ago my partner used the analogy ‘marriage is like a dance…… sometimes you’re dancing together, sometimes you’re dancing apart, sometimes the dance is slow, other times it’s fast. What’s important is not whether you’re dancing together or apart in that moment, it’s whether you’re both still in the room’.

These past few weeks it’s taken everything I’ve got, every ounce of willpower and courage, we may be dancing apart or even different dances right now but I am still in the room.

The post I Choose You appeared first on This Complicated Life.

I have a complex relationship with my eldest child. In part it comes down to the fact that I am the joint youngest of 5 children. Joint because I have a twin brother. This means that I have 3 people older than me who have to some extent spent the last 38 years bossing me around.

Older siblings see it as their birthright to order the younger sibs around and this isn’t just whilst growing up. I often watch my friends who are the eldest in their sibset comment on what’s good for their younger siblings, what they should and shouldn’t be doing (I should mention that all these ‘younger’ siblings are in their 30s and 40s). All this is an eye opener as it would never occur to me (a younger sibling) to have an opinion on my older siblings lives in this way.

Back to my relationship with my son. Boy does he love ordering his younger brother around. I get that it’s just part of life and ignore it. The younger one is much more likely to lamp his brother one when he crosses the line and happy that he can take care of himself, I let them get on with it and quarrel between them.

At times I have a shared joke or wink with the older son so he knows we’re just saying something for the benefit of the younger one and to get him in bed and out the picture. All good and I’m sure parents the world over have different codes and actions with their different children.

What *really* drives me nuts though is when the older siblings start parenting the younger ones. It’s all well and good when they’re helping get shoes on but not so good when they decide a younger sibling must be punished or controlled and start making suggestions to me (their mother) of their punishments. I’ll often come into the room to find the little one howling because the older one has taken it upon himself to tell the little one that he’ll be going to bed early or not playing playstation or some such, purely because his older brother has said so.

I’m sure this won’t change any time soon but whenever it happens I can’t help feeling a stab of sympathy for the little one and letting him know that I understand completely. Sometimes older siblings suck!

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We’re having a baby! In just under 12 weeks our crazy family will have a grand total of 2 adults, 4 children, 5 fish, 1 cat and a dog.

We were very nervous of telling the kids. After all. Nothing says ‘we’re all going to be cemented together forever’ in quite the same way as a brand new sibling arriving.

We worried about the kids feeling jealous. Of feeling stuck with each other. Of feeling stuck with me and my partner. We worried they’d play up, be unmanageable and generally prefer their other parents to us. Turns out we didn’t need to worry at all; they all have varying levels of excitement at the thought of the impending arrival. Turns out the youngest had been sick of being the youngest and ordered around by the big ones for quite a while and other than one of our three children not liking the name we’ve chosen for the baby, all is good.

When I say all is good I’m not referring to the endless questions. It’s been easier to handle the questions from the older kids (who are 9 and 12) as they know where babies come from and do not want to discuss it as they don’t like to think of me and my partner going any further than holding hands and sharing the occasional kiss. Therefore their questions are more focused around where the baby will sit in the car, who will share a room with it etc.

This week, whilst in the middle of a carnival surrounded by hundreds of people my 6 year old loudly announced ‘Mummy, babies don’t just pop out of tummies do they? Where do they come from?’ I’ve always promised myself I’d be honest with the kids, using the correct terminology for them and not subject them to my own experience of growing up where my Mother never even used words for our privates.

I braced myself, wished that I was anywhere else (as did my Step-Daughter and Son) and explained that women have a vagina which is for babies to come out of. Just as I was congratulating myself for taking the bull by the horns and being so honest he burst out laughing and said he didn’t believe me. Brilliant. I’m sure all the other people surrounding us (we’re at a carnival remember) were nodding along but the little one wouldn’t be convinced.

I know I said I’d always be honest with the kids but next time a question is bellowed at me in a very public place I think I might fein a migraine and go for a lie down leaving his older siblings to fill him in.

Photo by Braedon McLeod on Unsplash

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The ridiculous thing is I thought I’d chosen someone who could and would be decent if we split up. Obviously I hoped we wouldn’t but no relationship is perfect and having been raised, since the age of 3, by divorced parents I knew this could be a possibility.

None of us know how abusive people can be. After all if they walked around with a big sign saying ‘potential abuser’ none of us would go near them. Also abusers can be very charming, that’s how it all begins. The problem is, coming from an abusive childhood means I’m not good at spotting signs of abuse. Many hours with counsellors has determined that I have a tendency to view abusive behaviour as normal behaviour and I now have to work really hard to recognise when behaviour isn’t right and calling my ex out on it is not ‘making a fuss’.

Two and a half years ago I split up with my ex. The journey into abuse was a long one… starting with long periods of sulking as a way to get me to comply with what he wanted; this steadily declined into emotional, sexual and domestic abuse. Getting out of the marriage was a relatively quick process; one day something snapped in me and I knew I couldn’t live this life any longer. I told my ex, we had many, many conversations about it and seven weeks after I first spoke about it, he moved out.

I cannot describe the extent of my relief once he’d left. Having the autonomy to live my life. Parent how I wanted to and the feeling of oppression that had settled on our home had finally gone. I naively thought we would be able to coparent well whilst we both went on to build better lives for us and our children.

We’d agreed that we’d put the interests and needs of the kids first. That we wouldn’t slag each other off to the kids and that we’d make the separation a much easier experience for our children that our parents’ divorces had been for us. On the surface, for a time this is what happened. We worked together cohesively so the kids could free flow between our houses, spending the majority of their time at mine with the option to go to their Dad’s for a night in the week and every weekend. We never said anything but good things about the other parent and the kids adjusted pretty well. So far, so good.

The changes happened with the same insidious nature as the abuse when it first started in our relationship. There was him telling the children that I’d sent their father away because I didn’t love him anymore. The insinuation that I would maybe stop loving the kids one day and for no fathomable reason. Dropping the kids at a moment’s notice, deciding he wouldn’t spend the time with them after all, leaving me to explain to upset, whinging children that Daddy was busy. The stubborn refusal to have the children for a moment more than the time agreed and not covering any of the school holidays so I could work. At the same time he would tell the kids I couldn’t provide for them financially whilst paying below the minimum rate of maintenance himself.

This just became a way of life for us, happy, confident children at home in the run up to seeing him followed by anxious, angry, upset children after seeing him. The children adored him so we struggled on. All the while his abusive behaviour continued. He insisted on having the kids for their birthdays and Christmas so I didn’t get to spend more than an hour or two with them on special occasions. If I asked him to have them for a day during the school holidays he’d scream at me ‘you wanted this divorce, you look after your own children’ and hang up.

He quickly found a girlfriend who also had a child. He became a ‘Disneyland Dad’ when she was around, playing with the kids, planning trips and holidays. Entertaining and joyful when she was around then would pretty much ignore the kids when she wasn’t.

All in all the seamless, positive co-parenting experience we had hoped for the kids was crumbling.  My ex and I had no relationship beyond text messaging about arrangements for the kids. Every time I tried to talk to him about bigger issues it had to be done over email and I’d always get a vile stream of abuse back from him until I gave up and stopped emailing.

Things went from bad to worse. My ex, who usually couldn’t look me in the eye, came to the house and cornered me. Shouting, being abusive, traumatising the children. Social Services and the School Counsellors got involved and I was to no longer be alone with him. The emails from him became worse. He also regularly told me he was stalking me online, taking screenshots of everything I posted on Social Media, blogs and my work website. My confidence crumbled and I didn’t know what to do with this information. Social Services said to report it to the police. Like in our marriage, I didn’t want to do anything that would anger my ex and make the abusive behaviour worse.

We carried on like this for another 2 years. I met someone, who kinda understood what I was going through. He kept his head down, didn’t engage with my ex who, despite still being with his girlfriend, was jealous as hell and raging about me having a boyfriend. After 14 months my partner moved in with us and things started to settle down. Whilst things were never going to be easy between me and my ex, we had fallen into some sort of groove and whilst my ex wouldn’t look me in the eye, communicate anything other than arrangements for the kids over text, life felt ok.

Then my ex found out I was pregnant. A planned baby which we’d just broken the news of to our kids. All of a sudden, life was not ok. We had 3 very excited kids and my ex who was working to make everything difficult. He refused to come to the house to collect or drop of the kids, stating he wouldn’t see them if I didn’t do the running around. He sent abusive emails accusing me of all sorts of difficult behaviour and eventually, after two and a half years enough was enough. I blocked him.

Feeling sad was a small price to pay to not have to go through the daily abuse and character assassination by him. To have him relentlessly belittle me, my work, my decisions and dictate when he would and wouldn’t have our children and not give me a say in any of it. It was strange. The first time in 10 years that we didn’t have any contact with each other. It took a while to get used to and whilst it’s not ideal having to arrange stuff to do with the kids via his Mum or not be able to quickly check something with him, the small amount of peace makes it worth it.

When we first split up and he was still living here, a friend messaged me and said ‘I know you guys want to be friends for the sake of the kids but right now he’s not your friend. You need to work everything else out before you get to that stage’. It was great advice. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to be friends. Too much hurt and too much stubborn-ness. I never thought this was how my life would be but it is and the kids and I are making the best of it in the best way we know how.

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There are some days/weeks/months in life where you feel you can’t get it right, no matter how hard you try. As I prepare to leave my ‘mid’ 30s and hurtle towards 40 I realise a lot of this is just being an adult. You have good days and bad days and hopefully, more good days than bad. What tends to complicate things is by the time people get to my age often they don’t just have themselves to consider so retreating under the duvet until the world feels a friendlier place again isn’t an option.

We’re going through a tough time in my house at the moment. It’s January, moods are low and irritations, high. We’ve all had a change with my partner moving in 10 weeks ago and are all adjusting in our own ways. A lot of the time this works but sometimes everyone gets the wrong end of each other and it causes tension and irritation.

I always knew I wouldn’t be the same parent that I was raised by. Whilst my partner, the kids other parents and I are leaders in managing the kids emotional development, wellbeing and physical safety, our childrens feelings are as valid and equal to our own. How do you explain this and really get through to someone who has relatively draconian views on this subject? Parents are parents and there to be respected and obeyed. Of course we need to teach our children manners and the benefits of listening to instructions and awareness of others’ feelings and how we impact on those. In my parenting that is part of the leadership I mentioned above.

The thing is everybody is damaged. No exceptions. Even those who think they’ve had the most glorious, happy childhood may have been subjected to over-parenting, parents who have more ambition for the child than the child is able to achieve. Or those who are such a stickler for manners that the child’s feelings are suppressed.

Then there are children who are subjected to plain old abuse. In 2014 (I think) the government changed some of the Safeguarding protocol to include that children who are witness to one (or both) parent abusing another are considered to be subjected to child abuse. This includes children who witness parents arguing in a loud/aggressive manner.

For those who are curious my children fall into the latter category having spent 7 and 3.5 years (respectively) witnessing daily emotional, physical and sexual abuse towards me from their father. How/why didn’t I protect them is a question I’ve been lucky to not have been asked but in case anyone who has stumbled across my little corner of the internet wants to know, simply put, I grew up in an abusive household and to begin with, in my relationship, I didn’t realise that what was happening to me/our household, was abuse. It felt as though it was a continuation of my childhood and I figured that this is what life was; a matter of survival, making the most of situations when I was out of the house and felt like I could breathe, and buckling up for going home and whatever was waiting there.

Once I’d left my ex-husband I thought I was free. I recognised that I could live a life I wanted for me and my children and it didn’t have to include abuse. The euphoria was great; the depression at times, was greater. A lot happened in the first year of separation; I lost friends who didn’t want to be a part of my new life even though we’d walked together for 30 years. I made new friends who hadn’t known the old me and we could start with a clean slate. Some friends I thought would step up and support me and the boys didn’t, they continued in the odd night out/playdate with the kids. The friends I’d been close to rallied round in every way they could. I learned that leaving a marriage wasn’t the same as leaving any old relationship and just when you felt the world was a safe place and you knew your place in it, something would come along and whip the rug from under your feet.

There were a few incidences in that first year where my ex-husband’s abusive side kicked in, where he became controlling around the children, taking them away without me knowing where they were and refusing to have them during his scheduled time which scuppered work meetings for me, all the time screaming ‘you wanted this, you chose this life’ at me. 10 months after we separated he came to the house, his behaviour was awful, abusive and mine and my friend’s children witnessed it. My kids were added to the Safeguarding register at school, Social Services were called, my counsellor became involved, my eldest son started having debilitating anxiety attacks and life was a mess. My ex-husband’s behaviour became more erratic, admitting to stalking me online, scuppering relationships with important contacts I’d made and on one occasion, exposing our fatally allergic child to the allergen then not reporting it to me.

What followed were some of the most stressful months I’ve encountered in my adult life. Not being able to work enough because I was constantly in meetings with Social Workers, therapists and the school. Not having the confidence to work because my ex-husband was stalking me and chipping away at me, character assassinating me and my work in abusive emails. The children started to show their fear and pain, some pent up, some new, through their behaviour and everyone was telling me what I ‘must’ do on a practical level, basing it on their own experiences/prejudices, without having any understanding of what I and my children were going through emotionally.

When you live in an abusive situation you know what’s waiting for you at home. When you detach yourself from an abusive situation but still have to be a player in it by virtue of the fact you share children, you don’t know what’s waiting for you, when they’re going to attack, how they’re going to do it, who it will involve. You just know that at some point, they will.

In the meantime you get on with life. You arrange therapists for your children, you have meetings at school, you cut out toxic people from your life, you stop drinking alcohol because a glass of wine doesn’t help anything and you spend hours explaining to your partner and friends that yes, they may parent differently to you and they may be more forceful and less compassionate in their parenting, and yes, their children (generally) do as they’re told but they and their children haven’t lived under the cloud of abuse that you and yours have.

The message that this well meaning advice gives out is… ‘you’re failing at this’. It’s a hard message to hear. I’ve already failed to protect my children from abuse. I failed at my marriage. Since separating I’ve failed to be as successful as I need to be in my work. If we want the full blown pity party here I also failed at school with the worst A Level results in my year. I get it. I fail at stuff.

I also get up and face another day. Relentlessly, even on the days I want to hide away and pretend the world doesn’t exist, I face the day, I face my children and all I can say is ‘I’m sorry this was your beginning but I’m working so hard to ensure abuse has no part in your middle or end story’. I face my partner and friends and say ‘I’m sorry you don’t always like my parenting and you feel frustrated with it but I’m not sorry for parenting the way I feel meets my childrens’ needs best’.

Integrity is what I have to give. My skill. For so long I couldn’t live with integrity, having to hide what was going on at home, having to tell myself that this life was ok for me and my kids, it’s all I deserved. These days people may not always like me or my actions very much. They may not understand my motivation or my back story but integrity is my bedmate. Coming from someone who lived with their (ex)husband gaslighting them for 8 years, integrity, knowing the real me and behaving autonomously is all I’ve got left.

Some days life is hard. Some days I struggle more than others and I may stumble, but I will never quit.

The post I may stumble but I won’t quit appeared first on This Complicated Life.

I challenge anyone to go out and find a mother who does not think she’s failing at something. Does not question some or all parts of her parenting. I’ve been at this parenting gig for a little over 8 years now and there are moments I’m very proud of and moments I am definitely not proud of.

A lot of this year has been spent processing the abuse that went on in my marriage. Abuse that the children witnessed and how that is now affecting our everyday lives. That’s the thing with abuse – having spoken to friends who have been party to similar treatment in their marriages, we have all said the same thing. There’s something about your marriage that you can’t quite put your finger on. Something that you know isn’t right but you don’t particularly think of it as abuse. After all, we were raised to think that if we were in an abusive situation we would leave and yet here we are married to these men so surely it can’t be abusive.

Gaslighting is a term I only learnt recently. It explains a lot. It explains why people don’t necessarily realise they’re slipping into an abusive situation and how these things creep up on us until we’re not sure how to handle it. Needless to say, most people in abusive situations are the victims of Gaslighting.

For me this makes my parenting a complicated process. While I was married and living with my husband, life was just about survival. I was often short tempered with the kids as I was continually walking on eggshells at home and I would leave them in After School Clubs as long as possible so they didn’t have to be in the difficult home environment. Weekends were a case of taking the kids on a circuit of visiting friends so we weren’t trapped in the house with their Dad. Needless to say, as much as it was all the parenting I was able for, it wasn’t who I wanted to be or how I wanted to raise my children.

It has now been a year since my marriage ended and almost a year since their Dad moved out of our house. Yes life has been stressful. There has been massive financial insecurity, tears, stress, loss of tempers, guilt etc but it’s been almost a year and not only have we survived, we are blossoming.

Recently I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I shouted at the kids (then ironically shouted at them about 2 hours later!) I saw that we’d settled into a routine that not only encompassed us and our needs, but allowed for a new relationship, new partner and his daughter to become a part of our family too.

Life certainly isn’t picture card perfect, there is still a lot of turmoil in the background, unpicking of my ex’s behaviour, senior teams at the kids’ school getting involved, temper tantrums, children struggling for autonomy and confusion as they come up to their first Christmas belonging to two separate households. However difficult it has and continues to be, I have become the parent I wanted to be. Tolerant, calm, supportive and only leaving the house if I want to, not as a means of escaping a man who was terrorising us all.

They say having children is a gift. We all know that to be true. Being able to parent those children in the way in which you want to, a way that makes you proud of who you are. That’s the biggest gift of all.

The post Today I was the mother I wanted to be appeared first on This Complicated Life.

This year has taught me a lot. It has taught me to talk….. openly, honestly, deeply. This has been one of the biggest learning periods in my adult life. We all know how to talk. Small talk, chatter etc but what about when you need to talk about bigger, deeper issues? What if what you have to say is hard for the listener to hear? What if you have to talk about abuse that’s equally embarrassing and horrifying for both the teller and the listener? What if it’s stuff that you haven’t ever spoken about and don’t know where to start?

I’m not going to lie, it’s been hard. It’s meant breaking habits that have been formed over a lifetime. One of the forms of emotional abuse that went on when I was married was that my (ex)husband did not leave the house for weeks at a time and would sit in the room upstairs listening to all my conversations, commenting on them, criticising and challenging me on what I’d said, after the guest had left. He didn’t want anyone to know anything about our lives and in doing so, it meant that I could never talk about myself or any issues I had, with my closest friends.

A challenge since his leaving is his continuing the abuse via our children and trying to control what I post online etc….When our marriage ended I spoke to him about all the abuse, how it had made me feel, where we went on to from here etc. He admitted to everything, apologised for it and in some cases, was quite rational. It was a relief to be able to talk to him about it from a place of strength. Knowing that I was never going to let him touch me again was enormously empowering and completely changed the dynamic between us.

I chose to speak publicly about the different forms of abuse. I never mentioned my husband by name (we don’t share a surname) and I’m not going to lie, it’s been difficult. But not as difficult as staying silent was.

What was difficult was 1 – dredging all the details up again, having already lived it and I had started to take steps away from it but being on my own, not having to face that treatment every day. 2 – being judged, not for what had happened but for speaking about it. I chose to speak about it because I know that had I read more information online about what was happening to me, I would have recognised it for the abuse that it was. I would have left sooner. Perhaps I wouldn’t suffer PTSD now if I hadn’t been subjected to over 7 years of this treatment. ‘Friends’ said to me that they appreciated that it had happened to me and didn’t contest it, they just didn’t think that I should speak about it and therefore couldn’t be in my life, supporting this.

Not everyone felt like this. It was just a handful of people but it was a horrible, horrible experience. It shook my confidence in speaking at all. However, I felt like even though it was a difficult subject to talk about, if I can talk about it, it’s my responsibility to do so. Part of it is self-healing but a large part of it is to break the silence and the stigma on sexual abuse.

There have been challenging times dealing with this subject matter. A few months ago I started a new relationship and because there is this information about me online, one of the first things I had to tell him was what happened (I didn’t go into details) and that there’s a lot of information about me that’s easy to find online. I was so nervous and kept telling myself that if he walked away then obviously he wasn’t the person I was meant to be with. As it goes, he was amazing about it all and now, a few months on, we’re dealing with the challenge of it together.

Another very empowering experience was talking to an old friend about it. I say an old friend because we’ve known each other for nearly 20 years but we’re not close friends. He was over for dinner last week and we were talking about it and I said about how it’s hard to talk about and his reply was: ‘but it’s not hard to hear, you’re my friend and I would rather know what’s happened to you than have you carry this alone’. It was amazing to feel so supported. It also made me realise that one day I may stop talking about this, hopefully it will just become a (horrible) part of my distant past. Until that day happens, I’m going to keep talking. I’m not going to be silenced and I’m going to try and help as many others as I can along the way.

Featured Image – from Escape the City – London FB Page. Other images from the Unbounded Spirit Facebook Page.

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I think everyone will agree that single parenting is hard. In fact I read a great article on Scary Mommy about it, the difference between solo parenting, where you’re parenting alone because your partner’s away and single parenting where every day is parenting alone with no support, no partner and quite often, a whole other set of dynamics to do with the partner you’re no longer with.

I don’t regret for even a single second going it alone and wish I had done a long time before I actually did. I felt like I was pretty much single parenting anyway with my husband not being involved with any of us, just doing his own thing and leaving the kids and I to get on with it. Eventually we split and on the very first day my little one got ill and I had to try to negotiate getting the big one to school whilst looking after a very poorly small person. It was a challenge but we managed it and it’s safe to say that my very first day as a single parent was a baptism of fire.

Luckily not all days are like that! We are nine months in and life flows as well as it’s going to with two small children, a slightly crazy dog and large cast of friends and family. However, throw PTSD into the mix and single parenting is a whole different ball game to just being responsible for you and the kids. I had no experience of PTSD before having it myself so it’s all been a very new and bewildering experience.

Here’s what I’ve learned about single parenting:

People can be wonderfully supportive of you, your kids and new setup but when you close the door at night and it’s just you and the kids, it’s just that. You guys, everyone else has gone away to their own lives and it’s up to you and you alone to keep everything in your family unit going.

People will use it as an opportunity to rewrite the history of their divorce so they can make their story parallel or worse than yours. They’ll take up a lot of your time. Disengage with them. You don’t need this in your life right now.

No-one will really understand what you’re going through. Friends may have their own experience of separation, single parenting etc but no-one will know the dynamics of your household and what went on before to emotionally get you and the kids to this point.

Some days you will feel so alone. You may be surrounded by people at the school gates or with family at a party, yet no-one knows what you carry or how you are dealing with it.

There’s no-one to tell you no. I started smoking again after my ex moved out. At first it was a social thing and then it was an every day thing. People told me to give myself a break, if it helped me through this period……. Whilst it was really freeing to be able to do what I liked, even if it meant smoking, I now have a habit I need to give up.

Everybody has an opinion. When you don’t have a partner people think it’s ok to tell you what to do, with your life, your children, your career. It’s almost as though not having anyone to defend you or consider makes you public property when people want to voice their opinions.

People will seek you out. Being one of the first of my friends to separate and the first out of my age group, people who are having relationship troubles often seek me out, inviting themselves for coffee, lunch or wine to discuss them, as though I am some sort of oracle. I am not.

PTSD will take things to a whole other level. Especially as you won’t always know what the triggers are and PTSD takes on many forms – flashbacks, muddy head, loss of sequencing, inability to multitask, feelings of bleakness, not being able to really speak, eat or form thoughts properly.

Parenting through bad PTSD days is the absolute hardest and you won’t even be able to communicate with friends what’s going on. Muddling through and knowing it will pass is the only way.

There is no guilt like single parent guilt. This is probably the biggest point I can make. Friends, older than me, who were single parents used to talk of the guilt and I never really understood how, why. All I could see was my friend who was doing an amazing job. Now I get it. Every time the kids ask to see Daddy and it’s days before they get to actually see him. No matter how much they like my ex’s girlfriend or the guy I’m dating, they ask if Daddy can live here again. I will never be able to fully explain to my kids why Daddy and I can’t be together, in what ways he was abusive and therefore, trotting out the ‘we’re all happier this way’ line, often falls on deaf ears.

OMG the tiredness. You think you knew tiredness before. Yep, you did the newborn years, in my case neither of my children really slept through the night before they were 4 (that’s right – 4 YEARS, not weeks or months) and to date my little one (aged 4 and 2 months) has only slept through the night 5 times. I’ve never needed much sleep so that’s not really the issue. The emotional tiredness of being the one to run the whole show day in, day out is exhausting.

You may strive for amicability but there’s a reason you and your ex split, making the painful, difficult decision to tear your family apart and when you look at it like that, it’s no wonder you drive each other mad. Just because you no longer live together doesn’t mean that he won’t speak to you like dirt or still try to control everything you say or do. Once an abuser, always an abuser right?

People will take sides. When my ex and I split I painstakingly explained to friends and family that we were hoping to do it amicably and would like to consider each other when it comes to family events, celebrations etc. Everyone promised they’d be supportive of that. They weren’t. Very quickly life felt like an ‘us and them’ situation. Frustrating consider these people knew a lot of what went on in our marriage and have managed to blank that out.

The first 6 months are the worst. I’m not going to lie – I thought I had dark days before. I thought if I could survive my childhood, I could survive anything but wow. This was a whole other level. I was lucky, I had 2 amazing friends and a cousin (all living abroad) who showed up relentlessly, messaging, calling, daily, making those 6 shitty months the ones where I have felt most loved and cherished.

You’ll look back and realise how far you’ve come. For me, 2017 was about survival, literally just get my head down, love and care for the kids, get through it and hopefully see everyone in 2018. Erm, yep, that didn’t happen. The surviving bit did but wow! Within 5 weeks of my ex moving out I lost 2 contracts that had been paying my rent, my little one had been hospital worthy poorly, relationships with long trusted friends were in tatters and everyone seemed to want a piece of me which, due to PTSD, I couldn’t really give. On top of this, both kids needed to move schools, my ex started to threaten me if I didn’t stop blogging or going on podcasts. I had to give up my name online (not his name, I never took his surname) and some days trying to see the wood for the trees felt impossible. Not going to lie, some days it still does but there are less of those days than before.

All in all, it’s been a massive learning curve and I’d like to say it’s a year (9 months) that I wouldn’t want to repeat but…… I got my freedom!! After years of abuse, misery and being controlled I got complete autonomy. Ok, with my ex trolling my blog etc, it doesn’t always feel like that and I can have full scale meltdowns with friends due to lack of confidence etc but Rome wasn’t built in a day and with my incredible friends helping lay the foundations a much better life awaits us all.

Images, once again, are from the Unbounded Spirit Facebook page.

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Ugh. I just can’t seem to get my shit together today. The most frustrating part is that I really don’t know why. I think I’m tired, really, really tired. Or maybe I’m just finding life challenging right now. I don’t know but today is not a good day which is a shame as it has all the formula to be one….. friend who I haven’t seen for over a year making a surprise visit, work coming in thick and fast, kids at school full time, clean house etc.

I guess that’s the issue with PTSD, you never know when it’s going to strike next. One minute you can be absolutely fine and the next, your head is fuzzy, sequencing is hard (anyone else find their house keys in the fridge??) and thoughts are all on the sad/mournful side.

PTSD is not the same as depression, which I am finding out the hard way. I know it sounds crazy but having lived with depression for so long I feel I understand my version of it the best I’m ever going to…. I know what to do, how to help myself and it tends to creep up on me rather than the ‘boom’ that PTSD tends to strike with. If I was going to have a mental image of PTSD it would be carrying a baseball bat as it just hits without any warning. Almost like when life’s getting too good it comes to bat me back into the box. I guess what feels doubly unfair is that depression is something I’ve always had, to do with my thoughts/feelings etc and PTSD is something I got after things that someone else has done to me. Sorry if that’s not very clear but as I said previously, this blog needs to be anonymous so I can’t go into too much detail.

Whilst PTSD attacks can last for a few minutes (hello flashbacks) to days (anxiety, not speaking, feeling awful). Here are my thoughts on how to survive them:

• Listen to music & loudly – silence can be a terrible thing when you’re already spending a lot of time in your own head.
• Get dressed. Seriously. It’s all too tempting to think ‘what’s the point’ and mooch round in pjs. Hit the shower, get dressed, and whilst it’s not a cure all, it does help.
• Get out. Go for a walk, interact with people. No-one’s saying you have to be the life and soul of the party but see a friend for coffee, go for a walk, go to the shops, anything, just get out whilst there is daylight.
• Speak. If you don’t fancy the old fashioned practise of picking up the phone then record a voicenote, send it to a trusted friend. Just use your voice, try and talk it through.
• Eat –  It’s probably the last thing you feel like doing but if you don’t feed your body, you won’t be able to feed your soul and get better.

Most of all and this deserves it’s very own space in my little corner of the internet, It will pass, your feelings will change, your sequencing will come back and there are many times that you’ll feel really joyful. My favourite mantra for days like today is: it’s just a bad day. It doesn’t mean you have a bad life.

The post Not Every Day is Going to be a Good Day appeared first on This Complicated Life.