Our child’s well-being is modelled after our own. If we show up with any kind of change in our personalities, our children sense the storm. Rain is inevitable, but we must allow our reactions and coping strategies to become their umbrellas.
From the day I became a single mom, my son was all I cared about. Everything I did was for him. My life, passions, interests, health and well-being took the back-burner to his needs. I needed to focus on learning how to make money to prevent us from falling into poverty. Giving him a better life became an obsession, and the beginning of my interest in mental health and developmental trauma.
I feared what having a dad who denies you your human right to thrive would have on his development. All he knew was “men leave”. (Not that dissimilar to my interpretation at the time that “men steal”, “men don’t pay bills”, “men lie” and “men will take everything you’ve spent years building for yourself when they get bored of you.”) I realized this when we watched Disney’s Tarzan. What he understood from the opening scene, when the “Dad gorilla” told the “Mom Gorilla” that they couldn’t care for Tarzan (whose parents were killed) was “Mama, why is it that only Mom’s take care of their children?”
I knew my son had a developmental disadvantage and I did everything I could to fix it. I wanted to give him positive male role models to replace his biological father. I would read him biographies of men like Sydney Poitier and Michael Ohr, with the hopes of teaching him that great men didn’t have it easy. What I told him at the time was that his father had an illness that prevented him from being the dad my son deserved and that even though it “sucks” right now, as he grows up, he’ll understand how his dad’s leaving was the greatest gift he’d receive.
As the years went on, we did better and better financially. But I had lost myself somewhere along the way. I became a suit wearing, money making, knowledge obsessed woman because she was my armour. I needed to protect us from men like his father. As I worked on the exterior, my interior became weaker. The crazy, risk-taking, happy go lucky free spirit became the responsible adult. This came at the cost of my true essence.
I WASN’T PREPARED FOR WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
After about 7 years of child support evasion, combined with having no known location, the Canadian government puts your name and bio on a website callled “Good Parents Pay”. My ex re-emerged because having his name online negatively impacted his consulting business, which he started as a way to not have his waged garnished by the enforcement agencies. Without a known source of income, or assets in your name, they have nothing to garnish.
To make a long story (I’ll tell another time) short, he came back into our lives under the guise of “wanting to make things right”. I thought this was a great opportunity for my son and reintroduced him back into the lives I spent meticulously curating over the previous 7 years. I invited him to stay at my home, paid for everything and did everything I could to build a friendship with the person who had hurt us so badly in the past. He even stayed at my place for a week while I was away on a work trip. I was excited that my son would maybe, just maybe have a “father figure” again.
My ex knew that he had to go to court for what in Canada is called a “default hearing”. He owed about $400,000 in backdated child support at this time. I spoke on his behalf during this hearing, pleading that they give my ex a chance to come up with $72,000 (which he suggested) over the period of several months. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but at the next hearing he told me that if I didn’t tell the judge that I rescind the debt in its entirety and drop all enforcement mechanisms, he would “destroy me” in a never-ending legal battle, bankrupting me in the process.
FOOLED ME TWICE
He went to jail for 3 months and the legal process began. He hired a bully of a lawyer who wanted me to rescind the debt to get him out of jail. They played every dirty trick in the book, accusing me of parental alienation (to garner him sympathy from the court), and saying that because my ex only makes $7000/year, he would never be able to pay the debt and as such should have it completely rescinded.
Down went the spiral to my and my child’s mental health. My child was angry at his father for leaving him for (what at this time was) the 4th instance. My ex (who bounced between Vancouver and Toronto, depending on which enforcement agency was further along in finding him) started stalking my son near his school in an attempt to have me message him to stop so that I would somehow play into his parental alienation narrative. I was self litigating at the time and it just about killed me.
I started having panic attacks every time I passed a man wearing Tom Ford cologne (only the best for my ex who only makes $7000/year right?). I would cry uncontrollably and started having flashbacks of the abuse I endured in the relationship. My son began remembering abuses and shared them with me, only increasing my guilt for not having protected him from this person. I failed by level 3 CFA exam and knew I had to trade emotional stress for financial stress and retained a wonderful lawyer.
Luckily, I had saved just over $100,000 for a down payment on a home for us. Due to problems with the family court system in Canada (and everywhere I assume), my ex managed to drain me of this entire down payment with frivolous court applications. Why the court system allowed him to do this without asking for some form of payment towards his arrears is beyond me. Again, the courts award me some costs, but like the child support, it isn’t paid. Even though my bills were very real (I do pay my lawyers), his were apparently make believe. My son was upset that a person who had intentionally left him, could somehow keep draining us of everything we had worked for and he started exhibiting serious signs of depression.
I read a book a day to try to support him (while trying to finance the litigation, pay the bills, and raise him), I made frantic calls to doctors and therapists, begging them to help us. I didn’t care what it was doing to me. I just wanted help for my child. My ex’s lawyer even dared write a letter stating that I was the cause of my son’s precarious mental health, and how I damaged him and they were concerned. The exact line was “my client has serious parenting concerns”. Can you imagine? A man who repeatedly left his child to prioritize his personal and business interests over his own child’s right to thrive is now accusing ME of bad parenting!
I started seeing red. Cue brain fog, weakness, wrinkles, breakouts, vertigo, narcolepsy, weight gain and fear. (At this point, I’m also studying for the final level of the CFA designation, which I failed the first time due to my stress self-litigating.) My son was not getting better despite all of the research I was doing and professional help he was receiving.
One of the authors whose work I depending on during this time was Dr. Shefali. She had this beautiful analogy about us needing to be the sun in our children’s solar system. We needed to have a strong and stable presence in their lives to keep them orbiting properly. If we’re off, they’re off. It’s exactly what I needed to turn the focus from my son onto me. I trusted that when I fixed myself and my mental state, he would be thrown back into his proper orbit.
PUT YOUR MASK ON FIRST
We hear it every time we fly. Put your mask on before assisting your children. We’re no use to them if we black out. Why then, is it so hard to do in life? Why do we feel guilty when we fill our own cups? It’s not at the expense of our children, it’s for them. Cultivating my own mental health is FOR my child, not at the expense of my child. He needs a stable sun and the only way to do that is to put my mask on first.
THE FIRST STEP TO MY MENTAL HEALTH JOURNEY
As I do with everything in life, I obsess with learning everything I can about a particular subject. I read the work of Dr. Shefali, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Dr. Nicole LePera, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk among others. Because mental health is such an individual journey, I can only share with you my own story. I encourage you to read these amazing authors for yourselves to personalize your approach.
The absolute first thing I did was let go of the stress of my legal bills. I focused on the blessing of actually having the funds saved to pay my lawyer and having her support. I focused on everything she taught me and how what I was really paying for was therapy with the added bonus of saving me the headache of self litigation. She taught me how to look at my very personal situation which triggered trauma responses from her objective lens. I will always look at it as money well spent. I know many would argue this point, that the only people who win in litigation are the lawyers. I understand that view, but does it help me deal with my reality? Nope. My view supported my healing, rather than fuelled my anger.
The next thing I did was identify what was fun for me. When asked the question on a dating app “what do you do for fun?”, I realized I didn’t know myself. Reflecting on this now, I’m still searching. But I did consciously integrate things that brought calm and peace into my life, like massages, prioritizing time to read, reconnecting with friends, playing board games with my son and going to movies.
LIFE IS HAPPENING FOR ME
What helped me the most though, was a change in my mindset that said “life is always happening FOR ME, not to me. Spirituality and the belief that some force beyond human understanding knows more about the neuroses of our lives than we do, was always a big part of my life. It’s easy though, to forget.
I made my worst days my best days by reframing the story I told myself about them. I felt my nerves calm with the knowing that this will all make sense in retrospect. I was able to turn the anger I had at my ex into pity. What a sad life he must have – spending 3 months in jail, living with his parents (so he said) and needing to find illegal work to bypass the child support enforcement agencies. Moreover, he never got to experience the gift that is our child. I don’t know if I necessarily feel sorry for him (yet) since he made his own bed, but I’m comforted by the knowing that my son and I are greater humans because he is not in our lives.
SUPPORTING OUR CHILD’S MENTAL HEALTH THROUGH OUR OWN
As I worked more deeply into healing my own trauma, my son’s light started to shine again. I was able to calmly deal with the litigation, function at work, earn my CFA designation, and help my son more effectively with what he was dealing with. I even found myself smiling on occasion. (Who knew?!?!)
Whatever you or your child have lived through, make the choice to believe that you’re both stronger for it. It’s too easy for us to put our own well-being on the back-burner to be there for our children. As a single parent, you’re what your child has – as an example of who to become. It’s the most important job in the world, so don’t ever diminish the importance of cultivating your own light.
Ask yourself if you’ve been neglecting your mental health. Brainstorm ways to support yourself in the context of the way you show up for your children. For me, the biggest was reading the authors mentioned above. I also tried neurofeedback with a licensed therapist, meditation (sometimes hours at a time), massage, long walks (usually with audiobooks), snuggling my son and dog, journaling and reflecting on gratitude for what I had as opposed to what I was struggling with.
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