The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Sometimes even when we know what to do, we don’t know what to do in the moment. I met a toxic person recently in a place where I thought I’d meet kind people — a progressive Christian group. It is the type of Christian group populated with kind-hearted, highly educated people with high incomes who are generous in helping people who appear to need money, but that’s another story. After church services, people prepare snacks, including fresh fruit and raw, unsalted nuts, cookies or brownies, and coffee and tea. People sit at tables with chairs, which is probably pretty normal for most churches. After services, I gathered with others to set up tables and chairs for people to gather and chat while they ate their snacks. I ended up sitting across from one of my favorite attendees—an older man who served time in prison after bombing a military recruitment center in the 1960s. He was serving a life term in prison when he realized he had used violence to protest against violence and tha...

  How to Journal to Document Abuse or Conflict I went through eight-plus years of intense co-parenting conflict with my ex-husband that lasted until both our children were over 18 and still resurfaced whenever there was a reason for us to communicate about our children.          It was hell. The most important piece of advice I can give any parent going through co-parenting hell is to try to make life as happy as possible for your children. Try not to burden them with your problems, but that is the advice everyone gives. It is true, but even better is to make sure you and your children have fun together, whether it is buying art supplies and a giant pad of paper and making pictures together, cooking a special meal together, walking in a park, or playing in a stream together. But if you are going to go to court before a judge and assume that you will, if your relationship with your co-parent is filled with conflict…then you have to document your case...

Documenting Child Custody Battles and Abuse (c) V. Jones   I went through a high-conflict child custody battle that included false accusations of abuse and other wrongdoing made by my ex-husband against me; I won despite the accusations. How? I obtained the best documentation I could to cope with false accusations of abuse—a therapist for my children and a court-ordered Parenting Time Coordinator for my ex-husband and me. My ex-husband resisted obtaining a coordinator and using his health insurance to pay for my children to be in therapy, so I had to pay for our children’s therapist out of pocket while I waited for our court-ordered mediation to fail so the case could be heard by a judge. My ex-husband had found the therapist, but he rarely took our children to therapy and, even more rarely, went to therapy with them and the therapist.  Guess which parent the therapist testified in support of? Me, obviously. What do you do when you can’t afford therapy? Well, yo...