The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing

Therapeutic protocols and the legal system often facilitate emotional abuse in high-conflict divorced and divorcing families.  Both legal and therapeutic professionals are aware that problems exist, but neither has addressed the problem with medical and legal protocols, perhaps because Father’s Rights and Protective Mother advocates are at loggerheads over who is most responsible for and most victimized by these abuses.  But high-conflict families are the ones that produce the children most wounded by divorce. Moreover, the emotional abuse suffered in these families is every bit as damaging to children as child sex abuse.  I know this because my son, daughter, and I all suffered extreme coercive control and emotional abuse from my ex-husband and his second wife.  While my son and I survived the emotional abuse with permanent emotional scars but are basically OK, my daughter has struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).  BPD is, ironically, the...

Many years ago, when I was married to my ex-husband, he told me about his friend who had a child who died young. “He said you never get over it; just one day, he realized that his lost child wasn’t his first thought in the morning.” I haven’t gotten there yet.  Each morning I wake up, my first thought is about the daughter I lost to that ex-husband through an ultra-high conflict divorce.” Many will refer to this kind of loss as Parental Alienation.  I don’t like the term much because I am not comfortable with the man who coined it -- Richard Gardner.  He was not always as concerned about child sex abuse as he should have been, although he did do much to describe the situation and publicize it. I prefer Family Systems therapy and its founder to Richard Gardner’s work. Among other things, especially since I have encountered well-meaning, well-intentioned therapists who make things worse.  Because they are well-meaning, I am hesitant to ...