The Prophecy
A greater woman stays cool
But, I howl like a wolf at the moon
Last week was a mess. It started on terrible footing and by the end of the week I felt like I was holding a tornado together with bandaids.
I still feel like that. And the remnants are still weighing on me.
The crazy thing is that what occurred didn’t even happen to ME. It happened to my daughters while on their weekend with their dad. I’ve talked about it on TikTok, but in case you are not on that platform, I will give you a recap.
During my girls’ most recent weekend visit with their dad, on that Saturday night, my youngest was spoken to very aggressively by her father. My youngest daughter and her step-sister were playing and my daughter got hurt by the doll her step-sister was swinging around. I am not sure how things progressed at first. All I know is that her dad and his wife were in the girls’ room speaking to my daughter. His wife told my daughter she was “just making things up” and my daughter, in her defense, was trying to tell her dad that his wife was lying in stating that she making anything up. Their dad’s response was to yell and cuss at our daughter. He told/yelled at her “that is fucked up", “you crossed the line,” and then called her a “little shit.” Keep in mind, his wife is in the room with them and does nothing. She let him do that. She didn’t stand up for her or try to diffuse the situation.
Her two older sisters, who share a bedroom next to theirs, heard their dad, got scared, and moved from their bedroom to the kitchen to distance themselves.
I did not know of these events until the following day after I picked them up and brought them back home. Both Nate and I listened to what happened and then made sure all the girls knew that their sister did nothing to warrant that reaction. Even if my daughter straight up called his wife a LIAR (which she did not), that would never warrant an aggressive response. I’ve been on the receiving side of his aggressive words and yelling and it shook me as a grown adult. I simply cannot fathom how scared my daughter felt in that moment and when I think about it, it makes my blood boil.
I spent a better part of last week filled with rage and anger, but I don’t like to make decisions that are based in so much strong emotion. I asked for clarity. And, I thought I had attained it, but I don’t think I have. And I think that is the weight I am feeling. The old echoes of his empty threats and words made to doubt myself still slither around in my mind and I find myself holding back my punches when I know better. I don’t want to look back and see that instead of helping my daughters, I just let their dad continue to repeat the same behavior and continue hurting them. That isn’t being a good mother. I want them to have a relationship with their dad, but I need it to be a healthy one for ALL three of them. And right now, it is so unstable
Do you remember a movie called Contact? It’s a 90s movie with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey about making contact with other beings in space. It’s a really good movie. I highly suggest you check it out if you’ve never seen it. There is a point in which they build a ship to send Jodie Foster’s character into space. They were given the plans by these other beings and they build it to scale, exactly as they drew it up, except for one thing. They added a chair for her to sit in. The plans were for one person to travel and they didn’t include a seat. Thus, our little human brain thought adding it just made sense. When she takes off and slingshots into a wormhole, the seat she is sitting in begins to shake violently and it starts to scare her. I promise, this story has significance…After a bit she decides to unstrap herself from the chair and she begins to calmly float while the seat continues to shake and then break off. She realized that she was better without it. That they should have just stuck to the plans and trusted that there was a reason for it not being included.
Right now, I feel like I am sitting in the seat that is violently shaking and I’m scared. I don’t know if I am brave enough to unstrap myself and it makes me feel weak.
