As I was reading the words of a young mother in Washington state who recently committed suicide, I was reminded of an essay a British mum wrote and I wanted to rerun it. Kodi Hawthorne had her nine month old daughter taken from her in a horrific battle instigated by her ex-boyfriend Travis. It was a hateful campaign to completely destroy her, and it did. (Please moms, get help before considering suicide. This hurts so many people including the children and it lets the bastard win.)
Back to the British mum…Marie is incredible at expressing the horrifying experience of children being ripped from their mothers by fathers out of spite. Her blog is Kids Need Mums.
If I were a ghost, I could spend more time with my children – yet another nightmare dream
I woke up crying from a dream I had last night. The tears started during my dream: my dream-self was crying and as I woke up, I was still crying.
I had dreamt that I had become a ghost. My ghost-self was able to be anywhere that my children were – it felt wonderful. If they were asleep in their room, I could sit on the end of the bed and just watch them sleeping. If they were sitting quietly reading a book, I could sit next to them mouthing the words alongside them and watch the expressions changing on their faces when they read a funny piece or a puzzling piece or simply watch them becoming drawn into a fantasy world. A world where I was too. I could run outside and play with them, chasing after a ball or just cheering them on…
Nobody would notice, so nobody could stop me. No-one could tell me that I shouldn’t be near my children. I could spend all day and all night with them. If I was lucky, they might become aware of my presence in a positive way and just feel comforted that their mum was with them then they could sleep soundly, assured in the knowledge that my love was all around them even when I was not physically able to hold them and cuddle them.
No wonder I awoke crying…..it’s simply a dream and not a possibility…..
[Don't worry - I'm not suicidal. Far from it, I would never do that to my kids and I feel no reason to do it since making a full recovery]
I dread going to sleep nowadays. Most nights I dream about missing my children, about them being taken away, about them being in trouble and not being able to help them, about having to witness their tears and not be able to wipe them away, about them growing up without me, forgetting that they had a mum. I can only sleep with a sleeping tablet and then I still wake up fretting with a dread in my stomach and memories of the dreams I’ve had floating in and out in the early hours.
I never tell the children I have these dreams. When they tell me of their own bad nightmares, they tell of dreams of me having my head chopped off or about being eaten by a giant spider or about being kidnapped and me not coming to rescue them. My youngest wakes up scared that I really have had my head chopped off and is constantly scared that her dream will come true. She’s fretting about whether I’m safe and whether I will die. No matter how much reassurance I give her, she’s not convinced that I’m alright. She’s often telling me that she loves me “to the moon, and all the way around the universe and every atom in the universe!…..” but then goes on to ask how much I love her, seeking constant reassurance that I do.
My son is being teased at school for the fact that his mum doesn’t live with him; they tease him in front of other boys saying “your mum doesn’t live with you” in a taunt, repeating it until my son has to walk away. What does he tell them? How does he explain? He can’t; he simply has to walk away, hurting. No other boy in the whole school has a mother who doesn’t live with her son. He has to nurse that hurt on his own. Unlike other children with divorced parents who can share their hurt, he can’t; his family story is different from everyone else’s. It’s acceptable to have a father living away, but there is no other mother who is……How does he explain that even to himself, let alone to anyone else….
No wonder we are all having nightmares; it is a nightmare, whether you are awake or asleep and there is no end in sight….this is not a dream, but a harsh reality that my children and I are living in and we won’t wake up to find that it’s just a dream…..it’s horribly real.
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