Progress. What a beautiful word. Promising, carrier of hope for the betterment of… everything. It’s been 7 years now since the exact same thing had happened to me. From one day to the other, my daughter had disappeared, taken away by her mother. I fell into what seemed a bottomless pit. And it took such a long time to crawl out of there.
And here we are again.
Sunday I received the note that they had gone. Monday she confirmed it with the usual texts, writing what a terrible father I am, with a very notable desperation to convince herself of that. Because, as I’m finding out these days, everyone else had told her the opposite. That I’m a great dad. Even Lily had told her that, when the mother spew in my face what a miserable father I were, right in front of Lily. “There are no bad parents here. You just fight too much.” That 7 year old knows.
Which gives me confidence.
I’ve been training myself for this moment for years now. Therapies of all kind, implementing breathing techniques and meditation into my life, reading and talking and living philosophy. I hoped this day would never come again, that something good would happen, that I would develop superhuman power and actually be able to help the mom the way I never could, the way that she needs.
It’s in crisis when we test our progress.
And either I went into shock and built a huge wall around all my emotions, or I did a huge load of progress. And it’s probably the latter. The emotions are there, the hurricanes of thoughts, the suddenly high heartbeat and tears in the eyes. Not everything can be breathed away, nor should it. But I stayed so much calmer this time. I knew what to do, I was prepared.
Everything gets easier.
When I told a friend of mine a few years ago that the second time the mom would rip Lily away from me or take her out of the country, it wouldn’t hurt as bad, my friend was shocked. How could I say something like that? It’s my daughter! It’s not about loving her less or shielding myself from attachment or alikes. It’s for one letting go of what I can’t control, and two trusting in myself to be able to handle and remedy any outcome, and damage that Lily will sustain.
And I did.
This is the 5th time that she’s out of the country illegally. Most likely, honestly, I have no idea where they are. That drove me crazy before. Now it doesn’t. On the long term, this will help me to get more legal grounds to push for real coparenting. And I know that on a very basic level, her mom is a great mother. She does take good care of her on everything that doesn’t require empathy or higher forms of ratio.
And I know they’ll be back.
Lily and I have a great relationship. Lily will push to come back. And she can be feisty. And nasty. And incredibly annoying. She will give her mom a hard time, I’m sure of that. She knows that I’m the one that is on her side, that wants real coparenting.
And then there’s money.
Having a child is expensive. Sooner or later, that will become a factor. Probably rather sooner than later, knowing her patterns. She will blame it all on me, of course, call it “vicarious violence”, something that is en vogue at the moment. Disregarding the fact that she’s stripping Lily of the right of having her father present, which is the base for child support here. But that’s not important right now.
Everything will be fine.
Well, not completely, but fine enough. I can feel it. My psychologist taught me a technique called heartmath, where I not only deep regularly and feel my body, but rather recall the memory of a feeling. Mine is Lily giving me “bear hugs”, pressing herself against me so hard that I pretend to choke. It’s one of many, to be honest. And I can feel her. I can feel that she will be back.
Sooner rather than later.
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!
Pictures taken with a Motorola Edge 60 Pro, I reserve the copyright - but feel free to ask if you want to use one of the pictures!
