Meet my scarf collection, something I've been building since our big move this Spring. I absolutely love scarves! I realized today, that after a little shopping spree for clothes yesterday, I'm finally starting to feel like I have "things" again. I moved here with a bag of clothes and my laptop, so I practically started with nothing. My life for the past year has been a lot like someone's life must be when there is a fire that burns down their entire home and everything inside along with it. I often wish it really had been a fire that displaced me and my daughter from our past life. That would have been a lot easier. Moving on and moving forward has been no easy task for either of us, and although I respect the importance of facing what we went through and accepting it all, I still wish I could just erase it all.
I attend a domestic violence survivors support group every Thursday, and as of last week, I've started bringing my daughter with me those nights so she can take part in the children's group that is held at the same time. I had originally been bringing her to see a psychologist earlier in the afternoon on Thursdays, but that ended up a complete disaster. Through my daughter's school, we were referred to a sort of community outreach program who suggested a psychologist for her to see. They told me and J-E that this psychologist was their go-to expert for victims of childhood trauma. Unfortunately, our trust in their judgment was very poorly placed. At her third session, following all those visits being told by the psychologist that we were not allowed to discuss the violence my daughter witnessed, J-E and I posed a few questions about the woman's approach to my daughter's treatment. Although I had expressly insisted from the start of these meetings that J-E was to be privy to everything that went on during the appointments and that I expected him to be given every bit the same respect and rights as a biological parent would be given, the psychologist had the nerve, in front of my daughter mind you, to insist that he leave her office in the middle of the third appointment. She went on to point directly at him, while my daughter was RIGHT THERE, and insist that he had no say-so whatsoever because he "is not a biological party to the child." He and I both were deeply offended that she would say such a thing, especially in front of my daughter. J-E left, and I removed my daughter from the room, telling the horrible woman that she shouldn't bother to schedule any future appointments because we would never be seeing her for a therapy visit again.
You'd better believe I am filing a grievance about this matter. Not only did the lady spend a mere fifteen minutes with my daughter before she was trying to [very inaccurately] label her with ADHD, she refused to hear anything about WHY my daughter needed to be seeing a therapist - how do you HELP someone if you don't know WHAT they need help with?! - and bottom line, she was downright rude and unprofessional.
Today, we were reminded of the psycho-psychologist event when someone from my daughter's school called J-E's phone and insisted, yet again, that the school was refusing to listen to or divulge any information to him. The guy's trying to help me out, so maybe they could save me a little time by letting him give them answers to questions that he knows just as well as I do. Instead, the lady insisted upon speaking only to me. It's like this on a regular basis - they call his phone [because my cell phone is a useless brick from home and has next to no reception] and refuse to speak to him, leaving him to have to come chase me down to answer simple, stupid questions that become just a waste of everyone's time. Well, I called the woman back and after we handled what needed to be taken care of, I questioned her refusal to work with J-E when I have repeatedly asked everyone to keep him privy to everything. I went on to ask what the hell I have to do to change the school's refusal to speak with J-E. She went off on this huge tangent saying that J-E has to adopt my daughter before he can have any say-so, and started going on about her husband adopting her daughter, blah-di-freaking-blah. And then came the ringer : she added such a nice touch when she said, "You just never know where life is going to take you." Excuse me? All I know for sure is what I have today, and today I have a REAL father for my child.
J-E and I phoned the school principal to discuss this matter. She yelled at the woman over the phone for us to hear [isn't that adorably ghetto?], apologized for what had been said to us, and gave us the information we had needed all along about how to change J-E's rights to parent my daughter when it came to dealing with the school. It was such a simple answer : have a letter notarized stating what I want him to have access to and bring it to the school to be kept in our daughter's file. For fuck's sake, people, was that so hard? NO! J-E is raising my daughter as his own, and she adores him and sees him as nothing less than her only father. If I died tomorrow, I would die knowing that J-E would watch over my little girl. He and I both are sick and tired of society denying him the right to be a parent. I am thankful every day that he came into our lives and has taken on the role of her father. She deserves a real dad after being cheated out of one the first go-around. I would never have gone around telling people that J-E was anything less than her biological father if it weren't for my need to protect her from the possibility that my ex-husband come looking for us and turn up at her school one day. Because of that fear, I felt I had to tell them about the protective order, and because I want to see to it that all her needs are met, I had to tell the school that I recently removed her from a violent, abusive home-life. Hopefully things start to change, because we are getting fed up with people disrespecting us just because we appear to be young and because J-E isn't my daughter's biological father.
In happier news, which is hard to come by these days, J-E rescued a dog yesterday. J-E already has a 2-year-old American Bulldog from the same bloodline. The breeders recently reached out to him asking for help finding a home for some of their pups. Unfortunately, there was an accidental breeding, the owners are living in an RV, and coyotes have been circling the kennels at night, endangering the younger dogs. After living in SoCal, I am all-too-familiar with how much of a threat coyotes pose to domestic animals. J-E traded the breeders 2 bags of dog chow for what would have been a $1500 dog. She's the most adorable runt of the litter named Mouse, and is almost completely white aside from a tan "mascara" marking around one eye. I really, really love bully breeds, especially because I miss my old pitbull so much. I raised my daughter alongside my pitbull, and she's been so sad ever since my ex-husband threw him out god-knows-where. When we moved here, she was so thrilled that J-E had his big American Bulldog, and they've gotten along brilliantly but the dog often just ignores her. J-E made a brilliant point about raising young victims of childhood trauma and sufferers of PTSD with puppies to help them form strong attachments. At times, because I am dealing with my own slew of emotional issues and PTSD, I can't always be the best person for my daughter to cling to, so having a close bond with our new dog could be a deeply beneficial relationship. [I suggest you take a look at this website J-E came across on the matter : http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/trauma_ptsd_attachment.asp]. My daughter is thrilled to have a puppy to play with! J-E is such a sweetie, always finding ways to spin things in an effort to help us both out in our struggle to move on after so many years of abuse. <3
