Over the next few weeks I want to focus on the tools I use on a daily basis to help me be a better parent.  The very first tool and, in my opinion, the most important tool is happiness.  I can just see the look on your face… Happiness? A tool?  Absolutely!

If you are going to raise happy, healthy children, you must first be happy and healthy yourself.  As the adage goes, “You cannot give that which you do not have.”  When you first separate from your spouse, you may not feel like being happy.  It is extremely stressful to juggle everything.  You now have to be comforter, discipliner, cook, chauffer, maid, and many other things to your children all by yourself.  Not to mention the emotional ups and downs you are going through from your recent change in relationship status.  One way or another though, you have to be strong for your children’s sake.

On my worst days, I found that faking it was the best that I could do.  Mildred Barthel said, “Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.”  If you cannot be genuinely happy, “fake it till you make it.”  Putting up a front for your children is essential so do what you can to be happy in front of them then when they are in bed, go ahead and let it out.

Some of the things you can do to make yourself happy are, 1) find a job that you like, 2) make time for hanging out with friends, and 3) go to a counselor.

1)    “Many things will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart… pursue those.”  Anonymous

I am extremely fortunate to work in an industry that I love, doing what I love, for a company that I love.  I know that not everyone is as lucky as I am in this area but I did not come by my job by accident either.  Straight out of high school, I knew that I wanted to be in the engineering business but I did not have the money to go to college and my parents were not in a position to help me.  So, I check into all my options.  One of my options was the military.  After speaking to an Air Force recruiter I learned that they could guarantee me a specific job.  I used that knowledge to my benefit and told them I would join if they guaranteed me a position in the Civil Engineering unit.  I had to wait 7 months for a position to open up but once it did, I headed off to basic training.  While in the military, they trained me in design, surveying, and construction management.  I had the great fortune to get on the job training which is the best type of training because your employer pays you while you are learning.  After getting out of the military, I used my GI Bill to complete my Bachelor’s degree.

I am not saying that you have to follow my path of joining the military to get the job you want.  What I would recommend is that you research companies that employ people in the types of job you want.  Find a few that provide tuition reimbursement and/or on the job training to their employees, then apply for any position that they have open.  Once you land a job, you can worry about working your way toward the position you want.  If you want to manage people, do not be afraid to start at the bottom and work your way up.  I have a dear friend from high school that started working at Kentucky Fried Chicken in high school and is still there today.  No, he is not still working as a fry cook.  He worked his way up to corporate management and is doing very well for himself.

When I first came to IMAIGNIT, I wanted to be the training manager.  However, the only job that they had open was an applications engineer.  So I took that job and worked my way into a project management position, then a solution center engineering manager, and now I am finally the training manager.  Of course, now that I am where I wanted to be 5 years ago, I am looking at even better possibilities for my future.  The key is I never gave up dreaming and working hard to get where I am today.

2)      Making time for hanging out with friends was the most difficult thing for me the first few years.  To be honest, I still struggle with it.  I work all week long so by the time the weekend comes, I do not want to be away from my children anymore.  In order to get time with other adults while being with my children, I like to get together with friends with children of their own.  That way, the kids can play and entertain each other while I have the opportunity to have an adult conversation.  This keeps me from unloading all my stress on my children while still allowing me to vent.  If you go this route, don’t forget to also have an all adult night every now and then.  I know that babysitters can get expensive so start by trying to get out at least once a quarter, and then set yourself up so that you can do it at least once a month.  You will find you are much happier from it.

3)      If you try the things above and you find that you are still not able to be happy, go see a counselor.  In the last 5 years, I have gone to two different counselors and it has been the best thing I could have done for myself and my children.  It gave me an outlet for my anger and someone to talk to about my fears that did not judge me.  Friends and family are great to talk to but having an unbiased individual that can help you better understand why you feel so sad is so beneficial.  Don’t think that every session will leave you feeling better.  There were days when I left the counselor’s office feeling worse than when I went in, but after thinking about the things we talked about, I was able to put certain events into perspective and overcome the sadness and anger that they created inside me.  I am a much better person for having gone and would go again in a heartbeat if I find myself having to fake being happy again in front of my children.  Because even though faking being happy in front of my children helped them find stability, being genuinely happy around them makes all the difference in their happiness.  They can sense how you are truly feeling and they feed off of your emotions more than many of us realize.  Now that I am genuinely happy, I have found that my children listen and mind much better and we all laugh a lot more.  You know your children are worth it so do it for them if no one else.

“Kids don’t make up 100% of our population, but they do make up 100% of our future.” – Zig Ziglar

Last week I wrote about how I became a single parent and what keeps me going strong each day.  This week I want to focus on the steps I took to break free and the mistakes I made along the way so that you do not have to make the same mistakes.

Step number one is gathering the strength you need to walk out.  My strength came from believing that leaving would make my life and my children’s lives better.  Then I convinced myself that I could make it on my own.  This is probably the hardest step because we have been programed for so long to believe that we cannot make it… that we need the person that is beating us down each day to survive.  In actuality, that breaking you down is giving you strength and endurance like no other.  I know that statement sounds ridiculous so let me put in a side story to help you understand what I mean.

Almost right out of high school, I joined the Air Force.  Friends and family laughed and ridiculed me because they did not think that I could make it through basic training.  To be honest, I was not sure I could either.  I was a skinny, knobby kneed little girl that was scared of her own shadow.  I would burst into tears if someone even looked at me cross.  I knew that it would not be easy but I was willing to try so that I could have the means to pay for college.  Once I got to basic training, I found that I flourished.  You see…. the military beats you down during basic training so that they can turn around and build you up in the image that they need you to be.  They need you to have strength and endurance so that if you should go to war, you will have the strength needed to come home in one piece.  I believe that the Lord gives you trials because he knows you have the strength inside to overcome them, he just needs you to realize it as well.  These trials build you up and prepare you for what is ahead.  The longer you have been in an abusive relationship, the stronger you will be when you finally break free.  I am not saying that it is easy… but the best things in life never are.

Even after leaving, I had to continually convince myself that I can do it on my own.  Each morning for three years, I looked in the mirror and told myself that I am strong enough, smart enough and worth enough before I started believing it.  It helped that I had a lot of friends and family rooting for me all along the way. 

*Note:  If you are not the one in a violent relationship but have someone you love who is, the best help you can give them is words of encouragement to keep moving forward.  I have heard that we need 7-10 positive words to outweigh the negative ones.  As a friend or loved one, you have your work cut out for you.

Before you leave, make sure that you are amply prepared to do so.  The first mistake that I made was not gathering (or presenting) proof that would help me protect my children easier.  Let me elaborate a bit… The last year I was with my husband, I kept a journal about the problems we had in our marriage.  I started the journal as a way of releasing some of the things I was keeping completely inside.  Outside of my journal, I only told one person about the things going on in my home.  My own family did not have a clue what my daughter had accused my husband of or the drugs I knew that he was on.  I was too ashamed to tell anyone but my best friend about what my daughter had said.  When the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) worker asked me if I had a journal or if I had told anyone else what was going on, I did not have the courage to tell her yes because she asked me in front of my husband.  I was much more concerned about how angry he would get and the rath that would come after she left than proving I was telling the truth.  Instead I trusted that the DCFS worker would write in her report that he admitted to doing drugs and that he admitted my daughter had accused him of this unthinkable act right in front of him. The lesson learned here is that you have to gather enough evidence and present it to the authorities so that they can do their job.  Some of that evidence might include keeping a journal of violent incidences, medical records, and a list of witnesses who may be able to speak on your behalf.  If you have experienced physical abuse, pictures of your cuts and bruises are vital.  Do not hesitate to go to the emergency room right after being attacked.  It is going to be your word against theirs’ if you do not gather the proper evidence.

Other things that are vital are important documents like birth certificates, driver’s license, pass ports, and important phone numbers.  Gather them and put them in a safe place where you can grab them quickly if you should have to leave before you plan to.

A few  of the things that I did right were: 1) find a place to live and leave without confronting my husband, 2) apply for a restraining order on my children’s behalf, 3) never give up doing everything that I can  to protect them, 4) learn to seek the help of others.

1)      I was extremely fortunate to find a great place in a safe neighborhood that I could afford.  Before actually moving, I spent two weeks cleaning and arranging clothes and household items that I would need so that I could pack them quickly.  I also arranged to have movers pack and move everything we could in one day while my husband was at work.  I knew all too well that anything I left would be ruined as soon as he noticed we were gone so I told the movers to take everything that looked like it belonged to me or my children.  Then I returned anything that was actually his a few months after leaving when I felt safe enough to hand it to him.

2)      The day before I moved out, I spent the day at the courthouse getting a restraining order to protect my children.  With the restraining order, I was able to have police stand guard while I packed everything my children and I would need to get by in our new home.  This gave me the sense of security that I needed so that I could pack more efficiently. (If you are constantly in a state of fight or flight, your mind does not think as clearly and you tend to miss a lot of things.)

3)      I never gave up.  For the last five years, I have fought to keep my children safe.  I have spent a lot of time and money in and out of court trying to prove that my children need to visit their father under the protection of a professional supervisor.  I have succeeded multiple times in getting supervised visitation ordered only to have it revoked a few months to a year later because he refused to visit with my girls with a supervisor present.  The courts seem to believe that a bad father is better for my children than no father at all.  In 2008, when I succeeded in getting supervised visitations ordered, I was dating someone whom I cared about a great deal.  When I no longer had full weekends without my children, he realized that staying with me would mean raising someone else’s children.  He was not ready for that.  It would have been easy for me to give in and let my ex-husband have unsupervised visitation so that I could be with this man but I knew that my children needed supervised visitation more than I needed a man in my life.  I also realized that the only man for me is one that is willing and able to help me raise my children in a healthy and loving home.

4)      Before even leaving, I had my daughter in counseling.  As part of that, I had the opportunity to go through Parent Child Interaction Training (PCIT).  This by far was the best thing that could have happened for my children and me.  PCIT gave me parenting skills that I would not have thought to gain otherwise.  It also brought me and my children much closer than would have been possible without it.

I am just now realizing how long this post is getting so I will cut it short.  There are a number of other steps you will want to consider taking according to Dr. Phil. A full list of them is below.

·         If you are in immediate danger, call the police.
·         Develop an escape plan which does not include confronting your abuser.
·         Contact your local battered women’s shelter, and know about laws and resources available to you before a  crisis. 
·         Keep evidence of physical abuse.
·         Keep a journal of all violent incidences.
·         Take important phone numbers.
·         Gather important documents — medical records, birth certificates, driver's license.
·         If injured, go to the doctor, report what happened and document the visit.
·         Plan with your children, and identify a safe place for them to go for help.
·         Try to set money aside.
·         Pack an extra set of clothing for yourself and your children.
·         Request police standby or an escort to the shelter.
If you need immediate assistance do not hesitate to call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 (800) 799-SAFE (7233).

"Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain." - Vivian Greene

I recently finished reading Grace by Richard Paul Evens.  It reminded me of how many women stay with abusive men (either physically or emotionally) because they think that they cannot make it on their own.  I am living proof that you can.  To prove it, let me tell you about my humble beginning.

I grew up in the small town of Price, Utah.  From the age of 5 to the age of 10, I lived on 5 acres just outside of town.  It was a wonderful existence.  My cousins lived just up the lane and we could go play for hours in the vast open space surrounding us.  We had a wash (dry creek bed) in our backyard that we often played in and went exploring in for miles.  We even built a great little fort in there using bushes for the walls and rocks and logs for furniture.  It quickly became the neighborhood hangout.  Then just after my mother’s 30th birthday my parents sat my sister, brother and me down and told us they were getting a divorce.  Not long after that, we moved from our wonderful home.  My mother rented a home in the center of town and my father rented a duplex on the east side of town.  After going back and forth between my mother’s home and my father’s for a while, my sister and I ended up living with my mother and my brother stayed with my father.

My mother, after getting pregnant at the young age of 16, dropped out of school and never even received her GED.  Therefore, her earning potential was very limited.  At the time of the divorce, she was working at the local drug store grossing $800 per month.  Yet she was determined to give my sister and me everything we wanted.  My sister became a cheerleader and I the high school mascot; both of which cost my mother a lot of money between uniforms, game trips, and national competitions.  Somehow, she made ends meet.  After watching my mother struggle so hard to put food on the table I swore I would never put myself in the same situation.  I was going to get married one time and work my hardest to not let it end in divorce.

Years later, I did get married and I quickly found out how hard it is to keep a marriage together.  There has to be a lot of compromise from both parties to make it work.  Though my husband never hit me, he was very verbally abusive.  He learned how to make me feel so worthless that I found myself scared to try anything hard.  At the time of our marriage, I was working on an engineering degree at the University of Utah.  He tried many times to talk me into quitting school but I was determined to finish.  However, it wasn’t long before I changed my major to Geography because it was easier and would not take as long to complete.  I also quit going to church because it was easier to not fight with him about me not being by his side for 2 hours on a Sunday morning.  The ultimate compromise I made was selling my rental property (a condo I owned before our marriage).  He told me that I either had to sell the property or we would get a divorce.  Since we had already had our first child and I was pregnant with our second at the time, I of course chose to keep my family together.  We tried marital counseling which seemed to help for a while but it did not take him long to go back to his verbally abusive ways.

Less than 5 months after selling my condo, my oldest child (who was 2 ½ at the time) announced, in front of her father, that he put his finger in an unthinkable place.  He denied it immediately and swore he would never do such a thing.  Not knowing what to do, I took her to her pediatrician but there was no evidence of abuse.  So I had to trust that he was innocent.  I tried to forget about the incident but it was not easy.  It was constantly in the back of my mind. At the time, I was pregnant and working part time at Salt Lake Community College with no benefits so there was no way I could leave even if I wanted to.  I found myself constantly praying about it.  Then May came and I gave birth to our second child and life seemed great again.  It was a big adjustment to having a second child.  Both my husband and my first child were very jealous of the baby.  I was so happy to be a mother again that I did not let it get me down.  I just dealt with it and kept moving forward (mostly because I did not know what else to do.)

Then August came and I found my oldest daughter doing something to herself that disturbed me.  When I asked her to stop, she said, “Why? Daddy does it to me.”  I felt as though life stopped altogether.  That evening I took her to Primary Children’s Hospital to report it.  After putting her through extremely invasive tests they determined that, again, there was no evidence of abuse.  It was me this time that gave the ultimatum.  I told him we had to go to counseling if we were going to make our marriage work.  Three weeks later, we still did not have an appointment for family counseling so I secretly found an apartment and left the last day of September.  When he came home from work that evening he found the house cleaned out of anything that was mine or the children’s.

Just like my mother, I found myslef a single mother at the age of 30.  I have looked back a number of times and wondered if I did the right thing.  I will even admit that I considered going back a couple of times.  But the one thing that kept me strong is the thought of my children and how much better off they are today because I got them out of that environment.  I do not know for sure if my husband really did the things my daughter said he did.  I do know that she is a completely different person now.  At the age of three she was so afraid of everything and everyone that she would not even play at a McDonald’s play area if there was anyone else anywhere near it (including children smaller than her).  Today at the age of 8, she is confident and strong and reading at a tenth grade level.  She loves doing gymnastics, helping others, and being the center of attention.  She gives me the strength I need to each day to continue being the example I need to be for her so that she can have a better future and be anything she wants to be.

Raising a child on your own is no easy task, yet too many of us are doing it with little to no help.  You don't have to.  Join me each week to hear stories of how other single parents are successfully raising their children to be the kind of people this world needs.