June 07, 2021

Stacie Wimer - Ep. 25.4 - It’s not on me anymore, it’s not on me to keep it all together. All I have to worry about now is myself, and my daughter.

10 minutes

In this episode we explore the feeling of being independent and what it was like to let go of the other children you helped raise and who are now divided from you. We talk about what it’s like when the relationship has to end. Stacie even admits that the end was not what she wanted, but chose it when faced with having to choose. She admits to many things inside this episode, the most important, her granting space to the children she helped raise to have their own choice. She tells us how she respected the ripple effect she could cause them and the hurt behind it.

This episode presented a difficulty I have not encountered before in listening. Stacie was placed in a position where the children she still loves and cares for were no longer accessible to her without the possibility of repercussions, unspoken repercussions. I find it hard to accept that parents could deny children the opportunity to choose someone, only because the marriage didn’t work out. In my marriage, the greatest lost I endured was that of my step daughter, whom I still to date have never heard from and wish I could. But I did not give her life, so how could I ask that? I hear that in Stacie’s story, and I too respect the boundary placed before me, the unspoken boundary riddled with traps.

I do not know Stacie’s ex, nor his family, but I hope that if they hear this episode that they stay for the whole series. I hope that they hear the loss their children are experiencing by not having a woman, a mother, a friend like Stacie be part of their lives.

If you find that you are the barrier between your kids and someone who loves them, I implore you to consider that denying children love under the guise of a divorce is not a just way to protect them. In the end, if a relationship doesn’t work. Distinguish why it didn’t without punishing the ones around you could benefit from having a good person around them.

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