8 Critical Steps to Transforming Your Life after Losing
Custody of Your Child!
Loss of Custody for a parent simply means that you no longer have primary
custody of your child.
It does not mean that you do not have rights as a parent;
and as a parent you are still a very important part of your child’s life. The issues
and challenges differ for every non-custodial mother as well as the events leading
up to them; however, the emotions that the rock the mothers’ worlds are common.
Little did I know it was all about me. My mind was always on the kids. Did they
miss me? Did they hate me? Did they really believe I was a terrible mother? A
terrible Person? I was so humiliated and I was an emotional roller coaster. I had
to be strong on the outside while I was a wreck on the inside. My self-esteem was
shattered. I lost myself completely. It was horrible for me. You never want to
allow your kids to feel guilty. You have to stay strong on the outside. You can’t
really talk about it. There’s nothing anyone can do.
When my kids went to live with their father my world turned completely upside
down. It comparably changed as much as when I was married and had our first
child with the difference being on opposite ends of the happiness spectrum.
I ran
the gamut of emotions over the course of many years even long after our kids were
grown and had children of their own. I was alone with no one to talk to and I had
no idea that it didn’t have to be this hard. What did I learn? That it was my
attitude all along. And it is completely in my power to change my attitude.
Today, acceptance is my mantra. I accept total responsibility for my attitude
about everything that has happened to me, what I’ve done and what I
accomplished through hard work, discipline, desire and passion.
So, no matter what your life looks like now I can promise with the application of
these 7 steps, there is life after divorce and loss of custody. Here are the 7
Critical Steps You Need To Feel Happy Again!
1. ACCEPT that it happened and let go of YOUR CONTROL.
If you are like I was when my children’s father was awarded custody, you
experienced a number of emotional reactions such as disbelief, denial or fear.
You look for reasons to support these feelings and stay in a state of
immobilization or fighting a lost cause, possibly making matters for you even
worse than they already are.
Blaming yourself keeps you stuck, feeling like a victim. It doesn’t
accomplish anything. Fear immobilizes you. When you stay in victim mode
you are immobilized with fear. You wait for what is going to happen next to
you.
A monster is only a monster because you don’t know what it looks like. Once
you know what it looks like, you identify it differently and you can start
figuring out a way to deal with it. Once you are sick and tired of letting it
control you and scare you, the sooner you accept and the sooner you move
forward. Things can change, but it’s important not to spend all your energy
on thinking you have to change it.
Critical Healing Tip: Accept that it happened. It is what it is. Even if you
want, hope and plan to get your children back, acknowledge that it may not
happen. Do the best you can for yourself and your children, working with
what you have. Appreciate any and all time and communication with them.
Express love at every opportunity. If you are okay, they will be more apt to
be okay. Your children pay attention to your response to everything, so
think about your influence on how they feel about themselves and where
they are.
2. Evaluate/Analyze the Situation without Emotional Attachment
Step outside of yourself and take a look at what actually is. See your
situation as a blessing even if it’s hard. Every time you feel anger, realize
you’re giving away your power. There is a message for you in your situation
and when you look deeper into it, you’ll discover what that is. Eventually,
you will find this is a gift and things will change for you for the better.
EXPERIENCE the LOSS OF CUSTODY as a failure rather than you BECOMING
a failure. As Zig Ziglar says: “Failure is an event, not a person.” YOU are
not a failure. Losing custody is something that happened; it does not define
you as a person. Admit you could have done things differently. And
recognize you can’t change what has already been done so you can move on.
You may or may not get your kids back. However, you can master how you
feel by having faith that everything seems to work out perfectly in the end.
Critical Healing Tip: Make the experience bigger than you rather than about
you. Learn to meditate and ask for understanding. Look for the blessing in
the experience. Acknowledge you don’t own your kids, they are not
possessions. They are a gift to you for whatever time you have with them.
3. You are still their MOTHER.
Loss of custody creates a huge hole in your heart. You probably know that
empty feeling all too well. It’s like a vacuum sucking in whatever feelings
are available like a wound fills with blood. For example, if you feel anger,
fear, hatred or sorrow for yourself it’s going to lodge in the hole in your heart
and there won’t be room for feelings of love, happiness or forgiveness until
you release some of the other feelings.
Even when your children aren’t with you, you are still their mother and you
still affect your kids’ emotional and physical state of happiness. Time and
distance can’t block thoughts and feelings. Your heart is still connected to
your children and they feel it. You can send them love and your child will
feel it whether or not you get the opportunity to say it or hear about it. Just
know it.
Critical Healing Tip: Work out your negative emotions and let them go
before you focus on your kids. Love without expectations or conditions.
Love them, because love is not interrupted by time or space. It is felt even
when not spoken. Point to remember: in order to love another you must
love yourself first because you cannot give what you do not have. When you
love yourself you have to share that love with another.
If you don’t feel your own importance, you can’t expect them to know their
own importance without you role modeling self-love.
You may have a
challenge with falling in love with you again, but no worries, because you can
learn to love yourself again with the help of a mentor or a coach. Here’s my
suggestion for you: don’t waste any more time feeling blame or anger. Take
charge of your life and live again!
There is a wonderful book written by Kimberly Ann Coots called “Your Divine
Worth”. I highly recommend this book for guidance in finding your self-worth
and learning to love you again.
4. Express Your Emotions so that you can release them.
Hiding your emotions does not make them go away. Worse yet, they get
passed onto others, particularly your kids. Kids have a tendency to sense
your guilt and they feel guilty, your anger and they get angry too, you feel
badly and they feel they did something wrong, you blame others and they
blame themselves. There is energy in your emotions and it can be felt,
particularly by your kids. They have an uncanny ability to absorb and they
internalize it. And it changes who they are.
Repressed emotions also affect other areas of your life such as your career,
relationships, family members, and your self-esteem, feelings of worthiness,
anger, trust, and fear. They can change you as a person – who you are.
When you encounter resistant emotions and limiting beliefs, it helps to have
a way to handle these on your own. The great thing is, when you begin to
remove the limiting beliefs (your concerns, fears, and doubts) that are in
your way, things become easier.
Critical Healing Tip: Give yourself an opportunity to acknowledge and release
negative emotions so you can visit your children in love. Do not hide or bury
them; they will not go away. The very thing you may want to hold onto is
the very thing you need to give away. Let go of your negative emotions.
They do not serve you. Make the best of your situation.
Here are a number of techniques for helping you overcome any resistant
emotions or limiting beliefs. These include: Byron Katie‟s „The Work”; The
Sedona Method; Meridian Tapping Techniques, such as EFT (Emotional
Freedom Techniques); or learning to meditate. (There are numerous ways to
meditate and you need to try several until you find which works best for
you.)
5. Ask for Help
You are not alone. It’s easy to believe you are the only one who
understands what you are going through, but the fact is that even though
you have a unique story that led up to your loss of custody, it is common for
other mothers who have lost custody battles to experience those emotions
themselves as well as understand the pain you have. You have gone through
this experience for a reason and talking to others is a great way to find how
you can benefit by sharing your story with others and hearing theirs.
Critical Healing Tip: Join a group. There are a number of different groups of
mothers who lovingly accept other mothers who have lost custody of their
children into their group to support, vent, share, encourage, offer their
knowledge, etc. I suggest the Facebook group “Mothers Without Custody” or
NANCM , “National Association of Non Custodial Moms, Inc” to name a
couple.
6. Find the GIFT in the experience.
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Appreciate what you have. Whether it’s
time with your children, phone calls, the experience of having them, or
knowing about them; be grateful for anything and everything you can think
of. In my case, I found a deeper stronger relationship with my kids during
our weekend visits than when I had custody. We took our time together for
granted until we lost it. We learned to respect and appreciate each other
much more than before.
Your body is a communicator of your thoughts. Remember your thoughts
create your emotions, and you are in complete control over what you think.
Your emotions create your attitude and your attitude affects your behaviors.
When we get a handle on our thoughts, we can then get a grip on our
emotion, thus, being able to do something about our behaviors. Sometimes
our behaviors reveal STRONG emotions.
Critical Healing Tip: Take time each day to appreciate everything in your life.
Create a Gratitude List each morning, writing down at least twenty things
that you are grateful for before doing anything else. Sometimes things are
taken for granted until you lose them. Like how often are we thankful that
we are able to breathe? Anyone who has asthma or is using oxygen will tell
you that it is a blessing. You can be thankful for the sun shining, that your
dog is happy to see you or your car starting on the first attempt at turning
the key. Make a mental note of each miracle that happens every day. Focus
on the positives in your life. Recognize the gift you are to others. You will
see a difference in your life when you change your thoughts and your
perception of everything that is around you.
7. IDENTIFY WHO YOU ARE AND REDEFINE YOUR PURPOSE.
Go deep within and find the spiritual side of yourself. Make this bigger than
you are and know that you are going to need help. Ask for Divine guidance
to the answers you seek. You had a purpose before you had children and
you have one now. Look within and figure out all that you learned so far and
what you want to get from this experience.
What do you have going on inside that you haven’t dealt with yet? Do you
feel all the weight is on your shoulders? Are you feeling sadness and anger;
as though you just exist rather than LIVE? You can make your life
meaningful instead of painful. You can be joyful, laugh and be the light for
others. You can help heal and embrace the lives of others.
Critical Healing Tip: Shift – find something bigger than your pain. “The best
way to find you is to lose yourself in service to others” (Gandhi). Be what
you want to attract in world – understand what you really want and need and
then create it. All prosperity comes from giving “energy”. As Cynthia Kersey
stated in an interview, “The roots of deep happiness is deep giving without
expectation of any kind”.
8. FORGIVE Yourself – Stop Beating Yourself Up
Hanging onto guilt is just that - HANGING. It serves no useful purpose. As a
matter of fact, no one can continue living with guilt. A person will turn it
into something they can deal with. For instance, if you continue to blame
yourself or allow someone else to give you a reason to feel guilty, after a
while you might turn it into anger or feeling sorry for yourself, or even justify
what it is you’re feeling guilty about. Then you express the new feeling
(such as anger) in some way and it gets carried over to others.
Your left over baggage from past may be the reason you choose a partner
much like your parent or caregiver, where you work and how much you
work, how you think about money, how you perceive you are seen to others,
and the list goes on. Your choices at the time you were a child were made
for you, good or bad. But in reality, nothing from your childhood has
anything to do with the choices you make now, and as an adult, you create
everything that happens to you through your own choices. You are
responsible for putting yourself in whatever situation you encounter with
your choices. For instance, you may not decide that you want to be in an
accident, but you do choose to be in that particular place at that particular
time. And you make those decisions through your thoughts, perceptions and
attitudes. Do you want others to determine your thoughts, perceptions and
attitudes by believing their judgments, criticisms and conclusions? Make
them your own and realize you have the power to change them as well as
change your life.
Critical Healing Tip: Know that you are a child of God and you have an
important mission in this life. Everything you experience in life has a
purpose and it is what makes you who you are. All pain is to make you
stronger. It is no mistake that you had your experiences and you are not
being punished, you are developing. The greater your pain, the greater your
calling. Think of ways you may be able to use the blessings from your
experiences to serve others. You have gifts you are meant to share. Know
that you are a worthy being.
In Summary:
Losing custody of your children has an emotional impact particularly on
women because of the feelings of judgment and criticism that is common to
most mothers who have undergone the experience. Emotions are caused
from thoughts, and thoughts stem from past experiences, many times
carried over from childhood. These 8 Critical Steps are for you to help guide
you in realizing that changing your perspective by changing your thoughts
can change the direction of your life. For information on more in depth
guidance please contact me at http://www.marydirksen.com.
Blessings to you along with much peace and love.
Mary Dirksen