The shock of the Temporary Order was slowly starting to subside. I reached for every coping strategy I learned over the past year, and I reached hard. I surrendered, I payed attention to my ego, I manifested, and I incessantly listened to motivational Podcasts, Youtubes, and Ted Talks. Here are a few:

• The Universe Has Your Back
• Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversation: Eckart Tolle
• Choices That Can Change Your Life

Once again I managed to convince myself that this was just a rough patch, and I would get through it. Everything would work out in the end.

As per the Temporary Order, I scheduled an appointment with the therapist for Monday at 10am. The Temporary Order stated that I would start the new unsupervised schedule with my daughter the Monday after my first visit with the therapist. Did that mean I would get to pick her up from school that same day? Or the following Monday?

The language was arbitrary and no one knew what was going to happen. This meant that I had to ask my husband’s permission in order to make my first unsupervised day with my daughter happen the same day. I had no idea what he would say, but I knew for sure that his main goal was to keep me away from her. I was scared.

I was also confused as to what I was going to discuss with this therapist. The forensic report stated that there was no abuse, and since my daughter had been away from me for almost a year there was definitely no breast feeding. After some conversations with my lawyer I started to understand that the court wanted me to move toward my husband’s new “mainstream” parenting practices, and away from my “holistic” ones.

FML

All the research and hard work that I put into giving my daughter the best life possible was being shunned. Apparently I shouldn’t be concerned that she is eating pizza for dinner, that makes me too stringent. It wasn’t normal that I powered through extended breastfeeding so that I could provide her the best nourishment. That was taboo. What kind of parallel universe was I living in??

However, I knew that getting my daughter and I back together was more important than any of this, so I was prepared to tell the therapist that I was willing to succumb to “traditional” parenting.

The therapist’s office was just a few blocks from my office and I felt my knees shaking while I walked over. What if this guy was crooked? What if he had some kind of deal with my husband to write the court and tell them I was a danger to my daughter. What if he just didn’t like me?? I called my lawyer in a panic.

“I need a pep talk”, I mumbled in a shaky voice.

“Paulina, you are a lovely person, and he is going to be predisposed to like you. Don’t worry about the things you can’t control, and concentrate on the things you can. DO NOT say anything bad about your husband.”

I walked into a small dark office and saw a small bald man. He smiled a big fake smile at me. I smiled a bigger one back. My heart was pounding. Did he already think I was some sort of criminal? Would he do something to stop me from picking up my daughter from school today?

“If you have your portion of payment, I’ll take it today. I haven’t received the father’s portion, and I’ve already reached out to the court about it.”

Shocking.

I handed him a check.

“Thank you. I haven’t read any of the paperwork yet, so can you please catch me up on what happened? Start from the beginning.”

Oh my god. I wasn’t prepared for this. How was I going to tell him the whole story without saying anything bad about my husband?? I smiled nervously and started talking. My voice shook.

“Well, when we first had my daughter…..”

He stopped me.

“No, start from the very beginning. When you first met.”

Shit! This guy meant business. He was clearly not just interested in telling me how to be a “better” parent, but really wanted to get to the bottom of this. So I calmed down and started talking for real. I told him an abridged version of The Back Story. I told him how I tried to move out of our shared apartment to minimize the fighting, and how on the day I got the keys to my own place I was called into court on a child abuse charge. My husband had “mistakenly” thought I had been masturbating with my daughter.

The man’s jaw dropped. His head shook in disbelief. He knew.

I told him how I had my daughter taken away from me and I had to pay for 100% of supervision and the forensic because my husband refused to pay.

“So he’s pulling the same game on me”, was the man’s reply.

He proceeded to ask me some questions…

“Does your husband have shared custody of his other kids?”

“He actually has full custody”, I answered.

“How did that come about?” He asked.

“From what I understand there was a child abuse charge.”

His jaw dropped even further. His head shook feverishly.

The rest of the meeting consisted of me describing the rest of the story to him and him staring at me with an open mouth and a cocked head. This was clearly a smart man and it took him about 5 minutes to understand what was really going on. I wasn’t sure why my forensic hadn’t been this intuitive.

“What are we supposed to be talking about here?”, he asked me.

“From what I understand the court would like me to adopt my husband’s mainstream parenting practices and give up my holistic ones, such as extended breastfeeding.”

He snarked. “Seems like peanuts to me.”

I walked out of his office still shaking. The events that had transpired in the therapist’s office should have developed the same way in court. Why was this the first normal human that was able to see through my husband’s bullshit? The story seemed pretty transparent to me. I started to worry again if there was a conspiracy in the court. Was someone paying someone off in order to keep my daughter away from me? Why did I still have barely any time and no rights to her??

Furthermore, I still had no idea if I was picking her up from school that day. I had no more money to pay for supervision for another week and frankly I wasn’t sure if I could take it anymore. The strange people sitting in my living room were driving me to my wits end. I had written an email to my husband asking if I could pick her up that day and had gotten no reply.

Finally, about an hour before it was time for school to be dismissed I got the following reply-

Paulina,
Despite the order stating the new visitation schedule goes into effect the Monday following the first appointment with the doctor, which would be next Monday, seeing as your first appointment was only today, I will consent to you picking our daughter up from school today.
As a reminder, any communication with the school by either you directly or your attorneys need to be in Copy to both me and my attorney.
I will pick up our daughter from your lobby at 7:30pm this evening, as the order states.
In furtherance, the order also states there is to be no disparagement of the other party or discussing of the case to our daughter or in front of our daughter. Please ensure this does not happen again.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I figured he must have gotten advice from his lawyer that he needs to give in.

“In furtherance”??

It was easier for me to be upset about the bad grammar than the lies about me speaking badly about him to our daughter.

The excitement in her face and the sparkle in her eyes when she saw me at school was all I needed to calm down. She immediately charged in my direction.

“Mommy, mommy! You picked me up from school!! Yaaaay my mommy is here!!!”

I hugged her and I cried. Her little arms clutched my neck. She couldn’t stop telling every passing stranger that her mommy picked her up from school that day.

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