WEBVTT
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Hey Marisol.
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Thank you so much for joining me today.
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I'm happy to be here.
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You have a strong social media presence on co-parenting, and high-conflict co-parenting specifically.
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So before we get into all the details of that, do you mind just giving a background on how you got started into that?
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So I got started because of my own personal experience.
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I have two kids with two different dads and at some point I managed two child custody cases and two child support cases.
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My longest custody battle was actually for my daughter.
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It lasted almost a decade.
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So a lot of my experience comes from my own.
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You know ways of having to survive, live and still have dreams somehow.
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So a decade.
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So that means that these were happening at some point at the same time.
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Yes, I actually had to manage.
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One of the worst months I ever had was in 2011,.
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Back in November, I think it was, I actually had four court hearings in one month.
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Two, I believe, were for one ex, one was for the other and then the last one was for bankruptcy.
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Oh my goodness, my court cases were actually in three different courts, so I actually attended three different courthouses that I had to learn how to navigate during that time of my life.
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Okay, just going into a courthouse on its own for something simple is intimidating enough, but that's crazy.
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Well, I actually have a very weird story where I was trying to get some evidence because I was being accused of something.
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I forgot which accusation I was being accused of at this point, because my daughter's father accused me of a lot of things.
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So I was trying to portray how much we were constantly in court and how he was, you know, being overly litigious.
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And I went to the courthouse that our you know that our court case was at and I went into the records department looking for my, my court case, because I wanted to see what they had not necessarily what I had, but what they had on file.
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Right, I was looking for something and then the court clerk tells me your file's not here.
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It's actually across the street in the basement because it's so large.
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At that time I had a baby, my son was a baby and I had a stroller with me.
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So I crossed the street and I went to the archives right to go get the custody case.
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And when I went down there I actually had to go to the basement.
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There was hardly any security down there.
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There was no cameras, it was so dingy looking, it was dark, I wasn't even sure what was down there.
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But eventually I found the office with the staff in it and they handed me and I was able to check out my large court case.
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That's insane.
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It was very, very insane.
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Yeah, it was like a whole surreal experience that I still wonder how we survived it.
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However, I do have a lot of insight and tips on how to safeguard your relationship with your kids, Because while you're going through this, your kid's childhood is actually still moving forward, you know.
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So that's what I focused on, even though it was very difficult for me and it was especially difficult for my daughter.
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I imagine so, and that's mainly the reason why there is some high conflict co-parenting issues is because it's almost like one parent has the children's best interest in mind and the other one does not.
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Yeah, I learned the hard way that if you're going to be dealing with a high conflict co-parent you're going to.
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You're unfortunately going to have different agendas.
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You're typically not going to have the same version of what parenting, healthy parenting looks like, even semi-healthy.
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You know cause?
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Not, I don't think parenting is perfect at all.
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I think we're all evolving as parents, like you know.
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It's okay for you to figure out that maybe what you were doing a year ago wasn't working because maybe now your kid's telling you hey, mom, I don't like that, you know, and you can change it.
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You know what I mean.
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So we're always evolving as parents.
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So, in terms of high conflict co-parenting, that parent the one that's truly high conflict they're really not going to have the same agenda as you and also that agenda and that mindset will hit the courtroom and that's why it becomes so high conflict, because they have a different mentality on what they want.
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Usually what they want is control and to win.
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And from my experience, all the years that I've been through, with all the court hearings that I've gone through as well for both of my children, I'm going to tell you that there's no winning in court hearings for custody or even child support.
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It takes a lot.
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It takes a lot from you as a person, and it also takes a lot from the kids too.
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So even if you do walk away with something, there's something at some point that you lost to even get that.
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Oh, totally.
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And I mean, when you come from a domestic violence relationship and then you have to co-parent afterward, like you mentioned, it's that control.
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They still use whatever tactics, even in certain cases using the children as pawns or manipulating the children, to maintain that control over you, yes, and then eventually also over the children.
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They kind of turn into their victims as well.
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Yes, that's a different component of that.
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It's so much to unpack there, but, yes, so my daughter's father actually ended up leaving me for her stepmom, and what was interesting about our situation is that right off the bat, they both got this really weird drive to really hate me, as if I had done something wrong to them, even though he actually was the one who walked away with her.
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With time I learned to be comfortable with some of the dynamic of it, just because my daughter grew to really love her, some of the dynamic of it, you know, just because my daughter grew to really love her.
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But in essence, all of that actually ended up hitting the courtroom too.
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You know the drama that surrounded that never let up, you know, and it's to the point that it started affecting different aspects of our lives, you know.
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So, having been part of that custody case, it their behavior was so detrimental that it actually, you know, was at her school, it was in her homework, it was a doctor's appointments you know what I mean.
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Like in their brain, I can never do anything.
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Right to the point that we couldn't even share a doctor.
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They insisted on going to a separate doctor because they had embedded that doctor.
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So they had to move my kid to another doctor.
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Same thing for dentists.
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Dentists were a problem too, then emergency contacts that was a problem too.
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So it was like constant battles for even the smallest things that you can ever think of.
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It essentially is a systematic infiltration of your life.
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Right, and one that you can't escape because your child's tied to you yeah, and you can't.
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And when you tell that to the courts, it sounds like you're the one that's being naggy and complaining, because you know you sound like you're the crazy one, you know.
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And, essentially, as my daughter got older, I realized that they were weaponizing my daughter against me.
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They weaponized my child yeah, of course.
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Yeah, that's a harsh reality to realize, because it's like how can a parent want to do that?
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You know what I mean.
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You're over here trying to raise your child and you're like okay, well, you left me.
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Fine, you're not here anymore.
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I accepted that.
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Now you're with this person and you're making this new life.
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Fine.
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Then why are you still after me?
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Right, just let me go Right.
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Parenting is already hard enough, then, to add the dynamic of high conflict co-parenting, right, and even that sentence, high conflict co-parenting even that within itself is a bit of an oxymoron, because you actually cannot fully parent with a high conflict co-parenting.
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Even that within itself is a bit of an oxymoron, because you actually cannot fully parent with a high conflict co-parent.
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You're constantly countering, you're constantly countering, and I called it DC.
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I was constantly on damage control.
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Right.
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It's almost like you can't progress with your children because you're having to undo all the bad things, right?
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So you have your personal experience with this, but then you also have a professional background that helps you understand these situations.
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Well, I mean, I have a master's degree in criminal justice.
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I'm not really sure there probably is some tied, you know, transferable skills to it.
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You know I'm not going to, you know, sit here and say that I'm like a mental health counselor, because I'm not.
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I don't know, I'm not a mental health professional.
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I'm also not an attorney or a legal professional.
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You know I do have that master's.
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You know, when I got that back when I was younger, it is transferable in terms of, like, the way that I think and how to defend myself.
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When I was in court, my ex couldn't pay child support, but he did hire attorneys.
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So, you know, I did end up hiring two at some point.
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And you know, there's only so much that you can do as a single mom because you're you're being targeted in so many ways emotionally, legally, financially.
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You know, um, I mean some.
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At some point it was targeting my spiritual side too, where I'm like, how is this happening to me?
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Like you know what I mean.
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Like I'm not a bad person.
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Why are they coming at me so hard, you know?
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So, yeah, I do have some background, but I wouldn't.
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You know, I don't want to be overstating what I do have.
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You know I also do have.
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I'm also certified in natural health as a natural health professional from the Trinity School of Natural Health, and I only got that certification because with a lot of high conflict comes health conditions, health issues, you know, because you're constantly on high cortisol levels so you're stressed out and that ended up affecting my body.
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So I I do have an autoimmune condition that I um that I take care of on my own.
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Um, sometimes I do bring in um an outside party to help me if I get stuck, but most of the time I have learned enough now about natural healing modalities to be able to um basically take care of myself, uh, myself, to, you know, mentally and even physically.
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I don't believe in meds, you know.
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If people do, that's their prerogative, but I basically manage my conditions naturally.
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There are so many things that obviously go into this.
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I mean, there are like 10 different avenues that we could take this episode.
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I'm like that was a lot right, yeah.
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So, my journey has been like very unique, very unique and also very eclectic in the way where I'm at now.
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It's nowhere where I thought I would be.
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You know some pros, some cons, the court hearings that eventually did end, but the aftermath of it it's still there.
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It's still there.
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Yeah.
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It doesn't die off.
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No, and I even think that once your children are beyond school age and you think, okay, we're done and there's not that necessary co-parenting, that needs to happen because you know they're technically adults now but you still have there's graduations, there's grandbabies, there's weddings and all sorts of different things that you're still going to have to interact with that other person.
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Yeah, there is, but it just depends on the comfortability of your child and what they want to do and how they.
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One of the hardest things that I had to learn is that, regardless of what my exes have done, my kids' dads, my child has the right to select how they want to proceed with their relationship with their father.
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Um, um, irrelevant to my own experience, irrelevant to what they've put me through, what they've left me hanging on, what they've neglected, you know, um, because the child has their own experience, because that is their father, and I'm not saying that they have to talk to them.
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You know, some people will do the whole like forceful thing, or you must talk to them because he's your dad.
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That's not the approach I take.
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I take more of the approach of well, go explore it, go figure it out, and if you want to go, no contact.
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Or if you want to limit your contact, those do exist If you need to do that.
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That's kind of what I.
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I'm more of a background actor now for my kids.
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I'm not really front and center when it comes to that, because now they can actually speak for themselves.
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They have their own values, they have their own perspectives.
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So I try my best, even though it's hard, you know, cause mama got opinions too.
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So, um, I try my best to just be supportive, even if I don't agree with it.
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It is my childhood journey and it is a difficult journey, and if they need support, I am there, you know.
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I am there to just provide that, you know, because it is a hard thing to stomach that your other parent, you know, is what they are.
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And that's a testament to how much that you have healed and matured through the process, because I imagine it would be difficult to co-parent with somebody that you loathe, you know, and not to impart your own personal bias onto your kids.
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Like, hey, you know that parent's the bad guy, right, right, and you know you're right.
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There is a level of dislike that I do still have sometimes, but it's not to the point that I used to have when I was still in it.
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So, whoever's listening to this, my current journey might be different in how I feel now because, see, I'm already a little bit away from it.
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So if you're still in it, you're probably going to still feel those normal feelings of hate.
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I sound like I'm at peace at it because I'm already on my way out, right, right, well, and almost betrayal too, like if you get your kids and they're like, oh, I want to go back over to mommy or daddy's house.
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I miss mommy or daddy.
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You know the other parent.
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You're almost thinking like, but what about me?
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Like, why aren't I?
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Oh, girl.
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Yes, so we actually had that situation happen on, uh, for Christmas, and Christmas for us was very different.
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We actually have traditions with my that I created with my children.
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You know, um, every, every December, we do family pictures.
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That that's not necessarily what happened this December.
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We're still trying to figure out how to do the holidays, especially because now I live out of state and my daughter lives in a different state, and then my son's with me, and then his dad lives somewhere else too.
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He doesn't live in the same state, so we're all in three different states, so Christmas looks very different.
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I truly do not mind sharing.
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That's one thing that I noticed that as I grew in my mentality and I haven't always been this way, okay, it took a lot of growth, okay so as I grew I realized that, yes, I'm sad and I actually did cry when my son decided to go with his dad.
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I cried a lot because it's really hard to let go of your kids because, you know, as single moms, they literally become our world.
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But then there's a certain level of like letting go that you have.
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That has to happen because that's a natural way of things, where they they should be able to, you know, have autonomy and individuate from us.
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You know, um, to be separate from us, but that's still hard, you know, cause we're attached to them.
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So, um, my son ended up going with his dad for two weeks, um, for, uh, christmas, you know, and that was nowhere near me, it was like hundreds of miles away from me.
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You know, and um, I talk in one of my videos that I made on my Instagram account, that we, as moms you know, protective, supportive moms we end up doing things that are more like in the truly, more in the best interest of our child than even the courts sometimes.
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You know, because we know we know more.
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You know, even if it hurts you, you will end up doing things for your kid that you see, that maybe your kid needs, even if it breaks your heart.
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Yeah, and that's, oh my gosh gosh.
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The emotional part is hard to let your kids go like graduate high school and they're going off to start their own life and everything's healthy and everybody gets along.
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That's hard enough.
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But then when they go to somebody else that you don't get along with and or that doesn't like you, that doesn't like you, we're going to use a strong word hates you they get along with, or that doesn't like you.
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That doesn't like you, we're going to use a strong word hates you, they might hate you.
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You mentioned load.
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Then you know I actually stopped.
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I would say I stopped hating them a while back, but it took a lot of work, like I mentioned earlier, and I still do, you know, kind of have my moments where I don't like them very much, but at the same time, I keep in my mind something that I talked that I that I kind of try to stay with, which is to love my kids more than I hate my ex.
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I don't know if you've ever heard that and I actually made a little bit of a segment on it last year love your kids more than you hate your ex.
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And actually that even applies even to men.
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If they're going through, like a toxic, you know a relationship with their, you know with their.
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You know mothers with their kids moms, you know, because it's not necessarily exclusive to gender.
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You know the level of toxicity that one can be put through, you know.
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So I focus on that, you know.
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And then, now that my kids got older, they're actually able to voice to me, like their needs and what they would like and their desires, and I'm just sitting here trying to figure out like okay, how can I make this decision that best fits my child's needs.
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You know what I mean, like outside of whatever court stuff's happening, you know.
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And but, mind you, I am speaking from a different perspective because now we don't really have an operational court order for my son and my son chooses when to go with his dad.
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And also the court order for my daughter did end too, and I kind of wanted just to be transparent about that because my perspective is different because of the fact that I'm at the tail end and also you do operate differently when you're still in it, you do.
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Oh for sure, Especially when you're fresh out of the relationship.
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So obviously, this is a podcast based on domestic violence.
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So you're coming out of a domestic violence situation and whatever the details of that is, you are freshly out of it, you're hurting, you're grieving, oh, 100%.
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And you're pissed, and you're pissed, and on top of that, they don't want to pay you.
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Oh my goodness, oh, my gosh, right, really, we are going to go in 10,000 different directions here, but so just a quick, before we get too far into other things can you give a definition of high conflict co-parentings, just so that everybody's on the same understanding level of what we're talking about before we go down these 20 paths that we've already created?
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We probably need more segments so high, complex co-parenting the best way that I can describe it would be when there's two parents who have not been separated or divorced and they're having a difficult time agreeing on things and usually it's stemming from the lack of maturity from one of them and then they start using manipulative tactics.
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They can start using lies, they can start using intimidation.
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They can also start omitting information that you would need to have at some point, that you need as the other parent.
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There's just a list of.
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There's also gaslighting too, so it just really depends.
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I don't typically use the word narcissist because it gets thrown around a lot.
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I know what I've experienced, but I do know that at least one of them is a narcissist.
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I don't have official diagnosis, you know, but what I went through was definitely one was harder than the other, but they both were hard in their own way.
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So the best way to describe the high conflict co-parenting is basically two people that are trying to make the best out of co-parenting and one of them is making it extremely difficult and, if anything, they're highly litigious.
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That's even one component too, because that's actually different components, because whenever they're doing one thing, they're actually doing separate things too.
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So it's basically like a multi-prong system of how they're going to just basically try to decimate you and try to not really co-parent.
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If anything, they're just trying to destroy your relationship with your child.
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Now, there's different levels of it, you know what I mean.
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Like some of them are nicer than others, you know, um, but it just at its core, they're just making co-parenting a lot more difficult than it should be, you know, and just making decisions hard.
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You know, like you can never decide on anything, you know, or even if you, or if you propose something, you know, your ideas are just never good enough, you know, um.
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Or?
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Or if you're parenting, something's wrong with your parenting at every step of the way.
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You know, I was constantly bashed for my parenting throughout the entire 10 years and a lot of it.
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He kind of weaponized my background.
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I have a background in not having a good family dynamic.
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I have a toxic family dynamic with my biological family, so I didn't really have a mom and I also didn't have a dad.
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So he weaponized that in court and made it seem like I was not going to be a capable mom because I didn't know what a family was according to him and his wife.
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So they just continue to use the abusive tactics that they've been using the whole time.
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Sometimes it's systematic.
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You won't even know if it's even happening until you're realizing like this doesn't sound right.
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And now there's more information out there of it.
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There's a vast amount of information.
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I'm super surprised how much there is.
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Back when I was in it, I don't remember being this much like you know, awareness of it, because even at some point I felt like I was the crazy one, because they told me I was the crazy one, and then you're going to court and court's telling you no, that's not happening.
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You need to co-parent better.
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You know what I mean.
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Like you chose him, so why aren't you co-parenting with him?
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Oh, I love that one.
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You chose him yes.
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Oh, I love that one.
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You chose him, yes, yeah, or like because I have two kids with two different dads.
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Right, I got the whole.
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Well, how come you can't keep a man?
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That's nice, let's kick you while you're down.
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And as I got older and I also, you know, grew and I did a lot of personal development I realized how a lot of that you know it did stem from some of the patterns that I needed to heal in my own personal life.
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But a lot of that is a lot of shifting ideology.
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That's not making the other person accountable.
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So you know people are going to have really judgy comments, especially when you have two kids from two different dads that look that, do not look the same.
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Right and then, like you mentioned, one of your exes remarried.
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So now you're not even having of the experiences that I've had too, where, like you know, he even went for the whole like well, we have a traditional family environment and she's a single mom and you know, I think at one point he even like I had never been called a feminist and he called me a feminist.
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I even had to Google it because I'm like, what does that mean, you know?
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And I forgot what Google told me and I'm just like maybe I am that, I don't know, but he would call me all kinds of names.
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You know he, there was a lot of name calling.
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You know that that still stayed with me.
