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love after divorce

Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Love

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love after divorce

 

Dear past, thanks for all the lessons. Dear future, I’m ready!

Love

Love. Hmmm. I thought I knew what that was. I really did. I come from the school of unconditional love. I saw it every day of my life growing up. I saw it with my parents. I saw it with how my siblings, and I would fight and somehow turn around ten minutes later and then go get ice cream.

When my husband cheated on me the first time, I thought my forgiveness was my example of my unconditional love for him. It was. But what I didn’t realize was that it was not an example of my unconditional love for myself. Sometimes you must love yourself more than anyone in the equation in order to survive.

So, when it happened again, as is always predicted…I had to confront him. When I found out about his infidelity again, I had to love myself enough to let him go. Twenty years is a very long time to think about this emotion and this word.

My husband and I were married with two priests on the altar.

One who was the main officiant, was my cousin. The other was at one time my father’s teacher at Loyola. He was a wise man and a confidant to me. I loved him like a grandfather. I have thought about the Bible passages he selected. I think it was his way of telling me he had doubts. This is the passage.

“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27

 

I never would have suspected that this would be the most prophetic line of my life. It appears…in the end, we were indeed a house built on sand.

And now that I have spent the past twenty years examining my own role in the demise of my house built on this shaky ground, I want to make sure that I never experience this again. But I never want my natural ability of unconditional love of myself and someone else to be stifled, dismissed or minimized.

I have indeed given up the opportunity to be loved by someone in order to ensure that my children knew they were my priority.

This was a choice I made with my eyes wide open. It seems apropos since I lived inside of a marriage with my eyes wide shut.

But until my children are on their roads and have established themselves into their careers and lives, only then will I truly know the full weight of that unconditional love I chose to exercise.

But thank you Fr. Houle. I appreciate your wisdom and perhaps perception that I needed to pay attention to what my house was about to be built on. I promise that if I am ever presented with the opportunity to love and be loved again, I will find the sturdiest rock and build a new foundation for a happy life.

I still see it for myself one day. I hope you are watching for that with me. I intend on living my life with grace and no longer grief. And I look forward to one day reacquainting myself with a love that is on my terms.

The post Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Love appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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weight loss

Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Weight

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weight loss

 

Want to lose weight fast? Lose your other half! The rest will fall off.

The Divorce Diet

Weight

When I suddenly found myself a single mother with the prospect of divorce in front of me, along with a plethora of responsibilities piled on top of me, weeks after giving birth to our second child, I found that food and I no longer worked. I was so busy nourishing my baby and toddler that I forgot to nourish me too.

I was just too tired. I was normally around 135 pounds pre-pregnancy. In what seemed like days, even minutes after his departure when the reality of what I was facing set in, I found myself squarely at around 102 pounds and dropping.

My nerves were a frayed mess that resembled a well-worn rug that had hundreds of miles of foot traffic pounded into it. I had just had a C-section and a tubal ligation afterward, so I was really worn out and unwell.

Emotional shock can do a number on you.

But emotional shock under the auspices of a marital breakup that included infidelity, combined with post childbirth can throw you into a space you never knew existed.

But worst of all you are coping with a broken heart as well. This sadly has taken me decades to recover from. Overnight I lost all appetite for food of any kind. They say that a divorce diet is the fastest and most effective one on the planet and would put Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig to shame.

I am here to tell you that it was fast and furious all right! It was too fast though. My body had spent the previous nine months adapting and re-adapting as the baby grew and pushed on every organ in me. Then after giving birth, your body readjusts again like air being let out of a balloon.

But when you are faced with a trauma like I was, it takes a toll on your body with a vengeance. What you should be doing is nourishing yourself to cope with the breastfeeding and sleep deprivation as you slowly find your way back to a normal size.

But in my case, because he left in the middle of building our home, and after just having a baby and dealing with these two very big life changes, my appetite altogether disappeared, and I found that worry and stress was my meal of choice.

But then…I also discovered Peanut M&M’s.

Oh sure, I had eaten peanut M&M’s many times in my life. But this was a rediscovery and these beautiful little candies became the vice I so desperately needed. I was literally being nourished on peanut M&Ms! They were one of the only foods that stayed down. And yet, I kept losing weight.

I was literally a size 3 by the time my baby was 3 months old. I was 39 when I had her. The years went by and my new normal was being introduced to me as I watched my baby and toddler grow to where they are today, 20 and 24. I can see that I put my body through a lot over the years. Age has much to do with it no doubt.

Weeks after I had begun divorce proceedings and sold our family home and purchased a new one, I received a call from my work telling me that they were closing the Southern California office and that I would have to relocate to Northern California if I wanted to stay employed with them.

I was in the beginnings of divorce proceedings and child custody and my ex-husband would not approve of my moving the children away. So along with all that I had already endured, I found myself looking for a new job.

Happily, and because I have a good reputation in my industry, I received a call rather shortly asking me if I would be willing to interview for a company that had a remote office location near my home. I immediately said yes.

I was in no position to say no to anyone or anything.

I had just bought a house and I had a family raise. I interviewed and took the job. And all through this new phase, I started my nibbling on junk food to calm my nerves. Up and down my weight went through the chapters of our family.

My go to is always something sweet and when I feel the nerves of my bank balance dropping due to the cost of raising my family; not to mention the ever-present mortgage…I nibbled away.

This included then and still includes now, school tuitions, cars, cell phones, food, clothes and everything else that goes with this journey as you help your kids put one foot at a time on the road to their respective adult lives.

And now, I am 60. And that is hard to imagine. I have sacrificed so much of myself as the sole provider. The funny thing is that most of my friends and family are either currently or planning to retire. My accountant laughed when I asked him when he thought I could retire. He said, “My dear woman, you will need to work until at least 75. I’m so sorry. But you are so young at heart anyway. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

So, with the knowledge of this and with each moment that I am faced with the stresses of my responsibilities, there is always a bag of peanut M&M’s nearby to help me cope.

The post Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Weight appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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money and divorce

Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Money

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money and divorce

 

Money, weight, love. Good or bad, these have been the beacons for me the past 20 years that I have been a single mother. I have literally been obsessed with these three words for as long as I have been bestowed the title of “single mom”.

I know that sounds strange too. Why would those three words have anything to do with “divorce” or “single parenting”. For me… they have everything to do with it. Because these three words became a measured part of my journey as I changed identities from wife to mother to new mother to single parent and now to 60.

Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.

Bob Marley

Money

Money. Oh, how I love/hate that word. When my ex-husband left my children and I, we were in the middle of building a home. I had just had a baby. Overnight I was faced with the rent on the apartment we were living in while the house was being built, the payments to the contractors, the original mortgage we were still paying, the Nanny, the pre-school, all the bills and ultimately a lawyer! I was prepared for none of this.

I only knew how to be married where we equally supported our family. Our life. I stood in frozen silence as it all came at me. When divorce knocked on my front door, I opened it and the first words it said to me was, “Hello, I am divorced and you are about to start living financially stressed from this day forward. Have a wonderful life!”

Within what felt like minutes, I felt like I was standing at the base of the Hoover Dam and ping by ping by ping, holes started appearing in the Dam.

Water started to seep through and one by one the streams began to intensify and suddenly cracks began to appear, and the water would come flooding down on me.

All the financial responsibility came flooding down on me too. I was submerged, gasping for air as I popped up only to be pushed down repeatedly. That’s how it felt for me to be the catcher to everyone who had their hand out waiting for a check. My husband just left me to carry it all. It was cruelty I would never have known in him or ever seen before.

I have always lived my life with a certain knowing that my life, whether long or short, would be one well-lived. One filled with opportunity and prosperity. I was raised to believe this, and I just have always felt this. An unshakable knowing because I saw myself living this way. Nothing in my life post July 29, 1999, the day my husband left or what I call, “T Day”, meaning: Transformation Day”, would have supported that notion.

But I just felt it in my soul. Yes, I was faced with all of that and more. My faith and belief in myself were challenged, but it was also what pulled me through. I saw better things for my family and me. I was able to wade through all the people who had their hands out. I was able to finish building and paying for the house.

I was able to move my little family into it, enjoying the fruits of my labor for a year or so, only to ultimately sell it and split the profits with the man who fled the project. I was able to buy a home. My home; in my name only.

I have achieved many of the visions I saw for myself and my family, yes.

Visions of opportunity and prosperity always being the gasoline in my engine. But it came at a high cost. It would. We live in Los Angeles, one of the most expensive cities in the nation. And though I still carried all the responsibility of raising a family, I still believed that anything was possible. I had to.

Money remains central to my nervous system today as my children are now 20 and 24. Every day is still a struggle to keep it all afloat. My role now as their parent is to help them take their first step onto the road of adulthood.

Maybe by my example of staying true to my inner knowing’s, they will not join the ranks of men and women living inauthentic lives who also flee their families and responsibilities.

Maybe, just maybe they will listen to their own inner callings and live a good life. Wouldn’t that be swell? I am seeing it already in them, and it makes me smile. For all the good and the bad, the feast and the famine that they have experienced with me, my hope is that they will take the sum of all these experiences and weave them into their own fabric of life.

I hope they use it all for the good of life and treat people with a sense of humility and compassion. Because even though on the outside we looked like the family who had the house, the cars, the nice schools…it all came at a high price. And that price was me. Because none of it was ordered with the thought that one single woman would pay for it all.

And so, I continue to do my best to try to live my life well within that certain knowing that my life, whether long or short, will be one well-lived. And money? Well, we are still getting to know how to co-exist harmoniously.

The post Money, Weight, Love: Let’s Talk About Money appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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Let’s Talk Divorce: Toxic Men: Are You a Narcissist Magnet?

Let’s Talk Divorce: Toxic Men: Are You a Narcissist Magnet?

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Do you seem to go from one toxic relationship to another?

Have you ever asked yourself, “Is there something wrong with me that makes me a target for narcissistic, toxic men?”

The answer is maybe and no!

There is NOTHING wrong with you but, you may have qualities and traits that make you attractive to narcissistic and toxic men. Like moths to a flame, these men flutter around you waiting for an opening.

These qualities and traits give the narcissist a foot in the door and leave you wide open for their manipulations.

5 Traits that Attract Narcissistic, Toxic Men

You’re trusting

You’re trusting with everyone from the get-go. People don’t have to earn your trust, you readily give it until proven it hasn’t been earned. Narcissists use this to their advantage.

You treat others with respect and expect the same in return

It is in your nature to treat others the way you wish to be treated. The narcissist returns this treatment during the love-bombing phase. They use it to reel you in and get you so emotionally invested that once the disrespect begins, you’re in too deep to extract yourself from the relationship.

You love unconditionally

You love unconditionally

In fact, you love to a fault! You may be in love with the idea of love.

Narcissists use this against you after the love bombing period. They know that no matter what they deprive you of in the relationship, you’re going to continue to love them.

You’re empathetic and compassionate

These traits make it easy for you to make excuses for the narc’s bad behavior. You make excuses for the narc based on his “victim” stories. He was molested by a priest, he was emotionally abandoned by his mother. And on and on. Being empathetic, instead of holding him accountable for bad behavior, you hold his mother or that priest accountable. You believe that love, your love, will heal those old wounds and he’ll become the person he was during the love-bombing phase again.

You have trouble setting boundaries

You fear setting boundaries because you fear abandonment. With family, friends, coworkers and romantic relationships, you allow people to take advantage of you. Due to this, you are easily manipulated by the narcissist, toxic man.

You know how you should be treated, you just fear vocalizing it.

The post Let’s Talk Divorce: Toxic Men: Are You a Narcissist Magnet? appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Games Narcissistic Men Play After The Divorce Is Final

Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Games Narcissistic Men Play After The Divorce Is Final

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Life after divorce from a narcissist can be far more tumultuous than when you were married. After the divorce, life for the narcissist is all about creating drama, drawing attention to themselves and making your life as miserable as possible.

For you, life after divorce is about getting results, civility, co-parenting and attempting to get along with the narcissist.

And that is where you and the narcissist differ. The narcissist doesn’t care about civility, they care about you paying for some unspecified harm you’ve done to them. You’re an ethical person, a narcissist is an unethical person. For this reason, there can’t be a civil relationship post-divorce. The narcissist is going to insist on doing battle and there is no way you can win if you engage in a battle with a narcissist.

There will be no civil co-parenting, there will be no negotiating but you will be besieged with emotional turmoil if you attempt to play fair…which is in your nature to do.

The video above will help you understand what is happening if you’re in the midst of it or, help you prepare for what’s coming if you’re still in the process of divorce.

4 Games Narcissistic Men Play After Divorce

1. They make promises they have no intention of keeping.

This starts during the divorce process. They will sign a divorce settlement agreement promising to do this, that and the other thing with no intention to follow the final divorce decree. If you have a divorce decree that state’s the narcissist is to buy you out of your portion of the equity in the marital home within 9 months, those months will go by with the narcissist taking no steps to buy you out. You’ll be in and out of court attempting to get the narcissist to follow through with the court-ordered promises he made.

That is the method of operation for the narcissist, agree but don’t follow through.

2. They play the victim.

In order to play the victim, he needs a victimizer and, that is YOU. He will tell his sad tale to anyone who will hold still long enough for him to bend their ear. He will use his children, his relatives, your friends, his friends, your family, and his family in an attempt to appear to be the victim in your divorce story.

He needs to smear your name and character in order to play that role and, the icing on the cake, it leaves you with few people to offer you support during a time when you need it most.

Even if he is the one who left and wanted the divorce, he will find some way to become the victim of the divorce. Count on it!

3. They will try to exact revenge.

They will use your children against you. What better way to get revenge on a mother than turn her children against her? Some go as far as completely alienating children from their mothers. It’s not that they want the children but their desire to cause you pain and emotional harm trumps their feelings for their children.

If you’re in a relationship they will do everything in their power to stall that relationship or break it up. The last thing they want is for you to find happiness with another man!

Your narcissistic ex knows you, he knows what you hold most dear in life and, all bets are off when it comes to him using whatever that is the exact revenge on you.

4. They will become very passive-aggressive.

They will appear to negotiate, appear to be concerned, appear to be on board with whatever you need for yourself or their children. Until that is, it comes time to follow through on what they’ve agreed to. They bait and switch you after you’ve given the very information they needed to be able to withhold what you or their children need from them.

This can be very confusing but, expect it!

What can you do about their games?

Don’t do what they want you to do…engage with them!

Don’t retaliate! They want to anger you, piss you off, cause you to fight back. They want you to look like the nut. Don’t give them the satisfaction. Whatever he does or says, NEVER let him know that you even noticed he was being an asshole.

Stop expecting recognition of your or your children’s needs. Lower your expectations of your narcissistic ex as low as they will possibly go.

The only way to win the battle with a narcissist is to remove yourself from the battlefield.

The post Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Games Narcissistic Men Play After The Divorce Is Final appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Ways The Family Court Fails To Protect Women During High Conflict Divorce

Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Ways The Family Court Fails To Protect Women During High Conflict Divorce

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We hear a lot about how women are favored during divorce but, in my opinion, the opposite is true. No one can hold onto resentment and anger like a man and nothing proves that more than the outrageous behavior by some during a high conflict divorce.

A woman’s only recourse is the protections afforded her by the Family Court and, bless our hearts, there aren’t many protections there.

I know a woman who has been divorced for over 12 years and still has legal issues with her ex. He constantly files a petition or motion with the court. It can be for something as simple as extracurricular activities her children are involved with to not liking the therapist her children are seeing. He makes NO attempt to negotiate and settle issues with the mother of his children. There is no emailing back and forth over a certain situation. He goes straight to the courts.

A woman has no defense against such a man. She is vulnerable to such a man’s whims because the Family Court allows the nonsense to continue year after year.

She has NO protection!

4 Ways The Family Court Fails to Protect Women During High Conflict Divorce

1. Failure to Protect Against Defiant Exes

If a woman is divorced from a man who defies court orders, she has no recourse via the Family Court. She can file a contempt of court motion but that’s like pissing into the wind. She will spend money on an attorney only to get a new order and listen to a judge tell her ex to “get it done or else,” and the or else never happens. The problem with contempt of court is this, a new court order means nothing to a man with a history of defying court orders.

2. No Protection from Crushing Financial Expense of Divorce

Most women going through the divorce process are stay-at-home Moms or the lower income earner in the marriage. They start the divorce process in a one-down position because they don’t have access to the best attorneys and experts to advocate for them. The Family Court takes none of this into consideration during the process and there is an old saying that is true, “the one with the money wins in Family Court.”

3. No Protection for Victims of Domestic Abuse

Victims of domestic violence are especially vulnerable in the Family Court system. Their main concern is naturally protecting their children from a violent man and with the courts’ main focus on not separating a child from a parent, the domestic abuse victim has to have substantial evidence of abuse to protect their children via the court.

What professionals fail to realize is that women in abusive situations don’t call attention to their abuse. Doing so can only lead to more abuse. So, instead of going to the emergency room so they’ve have a record of injuries or filing police reports, they stay quiet out of fear of inviting more abuse upon themselves and their children.

If a woman doesn’t have substantial evidence of abuse and brings up accusations of abuse in court she can be viewed as making false allegations of abuse and attempting to alienate a father from his child. Women all over the country are losing custody rights to violent men due to the lack of protection abuse women received in the Family Court.

4. Failure to Protect Children from Harm

If you’re divorced from a bully hell-bent on using your child as a pawn to punish you, the “best interest” doctrine, flies right out the window. A Family Court judge will NOT hold a man harming his children emotionally, accountable. I think they believe that a bad father is worse than no father so, purposely put children in harm’s way so they can tell themselves “at least the child still has 2 parents.” And, as someone who raised her children alone, with no contact from their father, I can say that, that belief is straight up BS!

The post Let’s Talk Divorce: 4 Ways The Family Court Fails To Protect Women During High Conflict Divorce appeared first on Divorced Moms.

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Should I Talk To My Kids About Narcissism? Q&A with Melanie and Zac

Should I Talk To My Kids About Narcissism? Q&A with Melanie and Zac

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If you are a parent struggling with helping your children after your narcissistic abuse situation, then I can’t recommend this episode enough.

Within it, you will learn what to tell your children, how to empower them and even how to help reunite with them if they have been smeared against you or alienated away from you.

My heart goes out to every parent suffering with co-parenting with a narcissist or trying to repair the damage that happened to their children after one.

It is Zac’s and my greatest desire, today, that this Q and A, offers you key tools to not just ease the pain, but truly overcome every fear, challenge, and heartbreak you have suffered with your children – just as Zac and I have together.

 

 

Video Transcript

Melanie: Welcome to Thriver TV, the place to break free from narcissistic abuse with quantum tools and understandings. And today we’ve got a very special episode because this is a first-ever Thriver TV with my son Zac. And for those of you who don’t know Zac, Zac is my son and he is also the CEO of MTE. So welcome Zac.

Zac: Thanks mum. It’s so great to be here. It’s so great to finally be on Thriver TV, and hello.

Melanie: I know a lot of people have been asking for Zac and this is it, he’s finally doing it. It’s so good, and we’re both so excited about this episode because we’re going to be answering your questions that were posted on Instagram and Facebook a few days ago about how to help your children heal after being through a relationship with a narcissist. And one of our beautiful Thriver members requested this show so this is why we’re doing it. And we’ve had some amazing questions come through from so many of you and I’m so excited to share these answers with you. Now, just before we get into this show, I wanted to quickly tell you that we are running my premier abuse recovery workshop in capital cities in Australia in early December. If you’re an Aussie or you can get to Australia in December, I would love to see you there. Information and tickets can be found at the link at the top right. All right, so we’re going to start off with our first question, which is one from Instagram. So what have you got there Zac?

Zac: Yeah, so Restoring Hope Again on Instagram asks, “How do I co-parent with a narcissist, but try to make sure my son isn’t mentally abused, taken advantage of, lied to, et cetera. How do I also combat the lies that the narcissistic father tells my son? My son is only four and his dad and I have been separated for two years, but I have so much anxiety about how my son’s narcissistic father will affect him. Thank you for what you do and I hope you can help.”

Melanie: Okay, so all right. This is what I say to every parent who is co-parenting with a narcissist. The first thing that you need to do is do the deep, constant healing work on yourself. Because the truth is you can’t change a narcissist and what they’re doing, and the lies and the smearing, and the abuse and the manipulation. And the more that you actually try to combat that from a place of feeling traumatized by it, the worse it will escalate and the worse it will affect your child. And this causes so many problems. So when you heal you and you get centred and empowered and you’re able to start parallel parenting, which is a part of what we teach in the NARP community, and we also teach you how to not get triggered and traumatized, you start taking your power back and you set a very powerful template for your child to follow your example.

Melanie: And even at a very early age, children follow this example powerfully. Our most successful parallel parenting people in our community are not trying to combat a narcissist on a head level and on a strategy level, they’re actually healing and diffusing all of the triggers and the traumas within themselves so that you can be solid and centred and powerful for your child regardless of what the narcissist is or isn’t doing. So then what happens is the child will start feeling settled and calm because where you go, they go. They will start to pick up the difference and they will start to, even at a young age, they will see who to gravitate to and who not to gravitate to, and the narcissist will stop the games. You will see that happen as well. So I cannot suggest it enough, look up parallel parenting and look at the NARP program. It’s essential for people that are co-parenting so that you can do it effectively. I really hope that helps.

Zac: Okay, so I’ve got the next question from Instagram. Korean Atopy asks, “So Zac’s father was the narc whose covert abuse almost killed Mel, right? Has Zac forgiven his dad? Do you guys see him or is he completely out of the picture?” Yeah, so this is the important distinction to make. My father actually was not the narcissist who was in the relationship with Melanie. My father had a relationship with Melanie when I was very young and they split up when I was two years old. So no, the narcissist that was the first relationship that Melanie was married to, we have no contact with and yeah —

Melanie: Never will.

Zac: Never will. I’m very happy for it to stay that way. So I hope that answers that question.

Melanie: And if I can just say it wasn’t quite covert, it was very overt. But yeah, I hope that that’s cleared that up for some people. But I will say though that even though it was Zac’s stepfather, he did create a lot of smearing and alienation where I nearly lost Zac. So yeah, that part of it still played out very powerfully.

Zac: True, very true.

Melanie: Absolutely. Okay, so on to the next question.

Zac: Okay, so the next question is from Facebook. Mary Angel asks or she says, “Thank you so much for this. Here’s my question. My kids are 13 and 11 and they see their dad two or three times a year. When they stay with him for a few days, they come back the following days feeling frustrated, sad, guilty, and also angry at me. Should I talk to them about their dad’s narcissism?”

Melanie: This is such a good question. I’m just going to go straight to it. No, don’t talk about his narcissism to them. Because as soon as you start putting him down and you start saying your father is this, your father is that, what that is going to do is push your children away from you. So what you do need to do is have really good boundaries with them. Don’t overcompensate, because they come back like this and then you’re trying to smooth things over. You want to lead the way powerfully for them. And if they’re feeling guilty or they’re feeling sad or they’re feeling down, bolster them up.

Melanie: Empower them and say things to them like, “You know, I can see that you’re feeling sad or you’re feeling down, but this doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. You know, sometimes people are like this,” and “Or that’s just your father, but that doesn’t have to affect you, because you’re amazing. You’re incredible. There’s so many things that are great about you. Now, let’s just put that aside and we’re going to have a great time. We’re going to have an empowered time. I’m going to have boundaries with you, which means that I don’t accept your poor behaviour or your bad behaviour, but I’m also not saying that you are bad or that there’s something wrong with you.”

Melanie: Where we go, our children follow. And what happens often as parents is, we feel bad for them and we feel sad and we feel guilty and we feel terrible and all that does is exasperate and accentuate what they’re feeling. We want our children to know they can feel empowered and whole regardless of what anybody else is or isn’t doing or being. That’s what we want to teach our children. That’s what thriving and empowerment is about. I really hope that helps.

Zac: Yeah. And if I could just say, really powerfully what you’re saying mum, like when you lead the way, don’t underestimate how smart your children are. When you’re leading the way, when you’re showing them how to be empowered, how to live your life the right way, and they see their father’s behaviour, they’ll quickly see who’s the right one. If you want to say right or wrong, but you know who’s the person they should listen to. They’re a lot smarter, you know, kids are very smart.

Melanie: I agree. Your kids are so smart and so intelligent. You know, they’re not stupid. And they gravitate to what feels good. If we’re being victims and we’re telling them how bad it is for them and how shocking it is and how bad the other parent is, you know, that’s going to push your children away from you every time.

Zac: More likely they’re not going to believe you if you start doing that and they’re going to side with the other one, I think.

Melanie: And it happens all the time. You know? That’s how parent alienation sadly and tragically happens. I hope that can really help you.

Zac: All right, so we’ve got the next question from Ieva on Facebook. Now Ieva was one of the wonderful Thrivers who came and saw us in February in the UK. It was so great meeting you there, Ieva. If you’re watching this …

Melanie: We love Ieva. Hello darling.

Zac: Your question was, “I would like to know more about proxy healing please. Thank you.”

Melanie: Oh, one of my favourite, favourite topics. Proxy healing is something that NARP members can powerfully do and it is phenomenal how powerful it is. Okay. So how it works is in quantum reality our belief systems about somebody affect them incredibly powerfully. And also, we have the ability to work on others through ourselves, because we’re all interconnected as one, especially with our children, whether it be a biological link or even in the case of an adoption, it’s a heart link that is so energetically powerful. So where we shift our beliefs and our DNA to, is where our children follow. I used this with Zac, healing by proxy, when Zac went through an awful phase in his life, in his teenage life where he was on a self-destruction path. I was trying to lecture and prescribe and fix and force him into shape, and the more I did that, the worse things got, which I know a lot of you parents experience with kids of all ages.

Melanie: When I finally let go and I knew the quantum truth, that I have no power to change anybody else. I only ever have the power to change me. I went inside myself with Quanta Freedom Healing with NARP, and I found all of the traumas relating to my trauma about him. And I shifted and I shifted and I shifted, and kept bringing in source until I came into source truth, which is that Zac has an inner being that can awaken into his power and health. That’s a source truth. And when I had hit that place, my fear about him was gone, even though his circumstance was dire. I didn’t know whether my son was going to live or die, it was that bad.

Melanie: Then what I did is I set the intention that I would work on his inner being through my inner being. And with NARP, we can do that. And how you do that is you ask permission to his higher self whether or not I’m allowed to do that. And the answer that I got through muscle test, you can do it through intuition, was a yes. So I got to work on that. Through my body I was able to feel his internal trauma, shift it out and bring in Source. And I did that work for only a few days. And then I hit a place where I felt this calm, peace and warmth for him, through me, as well as the calm I already had through me. And then Zac contacted me —

Melanie: Zac contacted me after three weeks of silence and said to me, “Mum, we need to meet down at the pub and I’ve stopped doing what I’m doing and I love you and I’m so sorry and I’ve seen the light” and he’s never looked back. And that experience has happened for countless parents that are working with this. Because if you see your children as broken, or narcissistic, or damaged or victimized, that’s exactly what they’re going to continue producing for you in your experience.

Melanie: When you change your beliefs and your knowing about your children then you can get to work by proxy working on their inner beings from your inner being, the results are beyond quantum. They are spectacular. They are miraculous. They create miracles every day in the NARP community. And in the NARP forum, we actually teach you how to do that healing by proxy. So if you’re already a thriver, you’ve already created incredible shifts in your life. The next step is you can work on your children by proxy if you want to. So I don’t know if Zac has anything more to add about that. Well, you were on the receiving end of that. You didn’t know I was doing that. You had no idea that I was doing that.

Zac: Yeah, I din’t know it was happening. And then sort of all of a sudden it’s just seeing this change get made and sort of, yeah. It’s sort of almost hard to put into words, but it’s —

Melanie: Something shifted, right?

Zac: Something shifted yeah and new opportunities opened up …

Melanie: Well, it was kind of like, because at 19 when I literally had Zac evicted from the home, things were so bad and I’ll never forget his parting words to me as he left. I mean, we can laugh now. At the time it was the worst. The police were coming in half an hour to take him. That’s how bad it was. And as he was leaving he looked at me, it was the worst day of my life, was worse than my demise, and he said, “The next time we lay eyes on each other is going to be on one of our deathbeds.”… and he said, “Never again are you my mother.” And that’s how he left. Three weeks later we were hugging. He’d stopped doing what he was doing, and had massively turned the corner and I know 1000% it’s because of the healing by proxy. I know that. So there you go. You had no idea at the time. You had no idea. It was a long time ago … we’re talking 11 years ago now that it happened.

Zac: Okay. So I’ve got the next question from Facebook. Amanda asks, “I want to know how’s Zac experienced his mum before she started thriving and then now.” Okay. So yeah, this is probably an experience that I haven’t had a chance to share with everyone on YouTube and you know, across the community. But it is a very important one. I definitely thought she wasn’t going to make it. I thought she was going to be traumatized for the rest of her life. At 16 years of age, I’d accepted that my mum was either going to be in a mental institution or she was going to be driven to her death. I was deeply afraid of him and what he would do, and I thought he was going to harm her and possibly me and other people. It was an extremely difficult time to say the least. The Mel you see now is nothing like she was. She is not the same person that she was back then.

Melanie: Or even before then.

Zac: And I don’t want to say any harsh things because I mean…

Melanie: Oh no, we can be totally honest with each other. For sure.

Zac: But she…

Melanie: I was horrible.

Zac: Yeah. She was a completely different person. You weren’t necessarily horrible. You were honest to me about what was going on and that was … I really appreciated that.

Melanie: Yeah.

Zac: I knew what was going on. You didn’t try and hide anything. You didn’t try and demonize him but you were deeply struggling and you were hooked and addicted. I think maybe that was the really frustrating thing. We wanted to shake you. You know, and I think so many kids want to do this; they want to shake you and say snap out of it, this guy’s going to kill you. You need to get out of it. And you wouldn’t. So you would keep crawling back and seeing him again and again. And it was, you know, seeing your own mother do that and, and I guess, not having a good father, you know, having a father figure in the home that’s destroying your own mother is a really challenging thing to go through.

Melanie: Yeah. And also too, you know, there were a couple of incidences where you tried to protect me and you couldn’t because he was very big and strong and physically threatening. And that was horrific for you. But I know that I went through a lot of guilt because being so dishevelled and when you’re traumatized, you’re not available and you don’t have patience. And I wasn’t there for Zac through a lot of his teenage stuff and growing up and his challenges because I wasn’t even there for myself. So, my heart goes out to a lot of parents because I know the guilt and the pain that you feel. You know, I wasn’t really a mother’s shoelace (effective mother) and it wasn’t my fault. It’s just the way it was.

Zac: It’s never you. It’s never anyone’s fault, you know?

Melanie: No, no, it was just a really hard time for everybody. But it’s nothing like what we have now.

Zac: So, what is Mel like now? Words can’t describe how much she’s just … she’s not the same person. You give her a completely different character because of the person she is today, how she’s able to help change the lives of so many people. I think it’s very apparent how much she’s helping people, that she spends her entire day from the moment she gets up to the moment she goes to bed thinking about how she can help more people. It’s just so inspiring. It’s led the way for me and now we get to do this together. Yeah, I couldn’t be happier to have you as my mum.

Melanie: So sweet. Yeah. That’s so sweet, Zac. Thank you. Well, I know that as we Thrive and commit to releasing trauma and bringing in source, we literally rebirth. We become a new and a true self. So quite frankly, I don’t even recognize the person who I used to be. I’m happy to be a completely different, evolved, forever evolving being because, oh gosh, who I was, wasn’t working. Who I am now, does.

Zac: So the next question on Instagram is from Stockingstyle and her question is, “Zac, at what point did you realize and know for sure that you are thriving?” Now, this is a really good question, actually. For me, thriving isn’t so much a destination as it is a state. It’s something that I’m continually working on. It’s something that I don’t necessarily feel like I’ve arrived at that place and then I’m there. In the early days, like we were just saying, growing up, watching what mum went through, having this figure in the house that was not a good person to be around, it did leave me and as you probably know, if you have children that especially in teenage years or the developing years, I sort of, I didn’t know my place in the world. I didn’t have a supportive figure to sort of help guide me through that period. I felt very lost, alone and really lacked a lot of confidence, so I didn’t sort of have any belief in myself. I didn’t see myself going anywhere and a lot of that had been lost. Maybe I sort of had that at a young age, but now I sort of felt completely lost.

Zac: I think when I recognized that I was starting to thrive or getting into that state of thriving is when I had the self-belief. So when I believed I could actually do something in this world, help people, even do something meaningful, whether it’s a career or a hobby or a passion or just something that I was able to put so much of my energy and focus on and then see results, see something that actually positively impacted people. So the work that I’m doing at MTE, the things I do, how I can help people, that to me is thriving. That to me is living the life that I want to live. And yeah, it’s really getting back to that, that believing yourself, putting yourself into something that you’re passionate about, and then seeing the end result that comes from it.

Melanie: If I can just add here. A long time ago when I started doing the core inner shifts on myself, I set the intention that any shift on my trauma would be passed on to Zac. So he’s been kind of pretty lucky that he hasn’t had to do a lot of healing work on it himself, even though you do. Of course, he does.

Zac: But I do that as well.

Melanie: He does it as well. Absolutely.

Zac: I had an extra boost.

Melanie: You got an extra boost. But what I’ve seen happen so organically is that often when I’ve broken through and reached a confidence and a belief and an inner power, I’ve noticed it happens with him as well. It just happens organically. And I think that’s what’s so wonderful about … quantum theory, they call it the entanglement theory which is connected organisms and cells. When one shifts, the other will reflect the shift regardless of what the distance is between them. And I see it happen with Zac all the time. It’s just beautiful. People report that through the generations backwards and forwards with quantum freedom healing all the time. It’s pretty magical. Maybe that’s got a lot to do with it. I mean, he’s done so much of it himself as well. Absolutely.

Zac: Yeah. There were some long years of doing a lot of the personal work.

Melanie: Yeah. You did. And you really took responsibility and did that, which is fantastic.

Zac: All right, so we’ve got the next question. This is for Mel on Instagram. Honey Ruth asks, “I’m concerned that my 29 year old son is carrying trauma from the 20 years that he was subjected to living this lifestyle with my husband. It almost would appear that he’s acquired the behaviours now, the dark side of him. But I have to save myself and I’m working to help me and I’ve sustained my son to an enabling level. What do I do now?”

Melanie: Yeah. I love what Honey Ruth wrote, what you are saying is that you have to save yourself and you have to focus on you because this is so, so true. If we come back to the quantum premise that you cannot change anybody else, then you only ever have the power to change yourself. So what you’re going to do is change yourself into is a self-honouring, self-loving being where you’re creating boundaries. Where you’re saying to the world and other people, ‘I’m teaching you how to treat me.’ So with these boundaries, what will happen is … and it can be heartbreaking with people we love. But this is where if we enable, as Neale Donald Walsch says about this, ‘to allow an abuser to continue abusing is an act of abuse.’

Melanie: So what he really means by that is that … if we set a truth and a value for ourselves, we give other people the opportunity to move up into a space of being respectful, loving, decent people. And if we don’t, we allow them to continue defiling the integrity of their true self by being an abuser. So you have to do that regardless. Then what you can do, of course I’m always going to say, I would love you to be working with the inner healing powerfully because then what you can do is no longer be triggered, no longer feel guilty and no longer hand over power. To have very clear, calm, truthful boundaries. But also you could be doing the inner and possible proxy work to help de-traumatize his soul, if you have permission to do that work on him. So there’s a lot you can do, but you cannot keep going the way you are of enabling him, because everybody loses. You lose. He loses. Your life and the things and missions and people you love lose as well. I hope that helps.

Zac: Okay, so we’ve got the next question from Instagram. So Cal asks, “I would love to hear from Zac how he felt when he was in the throes of narc abuse and how he translated that hurt into his own life and then what prompted him to start making different decisions and start his healing journey?”

Zac: This is a really good question. Thanks for asking this. There was sort of a period like we spoke about before, the period before Mel had accepted what she was going through and turn inward to start healing herself. Before she did that, she was really difficult, honestly, difficult to be around. I sort of had to separate myself. I had to shut myself off. I didn’t really know boundaries very well back then, but I was trying to just separate myself, go by my own thing. I was in university, I was trying to study and just sort of make my way through the world.

Zac: But when Mel finally turned inward and sort of accepted the journey and started going through it, we connected, you know, we connected, and I saw I could see the change in her. I could see that she wasn’t going to go back to him. And maybe that was part of the frustration that I was hanging onto. When she’d finally let go and when she’d finally turned inwards, taking responsibility for what she was going through, I started to see my mother as a role model again, and we started working together and we would talk about workshops or books I was reading and we spent a lot of time together really working on things together.

Melanie: And I would do healings. Because before then I used to hide things and I used to say, “no, everything’s fine”. And I thought that was the right thing to do, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew I was lying to him. And then when I just came out and I just went, “you know what, I’m broken and I need to heal”. And I was very vulnerable and honest with him, and I’d say, Zac, I’m going to go and do a healing. You’re probably going to hear me wail and cry and do all sorts of things, but it’s perfect because I’m getting my trauma out because I have to get better. And rather than him being really distressed and disgusted by that, I know it gave him a lot of comfort.

Zac: It was inspiring.

Melanie: Yeah. And it really gave him permission to be real with how he was feeling, and to share that with me as well. So we really came together in this authenticity, which helped us both so much.

Zac: Absolutely.

Melanie: Yeah. It was a powerful time. Well, this was your question. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hijack that. Was there anything more you needed to add?

Zac: No, just to really support the honesty. I think it’s just so important. Don’t hide anything away. Just be … I mean it can depend maybe if they’re very young, there’s certain details that obviously you wouldn’t tell a very young child, but you don’t have to tell them everything. But don’t say everything’s okay. I think that sends completely the wrong message.

Mel: True.

Zac: Be very honest, open, be vulnerable. And I think your kids will gravitate towards you and they’ll be inspired by that.

Zac: So our next question from Facebook. Jillian asks, “How can I connect with an alienated 20-year-old who’s convinced I’ve traumatized her? She tells the same to her siblings, although away at uni she’s still a flying monkey. It’s heartbreaking.”

Melanie: Yeah. Jillian, this is like, this happens all the time in the community and it’s one of the things that I really adamantly want to reach out to parents to help you with because I can’t imagine what, it nearly happened to me. I can’t, anyway, Jillian, I just want to say, you have to heal. Quantum law is this, so within, so without. The trauma of being alienated, if you can’t up-level and get yourself free of that in the inside, you’re going to keep receiving that from the outside. That’s the bottom line. This is what happens with so many parents in this community that have been alienated, that when they heal, when they release, when they’ll be able to come to peace, regardless of what’s happening out there, out there has to shift to match in there. It happens all the time.

Melanie: And the other thing about this is, is when we have the injustice of persecution and being smeared and set upon, that’s a huge, huge trauma. When that all releases and that all goes, this will never be about convincing her that you’re right and that he’s wrong or convincing her about how you’ve been traumatized and brutalized. That’s not what you’re here to convince her about. You are here to become love and let go of trauma and be able to allow the space and the love for her to move back into your life.

Melanie: We have had people in this community that have had five generations of dissension, fractures, decades of alienation who have healed. One family, five generations had been shattered and alienated and all came back together because one person in those five generations, and she knows who she is, and she’ll be watching this, she watches every episode, did the profound healing within her being to become love and feel and heal and know the family as love. They all reconnected. I promise you it’s the only way. And the thing is, there is no guarantee that that will happen, but there is the guarantee that if you do the inner work, the pain and the trauma will be gone. And from there everything is possible, including miracles. I hope that helps.

Melanie: I’ve really enjoyed doing this episode with you, Zac and I don’t think this will be the last one we do. You know, we may do this again, I’m really excited about the feedback and the questions and connecting to you all, and maybe, you might even ask Zac some questions on the blog or YouTube as well that he can answer.

Melanie: So, thank you so much for sending in your questions. And it is my greatest heart desire that we can help you. I am so passionate about our children and our future generations. It’s a topic so dear to my heart, I always get emotional when I talk about it.

Zac: It’s all right. It’s okay.

Melanie: I always do. This is the only thing I know, “Oh my God.” But it’s huge for me and I know it’s huge for you too. All right. So if you’re not already following me on Facebook and Instagram, please make sure you do, because we’re doing lots more exciting things there like this Q&A, and you can get daily inspiration tools and tips on there as well, 100%. So, so looking forward to your comments and questions on this really important episode that I’ve so enjoyed sharing with my dear son.

Zac: It’s been great. Thanks for having me on the show.

Melanie: Oh, that’s okay. It’s been, it’s a journey. It’s a few takes, but it’s fabulous. Zac’s not used to this. He’s done such a great job.

Zac: I’ve had a good teacher.

Melanie: Yeah, you’ve done a really great job. So anyway, people, you know how it goes, keep smiling, keep healing and keep thriving because there’s nothing else to do. And also too, I would love to see you at my live events. Zac will be there too.

Zac: Hope to see you there.

Melanie: The Thriver team and our MTE global team are going to be there and we’re going to hold you, help you and heal you and your future generations. And also, know that we have a $100 discount, which is going on the 18th of November so we’d love you to get in early and get your tickets. All right. Lots of love, everybody. Bye Bye.

Zac: Bye.

 



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