Children of divorce often wonder, “Can you emancipate yourself from one parent?” Tiffany will share the story of how she emancipated from both parents. Hopefully, her story can help any minor hoping to emancipate themselves from an abusive parent.
If you have children in danger from their father after a divorce, or you’re concerned about it, we’d love to support you. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.
1. What Does It Mean to Emancipate Yourself?
At BTR, we advocate for safety above all else. To discover if you’re emotionally unsafe, take our free emotional abuse quiz.
Women can learn emotional and psychological safety strategies by enrolling in The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop.
2. When It Feels Too Difficult To Emancipate Yourself From Abuse
You’re not alone. Many women experience debilitating trauma when considering emancipating themselves from abuse.
Why? Because abusers condition victims to feel powerless, worthless, and trapped.
3. Finding The Strength To Emancipate Yourself
It may feel overwhelming, frightening, and devastating. But you can find the strength to emancipate yourself from abuse.
Many women weigh their options, putting others’ needs before their own safety. Some of these include:
- Wanting to spare their children the trauma of divorce and its aftermath
- How do you help the child of a narcissist?
- Wanting to avoid financial hardship
- Wanting to “keep the peace” by “letting it go”
- Fear of the abuser’s retribution against self or children
Abuse teaches women that they are not worthy of safety, kindness, or respect. Women will hold tight to everyone else’s “needs” because abuse has conditioned them to do so.
4. Will It Hurt My Children IF I Emancipate Myself From Abuse?
Mothers worry that separating themselves from abusive behaviors may harm their children. This is understandable, divorce, separation, and other safety boundaries may feel disruptive and traumatic for children.
However, no matter what the circumstances, if their mother is being abused, the children are also being abused – even if the abuser never lays a hand on them. Simply existing in a space where abuse is present is detrimental and harmful to children.
At BTR.ORG, we know that safety looks different for everyone. Some women opt for a no-contact divorce, while others choose to stay married. No matter how you emancipate yourself from abuse, Betrayal Trauma Recovery is here to support you, validate you, and empower you.
The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions meet multiple times a day in every time zone. Join today and find a loving community of women who understand what you are going through as you begin your journey to safety and healing.
Transcript: Can You Emancipate Yourself From One Parent?
Anne: I received a five star review the other day. She said, lifesaver for me and my child. I don’t know what I would do without this podcast. I look to it for guidance, support, and understanding. BTR seems to really know what is going on and doesn’t take BS from anyone. After living with my ex’s pornography, abuse, and sex addiction for eight years, I finally found a safe place that can empathize and explain all of the madness I’ve been living. There is no podcast quite like it. Keep doing what you are doing, BTR, and thank you.
I have Tiffany on today’s episode. She is familiar with overcoming hardships after enduring physical, mental, and sexual abuse. Tiffany emancipated from her parents at the age of 15. At the time, she was only the second case in Utah for a child of that age to become legally emancipated from her parents.
She worked three jobs to support herself through high school, became a Sterling scholar, and graduated top of her class. As a torchbearer for the 2002 Olympics, Tiffany has always determined to shine a light in dark places. Welcome Tiffany.
Tiffany: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Anne: So Tiffany’s going to share a little bit about her childhood abuse and how to emancipate yourself, which is an amazing story.
And then we’re going to focus the rest of the episode on the abuses she experienced from her boyfriend, and how she didn’t realize what was going on. Then finally, she also emancipated herself from that situation. So Tiffany, let’s start with your childhood abuse. Did you understand as a child that you were a victim of abuse?
Tiffany’s Childhood Abuse
Tiffany: I think the moment I realized, was when my dad broke my arm. So an answer to that question, from my earliest memory until he broke my arm when I was six, I didn’t realize it. But then once that happened, I was like, okay, yeah, this isn’t normal. He threw me across the room, and I hit a solid wood door.
I didn’t know the word abused, obviously, at six, but I knew that what was happening couldn’t be right. My dad would never take his anger out on my mom when he was mad at my mom. He put her up on a big pedestal, so instead when he would get mad. He would pick me up off the floor from my coloring books and throw me across the room in anger in some sort of fight with my mom.
Also, he took my mom and I to my grandmother’s house for the day, because he worked a weird shift of 3 p.m. to midnight. So, when he would go to work, my mom and I would go to my grandmother’s house, my mom’s mom’s house. And we were driving a 1964 Ford, which my dad still drives. And the seatbelts in that car, the reason I tell you that is the seatbelts in the car are very difficult to push the button down to undo the seatbelt.
Physical Abuse from Father
Tiffany: And my dad started yelling at me. I couldn’t get the seatbelt button to go down. My dad broke my arm. And I’m saying, I can’t do it, and I’m crying, and he’s getting pissed off at me. Finally, he releases the seat belt. Basically yanks me out of the car, throws me to my mom, and my mom and I go inside my grandmother’s house.
And my grandmother’s like, you know, I’m bawling, my arm looks crazy, my mom’s trying to say, oh, it’s nothing, it must be a sprain. And my grandmother’s like, no, this isn’t a sprain, we need to take her to the hospital right now. So they ended up taking me, and I remember the whole time it was my grandmother by my side, not my mother.
I don’t remember where my mother was. When they gave me the anesthetic shot to do what they needed to do to. They set my arm and put the cast on or whatever it is they did. My grandmother’s there trying to calm me down, wiping my tears, wiping my head, and telling me I’m gonna be okay.
And my dad picks us up that day at midnight. Hey dad’s here, we got to go home, and I come out with this cast on my arm. My grandfather played the organ, and I distinctively remember my dad sitting on this organ bench and saw this cast on my arm. He looked down at the ground and didn’t say anything about it.
Emancipate yourself from Manipulation & Lies
Tiffany: But the next morning my parents told me to tell everybody that I fell out of a tree. And that’s what happened to the arm. So I would walk around with this cast on and my arm behind my back. Because I didn’t want to lie to people. And I’m thinking, why are my parents asking me to say something different than what happened?
And so that was kind of my first aha moment of, okay, well. They’re asking me to lie about something that’s not true. And threatened me if I didn’t say I fell out of the apricot tree in the backyard. So it led me to believe there was something more going on that wasn’t good. So the actual word abuse? No, I don’t think I knew it was abuse as far as the word. I knew that it wasn’t right, but I was too scared to say anything.
Actually, my dad did not abuse my mom, that I know of. And I think she would probably say the same thing. The reason I say that is my mom was his princess. He put her on this pedestal, as I’ve mentioned. He gave her money to buy clothes, do her hair, and never made her work. When they got into a fight, most of what I saw was he would yell. Which was rare. Then he would come back with flowers and apologize, and he just really doted on her. It felt like I was the punching bag for when he was upset with her.
Mother’s Emotional Abuse
Tiffany: But I know my mother was emotionally abusive to me. My mom was a promiscuous woman. That’s actually how my parents got pregnant with me. She cheated on my dad a lot with people in the congregation of the church we were in.
I’d see them in bed with my mom during the week. She would say, if you say anything, I will break your face. That was her one common threat, I’ll break your face. And I didn’t know what break your face meant. But I knew I didn’t want to get hit in the face. That was already happening from Dad.
Mom would give me candies, for example. My dad loved caramels. He had this tin can of caramels he’d keep in the kitchen. And my mom would open one up, or open the tin up and say, Here, do you want one? And, you know, I’m a kid. Yeah, I want a freaking piece of candy. If you offer it to me, I’m gonna take it.
So, I’d take it and eat it. It was delicious. You know, again, my dad worked that 3 to midnight shift, and I’d be sleeping in my bed, which is in the kitchen, by the way. My bedroom was in the kitchen, growing up. The front door was at the foot of my bed. So, my dad would walk in, wake me up a little, and I’d pretend to be asleep.
And my mom would say, Tiffany stole candy today. Or, Tiffany did this, and then my dad would yank me out of bed and beat me for taking candy I wasn’t supposed to take. Yet my mom gave it to me and asked if I wanted it. So she was very manipulative in that way.
Molestation & Emancipation
Anne: You’re the second woman in Utah to legally emancipate yourself from your parents. Talk about how that went down.
Tiffany: When it started, it wasn’t meant to be an emancipate yourself thing. One of the men my mother was cheating with, my mom ended up going with him. He ended up molesting me when I was young. And molested my sister later on in life as she came along. Beause my mother did nothing to stop it with me. He was a military police officer and said, if you say anything to anybody, I’ll kill you.
Well, he’s six feet two or three, I don’t remember exactly, but he was tall and intimidating and had a temper. He was physically abusive to my mother. And so when he said, you say anything, I’ll kill you, I believed him, I kept my mouth shut. My mother, who turned to drugs once she left my father. It started with speed, and then it turned to marijuana, and then it turned to cocaine. It escalated, and now she’s still a drug addict on much heavier drugs.
I thought my mom wouldn’t protect me if I said anything anyway. And she came to me one day when I was getting ready for school and said, what’s going on? And so I told her, because I thought she would protect me if she asked about it. She basically confronted him, and we had this family discussion. He turned to her and said she’s lying. I didn’t touch her.
I didn’t molest her. Everything she’s saying is a lie. He told her she had to choose between me or him. She didn’t even hesitate two seconds.
Emancipate yourself from Living with ABUSIVE Biological Father
Tiffany: She turned to me and said, you have until tomorrow to get the bleep out of my house. At that point, I was 13, in the 8th grade. And she had a yard sale, sold my belongings in front of me, and I had basically a garbage bag full of clothes, and I had a Tootsie Roll piggy bank with some change, so I walked past her and her yard sale of my belongings.
It is still so crazy to me that she did that, but took my coins from my piggy bank and got on the UTA bus, which is our local bus system here in Utah. And lived with my biological father in Layton, the guy physically abusive to me. I just thought, I’m either homeless or living with Dad. I don’t have a lot of options. And so I took the risk and lived with Dad. Once Mom was gone and they divorced, he never touched me again.
I became a latchkey kid. Meaning I woke up and dad was gone for work, and I came home from school. Dad was still gone for work because he worked two jobs. Being 13, going through sexual abuse from my stepfather, and then not being believed and getting kicked out, basically felt like I was worth nothing. If the woman who brought me life and brought me to the planet doesn’t want me, what’s the point? And I became anorexic and suicidal, and had a lot of things I was having a hard time dealing with.
Struggles with Mental Health
Tiffany: And there was a morning I woke up and I said, today’s gonna be the day I end my life. I just don’t wanna be here anymore. I just don’t see the point.
The angel on my shoulder said, yeah, but if you kill yourself, you’re letting all this defeat you, and you’re letting them all win. You need to emancipate yourself. It wasn’t those exact words, but something along those lines. And I realized it was time to either get help or just be done with it.
And I knew that this didn’t need to define me. It was a weird, strange moment. It was very, very surreal. I reached out to a social worker and had to go through two years of therapy, to the point that I could just even look in the mirror and not be disgusted at myself and feel like an unworthy person.
At the time, I was 15. And I said, what’s next? And I knew it wasn’t good to go back with Dad. Obviously, I couldn’t go with Mom. So he mentioned foster care. And foster care was not anything I wanted to do. When Mom left Dad, we bounced around a lot, because she’d go from man to man and then return to the other man. She just couldn’t keep steady romantic relationships.
And so I went to 23 different elementary schools in a very short period. And I knew when you’re in foster care, you get bounced around a lot. Not always, but generally that’s what happens. And plus, I didn’t want to live with a strange family. I had separation issues. I had attachment issues, you know, many things, as you can see from what I went through.
Emancipation & relief
Tiffany: I said, there’s got to be something else. I don’t want to be a foster kid. And he said, well, you can emancipate yourself. I didn’t even know what that meant. He explained it to me, and he said, but I need to let you know, the odds are stacked against you.
There’s only one other case in Utah at your age that was able to at the time. And I thought, well, what’s the worst that can happen? They’re going to tell me no. And then I have to go into foster care. So, I went for it, and I was awarded, essentially, custody of myself, and became the second case in the state of Utah.
Anne: That felt scary and sad and great all at the same time kind of a thing?
Tiffany: Yeah, for sure relief, for one. My mom, she’s very vindictive, and I didn’t want her to say I was a runaway. I’d have to go into juvenile detention. So I felt relief, because I felt Mom didn’t have those chains or that hold or that control. I felt so much relief. I didn’t have to be around her, see her, which is sad. She’s my mother. She’s the reason I’m on the planet. But she’s not my mom, and I see a big difference in those two words.
So, I got emancipated right around the same time I got to run the torch in the Olympics. And that’s when I was dating Danny. I ran the torch in 2002. I met him in 2001.
Emancipate yourself: Meeting Danny
Tiffany: I’m a huge Dave Matthews fan, and so is he. A friend of mine from the singles congregation had said, Hey, Dave Matthews is coming into town. Did you see that? I’m like, Oh yeah, I saw and I want some tickets, but you know, looks like it’s going to be sold out. And he’s like, well, I can get you a ticket. And I’ve got a couple of buddies of mine coming in from out of town.
He was from Louisville, and I wanted to go. And I said, heck yeah. So I paid for the ticket, and he and his two friends came and picked me up. And one of the guys was Danny in the back seat. And I remember at that concert, he sang one of my favorite songs. Like, he was standing next to me, and it almost seemed like he was singing it in my ear. It was like this little romantic moment. You know, my favorite band, he was cute. We both loved Dave and just stayed in touch.
We had a long distance relationship, writing letters, talking on the phone. He was the first man I ever fell in love with, the man I lost my virginity to. So, like, there was a lot of attachment there. And as a surprise, he ended up, packing up his little Honda Civic and driving across the country and knocked on my door. I was renting a basement room with some other girls. And was like, surprise! I was like, you’re here, this is so awesome!
And he’s like, no, I’m moving here. I’m like, what? It was so awesome.
Anne: No hint that you would eventually emancipate yourself.
Danny Moves to Utah
Tiffany: You know, so excited for it. We ended up moving in together and renting a basement apartment. And his friend rented the other room. It was a two bedroom apartment. We shared one room, and then he had the other. It wasn’t until he moved here to Utah, that romanticism, oh, I can’t wait to eat breakfast in the same room as you. I can’t wait to go do, all the things you want to do when you’re in a long distance relationship. Once he was here, it was like the monster came out. I started to see who he really was.
Anne: Did you ever consider that talking on the phone and all that before he moved here was grooming? You wouldn’t until hindsight, obviously.
Tiffany: Right. He treated me like gold, he honestly did. He wrote me poems and sent me flowers. So I was like, this guy is perfect. He flew here to take me to homecoming at university. But he was here for moments, he was here for three days, five days, you know, short spurts. So it’s easy to have like, oh, every little moment’s amazing with you. There were no issues about you need to emancipate yourself before he moved here.
We didn’t fight over the phone. He didn’t say mean things over the phone. It wasn’t until he got me one on one in person that it started. I very distinctly remember, it started the day I ran the torch. We’d just gotten home.
First Signs of Abuse from Danny
Tiffany: And we were in the basement and started arguing about something. And he came over to me and shoved me, and the torch fell out of my hand. And I was so worried that that glass on the torch would break. Because somebody had paid for me to keep the torch. It was like, wow, this is so cool. He shoved me, and that torch fell out of my hand, and I was like, whoa.
Then I started crying, and he came over and put his hand over my mouth and said, you stop your crying. And it was like, it wasn’t okay for me to shed tears. And it was such a big day in my life. It was like, he was trying to take away my moment, if you will.
Anne: We see that a lot. On a holiday, or on a birthday, they might not shove. Like, shoving is pretty overt abuse, obviously. But, they might do something to throw you off emotionally, ruin your day. When I was on your podcast, you talked about the fact that he was using pornography, but you didn’t see that as an abuse issue or that you needed to emancipate yourself.
Tiffany: Yeah, so, he was a photographer. It was a hobby. But turned into where he was pursuing it professionally. The Victoria’s Secret model, Gisele Bundchen, and some other Victoria’s Secret models. He always looked at pictures of them, or he had books, like coffee table books of them in scantily clad clothes, bikinis and things. I thought, well, he’s a photographer. He admires beautiful photos.
Emancipate yourself FROM OTHER Women’s photos
Tiffany: There was a Sante D’Orazio book he had of women that just had underwear on, or they’re naked, and you see everything. I didn’t think much of it, but hindsight, as you say, now I’m like, okay, he was doing this stuff right in front of me all along. It escalated to a point where we had the computer in the bedroom, because we had those tight quarters in that basement apartment. And sharing with his friend living on the other side of the basement.
He would look up these photos online, and he started looking at them right before we’d go to bed. And then he’d want to get into bed and do something. Sexually is what I mean by doing something. And like, you’re not going to get your rocks off by visually stimulating yourself looking at these naked women. Of these supermodels or just women you think are gorgeous and then come get into bed with me. I would say things like that.
And he’d make me feel like I was a complete idiot, that I was making stuff up. He tried to make me feel like I was being crazy, and I did. I questioned it a few times. Am I crazy? Is this just me being ultra paranoid or something? Do you need to emancipate yourself? That’s something that happened regularly. Now that I’m thinking of it. I was one of his subjects. He would love to take pictures of me, just out and about every day.
I was very skinny and slender at the time, and I was modeling on the side here and there, but then of course, behind closed doors, he’d want me to take photos like he was looking at online.
Recognizing Abuse
Anne: Did you recognize it was abuse while you were in it and even getting out and emancipate yourself? Or did you have to be out of it for a while to recognize, whoa, that was abusive?
Tiffany: So when we were in it, I started to get more vocal about it and say, this doesn’t make me feel right. You know, this shouldn’t be happening. Why do you have to do that before you get into bed with me? And then we’d get into these big blow up fights. Like I say, he’d make me feel crazy. We were together four or five years. I would ask about marriage.
Do you think we’re ever going to get married? Not, hey, when are you going to propose to me? Like, hey, do you think we’re ever going to get married? Because nobody wants to waste their time, obviously, and we’re this far in. And any time I would mention that M word, marriage, he would freak out. It would cause a huge disturbance in our relationship, and we would fight, and it became something that I walked on eggshells and never dared to ask it again.
I had this little epiphany where I’m like, if he doesn’t know by now that I’m somebody he could marry and I can’t even talk about it. Then I’m wasting my time.
Ending the Relationship
Tiffany: So I started sleeping on the couch. The last six months of our relationship, I slept on the couch. I would say to him, you know, if you keep treating me like this, I’m going to leave. I don’t think he believed me. And I went apartment looking on the side and found an apartment and signed a lease. I didn’t know how in the world I was going to make it work financially, but did it anyway. And I moved out one day while he was at work. And never let him know where I went. You can emancipate yourself.
He called me and was like, Where the heck are you? And what are you doing? And I mentioned the marriage thing. If you don’t know you’re going to marry me, and we can’t even talk about it, what’s the point? And he’s like, Well, just come back, and I’ll propose to you on a mountain in Paris, or blah, blah, you know, just somewhere in Europe. And I’m like, it’s too late. So then he tried to use his manipulation of giving me the things he knew I always wanted, and withheld from me.
There were so many times going back even to when I was six, I knew something wasn’t right. I didn’t know it was specifically the word abuse. I knew something wasn’t right when my stepfather did the things he did. When Danny would come to bed and do the things he did and the way I felt, I knew it wasn’t right. Listening to my gut was huge, and it’s something I should have done sooner.
emancipate yourself AND Listen to Your Gut
Tiffany: You feel a certain way. You’re feeling that way for a reason. I know that’s vague, but listen to your intuition. If something in your brain says, this just doesn’t seem right, or doesn’t make me feel right. Then it’s probably not right. But in addition, I think the biggest thing is that many times I didn’t say something in fear of another abuse happening. Whether it was beating, emotional or mental. See something, say something.
If you don’t say something, nothing can be done. We know this about the reporting of abuse, the prosecuting of abuse. Specifically with mental and emotional abuse. There are no scars to prove anything. It’s just kind of word against word. Reach out to somebody you trust.
For me, I trusted nobody other than a bound book with the word journal written on the front of it. So, my journal, if that’s what you gotta do, write something in a journal, get it out. And then see how that felt, and then be able to move forward to talking to an actual person about it. But I know the hardest step is the start, that stops you when trying to emancipate yourself.
It’s that first step of, I’m afraid to say something, because who knows what he’s going to do. If you can take that first step, and you realize, okay, I’m strong, I did that, how’d that feel? And then you take the next and then the next, then you’ve got a momentum going to build yourself back up to healing
Anne: Yeah, taking tiny steps. We actually have three steps. Where, if you have no idea what to do, you can find that.
Building a Life of Safety & Peace
Tiffany: Yeah, I love that. Because you feel so powerless when all this happens and don’t feel like you can emancipate yourself. Standing in your power and saying, I can’t do this anymore. Here I am at 38 years old. The last abuse I experienced was 18 years ago. And I’m not here to discourage the listeners, but I’m still a work in progress. I’m still doing things daily to remind myself that I am worthy, beautiful, strong, you know, all the things that you don’t believe when you’re mentally beaten down and emotionally beaten down.
Anne: I’m proud of you for all the amazing things you’ve accomplished in the face of abuse. Can you talk about goals you’ve set for yourself? The fact that you don’t have children with your abuser is a blessing, but can you talk about how you’ve built a life of safety and peace now?
Tiffany: The biggest thing is my support. Meaning the people I allow around me. I’ve learned to value myself in a way that I am careful who I let in. I’m just at a point in my life, and it doesn’t matter if I was 21 or 72. Everybody should have this in their life, they deserve it. That I just don’t need to be around people who don’t believe in me and are there to pick me apart.
I even have cousins and aunts and uncles that might not be a huge believer in me because of the emancipation I did against my parents. That’s hard, but really, to get me to where I am today, I can literally go through anything now and overcome it.
Meditation & Positive Affirmations
Tiffany: And the way I do that is, I believe in meditation. I used to think it was a very woo woo thing. Probably five years ago. If I had this conversation with you, the word meditation wouldn’t have even come out of my mouth. I’ve really embraced it. in the last five years, whether that be meditation for you might be praying, sitting in a quiet room listening to your thoughts or trying not to listen to your thoughts. Meditation to you might be staring at a landscape and listening to birds, you know, meditation can be different for everyone.
But I bring that up, because it’s important to be comfortable with yourself. And to listen to the thoughts that might come into your head, but not necessarily give them a ton of credit when you are trying to emancipate yourself. Because sometimes our mind tries to confuse us, or our mind tries to remind us of, oh, but remember, you were not worth it back then.
You’ve got to remind yourself, yes, I am. Because I’ve grown, and I’ve made the steps, and I’m doing the things I need to do. So meditation is huge, and then for me also positive affirmations. If you step into my house, you can’t go into one room of my house, including the bathroom, that there’s no positive affirmation.
Whether it’s me writing a post it note on the mirror, or something on the wall hanging up. You know, I have a daily affirmation calendar that I change every day, and it’s a new affirmation. I think kind of rewiring your thoughts and beliefs about yourself through positive affirmations really helps.
Emancipate yourself WITH Goals for SHARE Initiative
Tiffany: People used to make fun of it. You know that Saturday Night Live skit where the guy would talk to himself in the mirror and be like gosh dang it, I’m special and everybody loves me. But it’s true. That stuff works, negative self talk is not gonna get you anywhere. The positive self talk, and then visualizing it and seeing it in front of your face, as well, gets you so far. It’s helped me tremendously. Now, as far as goals, obviously I’m still running SHARE.
As a matter of fact, we’re doing a Thanksgiving dinner for a family in Bountiful next week, which has been through tremendous domestic violence. And so, my goal is to have SHARE be a global initiative in the long term to emancipate yourself. Not just something happening here in Utah, because that’s my reach as of now. I want it to be a national initiative recognized everywhere in every state, and then a global initiative, because abuse is an epidemic.
Statistics aren’t getting any better, specifically during COVID. You know, when people were trapped in their homes with their perpetrators.
Anne: Many women who listen to this podcast are in a relationship with an emotional and psychological abuser. They fear getting out of the relationship, because they feel like I need to stay in the relationship, because it’s better for the children if I do that. Being a Victim of childhood abuse from your parents, what would you say to that for women victims. Who are feeling like, getting out is too hard, I need to stay in, and plus it’s better for the kids?
Long-Term Effects on Children
Tiffany: So, getting out, and emancipate yourself, if a woman says getting out is too hard, she’s talking about, you know, I would say herself, not selfishly, but it’s hard for her because she’s gonna have to be a single mother. She’s gonna have to do this on her own. Maybe she’ll feel she has no support. Whatever the case may be. But you’ve gotta look at it this way.
By staying, you’re affecting all these kids’ lives in a negative way. Because they’re now exposed to it in some capacity. Whether you’re not being able to give your 100 percent as a mother. Because you’re dealing with this abuse in the home, or they’re seeing the abuse take place in the home, not necessarily physical, they can see it emotionally.
I just had a podcast this morning where a lady was talking about emotional abuse and how much it affected her seeing her mother and her father do that to each other. So I would say long term I know that’s hard to do in the moment and feeling that you can’t do it. Whether it be financially or support wise or safety wise or whatever the case may be.
But if you don’t do something now, it’s going to have a trickle effect even greater on your children than if you were to leave. And I don’t say that to, like, make them feel guilty or bad. But that’s the truth of the matter from somebody who’s been there. If my mother had, when I said, hey, this is what Robert’s doing to me. If she had taken my side. She would have said, you know, okay, this is absolutely crazy, I’m protecting you as my daughter. And Robert, you need to leave.
Challenges of Shared Custody
Tiffany: Then Tristina, my little sister, who’s nine years younger than me, would not have had to deal with the abuse she went through, if that makes any sense. So, if she had stopped it with me, it was only one statistic, instead of my sister, and we suspect even my brother, because my stepfather was molested by his father.
So try to remember that it’s going to be so much easier on the other side. To look back and say I can’t believe I went through that, than to still be in it. I get that, but think of those kids.
Anne: Absolutely, I think there’s one thing that we need to acknowledge here. And that is divorce doesn’t solve abuse. So If you get divorced and are out of it, but your ex is still engaging in abusive behaviors and you share custody. Then there’s still going to be abuse happening.
So even though you’re protecting your kids more than if your abuser lived in your home. If you’re required by law, which most everybody is, to send your children with your abusive ex. Maybe you have 50 50 custody, maybe you have sole custody, whatever it is, he will still have access to those children. So divorce is not the complete answer.
It doesn’t solve abuse, but it is a way to start stepping out of it and emancipate yourself in some cases, in most cases. So I want to caution everyone from thinking, okay, the solution is divorce. Because even when you divorce, or even if you divorce. If you share children, that abuse is still ongoing, both to you and your children.
emancipate yourself BY Building Confidence & Strength
Anne: And that’s what makes the situation so difficult for victims. With the court systems, the way they are, and with the situations they are with custody, you can’t just completely walk away from the abuse and emancipate yourself.
Tiffany: Yeah, I didn’t think of that. I mean, I don’t have children of my own. I’ll have to say that. So take what I’m saying with that grain of salt. Other than I have raised my siblings, I ended up taking them out of foster care and raising them, but it’s not the same. I didn’t even think of that aspect. It is such a tricky place to be in. It comes down to having confidence in yourself and having that strength. But then where does it come from when you’re getting beaten down every day?
Anne: I do think victims are stronger the more they can escape the abuse, and divorce facilitates that. So even if their abuser is still engaging in abusive behaviors, if they have separated themselves as much as possible from the harm, they’re going to get stronger. They’re going to live a more healthy, emotional life, physical life. They’re going to feel better.
Even if the abuse is still sort of this. thing that’s hanging over them and their children, possibly for the rest of their lives. At least you’re providing some type of barrier, which you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Encouragement to Take the First Step
Tiffany: I just want to say probably the phrase I’ve already used here, it is the start that stops you. So I challenge everyone who listens to take that first step to emancipate yourself. Whatever that first step looks like for you. Whether it’s again journaling, taking the time to sit in peace with yourself and meditate, or reaching out to somebody you feel is safe.
Continue to listen to this podcast. It’s a tremendous resource for you ladies that have gone through this, and just keep tuning in and hearing these stories that will help you and what Anne has to offer, and that’s awesome.
Anne: Thank you so much, Tiffany, for coming on today’s episode.
Tiffany: Thank you.
Ladies, thank you for your story. This has helped me recognize some things in my own life that I want to work through. In the late 90’s I was living with an abusive bf, my mom kicked me out for not cleaning the bathroom ,shortly after my 16th bday. I left happily. Real dad, a police officer in my city, didn’t want to pay child support anymore. Asked me to sign for emancipation. I signed. I’m still working through this stuff in my head