Divorcing a Narcissist? Enroll your Children in Empathy Boot Camp
When my divorce began, my daughters were four and two.
The universe handed me a therapist who understood exactly the kind of man I had been married to, and the family he came from. She understood it almost immediately. I know now how rare that is.
I have thought a lot about what she must have heard in those early sessions. The answers I gave to her questions. I think she saw, before I could say it out loud, that my girls were being shaped. Trained to follow. Groomed to step into the same shoes.
She gave my new home a name during my early divorce era:
Empathy Boot Camp.
The mission: Undo what had already been done. Get them to think of others. To imagine what someone else was feeling. To stand in another person's shoes, and to stay there a moment.
So that is what we did.
Every.
Single.
Day.
...and then some.
I modeled empathy to the point of exhaustion.
When a girl in my daughter's class got sick and missed the school play, we sat with it. We imagined what it would feel like to be her, at home, missing something that mattered.
We kept care packages in the car. We drove around scanning for anyone who might need one.
A lost dog poster stapled to a telephone pole became a whole conversation. Who is missing this dog tonight. What does that house feel like right now.
I did that work alone. I honestly do not know how I did it.
Lately, all of it has come back. Not because of one moment. Because of a hundred of them. The messages that land in my inbox. The parents I sit across from, the ones doing this work right now, in real time, with no guarantee of how it ends.
I see myself in them. I see those early years and I want them to know something.
If you are parenting through a family court case, I see you.
You are doing the ordinary, bone-deep, bone-tired work of raising children. You are doing it with extra layers most people never have to carry.
The therapy appointments. The undoing of whatever was done during the last exchange. The fine line you walk every time you talk to your own child, careful, measured, aware that anything you say can be turned into a weapon. The pressure of not having the answers but having to look like you do. The sleepless nights, wondering if they are going to be OK.
You are doing all of it under a microscope. I see you.
Here is what I want you to hear. I am not asking you to be doing it perfectly.
Some days are Empathy Boot Camp. Some days survival is the entire job. Some days you get everyone fed and into bed, and that is the whole victory, and it counts.
Being seen does not require you to perform your strength. It does not require a good day. You are seen on the hard days too. Especially on the hard days.
I know how alone this work can feel. The friends who do not quite get it. The system that looks right past you. The exhaustion you cannot explain to anyone who has not lived it.
So let me say it plainly. What you are doing matters. It is not invisible to me. It is not invisible to this community. You are not doing it in the dark, even when it feels that way.
"Let them be little."
That phrase surfaces for me constantly. It is the wish underneath all of this. That your children could simply be children. Soft in the places childhood is supposed to be soft.
It would be easy to walk straight down the road of anger from there. To think about stolen childhoods. To sit with the fact that our kids could have been protected, if the people in the system had simply listened. If they had believed us.
I know that road well.
I refuse to live on that road.
I come back to radical acceptance instead. It happened the way it happened. There is no version of the story where I change it. I would have bought a bubble and tucked my daughters safely inside it, if such a thing existed. That was not our path.
I have to trust that the path led where it needed to lead.
Here is how I know Empathy Boot Camp worked.
A few weeks ago I was sitting on the patio of a coffee shop with my daughter. A homeless man walked up, asking for help. One by one, the people around us looked away.
You know…the way people look away.
My nineteen-year-old stood up.
She dug out a handful of crumpled dollar bills and put them in his hand. She looked him in the eyes. She held his gaze. She let him be a person for a moment, when everyone else had decided not to. When she sat down, she made a comment to me about the need for community, and that no matter how little we have, we always have it better than someone else.
That kindness was not born on the coffee shop patio. It was born years ago, in the car, driving past a lost dog poster, handing a loaf of banana bread to a complete stranger.
Your version is happening too. In a car somewhere, on an ordinary afternoon, in a hundred small moments no one else sees. You are building something, and it is really important work. Someday you will see the fruits of your labor stand up in a coffee shop and show loving kindness to another human.
Until then, I am cheering you on.
P.S. Some things to note:
The second edition of The Narc Decoder is expanding to include the supporting cast: the mothers-in-law, step-mothers, and family members who show up on behalf of the abuser. If you have received an email, letter, declaration, or message from your toxic ex mother-in-law (or another enabler in your ex's life), I would love to consider it for the book. Please remove identifying details (names, locations, case numbers), then [click here] and select "Submissions" in the upper right hand corner.
Connecting with our community:
a) OMB Private Chapters (on Facebook) are FREE. Go to www.ombchapters.com
b) The Lemonade Club is my private group. We meet on the second Monday of every month at 6 PM Pacific over Zoom. Go to www.thelemonadeclub.com
c) The Lemonade Power Retreat is coming up in November. Survivors coming together with a collective nod that says, "I get it." I would love for you to join us. https://www.onemomsbattle.com/retreatsThe High Conflict Divorce Coach Certification Program starts in August. If you are a survivor who wants to turn your lived experience into something that changes lives, this is the path. I firmly believe that where there is a will, there is a way. If you are interested in joining our next cohort, please reach out to me at tina@hcdivorcecoach.com
