Why don’t you just leave?

Then vs. Now: When the Abuser Wins Custody Through Perjury

Then: The Stay-at-Home Mom Crying on the Couch

In 2017, I was seven months pregnant with my second son. My oldest was just four years old. I was a full-time stay-at-home mom, completely debilitated by what doctors called “chronic fatigue”—but what I now know was emotional collapse from long-term psychological abuse. I couldn’t function most days until late afternoon. My body was shutting down from adrenal exhaustion, spiritual despair, and an ongoing sense of powerlessness in my own home.

I had no help. No reprieve. And no one to protect me—not even my husband.

The posts I made back then show it all in real time:

• January 2017: I was begging for prayers because my husband’s narcissistic mother had inserted herself into our marriage and my husband had turned against me. I was forced to attend weekly dinners at her house while being forbidden from saying anything negative about her—while she could attack me freely.

• February 2017: I wrote openly that my four-year-old saw me cry every day. That I had no energy left. That all I could do was pray I’d have enough energy to feed my family. That’s how low I was—hoping God would give me just enough strength to cook a meal.

• 2018–2019: I continued crying for help in support groups. Looking for backup babysitters because I physically couldn’t care for my kids alone. Trying to apply for support programs. Admitting to strangers that I’d had chronic fatigue for seven years and was “tired of being tired.”

But what the world didn’t see behind those words was this:

I was being emotionally starved, gaslit, and isolated inside a marriage that made me feel more like a prisoner than a partner. My husband never once defended me—not from his mother, not from church manipulation, not from the psychological hell I was sinking into while pregnant and parenting alone. He watched me suffer. He watched me cry. He watched me collapse on the couch every day—and he did nothing.

Worse, he blamed me.

Now: He’s Raising My Sons in His Mother’s Basement

Fast forward to now.

The same man who abandoned me at my lowest—who refused to support me while I raised our sons alone—is now raising them with his mother in her basement.

Let that sink in.

The woman who drove a wedge into my marriage… who gaslit me and triangulated my children’s father against me… who attacked me in front of him while I was pregnant… who pushed her religious extremism on our household and treated me like a threat to their delusional power dynamic… is now co-parenting my sons. Full-time.

I was erased.

Not because I was unfit.

Not because I was abusive.

But because I broke down after years of abandonment, emotional abuse, religious coercion, and court-enabled trauma.

I begged for help. I cried out for support. I documented the fatigue, the exhaustion, the pain of doing it all alone—and they used it all against me.

They didn’t rescue me.

They replaced me.

The Court Didn’t See a Mother Crying for Help. It Saw a Mother to Remove.

The system didn’t offer me a hand. It didn’t offer services. It didn’t intervene to protect me or my sons from coercive control. Instead, it punished me for showing symptoms of trauma.

And today, my children are being raised by the very people who broke me.

By the man who never once lifted a finger to help me through postpartum, pregnancies, or chronic illness.

By the woman who gaslit, manipulated, and attacked me while pretending to be pious.

They call it “justice.”

I call it court-enabled child abuse.

And Still… I Rose

I survived every night I thought I wouldn’t.

I healed parts of myself I didn’t know were broken.

I found my voice. I kept the evidence. I built my case.

I created entire platforms to help others endure what I did.

And I now speak not just for myself, but for every erased, silenced, soul-shattered parent who was punished for their pain instead of helped through it.

The difference between then and now?

• Then, I was pleading for someone to rescue me.

• Now, I’m making damn sure no one else drowns in the silence I once lived in.

To Every Parent Still in It:

Your exhaustion is not weakness.

Your body is not broken.

It’s trying to survive what should have never been tolerated.

You are not crazy—you’re being crushed by a system that rewards abusers and punishes those who feel.

And your tears are not evidence of instability. They’re proof of your humanity.

I Am Still Their Mother.

No court can erase that.

And I will keep telling the truth until the lies are exposed, the corruption is dismantled, and the next generation of children is protected from this soul-shattering game of power disguised as custody.