For those of you that have only just found this site and are in your initial days of shock and confusion.

More so for those that have been served with a restraining order and are being withheld from their children by false allegations.

I was where you are now two years ago. I went 3 months with no contact at all with my children followed by a year of supervised visits.

On that first visit with my children after no contact for three solid months my daughter ran to me, flung her arms around me and we both sobbed uncontrollably for a fair length of time.

She held tight to me and would not let go for a very long time.

That first visit will be draining. You will be an emotional wreck. The time will fly by in an instant and it will be time to say good bye.

Be prepared. This is the worst. Because it will be in your face what is being robbed from you, your very children, how much they love and miss you and how wrong all this is that you are being unjustly kept from them.

You’ll be a torrent of emotions, from being happy and grateful, to feelings of rage at the injustice of it all. These feelings will be one, followed by another and sometimes felt simultaneously.

You will feel humiliated, belittled, grateful, angry, filled with despair, so incredibly happy and hopeful and hopeless as well, all at the exact same time. It is whirlwind of emotions indescribable with mere words.

You must keep your wits through it all. It is imperative.

If you act on your emotions, those actions will be used against you and lessen your chances for ever having a chance at continuing any kind of relationship with your children. Knowing this of course only adds to the injustice of it all, that while feeling all this you are allowed to show none of it or be persecuted.

It is much easier said than done, keeping your wits while so overwhelmed with emotion.

I have always been known as a man to keep his calm, to not react to situations due to emotions or instinct. I’ve been a fire fighter and an EMT and I have always excelled in high stress situations.

But nothing prepared me for the journey you are about to embark on.

I once believed at the age of 41 that I had experienced humanities full range of emotions.

I had experienced many life challenges.

Life’s trials and tribulations.

It’s success and failures.

Good times and bad.

I thought I understood who I was, what I was capable of, and how to “deal” with any situation.

I was sadly mistaken and I was so naive.

I thought I had felt the full range of emotions, and I suppose I had.

But the depth of those emotions, is was took me by surprise. I had no concept of how deep emotions can be felt by the human soul.

No idea at all.

I was completely unprepared.

Nothing in life prepared me for these last 2+ years, for the months of very dark days I experienced at the onset, the darkness you yourself are likely experiencing now and will likely experience to an even greater degree here soon.

I don’t believe anything in life can prepare you.

Certainly I cannot with only my written words.

I was taken to the very brink of insanity.

I do not condone the actions of men that do unspeakable things in their torment.

But I now understand it. It’s not them that do it. When they do homicide or suicide in these situations, they do so because they have been driven over the brink.

It is not because they are necessarily bad men or even weaker men, it’s because they have quite literally lost their minds and with it any rational thought to control their actions.

For me, I was fortunate, I was always able to keep at least just a shred of rational thought. Just enough to keep me from acting on the intense overwhelming emotions I was submersed in.

I was able to hold to the knowledge that my thoughts, if acted upon would cause damage to my children if I succumbed to my instinctual primal desires. That I would be adding to their pain through ending my own.

I hope you will be able to do the same.

For both your own and your children’s sake, I hope for this.

We here on this page are here to help you if we can through this dark time.

It is why we are here.

You are not alone.

Respectfully,

Thomas Fidler

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Resources:

For help preparing for a custody battle, start here.

To find out how you can help, start here.