My dear friend,

 

I know you're very worried about things. Truly enough, the last few months of the year were getting darker and darker, and not just because of the winter... I can reassure you though about the mothers' grip on my life.

There has been a long time of "trying to keep the peace" in order to be allowed to see my daughter. And I do admit that it has been used as a pressure to make me do things that I didn't want to, and as such to affect my life. Of course I wanted to move on, and that's why over the passed year I've been working hard to make it clear that my visits to The Netherlands had my daughters' interest as only intention. There had always been the strain that I would take the girl to do something fun and the mother not being involved, and this added up to her feelings of jealousy. Where in the past I had remained "wisely silent", I have increasingly chosen confrontation. "Yes, the child IS the ONLY reason I visit.... No, it is NOT right for you to continue hoping I will ever change my mind, WHY can't we just agree on creating a situation for the childs' best interest instead of continuing to pretend ?"...

I took a gamble, I knew that she may fully cut off contact, but I had to do it in order to move on.... and I lost..... It was a heavy price to pay; nothing hurts as much as being half and half rejected by your daughter because she is forced to choose loyalty and naturally will choose the mother.

These are times for self-reflection, dear. The mothers' moves are terrible, but she is mentally ill and can't cope in any other way. In a funny way I'm grateful though, cause she forced me to do lots of soul searching. Over the course of time we loose track of what our intentions are whilst we're rolling along a situation. I had to remind myself that from the very beginning I've always been aware of the possibility ending up in the current situation, and that my main goal was to make the child feel loved and aware of my genuine interest in her. My feelings of the need to be a father to her are and should be secondary to that.

When you think about all these things for months, you reach a number of painful insights and you have to admit to yourself that what you would like to believe is not necessarily true. And it was tough, and at times still is...... But it is also a relieve being able to be honest to oneself, and if counseling is meant to help people to come to terms with things, I think I'm gonna be ok without at present. That's why I wrote that I felt rather Zen.... I have felt more at peace with things than I have in years, and without this depending on circumstantial factors, it is the best type of peace of mind one can have...

I know, it all may sound a bit woolly, and if you want to you can blame my Kechara books, but I am moving on and in control of my own life for the first time in years....