What I've Been Up To
Back in the saddle, yee-haw!
I apologize for the gap. It’s been some time since I posted.
I go between not wanting to make excuses— why can’t I just be more consistent? And trying to accept that I’ve just been tired. My apartment is a damn mess. I took time off work— not sick— just lethargic and low on motivation.
So I’d like to say sorry. Not to make an excuse, but to recognize that this maybe was disappointing for y’all. I also had a subscriber downgrade from paid to free (currently at three paid subscribers). Which I can understand.
I’m trying to look at it in a reverse lens, to understand that when I do produce, people have found value in it. (I always welcome encouragement from readers!) And when I do not produce, this is seen and experienced. I will continue to work to get better.
I started this Substack on June 1, 2024; I’ve published 60 posts so far. If you’re interested in sharing your story, feel free to message me here or email me at protecttheparents@proton.me.
Protect the Parents is read across 33 US states and 17 countries. I’m glad to be here, and hope you are, too. If you’re looking for another publication that might be helpful or uplifting, the platform backend tells me my readership has the greatest overlap with Dr. Kat’s “Decoding Coercive Control.” She’s written a book on coercive control and from what I’ve read of her work, I see value.
Always I am grateful to have this opportunity to speak to you. As a long time freelancer, I’ve understood that it’s a privilege to have your work read, and not a right.
For a bit of transparency, some of my time has been diverted to applying to opportunities to write about the family courts. I applied for the McGraw Business Fellowship, which provides mentorship and, most importantly for me, assistance with placing the story.
I’ve also been reaching out to publications, asking them if they want to host me for a StoryReach Fellowship, offered by the Pulitzer Center. Both are opportunities for freelance journalists to get support in reporting and publishing a story.
Take Action Tip: if you have worked with any journalists, refer them to these two resources. Encourage them to write about abuse, child abuse, the family courts.
In an earlier post, “The Cost of Custody When Your Pain is Profitable,” I shared my initial draft for the McGraw fellowship. It went through several iterations as I incorporated feedback from other journalists. A conversation with Michael Volpe was particularly helpful and energizing. He has been writing about the family courts for man years and has a wealth of knowledge on how the different, interconnected elements sync up.
In the next post, I’ll share what the final proposal looked like. I understand most of y’all may not be journalists, but I think this document might be useful because it distills the problem in the family courts. Perhaps you could use some of the language when you’re meeting with state legislators, advocating for changes in custody law. My goal is to share various kinds of writing, from personal essays on how abuse has felt for me (to let you know you’re never alone) to practical resources, like The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline Crisis.
As a quick aside, From the “Cost of Custody” article, here are the results of the poll, which asks how much you’ve had to shell out so far, in efforts to maintain contact with / protect your child. With most respondents paying out more than half a million dollars, imagine how much money is flowing through the courts.
Please feel free to pop over to the post and share your own experience.
For the sake of transparency, I am *not able* to see any information about who has clicked on which response. I cannot see which reader clicked on which link. I will not know who it is has said that they’ve paid $5K or $500K.
This is what that element looks like in the backend, I can only see the percentage of readers who clicked on which link. By the way, if you ever have questions about this platform or any concerns about your information, feel free to ask and I will try to find the answer.
Opportunities like the McGraw and StoryReach fellowship, I see them as being in tandem with my Substack work. This is a small, niche community, mostly readers who have first-hand experience of the family courts, or know someone who is/ has been. I’m glad to be connected with 280 of y’all because I see you as my primary audience. I like to work directly with the abuse survivors, the people most directly affected by systemic failures of the family court.
I want to work directly with abuse survivors because they are so inspiring. Getting to know Ruth during my master’s thesis, I realized she is the strongest, toughest (and most tortured), most resilient, most epic fighter I know.
There’s this idea, which I hope does not anger you, that God gives the hardest battles to the strongest soldiers. It’s like Ruth is a SWAT sniper for God, metaphorically speaking. Ruth is made of iron and grit. It is with awe that I perceive Ruth’s life. Like a Holocaust survivor, or Nelson Mandela, or a woman who’s survived trafficking— some people march through lives that are battle fields. When I was working on my thesis and investigating Ruth’s case, I watched “Kill Bill” and felt Ruth was a real-life Beatrix.
These larger opportunities (the fellowships) could help to raise public awareness of the failings of the family court. And we need more people, right? If a problem is kept in the dark, relegated to abused mothers, and unbeknownst to the larger public, it will continue to survive. So, again, I apologize for the gap, and share context. In the future, I should let you know in advance if I suspect I’ll be slow in posting.
In my next post, I will share the final proposal I submitted to the fellowship. Hopefully there will be some language in there that you can repurpose for your own activist efforts.
Again— I am sorry, and thank you for bearing with me.
If you had a "yes, I was previously fighting and know that my ex-partner will likely initiate proceedings again" button, I would have clicked it. Also want to say that I think all these opportunities you're pursuing sound great and I appreciate what you're doing to build awareness of the problems in our family courts!
When you're helping others, it really shouldn't be a numbers game-- I get that. So if I can help one protective parent, the effort is worthwhile. On the other hand, whenever we produce something (an article, an artwork, an event), we also hope to reach as many people as possible. So if you could share PtP with friends, family; post it on your social media, I'd be grateful.