My children and I have some challenges ahead as a family while we begin to diffuse that huge secret we don’t like to acknowledge lives here. As the mom, I want to spare my children the pain of revisiting it, and question how important it is that they understand who their father was. Some say I should be sure to tell them about some of their father’s more positive attributes, who he was outside of his abusive nature. But that IS who he was and everything and everyone of us revolved around that, and as he intended, him.
What confusing image is it to say ‘Oh, he was a great guy and loved you a lot but he just wasn’t good at handling the pressure of being married, or having children’? ‘That’s how some people deal with it – by belittling, berating, ridiculing, bullying, pushing and shoving, strangling, stalking and eventually shooting when they aren’t getting their way’. ‘He was really a nice guy and the shooting was just a big mistake’. What does that say to them? What does that teach them?
He absolutely could be nice, loving, fun and friendly. Anytime he wanted to he could be a great father and husband. He was clearly capable. He wasn’t mentally deranged or sick. To portray him to my children as other than he was seems to me to perpetuate the lie I led while trying to protect them from the truth while he was alive. The truth came out anyway. All that protection has led to them unable to remember him raising his voice, or his drinking, and many things I as his intimate partner experienced that they were too young to understand or were not privy to.
I hear ‘but he was their father’, they are a part of him. I, just as much as the next person, want them to have wonderful loving memories of their father and them together. But I didn’t create the memories he left. He did. If they are not storybook I can’t make them so.
Once again I am forced to reconcile the events that defined and finally culminated our life together with the husband and father for them I, too, longed for. Though I wish to spare them, perhaps my children need to be allowed to do the same.
Shameless Survivors 
Such conflict of loyalties…. It may take years, but perhaps through maturity and third-party influence, your children will reconcile the man their father was and how you attempted to keep up appearances for their sake.
Dear friend,
I helped my grandson’s by putting the focus on their Father in Heaven. The thoughtless children still say mean things, like you don’t have a father. The don’t know what they are saying. I remember the oldest crying and saying, “I don’t want to become like him.”
It was near Christmas and I asked them if they remembered Mary. The youngest spoke up, “the mother of God.” I said well God had a plan for her, and God has a plan for you. I asked them if they’d like to say a prayer. They said “yes.” So we asked God to keep them safe and we know He (their Father in Heaven) loved them just as He did Mary. We prayed that if it maybe God’s Will that he send a Father to them just like He did baby Jesus. They both opened their eyes then and looked at me with hope. A stepfather?
There were so many horrible scary moments, I was always in God’s Word. I prayed please don’t let Satan steal their joy and please God never let them go. Through the horrible scary times I found joy.
I also though told, I did not keep the secret. I told Pastor and the therapist. I wouldn’t let the rapist/abuser lie or hurt them anymore. I was compelled to put the sin in the Son-light, right where it belonged.
I love your writing Lizette. I can tell it comes right from your heart and I know God has great plans for you and your children.
May God Bless you Really Good – your friend