TAKE ACTION
I receive a lot of emails where parents ask me “how do you manage to function normally? Since I went through this everything has gone down. Anxiety, anger, depression. Everything is so deflating.”
The short answer is: accept reality and stop aimless thinking.
1. Accept reality
There are two things you can do after you lose your child. Accept reality or resist it…in your mind. The moment you accept reality that is the moment you can start changing things. If you fight with what is, anger will settle in, depression, suicidal thoughts.
The intensity of the pain you feel depends on the degree of mental resistance to what has already happened. After you have gone through the NJ Family Court system, most of us, don’t accept the situation, don’t accept reality, and don’t confront things the way they are. We wish the world was different, we wish the Family Court system was different; we wish our situation was different. And so we complain, we deteriorate, we become numb, we rot inside and we act like a victim and we do things that are ineffective because we live in a pretend world.
Professor Conor Neill performed a study on the elements of resilient mental strength. He spent time interviewing a number of high performance endurance athletes. He cites Kilian Jornet as an example, a man who set a new world record in the 165-mile Tahoe Rim Trail run. What is going through a human being’s mind when they are placed under extreme conditions and they end up victorious? Neil concluded that all of them had 4 things in common. Number 1: Acceptance. The moment anything bad happens, for example when Kilian is in a ski race and the binding on his ski breaks, he does not get angry with the ski. It’s immediately accepted as the new reality, and he is immediately looking at what can I do now that allows me to keep up with my competitor that doesn’t mess up my chances of staying close and having a good chance in this race.
Is a ski race of the same gravity as a kid losing a parent? No, I struggle through this myself. But the effects of accepting reality are the same.
Step 1, close your eyes, accept everything the way it is….just accept things. Once you have accepted things the way they are and you have confronted reality now you can start to change things, now you have the power to redirect how things go as you live your life into the future.
2. Stop aimless thinking (be present)
Focus on the present moment. Thinking of the past creates depression, projections to the future create anxiety. Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction. After my ex-wife went after 93% of my net income and left me bankrupt, I found my-self constantly thinking. Incessant thinking becomes a decease. The mind is a superb instrument when used rightly. Used wrongly however it becomes very destructive. After you have made plans on how to act, you need to find a way to stop your mind from aimless thinking. That is when the mind becomes destructive and starts attacking you.
As a famous spiritual teacher writes in his book: “When someone goes to the doctor and says ‘I hear a voice in my head’ he or she will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist. The fact is that, in a very similar way virtually everyone hears a voice or several voices in their head all the time. The involuntary thought processes that you don’t realize you have the power to stop. Continuous monologues or dialogues.
The voice commends, speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes and so on. The voice may be reviving the recent or distant past. Or rehearsing or imagining possible future situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes. “
Going back to the research that professor Conor Neil performed, the second belief all high endurance athletes interviewed followed was, presence in the moment. Ranulph Fiennes climbed Everest at 65 years old. And as he was preparing to set out his wife sat him down and said ‘Ranulph, climb like the horses.’ A horse runs until it is exhausted, until it just drops from exhaustion. The horse has no concept of the finish line. It will just run until it can’t anymore. If you are going to climb Everest, ask yourself, ‘can I take one more step?’ If the answer is yes, take one more step. At the beginning you can have one look at Everest but the rest needs to be a focus in the moment on the journey, the next step. Each of these high performance athletes in the course of their career, has looked less and less into the future and they are very present in the moment. The next breath, the next footstep, the next 2 minutes but they never allow themselves to get further ahead than the next very specific moment.
If you no longer want to create pain for yourself, then don't create any more time, or at least no more than is necessary to deal with the practical aspects of your life. How to stop creating time? Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.
A practical mechanism I found helpful in becoming present, is meditating for 10 minutes every day (I know it sounds mumbo jumbo, it just means don't think of anything for a few minutes). Just emptying my mind of all thoughts. After a few weeks, this practice conditions the brain to veer off less and less into past and future. You might find this instruction useful.
Editorial
It took me 12 months to fully put the above in practice. It is not easy. I was rotten inside. If I had put the above in practice from day one I would have had the composure to probably take more effective steps for my kid to have access to both of his parents.
Publish Your Case Study
Judges are not elected in New Jersey. They are appointed. The Senate Judiciary Committee conducts a public hearing on this appointment. Negative testimonies will only be taken into consideration if the person that testifies turns aside from his personal experience and also tells the commission what they know about the Judge's performance in other cases. By submitting your case study on this site, you will enable all of us who want to testify to share your experience with the commision (anonymously of course), and ensure Judge Daniel D’Alessandro is not reappointed in 2017 and that Brad Micklin never gets a chance to be appointed as a Judge.
This pool of case studies can also be used to draw attention of the media to this Judge and also of organizations like FACE who can organize the community more effectively into ensuring that the Judge is not reappointed.
If you are interested in submitting a case study contact me via the contact form.
Contact FACE
I would strongly recommend contacting this organization: For All Children Everywhere (FACE). Contact FACE if possible before initiating the divorce (although chances are you have visited this page because you have already done so). It is free (the annual membership is under $100) and their advice might help you save your children. Unfortunately, I became aware of this organization only after I lost my kid and moved out of the country.
Read more here: http://facenj.org/who.html
FACE is a New Jersey-based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, all volunteer, person to person support and self-help group for non-custodial parents and their families. They are a membership organization. FACE educates parents as to their parental rights and custody rights. Most FACE members are not lawyers, so they cannot and do not represent anyone in court. FACE shows people how to effectively represent themselves in family court. Not everyone is capable of doing this nor wants to do this. For those who don't, FACE shows them how the family court system works so they can manage and direct their lawyer/employees rather than allowing lawyers to make decisions for them that will effect them and their families for the rest of their lives.
Fire your lawyer, represent yourself, and only deal with the Case Worker in the Family Court
Family lawyers are only there to take your money. If you represent yourself, you are also fucked but at least you will save the money you would give to the scambags. After your divorce, deal only with the case workers. Forget about motions. It is a waste of money. Judges dont care about your kids. They care about the lawyer criminal network making money.
Should I go to jail or leave the United States?
If you are a parent who truly wants to support your kids financially, going to jail due to unjust inflated temporary support orders will only harm your kids. Family Courts do not understand that people are not banks, we dont "cut" money. If you go to jail then you will not be able to provide to your kids. In the current era of COVID, remote work outside of the US is possible. You should do whatever required for you to be able to continue paying your child support.
Add a review on AVVO
Attorneys often cite their exceptional rating on avvo.com. Chances are you have already encountered an AVVO plaque of an exceptional rating in the office of the attorney you most recently visited.
Well Avvo.com is a scam and you can read all about it here avvo.com scam however publishing a negative review on Avvo will go a long way.
Although fake positive reviews are posted to cover the genuine negative ones, posting a negative review will inform others about the experience they will receive with that lawyer. Readers tend to skim through positive reviews and focus on the negative ones and that is where you can make a difference. I get a lot of emails from disgruntled clients of Brad Micklin. Hardly anyone posts a review on avvo.com. Why? It only takes a few minutes, it is a great resource to prevent the destruction of families in your community, and it puts great pressure on the attorney. Take a few minutes, and post a review, no need to identify specifics.
Regarding the fake reviews, in order to post a review on avvo.com you need to provide proof that you have retained that lawyer. Yet lawyers can provide such proof from their records, a lot of them, as many as they want and pose as fake customers. And this is easy to spot. Take as an example Thomas Sidoti. He has a 4.5 client rating based on 7 reviews. He had not had a review since 2012. In 2014 a disgruntled client posts a negative review. Then you will notice 5 star positive reviews posted on the site back to back, with a few days difference, Jan 1, Jan 12, Jan 19. A man who did not have a single review for 2 years suddenly receives three 5 star reviews within a week. Thomas Sidoti Reviews. All fake of course.
Same occurrence with Karen Saminski. Not a single review since 2014 when a dissatisfied client submits a negative review. Magically 6 days later positive reviews start flowing in. Karen Saminski Reviews
AVVO increases ratings only for academic work, not for real-life success in trying cases. Many of their attorneys who have 10 ratings have never tried a case in their whole career. Further, an attorney who has won every case they tried will not get an increased rating because AVVO does NOT consider the attorney's litigation record. AVVO also does not figure client reviews into a rating; they only figure peer reviews.
Some more reading
Take a quick look at the manual from exiledfathers.org: http://www.exiledfathers.org/top_88_divorce_tips.pdf