Pro Bono--UPDATED WITH MORE RANTINESS

Anyone know any members of the Iowa Bar willing to do a little family court action for free or reduced fees?

Custody needs to be revised. It's a good cause.

DHS has an open file on the mother. The daughter has now tried to run away from her and the abusive boyfriend.

Several lawyers have said there's a better than good chance the father could get full custody. But they also want cost-prohibitive retainers up front.

You know, I rant about the Skankasaur a lot...she brings it out in me. And occasionally someone will say, "She can't be that bad." But you know what? She is that bad.

She is completely estranged from every single member of her family. My brother is the only tie between her and her family, because he takes the kids to visit the relatives who give a damn about them. She has four siblings, and none of them have anything to do with her. Her friendships never last more than a few months. She is a user and a completely toxic person.

I hosted her baby shower for my niece, because she had no friends to do it. I got my brother's friends' girlfriends to attend it, and everyone I could think of with some loyalty to my family. So it was a good turnout, but no one there was actually her friend. Her family members who were invited by me--AND WHO LIVE IN TOWN--did not show.

Two years later she had made a friend who lasted long enough to give her a shower for my nephew. I wasn't even invited. Nor was anyone else in my family. And she was married to my brother at the time. And I had decorated their goddamned wedding just a few months previously.

When my brother found her, she was living at the YWCA because all of her family had enough of her. And she was too lazy to work more than a few hours here and there. When she moved in with my brother, he stipulated that she had to get a job. So she got a part-time job at my place of employment (my brother also worked there at the time, different department from me, because I put in a good word with their department head who was my drinking buddy). I predicted she would get knocked up as soon as possible.

And she did. And she immediately quit her part-time, easy-ass job. Aside from her military stint, she has probably not worked more than a total of 100 hours since then. Maybe 200...she worked a couple weeks at a gas station in Missouri. She spent her time in the military trying to get injured so she could be on disability. The sprained shoulder (before she even made it to Basic, lmao)...the broken ankle...they wouldn't give in and discharge her. So she got knocked up. It's what she does. There were three possible candidates for paternity, btw.

Anywho, she has no real connection to anyone but herself and whoever she can use to get what she wants. She'll turn on the tears at the drop of a hat and make people believe she is Mother of the Year or downtrodden at the feet of her evil ex-husband, or whatever else she wants people to believe...but she does not give a single solitary damn for anyone on this planet but herself.

She was in Germany for a year, and got leave over Christmas. She never saw her kids for longer than an 8-hour stretch of time, and threw a complete hissy fit when my brother wouldn't change his New Year's Eve plans to watch them while she went out. It was all HER CHOICE...my brother had wanted her to spend as much time as possible with them for the kids' sake, but she had better things/people to do.

She doesn't do anything for her children out of love. I'm not sure she is even capable of it. I don't know if that's a result of her parents' treatment of her or what, but she never nurtures family. She creates a family. Every new boyfriend she meets is her "fiance" and the kids' new "dad" after twelve minutes. His family becomes the kids' new "grandma", "grandpa", "aunt", "uncle", and "cousin" as soon as they meet.

Meanwhile, she tries to get an aunt they've known all their lives and who she's trusted to babysit overnight even when they were a week old arrested for kidnapping when the aunt takes the kids to see their extended family like they do every summer when they go camping and swimming and ATVing and having fun instead of staying cramped up in an apartment and never let outside. Because she knows the kids love their aunt, and the mother has no capacity for love herself and so she is jealous of her children's affection for anyone else.

I know this because the kids have told me what their mother says. "We can't love you. We love our mom." I've explained to the kids that we all have hearts with room enough to love as many people as we want. There is room in our hearts to love our mom, dad, little brother, mom's boyfriend, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and anyone else we want to love. I've told them it's okay to love whoever we want and miss whoever we want no matter what other people think of that person. If one of our friends doesn't like our other friend, we can still love both friends.

Of course, it is a lie. We don't all have that much room in our hearts. I know one person who doesn't. But it is my sincerest hope that she won't pass on her small, ugly heart to her children. They deserve happier lives than that.

Posted by Jenelle at January 11, 2008 12:10 PM | TrackBack