I'm glad you gave us an update, but so very sad to hear about SS16. I hope he is getting meaningful help where he is. I can't imagine having that happen with a child that I love. It must be incredibly difficult.
Have things evened out with D22? Glad to hear the younger two are doing well.
Also happy to hear you have some plans to look forward to in the summer. I went through a period from about late January to mid March- where I was ok emotionally, but the physical stress caught up and I crashed from exhaustion every night when I put the girls to bed and just had to put one foot in front of the other every day. I've had much more energy in the last month and am truly starting to feel completely myself again. There is a mountain of work to be done around the property, adn I'm built to be a survivor - so it was time to get moving.
I'm at a place where I still mourn the loss of my family unit - but I'm pretty ok with letting STBX go. I haven't closed the door to reconciliation - but I know its highly unlikely and when I think of it - to be blunt, I consider it a desirable outcome for my kids and not necessarily myself. It has been difficult to swallow, but I realized that a lot of the dreams I had for the future were ones that would have had to happen in spite of STBX.
And now- I cannot help myself, I have to offer a practical suggestion regarding your taxes. Perhaps when things have progressed a bit, you might be able to suggest to your X that you each take a child as a deduction (Which would also allow you to file as Head of Household). You could offer to pay your X what she would lose taxwise and still come ut far ahead. i understand this is relatively common with divorce couples. I've thought about proactively being kind and suggesting it to STBX myself - but I am not in the mood to enrich OW's household and if I followed through it would be with the understanding that a certain percentage of his realized savings would need to land in the kids college accounts.
You know - I've been wrestling with whether or not I should buy season ski passes for D7 and myself. The last few drought years have been so crummy that they are practically giving them away along with a money back guarantee if its another drought year. And then I think.....you know people break their collar bones skiing......
I don't believe their have been any traditional success stories since you were last here, although there are a lot of people feeling stronger and moving on. New people arrive every day and their stories are eerily similar. I guess all this has happened before and will happen again.....
