I'm Lost, And I Have No Idea Where I'm Actually Supposed To Be

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"Uh... you won't let me in?" I asked, the confusion written all over my face.

"Sorry" she said flatly, giving no other indication that she actually cared.

"Um... but... this is a support group... and... I need support. I called yesterday and they said that everyone is welcome. I even got a babysitter and drove 30 minutes here" I said, adding in that last bit for the sympathy factor.

"Well yes, all are welcome, at the beginning of the 12 week session" she stated. "The divorce support group is more of a class than a group, and we require that everyone start at the beginning. We aren't currently at the beginning, we are 3 weeks in, so you will have to come back in 9 weeks and then you will be welcome."

No one had relayed that vital bit of information to me over the phone.

She then closed the door to the not-very-supportive divorce support group that was actually a very strict class, and left me standing in the hallway of a church.

It had been a year and a half since my husband had left and I was having a difficult time. Initially I had jumped right into a relationship with someone else, and if anything, it had only served to deflect a lot of the issues that I really needed to be dealing with. When that relationship had gone down like an atomic bomb, I was left standing for the first time, truly alone, and in the destruction of what was left of my life.

I had absolutely no idea where to turn.

So I didn't turn anywhere, instead, sinking inside of myself and shutting everyone out.

I remember one night in particular where I was lying on my bed, face down in my pillow, and bawling my eyes out. In the midst of my tears, the doorbell rang. I crawled over to my window so that no one outside would see me, and I peeked out to see two of my best friends standing on my front porch.

I could hear them out there talking to each other "she has to be home, her car is outside. Do you think she is OK?" but I couldn't bring myself to get out of bed and answer the door. After what seemed like an eternity, they left and sent me a text that read "We left a case of diapers for The Boy Child and a carton of ice cream for you on your front porch. We hope you are OK. It's alright if you don't want to talk, but just at least let us know you are OK."

I texted them back, apologized, thanked them for their kindness, and I felt awful.

A Court Date, A DCFS Case, And A Cry For Help

"Do you know what makes you special, in a different way than the baby in mommy's tummy?" The Guy asked The Boy Child as he pulled him onto his lap.

"I'm better at building with Legos" The Boy Child replied, apparently confident in his six-year-old understanding of how the world works.

"Well, yes" The Guy replied, trying not to laugh, before asking "but do you know what makes me love you so much?"

"Because I'm your best buddy!" The Boy Child exclaimed, throwing his arms around The Guy's neck.

Hugging him back, The Guy explained "yes you are! You are my buddy, and what makes you so special to me, is that your brother is being born into our family, but I picked you to be mine. I met you, and I took a good long look at everything that makes you who you are, and I said to myself  'I want to be his daddy, because that's how much I love him.' Forever, and ever, and ever, you're mine, because out of all the little boys in the whole wide world, I picked you."

With The Boy Child in is arms, The Guy is showing him how to hold his candle during the Christmas church service.

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A couple weeks before Christmas, The Boy Child was injured, intentionally, by a respite care worker we had hired to keep him safe. And due to a pending investigation of her, I can't go into details, but this woman had worked for us for a couple months, had gone through a background check, interview, drug test, and CPR class, all through a respite care agency. Yet still, she harbored an anger streak that none of us knew about.

My Ex's Attorney Is A Killer (Literally)

If you didn't read the last post, "I'm Not There Anymore," I suggest reading that first so that this post makes sense.

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It’s been a few days since my day in court, and I’m feeling much better. Overall I wasn’t feeling all that bad to begin with (compared to prior years in court), but either way it always takes a lot out of me.

This whole process has just been ridiculous. As a bit of background on this most current situation that brought us into court, Ex is ordered to pay 50% of all our children's medical, daycare, school, and extra curricular expenses. But about a year ago, he started to fall behind again; which if you are new to this blog, is a constant issue with him. He either doesn't pay the bills and/or child support, I take him to court, he is threatened with jail, and he catches up for a few months on a payment plan, before he stops paying again.

Sensing that we were about to head down the familiar legal intervention path, I told him that if he started paying me a set amount per week, that I would personally eat the cost of anything above and beyond that. The number that I offered him was significantly lower than what expenses actually are, but it would have been worth it just to not have to deal with him. To make the offer sweeter, Mr. Attorney Man graciously offered to waive the fees billed from prior court dates that Ex had not yet paid (since Ex was found in contempt, he has to pay my attorney).

Ex rejected the idea.

I'm Not There Anymore

It’s 6:30am. My husband just left for work, and the kids are sleeping. It’s been raining on and off, so it’s still dark out, and the cars driving on the road outside, are making a whizzing noise on the wet pavement as people rush off to work. A chill hangs in the air and fog has settled so thick outside, that I can’t see the cornfields right outside my front door. It’s exactly the kind of morning where you pull the covers up under your chin and relish the last few minutes you have before your alarm goes off, but I can’t sleep.

It actually feels a lot like the night several years ago when I found myself in bed, opening my laptop, and starting this blog.

I woke up this morning crying, and I’m not sure why. Tears clung to my cheeks as the pillowcase clung to my face, and my nose was running. Maybe I had been dreaming, but the more likely scenario is that even in sleep, I’m still decompressing from the events of yesterday.

On Going To Court This Week, Pregnant

Not long ago, The Guy, the kids, and I were in the car. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but at some point I looked into the backseat, and saw that The Girl Child’s eyes were welling up with tears. When I asked her what was wrong, she didn’t answer me. Confused, The Guy repeated my question, and her response to him caught me completely off guard.

“You’re not my real daddy!”

She was visibly upset and by the quiver in her voice as well as the emotion packed behind her words, it was clear that her statement was something that she had been thinking about for a very long time.

Not wanting to jump the wrong way in the conversation, I asked her what she meant by that, and she surprised me with the simplicity of her answer.

Please Don't Tell Me I'm Losing My Son

"Momma, I'm blowing on a wishing flower, and I'm wishing no more doctors"

Horatio G. Spafford, his wife Anna, and their five children lived in Chicago in the late 1800’s. Horatio was a successful lawyer with a booming business, when tragedy struck and pneumonia stole the life of his young son.

That same year, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed his business.

Not willing to give up, The Spafford family pushed on, rebuilding the business, and holding their family together.

Two years later, Anna and their four children boarded the ship Ville Du Havre, hoping to find some relaxation and rest in Europe, with Horatio joining them a few days later.

But as fate would have it, tragedy struck again when the boat collided with another, causing the Ville Du Havre to sink.

Anna was found floating on a piece of wreckage, all four of her remaining children drowned. “God gave me four daughters" she said to another survivor. "Now they have been taken from me. Someday I will understand why.”

She then wired Horatio a message that simply said, “rescued alone, what shall I do?”

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I didn’t want to come back here; back to this blog. Pages of my struggles, triumphs, chuckles, and tears, all melting together to showcase one thing; My Life.

When I first came here, I set out to see if anyone else felt the same way I did. I was looking for a light to lead me down my darkened path.

Please Pray For Us

Do you ever have those days where you feel so overwhelmed, that you don't feel like you can even think straight?

I'm having that month, and I'm not sure where to even start explaining.

Things have been a bit chaotic in the Strong household, and I'm spending more time crying and praying that I don't completely fall apart, than I would like to admit. And I know, it's not the most graceful or attractive way to portray myself right now, but it is what it is.

I'm struggling.

I Don't Want My Ex To Move Back Into My House

Well, to jump right into it, last week’s post stuck with me more than I was expecting. (If you haven’t read it yet, I’d suggest doing that before you continue on, but for the TL;DR, I've found my feelings of anger towards my ex, reignited as I watch The Guy with my children.)

Anyway, it’s been interesting for me to reflect on last week’s post. Although I stand-by everything I said in terms of not letting my negative emotions consume me, as with any source of anxiety, sometimes it takes a while to figure out where it stems from.

Then sometimes, you figure it out and it just clicks.

I was married to my ex for twice the time that I’ve been divorced, and although I hate to admit it, I still feel more like the wife that was left behind by her first husband, than the wife I am now. 

The Truth Will Set You Free

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A couple weeks ago on a Saturday night, I picked up the phone, and to my shock, horror, and surprise, there was a Facebook message from the woman that I believed my ex was cheating on me with during a portion of my marriage.

That would make her the woman that he was cheating with, before the woman that he was cheating with and left me for.

Does that make sense?

Hopefully, because we are moving on.

I almost hesitate to write about it because the timing of it coming right after my resolution to let go of the anger, most likely makes it seem completely staged, but it wasn’t. It really happened and if you care to stick around and hear about it, sweet deal, and if you don’t want to believe me, then you can mosey on along and it’s no sweat off my back.

But anyway, years ago when I was still married, my ex had everything electronic in our house on lock down. I couldn’t use the desktop computer without him unlocking it, he had his own laptop that I could never get into, and he had his phone locked and refused to ever let me use it.

Then, one night while I was sitting there nursing our son and paying some bills, I asked him to get my phone so that I could use the calculator. Being too lazy to actually get up and get it, he, for the first time ever, unlocked his phone and handed it to me.

Now everyone knows that the first time someone gives you access to something that you have been never been allowed to access before, that the smart thing to do would be to earn some trust by proving that you can be trusted, and not snoop.

Too bad I never do the “right” thing.

You Deserve Better Than Settling

“What you want, and what you are willing to do to get it, are drastically different things. You need to decide if you are simply just wanting, or if you are really, truly, willing. Because you can say all day long that you want something, or that you want to make a change, but unless you are willing — right now in this moment — to take the steps that are necessary for that change, then you are forever going to be left simply ‘wanting’.”

My nonprofit has such a long waiting list of clients right now, that they far exceed the services that we have available. So for now, a lot of our clients are meeting with me in what I’m calling “support sessions,” since I can’t legally counsel anyone (and they know that I’m not a licensed counselor, it’s fully disclosed, and they meet with me at their own risk). But it was last week in the middle of a session, when I found myself telling a client that they need to choose "willing" over simply just "wanting," when the hypocrisy of my words hit me in the face so hard that I was barely able to finish the session with her.

I am a hypocrite.

I'm So Angry!

Last week I was sitting in a left turn lane when a car attempted to pull out of a right-turn-only business exit, and make a left turn.

She didn’t make it.

She hit the back of my car, backed up, made a u-turn, and drove away. By the grace of God there were no other cars around, so I was able to make a legal u-turn and follow her to where she got stuck in traffic at a red light.

After snapping a picture of her license plate, I pulled into the lane next to her, beeped the horn, and motioned for her to pull over.

She laughed, basically flipped me off, and sped away.

Not wanting to kill myself while entering a high-speed chase down a very busy road, and unsure of what I would even do if I caught up with her (is it legal to run people off the road? I’m thinking probably not…), I simply pulled into the next business parking lot that I came across, and called the police.

The 911 dispatcher was all over it from the second she answered the phone. “What color was the SUV? Which direction was she traveling? What was the license plate number?” and within minutes an officer had pulled up next to me in the parking lot.

For the first time, I got out of the car to survey the damage she had done to my care, and I’m embarrassed to admit, it wasn’t much.

Whomp whomp.

The Most Shocking Post I've Ever Written

A few weeks ago I was at the YMCA gym, working hard to tone my butt on the ARC trainer (because why not), and thinking about how nervous I was that it was the first time that my now eight-year-old daughter wasn’t in the kid’s area of the YMCA childcare center. I was nervous as all get-out to have her move up with the older kids (overprotective much?), but she was nothing short of EXCITED.

In fact, the only reason we were at the gym that night was because she had begged me to take her. She knew that in the “big kids room” there was a large TV with bean bag chair viewing, a ping pong table, computers, arts and crafts, and the most fun part to her, was that the kids could check out tablets to play games on.

So, after hearing her beg, whine, and plead for several days on end, we made our way to the YMCA so that she could finally experience the Disneyland version of YMCA childcare; big kid style.

Sweating to death on the ARC trainer, I cursed the timer that seemed to be moving incredibly slow, and then found myself looking around the gym to see if anyone else appeared to be feeling the same level of physical fitness failure that I seemed to be suffering from that night. But what caught my eye was not some random person falling off of a stair climber, but rather the face of my daughter who was standing in the hallway.

She was crying

Well, crying would be putting it mildly, because she was actually at the point where she was hyperventilating. I jumped off the ARC trainer mid stride, and when I met her in the hallway she threw her arms around me and buried her tear streaked face into my side.

When she had calmed down enough for me to talk to the childcare worker who was with her, the story unfolded that when she tried to check out a tablet, she realized that she didn’t have her ID card with her. A childcare worker volunteered to take her to find me so she could get her card, and off they went, to the “gym” where I had said I was going.

But, I wasn’t technically in the gym, I was in the fitness center.

When she didn’t find me in the actual gym, she decided that I must be in a dance class, so they looked there. When I wasn’t there, they checked the spin class, locker rooms, bathroom, and then made their way back to the gym. The track in the gym runs around the enclosed basketball courts, and because of that you can’t see the entire track from the door. So I guess, as the story goes, she thought that I must just be where she couldn’t see me and she started to walk around the track. When she still didn’t see me, she panicked, and before the childcare worker knew what was going on, my tiny eight-year-old girl, wearing braces on her legs and with panic in her heart, started running around the track crying and calling out for me.

When the childcare worker managed to get her off of the track, she told her “my daddy left me, and now my mommy left me too.”

Hearing that CRUSHED me, because it made me realize that after four and a half years, countless hours of trauma therapy, and all the reassurance in the world that I would never leave her, she still harbors the realization that parents aren’t always permanent, and love is not always unconditional.

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On Friday morning I went to court for the dramatic situation that is the unpaid child support that I am owed. Not to beat a dead horse here, but as a SUPER quick recap (click here for the full story) I will remind you that my ex owes me a great deal of money in unpaid support, and after many, many court dates, was finally found guilty in court, and was sentenced to jail. Then the judge decided that jail was too harsh and he would give my ex time to pay me half of what I was owed, in order stay out of jail. My ex said he could pay it in 60 days, and the judge said he would give him 90 days, but here we were, over 90 days later and he still had not paid me.

Per the judge’s order of “Mr. Strong, if you don’t show up with a check you had better show up with a toothbrush,” Mr. Attorney Man assured me that we had a decent shot at my ex being thrown in jail.

Part Two Of The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

If you remember from the previous part of this unique three-part-post, I had been struggling to get comfortable with the very close relationship that the guy I'm dating, has with a female friend. Where we left off, I was having a difficult time balancing my genuine concerns over the closeness of their relationship, with my guilt that maybe the cheating ways of the previous men in my life might be the only reason I felt suspicious that something might be going on.

If you haven't yet read Part One, you can find that by clicking here.

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So there we were, him wanting to know what he could do to ease my mind, and me not even sure what I should be worried about.

I’m sure that at this point you must be envisioning some huge, drama filled situation that plagued us heavily on a daily basis, but I promise you it wasn’t like that. It was more like a constant yet almost inaudible level of annoyance, that was still very much there, and would occasionally turn the volume up until we paid it some attention.

But that still doesn’t mean that it ever went away.

Then, several weeks ago, The Guy, the kids, and I were at a park. The Boy Child quickly struck up a friendship with another boy his age, and while watching them play, I struck up a conversation with the child’s dad. We chit-chatted about whatever it is that people talk about while making small talk over the sandbox, and then The Girl Child came running over to me with gum stuck to her arm. Being very aware that she had not been chewing gum, I gagged a little bit and the boy’s dad quickly fished an antibacterial wipe out of his FANNY PACK so that I could clean The Girl Child off.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

The Threatening Female Friend (And All The Hateful Stuff She Said About Me To The Guy I'm Dating)

“I’ll forward them to you” he said, and in response, my entire body cringed. You see, I’d been dating this guy for a while now, and he had just told his best female friend that he couldn’t speak to her anymore, because of me. She reacted with a string of very pleasant emails that called me everything from a psycho bitch to a complete mental case. She told him that he needed to break up with me, and was livid that he wasn’t defending her. And by livid, I mean she said “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU.”

So basically, it was a lot of fun.

Photo Credit: Giphy.com

Now let me back up for a minute and say that yes, I’ve been seeing someone. I waiver back and forth between discussing it on here, and not discussing it on here, and I guess what it really comes down to is that I feel like I’ve displayed so much of my dating life online, that I’m feeling a bit vulnerable at the moment. You’ve watched me go on good dates, and horrible dates, you’ve seen me fend off creepy men that I wasn’t at all interested in, you’ve seen me start to fall for people, and you’ve seen me get my heart broken when it didn’t work out. You’ve watched me break a few hearts, and you’ve seen me struggle to date while trying to find the balance that still puts my kids first. You’ve also watched me try and figure out if monogamy or polyamory was for me, and you saw that I landed somewhere undecided.

I’ve basically bared everything from the inside of my heart to the inside of my bedroom, and I don’t know… I guess I’m just feeling a little shy this time around because I’ve already eaten so much dirt while the whole world has watched, that I'm a little full of dirt at the moment.

So to be vague and yet somewhat concrete, yes, at this point I am seeing someone monogamously. Where this will end up, I really couldn’t say. We aren’t living together or anything like that. There is no secret engagement, my kids aren’t calling him daddy, he isn’t paying any of my bills, but we are together. We have been taking things at a snail’s pace (there are kids involved here!) and how this proceeds from there, only time will tell. But as I said, I’m just feeling a little vulnerable these days, and honestly I’m not sure how many more times I can have my heart broken and still find a positive spin on it while I put myself back together. I think, at this point, that I’d almost rather grieve the loss of another relationship privately if it were to come to that, and I hope that you can all respect that. So until I’m a little surer of the unsure, vague it is.

But what I will say, is that so far things seem to be going well… and that is much to the dismay of his close female friend, whose emails were the ones he was forwarding to me.

Allow me set the stage for you:

Shortly after I started dating this guy — who we will now refer to as The Guy (I know, I’ve gotten so creative with these names lately, haven’t I?) — I learned that he had a very close female friend. Aaaannnddd… I’m not going to lie; my radar signals went up. He hadn’t given me any reason to suspect anything and I’d like to think that I’m mature enough and secure enough to handle my man having a close female friend…. but let’s just say that I’m not always that mature.

Goodbye Dad, I Love You

“Mommy, will you always love me?” The Girl Child asked, seemingly at random.

“Always,” I answered.

“Will you always like me?” she asked next.

“Maybe not” I said.

Harsh, I know.

As she stared back at me with a shocked expression on her sweet, seven year old face, I began to explain.

“I will always, always, love you, and nothing that you will ever do is going to change that. You will always be my baby, and I will always be your momma. But, there will probably be times when you make choices that I don’t like, and during those times, I will always love you, but I might not like the things you are doing, or the choices you are making. I might be angry with you, or upset with you, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you.”

She sat there for a minute and as I watched a look of understanding flash behind her eyes, she said “Ohhhh, so that’s what you mean when you always say ‘Girl Child, I want you to go to your room because I am not happy with you. I love you, but I don’t like the way you are acting'." "Yep!" I exclaimed. “That is exactly what I mean. Sometimes people do things that we don’t like, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t love them.”

And when it comes to my children, that will never, ever change. There is nothing that they will ever be able to do, that stops me from loving them with every fiber of my being. That doesn’t mean that I will always be happy with them, or that I will approve of the choices they make, but nothing they can do is ever going to lessen the love that I have for them, and nothing will ever stop me from wanting to protect them.

Because I am their mother, and my love for them runs deeper than the beat of my heart.

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I miss my dad.

And I almost hate to say that, but if I denied it, I would be lying.

I Need To Stop Looking At It

“Can we please just cancel?” I found myself asking him.

I just couldn’t go through with it.

I’ve been seeing this guy for a while now and there are still some family members of his that I haven’t met. The plan was for us to all go out to dinner on Saturday night, but as the day started to draw nearer, I found myself increasingly anxious about going at all.

Later that night as we chatted on the phone and he wondered aloud why I didn’t want to meet his family, I felt myself starting to emotionally shut down.

I didn’t want to tell him what I was thinking.

But when I could feel the conversation turning towards his own insecurities about why I was backing away from his family, I finally mustered up the courage to choke out what I was thinking.

“I’m not the kind of girl that families want to meet.”

Silence.

He didn’t say anything for a minute, but even though we were talking over the phone, it was easy to sense his confusion and before I knew it my thoughts were falling out all over the place in a long winded ramble of emotions.

Even More Surgery On Friday; A Message About Flat Tires And Broken Dreams

It’s 11:14 am and I’m sitting in the hallway of a very fancy theatre while my daughter watches a play with her class. I drove her here but she didn’t want me to sit with her, because “mom, that’s embarrassing.” Typically I’d have a lot to say about her attitude, but I’m exhausted and therefore making the executive decision to just let her snarkiness slide.

Plus the play looked stupid.

So here I sit, ushers walking by as they appear to wonder why I’m perched on the edge of a sofa that is probably more for looking at than sitting on, but alas, I’ve never been the most socially appropriate person, so why start now?

I’m tired.

My alarm went off yesterday at 4:00 am and in the dark I bundled my children into the car and drove us across town to Frisbee Boy’s Mom’s house, where she then drove the three of us into the city so that The Boy Child could be seen by a team of specialists at a major university hospital.

My Friend Was Murdered

My friend was murdered last week.

I'm in complete shock.

Several years ago my friend's husband died of a drug overdose, leaving her as a single mother to her young son. Looking back, her situation reminds me very much of the one I was in, except that in the end, my drug addicted husband left, and her's died. I always thought mine would die.

Not long after he died, she met someone and got pregnant. She was so happy — that is until her new boyfriend hit her. So while still pregnant, she left him.

I took care of her son on the day the baby was born. I'll never forget him asking me every five minutes to call his mom and see if his sibling was born yet.

My friend had a little girl and thus became a single mother to two children without fathers.

My friend changed her life. She recognized the pattern she was in and she decided to put an end to it. She became an advocate for taking charge of your life and an ambassador of self-respect; a loud, outspoken, caring woman who spent her time teaching teenagers that you create the life you want to lead, and that you are worth more than the people who try to bring you down.

She lived for others and exuded everything that I've always aspired to be.

Last year, 9 years after her 1st husband died, 8 years after she left her abusive boyfriend and gave birth to her daughter, she got married. She thought she had found the life she was always looking for; the same life that so many single mothers and DV survivors hope to one day find. She had a complete family and she was thrilled.

But then just a couple months later, she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.

Not one to back down from a challenge, she kicked cancer's ass.

Two weeks after getting a clean bill of health, last week, her brand new husband, her chance at a fresh start, murdered her.

I'm At Least Going To Try

If you remember, in June 2014 I decided to take my Ex back to court for unpaid child support. It was a decision that I had really struggled with because I was nervous to reignite his anger, but the kids and I were really struggling due to his refusal to acknowledge our existence or his court ordered child support payments. 

Eventually I decided that it was in my best interest to take him to court on the issue. I would highly encourage you to go back and read the posts surrounding those dates so that you know what I'm talking about, but for now I'll just put a very large cut and paste here from June of last year: 

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Please be aware that the following is a cut and paste from June 2014

"I’m tired of it. I’m tired of him. I’m tired of seeing things always work out for him while the kids and I struggle so much. Decide to hit your wife? Sure, go for it, no one will care. Decide that you don’t want to be a father anymore? Sure, just walk out the door and never look back. Decide to have your wife raped? Sure, the police aren’t going to do anything about it anyway. Shake your baby? No problem, your wife will dedicate her life to healing him while you just go about your merry way. Decide to stalk her for a few months because it’s all fun and games? 

Absolutely, go for it, you’ll never be prosecuted anyways.

When Love Hurts

She stomped out of the room, turning around just long enough to shout "I wish daddy was here and not you!!"

My heart exploded.

For a kid that is rarely in trouble and raises her voice towards me about as often as I change out my yearly calender, I was shocked.

Shocked, hurt, and shaking with anger.

I walked out of the kitchen, right past her, went upstairs, and climbed into bed. I don't know why I got into my bed, I just knew that I needed to distance myself from her before I started screaming everything that I was thinking; telling her everything about her father that I have tried so hard to protect her from over the last three years.

After laying there for a good 20 minutes and letting my knee-jerk anger subside, I came to the conclusion that what she did was normal.

Not appropriate, not acceptable, but not totally abnormal.

She gave me the equivalent of the "I love daddy/mommy more than you" phrase that at one point or another most young kids have thrown at a parent during an argument.

The Girl Child no longer loves her dad in the way that a child should, because she no longer knows him. But in that moment she was upset with me and having no other adult to turn to for support, she wished away the one the parent that was upsetting her and spoke aloud what she often keeps in silence.

She wants a daddy.

And while it hurt me to the core that she would wish away me and yearn for him, I have to remember that the reason she isn't angry with him, is because she is grieving him. She misses him (or rather the idea of him) and at 7 years old she doesn't understand all the things that I myself, as an adult, don't even understand.

Her dad abandon her and this is going to be a long road where I'm caught trying to navigate the path of allowing her to know enough about him to understand why it's better that he is not here and yet not letting her know more than she should be expected to handle at her age. Up until now I haven't told her the truth about her father because I need to remember that he is half of her DNA. I don't ever want her to feel like she harbors evil inside her because of him and furthermore, every scientific study out there proves that bad mouthing a parent to a child is detrimental to their mental health.

But at some point she obviously needs to know the truth.