General Discussion

My daughter was married to a violent man, but like so many victims of domestic violence she was afraid to leave the person. Her husband radiated tension, so it was never pleasant to be around him. My husband and I moved from Washington where all 3 of my kids and their families lived to Oregon about 14 years ago. If I had still lived in Washington, I am sure that I would have known so much more how bad it was. Things got really bad in the fall of 2020, and her older son went to live with his biological dad, my daughter's first husband. My daughter's husband, the father of her second son, would come home from work every day and drink until he would get in a rage. My daughter began to self-medicate with alcohol to numb herself to the violence. She became an alcoholic, too. We had a call one night from our grandson who was 11 at the time, that his parents were fighting. We packed our bags and headed north keeping him on the phone to make sure he was okay the entire 3-hour drive. The next day she tried to kill herself. The hospital would not release our daughter to her husband, but only to me. They actually had a guard at her door at the hospital to keep him away. We wound up taking our grandson back to Oregon while things cooled off, as she still did not want to leave her husband or press charges. The next night, she called. She was terrified out of her mind and had to flee for her life late at night with just the clothes she had on and her phone. We had to call the police. She was able to find shelter at a restaurant that was still open, and they kept her safe until the police arrived. Our son, who lives in Seattle, brought her back to his home. We drove up early the next day and brought her back to Oregon.

I won't go into everything that happened after that, but she has been hospitalized over 30 times. We also sent her to a facility in Arizona for two months. She is also bipolar (100% disability) with several other medical issues, so I have had to work with lots of her doctors, mental health specialists, etc. Overall, we have spent well over $100,000 to help her. In the meantime, we have been raising her younger son, and it has not been fun much for a lot of the time. I communicate fairly frequently with his teachers, as he has been behind academically. We put him in soccer, which gave him much confidence and helped with his self-esteem. That's not cheap because he is now playing at a high level, but it is worth it. Finally, after 4 years, our daughter is headed on the right track, is feeling healthy, and is divorced from that monster as of last month. She also lives with us. In the meantime, her older son has come to live with us. He is a great kid but has high-functioning autism.

We have had no vacation since 2019. We had flown to San Diego in 2022 for a cruise to the Mexican Riviera, but the night before the cruise was to leave her estranged husband came down stating that we were not there to stop him from seeing her. She fell apart, wrecked our car, which caused lots of new issues. We had to fly back from San Diego the next day. We also had to forfeit our trip we had paid for to Hawaii. Since then, we have been afraid to go anywhere. We hope that we can start up our life of getting some trips in next year, if she continues to stay well. We had plans to travel after retirement, but life throws you curve balls. We had to cancel our trip to England/Wales because of the pandemic, and then our daughter's situation happened. We are in our early 70's, so we can feel the years slipping away from us. I am thankful that we have adequate income, good health overall, and a house large enough to handle 5 people and 2 dogs.