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Denial is the first of five stages in the process that we go through psychologically with death, separation and extreme change like divorce. When we are not ready to accept the painful reality of what this separation from a loved one does to us, we deny it the emotional release as if it would bring us to despair and we would die ourselves of heartache.

What is even more difficult is the separation without death, because you cannot ever know complete release. My two children and I have experienced this separation due to their father and my financial difficulties as a single mother trying to survive in a man's world.

To summarize; I left the state of Arizona to remove myself and children from domestic violence. This was 2 years after the end of our marriage that was brought about due to him cutting my face and arm in a beating in front of my children. I had filed an injunction against him for threatening my life and calling me foul names in front of my children, telling them any time he had visitation that I was evil, lazy, well you can fill in the blanks. I could no longer take his disrespecting me in front of them. He was getting more and more violent with every visit.

The authorities hunted us down like we were psychotic killers. I turned myself in after three months on the run after discovering that I had a federal warrant out for my arrest. As a result I was incarcerated for 60 days and when I was released, my ex husband had moved several times without leaving a change of address with the postal service or the courts. I spent 468 days tracking him, his girlfriend and my children down before I could even serve him with papers to enforce my parental rights.

The extreme pain of not knowing where they were or how they were doing was enough to drive me almost insane. The denial turned to sadness, to despair, then to complete self contempt. Every minute of every day was filled with anguish and tears and I asked for death to take me every night when I lay down emotionally exhausted to sleep and was furious every morning I awoke to the same empty feeling of helpless, hopeless desolation.

Their life was not much better. They were not allowed to say my name in 'her' house. They were told they could not cry that they were being babies for doing so. They were told to hate their mother for her spiritual beliefs, that she was evil because she did not believe as they did. Their father tried to alienate me and my children and break a bond that has been present since before

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