Lemonade Wisdom 🍋 Sunlight and Survival

After fifteen years in the family court advocacy trenches, hope is something I have learned to hold carefully. It's something I have delicately cradled most of my life. 

So when I sat down to watch Hulu's The Nightmare Upstairs: What Happened to Ty and Bryn, I let myself feel it. Real hope. A documentary with actual reach, covering a case I knew — a case involving substantiated abuse, "parental alienation" counterclaims, and the for-profit reunification industry that profits from the suffering of children. This was the story.
Finally, a team with resources and a platform was going to tell it.

I watched the whole thing.

And then I sat with it for a long time.

I actually crawled under the covers and sat with my feelings… really big feelings.  Anger, sadness, frustration, hopelessness...and back to anger. Rinse & repeat. 

I have written my full review on the OMB blog and I hope you'll read it, but the short version is this: the documentary failed Ty and Bryn. It failed them the way the system fails children every single day. It handed the microphone to the wrong people, left out the most critical context, and gave armchair warriors enough ambiguity to tear two credible children apart on the internet.

That is not journalism. That is further abuse.

Grant Wyeth published a piece this week that landed hard for me. Writing about an unrelated case, he observed that empathy migrates away from those who need it most and attaches itself to those who don't deserve it at all. That sentence belongs in every family court in this country. It is exactly what this documentary did. It extended grace and airtime to an invested party while two children with substantiated CPS findings were left to be picked apart by strangers.

What stays with me isn't just the anger. It's the grief of a wasted opportunity. Sunlight is one of the only tools we have left. When a platform like Hulu gets it wrong, it doesn't just miss. It muddies the water for everyone still fighting.

There is something else I need to tell you about. Something that happened in the weeks before that documentary aired, while I was sitting with my own version of the same feeling.

Being targeted for speaking the truth.

When I first found out my insurance company was not renewing my policy in May, I felt the bottom drop out.

As many of you know, my recent medical issues forced me to step back from OMB. The legal battle I am currently facing has taken so much, and at some point, I hope to be able to speak about all of it in greater detail. But in the meantime, the practical pieces kept landing.

My insurance agent kept coming back with the same word.

Declined.

Declined.

Declined.

Each one felt like another door closing. I started asking myself the questions I didn't want to ask.  Would any policy that agreed to cover us come with exclusions that silenced me further? Would I be able to keep calling out injustice, keep writing, keep showing up, or would I have to make a choice between coverage and candor?

I knew my policy was set to run out last Monday.

Wednesday through Saturday morning, I did a good job of compartmentalizing. My daughters were visiting, and I was not going to let the clock ticking in the background steal that time. We laughed. We were together. That was enough.

Saturday afternoon, after they left, Glenn and I had the hard conversation.

The clock had run out. The risk of moving forward without coverage, given everything I am currently up against, was too great. We talked about shutting everything down.

That night, during a bout of insomnia, I lay there and formulated an announcement in my head. I decided to be vulnerable. To lay it all out. To ask for help.

I want to be honest about why I had stayed quiet for so long. I knew what the opposition would do with this information. The alienation industry, the people who have made it their mission to discredit, harass, and silence voices like mine, would have derived great joy from watching OMB scramble for coverage....and fail. So I held it close, until there was no other choice.

And then I poured my heart out.

I put the decision in the hands of this community.

You did not hesitate.

I've written before about post-separation abuse at the micro level, the tactics I experienced through my ex-husband and a court system working exactly as it was designed. What I am living now is the macro version. Same playbook.

Isolation.

Smear campaigns.

Harassment.

Stalking.

Legal abuse.

The goal is the same: silence the voice that names what is happening.

Speaking the truth makes you a target.

I know this.

You know this.

We raised well over the intended goal. I have reached out to those who donated after we surpassed the goal, offering refunds or the option to transfer contributions to our legal fund.

"Gratitude" doesn't cover what I feel. It is being seen. It is being held up by people who understand what this costs, because they are paying a version of the same price.

Right now, I have no idea what the future holds for OMB. I am trying to make peace with that, which anyone who has survived family court knows is not a small thing. The "what if" path is full of pockets of anxiety and PTSD land mines. I know this terrain.

What I can tell you is this: we have insurance. A stronger policy than before. One that does not prohibit me from speaking out, writing, or calling out injustice when I see it.

What keeps me going, in the middle of all of it, is this community. It is bringing survivors together. It is watching people step into their power and then reach back to pull someone else through. We are stronger together, and I believe with everything I have that we are building something, an army of people who refuse to be silent, for everyone still in the trenches.

If you feel called to be part of that army, there are two ways to join me this year.

The Lemonade Power Retreat is coming up in November. If you have never been, I cannot explain what happens in that room. You have to experience it. Survivors coming together with a collective nod that says, "I get it," is powerful to witness. 

The High Conflict Divorce Coach Certification Program starts again in August. If you are a survivor who wants to turn your lived experience into something that changes lives, this is the path.

Both of these things give me hope. Every single time.

P.S. My full review of The Nightmare Upstairs is on the OMB blog. If it moves you, share it. Ty and Bryn's story deserves to be told correctly. Are you subscribed to the blog? Click here to subscribe. 

With love,

Tina