I have been praying to HP all day ... since yesterday.  Let go, let God.  Detach.  Believe it will be OK,  HP, please help me do the next right thing... these are all my mantras today.

My most difficult challenge with this program is not just feeling like someone is hovering over me watching, like living in a glass house, as usual (which is an unfortunate reality I have, and need to let go on a daily basis)... but is when my "challenging person" is big time pulling the card that makes me crazy.  I know, and remind myself, what others think is none of my business.  What gets me crazy is the way in which our kids are manipulated, the way in which he (their dad/my former who is pretty much sober but with no program) takes actions or inactions and is very skillful and charming at having it appear to all others that I am to blame for the outcome that he is manipulating ... and these are outcomes that adversely affect the kids ... but are such that I have minimal control over the situation -- but somehow the responsibility consistently ends up at my feet even as I have clarified boundaries ... not just with him, but with the court ... the court is involved because of the kids.  He loves to maintain contact with me by creating conflict, such that if I don't run around meeting deadlines that he makes up or he changes things at the last minute usually using the kids in some way, that blame lands on me.  At first ... several years ago, I tried running around "cooperating" and "saving" situations that adversely effected the kids.   But over time it became clear that all that did was feed his kind of sick enjoyment of watching me get caught up into the chaos he likes to create in order to pull me into it. So detachment is a watchword for me, and I have gotten better, I can see what is going on ... but knowing what the "next right thing to do" and knowing he's lying to the kids, manipulating them, but trying to figure out how to proceed because I do not badmouth their dad to the kids. However he does the reverse, and says to the kids I am to do things that he makes up, and that if I say anything about it it means the kids are being put in the middle by me.  A catch 22 -- In time, as they grow-up, the kids will know, but their lives have been so confusing for them for so long -- the old being told something is white when it is black routine.  And the last several months have been so hard, and the last 24 hours are like a crescendo. OHHHHHHHH.

I know the kids have their own HP.  I believe in my kids, and I believe in my skills as a mom to them ... but ...praying for the serenity to accept what I can't change, and the courage to change what I can then leads me to truly needing the WISDOM to know the difference in this circumstance.  I feel I am at a point where I need to take care of me and have faith in my and my kids HP to take care of them  I have sacrificed myself over and over, and he knows I am at a key point of taking my life back ... but then there are the kids.  I feel that at this point, for their long term welfare I need to let what happens happen and not have me take the emotional hit this time, I may not be able to protect them from the emotional abuse that he has manipulated them into, and they may need to experience what their dad is really like. I need some ESH, please.