Begin forwarded message:

From: Alla Hill <allabhill@gmail.com>
Date: April 13, 2020 at 5:43:07 AM EDT
To: Henry Hill <henrythill@gmail.com>

Hi,

Hope you are doing well. I heard the latest about your health from Tyler - glad you are feeling better.

I am pasting the message from Tyler to me below - filled with lots of paranoia and judgment. Please, take a look, if interested. Unfortunately I can’t take this judgement and bullying anymore, since this is far from a single incident.

Tyler: “As i was saying before my phone died, your mother sucks just as much. She abandoned you at an early age so she could party and have an easier life, she manipulated and lied to you all the time, she treats you like a tool and is overall a burden to you, Almost every time you talk with her you are stressed afterwards and shit all over us for it. Or, you feel sorry for her and then bring everyone down with your "so sad" stories about her. Yet you defend her non-stop because you she basically ignored you growing up and couldn't even take the effort to show love having a birthday party for you. You weren't worth the effort to her. So now you call her all the time and try to prove how valuable you are by solving her problems and listening to her troubles like a dutiful little mamma's girl. But you don't try to ban her, oh no. It's sad really, if you had the same standards across both parents then i'd be totally fine. But you are too hypocritical. So going forward i'll call my family anytime i want and not worry about it.

I'm not like you though. I don't try to avoid my family every day so i call mommy for 2-4 hours a day. I'll leave that to you. I actually take part.”

Good part - I think he has decided to call you more often. Bad part - my.

Now - never did I ever limit him on any calls to you. We came for Christmases and visits for years, we visited your family as much if not more as my family. The only my worry was always, and unfortunately arose last February to the greater size, about your wife throwing her emotions on my children whenever her daughter is around, and you judging me of how to raise my children. Tyler shared your conversation back in August - I really did not appreciate hearing from you “our kids will grow ruined because of the way we raise them”. That really hurt my feelings. Hearing it from someone you’d think ought to be supportive, but disregards the love, heart and mind that I put into raising my children - honestly, it was completely devastating.I had projected my view of my family on you and your wife, and was definitely shocked hearing what Tyler told me.

To your knowledge, in my family kids were treated equally by adults and respected. Their minds were fostered with love, attention and respect. I was raised in a different society, of course, but my great grandparents and grandparents, who played an enormous role in my upbringing, showed only love, support, trust and respect. They were compassionate, empathetic, hard-working and supportive humans whose example I have followed throughout my life. So as my parents did, even though Tyler hates them greatly - never did they judged him or did any hurtful moves towards our children. In fact, our children love them very much. One can tell, they feel loved and secure around them.

Just to explain, if a child had any big emotions he/she hasn’t learnt how to deal with yet, simply because of his/her brain wasn’t developed yet to handle it, the adults in my family would try to help the child learn how to handle it, not through running around and yelling at the children and pointing their “mistakes and wrongdoings” of throwing or spilling things, but through giving them space to figure it out and showing the child their(adults)own stability and resilience, making them feel safe, trusted so that the child feels secure and accepted, also sympathized and believed in handling this emotion. My family’s priority was not a furniture, picked up cards or tidiness at the moment when children needed them greatly. (Because those are the moments they do need us, parents, the most. Their actions practically scream it). Nobody was squashing the child because of their (adults) own power struggles either. They knew, I believe, in their hearts, that a child comes first and their priority was to raise the next generation to be emotionally healthy and stable, not just monetarily successful. That will always come along(especially in this country) as long as a person stable, healthy, and believes in themselves. In fact, they would also be able to enjoy that success as a healthy happy family, and continue raising their happy stable children.

Furthermore, child’s physical health will follow as well. I honestly believe that doctors “don’t harm” does apply to raising children.

Furthermore, my family has had a great respect for their children no matter how young the child was not because they raised the kids a certain way but because they loved unconditionally and believed in their children. If you let a child calm down he/she will regulate his/her emotions and behavior, and make the right choice, be it clean up, fix whatever they did etc., a very important skill to learn in childhood. I cannot imagine my great grandma, who was 70 when I was born, jump and follow me around the room, when I am clearly upset, yelling “pick it up right now”. Furthermore, I cannot imagine her not feel a need to apologize to me and show that, yes, she lost it, but this is not the way I should've been treated and not the way I should ever treat others in the future occurring situations in my life. Honestly that would make me feel like she completely disregards my feelings and that cleaning cards of the floor is more important than my emotional health. In addition, there is no place for empathy or respect to others feelings there. At that age I would not feel safe around her or loved by her. Also - I'd feel not worthy, but her rules and demands are more important.  I believe it will make my brain freak out from now on when any situation occurs where emotion and feeling occurs - my or others - and I'd want to squash it, treat it disrespectfully, not show empathy, disregard it etc.

That never occurred in my family, so it is hard to comprehend. The adults in my family of course dealt with their challenges and frustrations because it is a life and they are humans, but they never did it at children’s expense.

It makes me very upset to see a view of children as unworthy respect or an equal treatment until they grow up and prove themselves, perhaps?

Humans’, but especially children's brain, gets damaged and looses parts of its capability under stress. Many studies have shown something my family was following naturally, without reading it in books - stress, especially in early childhood, prevents child’s brain from healthy development and growth. It damages areas that responds to stress in a healthy way, shrinks amygdala etc. I won’t cite all that, you can easily find it all online if interested. But what is important is that stress in early childhood may lead to depression, anxiety, addictions, health issues later in life. There is a book called “Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal” by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. An interesting read, that summarizes something I am trying to say here. Not feeling secure, respected, safe supported causes children great stress, prevents them from feeling self respect and confidence, leads to all sort of different issues.

I don’t think you will ever understand the environment of the country I am from. But I can reassure you that coming out of it with such strong morals, resilience and empathy, as I posses takes some special people to foster it all. And this the way of raising children I am determined to follow, even though I do not have the support of my greater family since they are not around.

Yelling at kids and "feeding" them rules, squashing their will for whatever reason is honestly an easy way to deal with the children, in my opinion. Letting kids thrive and figure things out on their own, be free, make their own choices, and believing that they will follow your good example - without your nagging - takes much greater patience, strength and mind.

Now, back to my situation, what my family did not prepare me for is to not feel safe in my own house and in my own marriage. I was surrounded by such stable and secure relationships, people who supported each other that I couldn't have any other expectations from my relationship with Tyler.

Unfortunately, this is not what our marriage has been. I do not want to get into the details of previous years, he can talk about it. I used to excuse certain things reasoning it as mentality differences and language misunderstanding. But that has passed and is not present anymore.

I truly believe that Tyler has some psychological issues, be it a paranoia or dissatisfaction with himself, or both. Unfortunately it takes an enormous toll on our family. I can compare it to riding on a roller coaster - we are up and happy, seemingly stable, but you never know at what moment he will flip out, start being mean and bully, and we will be down again. On certain days he is stable and takes care of himself but then he flips out and doesn’t go to bed until 3 am, doesn’t eat well and in a couple of days I can expect a ruined person who can be very mean, with no empathy and very selfish. Living like that equals to living in an unpredictable stress - for me and our kids.

When I finally had realized what is going on with him and picked on the pattern, I have been thinking for awhile if I am up for living this way. Honestly, if not of our children, I would have left him about 7-8 years ago, certainly 4 years ago. But I have also concluded that our kids will be much happier if we separate and they do not have to witness all what is going on here. Last night I caught Tyler badmouthing me to our children - and it is not the first time. A few months ago he was telling them how their mom is violent and may hit him and them. When I look at this whole situation as an outsider - this is all completely unacceptable and very harmful to the children. They for sure do not understand it.

I do blame myself for going with it for so long. Any time we have a situation he would come and ask for forgiveness, lie, make things up, find excuses, and I'd go with it.

In addition, Tyler is super jealous of my relationship with my parents, any attention I pay to them is viewed like attention taken from him. He is very selfish, possessive and moody. Living with him has been a big challenge, he makes me feel very suppressed. He can’t let his partner live freely and comfortably.

I know, it was very weak and stupid of me to hope and keep accepting him, and the most important - harmful to our children, that's why I am stopping it.

Thanks for reading,

Alla