How to Accept Losing Custody Of Your Child

Custody battles are often very challenging, not because they are difficult (though they are), but because they literally challenge our views of ourselves and our lives. We tell ourselves a story about how our live is and how it is going, and we argue vehemently against any narrative that portrays us in a less positive light. But losing custody of your child forces us to recognize that some greater power — the courts — sees that less-positive narrative as the more accurate one.

Failure Is An Event, Not a State of Being
It’s common for parents who have lost custody of their children to feel like they have failed on some fundamental level. The painful truth is, they have: they failed to keep custody of their children. But it is not true that this makes them ‘a failure.’

There is no such thing as ‘a failure’ in terms of a whole human being — the only thing capable of being ‘a failure’ is an attempt. Ask anyone who has gone into business; the concept of “fail until you succeed” is a commonplace aphorism around Silicon Valley and Wall Street. By mentally assigning the failure to the event of losing the court battle rather than assigning it to yourself as a person, you can move forward.

It’s Not About You
You might be thinking, “What did I do wrong?” or “Do my kids think I’m a horrible parent?” You look for arguments against those ideas, ‘evidence’ that the court’s decision was wrong and that you are a good parent. But custody of the child isn’t about you — it’s about them.

If you approach every interaction with your child as an opportunity to improve their lives, to make them better human beings, you are being a good parent. If you approach an interaction with the intention of making yourself look better in their eyes (or the judge’s eyes, or making your ex look worse), you have failed your attempt at parenting for that interaction. The courts’ mandate is to look out for the children’s best interests — the more you are a legitimate ‘best interest,’ the more likely it is that you will be able to spend time with them in the future.

Moving Past the Feelings
Losing custody creates a lot of emotions, most of them negative. If you do not express these emotions deliberately, they will find a way to express themselves — usually in the most destructive manner possible.

Instead of internalizing, repressing, or ignoring these feelings, you must deal with them deliberately if you want to get past them. There are a lot of methods for doing so, and the weird truth is that it doesn’t really matter which one you pick — the important part is that you choose to actively address your own emotional state. Almost every method is a variation of the same theme in the end: externalize your emotions so they are no longer a part of “you,” and then release them, either by expressing them (in writing or screaming or boxing), or by ‘taking a pass’ on feeling them (by meditating until they slip away, or learning any of several release techniques).

By separating yourself from the failure, from the self-interest, and from the negativity, and moving forward addressing each day as an opportunity to be yourself in the most engaged and authentic way possible, anyone — no matter how dark they feel today — can learn to move past the pain of losing custody and live again.