YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH! — Hers, His and Ours

I've been divorced from Dick for 16 years now. Up until the past few weeks I don't remember the last time he's said a kind word to me. Instead every word out of his mouth has been laced with negativity about; my parenting, my life, my family and that I'm just a POS. He's varied it from being said to my face, behind my back or directly to Elle. I'm a big girl and can handle the talk, but Elle, well that's a different story.

For as long as she can remember, Dick has lobbied her pretty much non-stop to see the "truth" about me, with the sole intent to build up his own ego "thank god Elle that you have me!" He has never been able to grasp the point that Elle is apart of me and thus, all of his negativity toward me, directed at Elle has had a direct correlation on her own self worth and self esteem.

The year prior to leaving his home, when he would go off on "Your Mom is this that or the other" Elle would tell him "GET THERAPY! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!" and leave the room. His response was one that him and Malus liked to use often "I'm just telling you the truth, sorry if you can't handle it!"

As you know, Dick held out an olive branch a few weeks ago with no strings attached to let Elle go through her things and take what she wanted from his home. He was warm to me and gave some unforced compliments. At the time Elle said "Wow, he's never said anything nice about you Mom, EVER! Sorry, he just doesn't like you." I've always responded that it doesn't bother me and she has nothing to be sorry about.

Given all that it was very surprising when out of the blue this week I received the following text:

Hi Lisa.

I just received more pictures of our girl.

She is truly beautiful, in fact stunning.

Just like I said when she was born, "There she is Miss America".

Thanks for being such a great Mom. She deserves it.

Looks like our time spent together was an absolute blessing.

Thanks for all you do. D.

My first thought was of Elle. I had long ago stopped caring about proving to him that I was a good Mom, worthy of his praise, but Elle it had constantly eaten away her that he "hated" me. I immediately called her and read the text. Her response "Wow, he's said more nice things about you in the past month than he has my entire life, it feels nice."

While it breaks my heart about the past, I am comforted that the conversation seems to be changing. Elle's Dad accepted a very big part of her by saying those kind words to me. I hope it continues..........