My mother had to go to legal aid to get divorced from Kent, and of course he wanted joint custody of me. My mom agreed at first, but when she went to court and the judge heard all the gory details, he insisted she have full custody. Kent didn’t show up for the hearing, so he never knew what had happened — and nobody rushed to tell him.
About a year later, my mom was milking a cow we had bought from someone else. The cow kicked her hard, and she had to go to the hospital. While she was gone, Kent showed up at the farm with the girl who was Gil’s minion and took me away from Dennis. Just like that, I was pulled back into Gil’s world.
Kent told my mom that if she wanted to see me, she would have to clear it with Nancy — Gil’s female minion. That was the level of control he lived under, and he expected us to live under it too.
But when Kathy came home from the hospital, Dennis called legal aid and explained what had happened. The woman on the phone asked whether my mom wanted Kent taken directly to jail or to see a judge first. Needless to say, Kent brought me right back.
But the damage was already happening.
This tug‑of‑war between two worlds — the fear‑based world of Kent and Gil, and the love‑based world of my mom and Dennis — was tearing me apart. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I could feel the split inside me. Every time Kent took me away, the farm lost a piece of its stability. Every time I came back, I brought the chaos with me.
By overcoming the mental problems this created, I began to understand something essential: love for each other and love for the cows was what kept our world intact. Not money. Not luck. Not circumstances. Love.
The money and the things we needed to keep the farm running always materialized — as long as we didn’t give in to fear. I think this was the point when Dennis stopped being just a stepfather and started becoming my guru.
Living in his mind was comforting at first. He lived from a place of love, not fear, and when I entered that space, I felt safe. But then I would see circumstances forming — bills, broken machinery, sick cows, storms — and I would panic. I would see disaster coming for us, and I couldn’t stop it.
When I couldn’t overcome the fear, Dennis would step in and dissolve the disaster I was certain was real. He didn’t fight it. He didn’t struggle. He simply revealed it as the illusion it was.
But entering his mind when I was afraid became harder and harder. The part of me that wasn’t anchored in love would be burned away through mental pain. It wasn’t punishment — it was purification. Until I learned to have faith in the power of love to materialize what we needed.
Unfortunately, Kent didn’t forget about me. He went back to court and got joint custody. After that, he took me away from the farm every chance he got.
And every time he did, the farm suffered. My mom and Dennis were left without help. The cows still needed milking. The work still needed doing. And the stress on them grew enormous.
I didn’t know it then, but this was the beginning of the long fracture inside me — the split between fear and love, between two worlds, between two ways of being. And it would take years, and a descent into darkness, before I learned which world was truly mine.
This is the chapter where the reader finally understands:
the instability Kent brought into your life
the danger of being pulled out of the farm’s love‑based world
how the tug‑of‑war damaged you
how Dennis became more than a stepfather — a spiritual anchor
how you learned, painfully, that fear materializes chaos and love materializes safety
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