You finally have full custody of your children. Maybe the other parent no longer has any rights to the child at all, a legal stranger.
The chaos is gone.
The home is calm.
Your child is happy.
Healing has started.
And then, like clockwork, the abuser’s extended family suddenly wants access.
Maybe it’s because the person who hurt you no longer has access to your children.
Maybe “no” is not a word in their vocabulary. (Shocking, I know)
Maybe boundaries simply don’t exist in that family.
So how many times do you have to say no?
How many envelopes do you have to refuse?
How many phone numbers do you have to block?
How many times do you have to politely, firmly, clearly tell grown adults to stop contacting your child?
Maybe this doesn’t apply to you.
Some of us do have full legal custody.
Some of us do have mental health professionals. They support our decision to keep toxic and abusive family members away from our children.
That matters.
Even if it’s inconvenient for others.
Even if it hurts their feelings.
Whatever the reason for no contact, it is deeply upsetting, frightening, and violating when boundaries are ignored.
And the law? The law is murky at best.
Here’s what happens instead.
An officer will ask:
- Did you refuse the mail?
- Did you ask the post office to stop accepting it?
- Did you block the numbers?
- Did you change your child’s phone number?
- Did you explicitly tell them to stop?
- Do you avoid places they might show up?
Because if you haven’t done everything, they won’t, or “can’t”, do much.
You’ll be told to hire a lawyer and let them handle it. We all know how that goes.
So yes. You send the letter.
The strongly worded one.
If you care about appearances, you’re expected to be polite. Calm. Civil. Maybe even nice.
You’re told to let someone else handle it, especially if you’re not completely burned out by lawyers yet.
If the mail continues, you cross out how they addressed it.
You write your child’s real name on the envelope.
You send it back. “Refused,” Signed by me, the Mother.
If they try to text your child from a new number, you respond every single time.
My child has restrictions, those messages come to my phone first. She only sees a notification that an unknown number attempted contact. Nothing else. She doesn’t see anything but her pinned conversations.
And no, I will not change her number.
She memorized it.
I will not change mine.
I will not change my husband’s, the man she calls dad.
What I will do is say it again. And again. And again:
Stop harassing my child.
I deny DM requests on my private social media.
I block mutual friends who think they’re entitled to share photos.
Access is not automatic. Blood does not override safety.
And if I see them in public?
I will say it loudly.
Stop. Harassing. My. Family.
I do not care how it makes me look.
Because protecting my child matters more than being palatable.
More than being polite.
More than keeping the peace for people who never respected it in the first place.
So if it is fitting, call me the villain; my child is protected.
It will be my new favorite bedtime story.
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