There is a movie I saw years ago – The Truman Show.

It was a few months into Daddy’s terminal cancer – the hardest thing I had lived through up to that point, though it would get much worse. He was at MD Anderson, just trying to get well enough for the doctors to send him home.

Alton and I were flying back and forth to MD Anderson, in between helping Daddy with his businesses.

It was a total nightmare, and someone suggested going to a movie to take my mind off all of that horribleness. So off we went.

I remember sitting in the theater thinking – well, this sucks.  This is awful.

I left the theater in an even worse mood than when I got there – not because the acting was bad, but because the theme was disturbing. 

A man named Truman lives an ordinary life in an ordinary town. A wife, a job, a best friend, a routine. What he doesn’t know is that all of it is staged. The town is a set. The people are actors.

His wife is playing a part. The whole world has been built around him and managed down to the weather. He is the only person in it who does not know he is on a show.

At one point in the movie, his best friend looked him straight in the face and said, “Truman, I would never lie to you.”  Then he did just that – lied, right to his face.

His own wife, smiling into hidden cameras, doing a commercial in the middle of his heartbreak. Everyone in on it. Everyone performing.

He suspects something is wrong. He asks for clarification. She yells to the film crew “Do something.”

Do something to stop him from figuring it all out.

When I watched it, I thought the people running his life were monsters.

At the time, I also thought Truman was a dork.  Stuck in the middle, living what he thought was his real life inside their elaborate lie, and too dumb to see it.

I didn’t understand how he could not know he was being severely manipulated his entire life.  It just seemed a little too far-fetched for me.

There was no way he could not know he was being managed.

I understand it very differently now because in my own life, I was the last one to know.

My Marriage

My 12-year marriage was one giant Truman Show.  One giant con job.

I didn’t go into it thinking that.  I thought I had found the one. I thought he felt the same.

I felt like I had not only found the man I was crazy, smitten in love with – I had found the man who would stand shoulder to shoulder with me during the hard times, who would hold my hand during the sentimental ones.

We loved each other deeply.

The bonus:  he adored my children, and I adored his. We were going to create the most wonderful blended, happy family.  The best part – he was destined to be my partner for the rest of my life.

What a sweet, sweet life.

Every dream inside my soul.

He swept me off my feet.  He was as committed as I was to making all our dreams come true.  We had some beautiful goals.  My soulmate.

I will never forget the text I sent him one evening – I really think my father and brother had a hand in choosing you for me.

His response:  “I feel the same.  I wish I could have met them both. They sound like wonderful men. I just wish I had met you sooner.”

The reality:  I’ve spent the last 12 years searching for the man I met 13 years ago.  The one who said those beautiful words to me – and meant none of them.

Recently, I was brave enough to look through our wedding album.   When I look at David’s face in those pictures now, he isn’t smiling at “the love of his life.”  He’s gloating. 

That beautiful relationship I thought I had with my husband.  That gorgeous wedding, where my boys walked me down the aisle and my daughter was my maid of honor.

The bouquet I carried – tiny photos intertwined with white roses to honor my father and my brother. David’s boutonniere, with a treasured photo of his own late father.

The custom platinum wedding band he wore, with my fingerprint on the outside, and my handwriting inscribed inside, permanent:  “You’re my gift from God.”

Nothing but a humiliation project.

The man who married us knew.  “His friends” knew. His ex-wife knew.  His family knew.  Many of the sub-contractors who worked on our house knew.  People within the community knew.

Many of them agreed to their role and performed perfectly, in order to protect his past.

The “friends,” and those with a dog in the hunt, sat back and fed on my stupidity.  They enjoyed my ignorance as I participated in this giant lie my husband had created – at my expense, and my children’s.

David hand-picked me for the role of rube in his production.

Apparently, we had an open marriage.  I was the only one who didn’t know it. 

My tremendous love for David kept my blinders on.

My loyalty kept my humiliation project running, indefinitely.

To realize I have been the laughingstock of my community for twelve years is breathtakingly painful.

You don’t have to look deep or far to see my love for him.  Everything I did was with him in mind.

The gardens I created.  The spaces I designed.  The battles I fought.  

And the toll all of it took – on my self-esteem, my self-worth, my ability to make a single decision.

When I first realized the absolute nightmare I have been living, I couldn’t look at my website without falling apart.

Now, I’m just numb.

I put a tremendous amount of sweat and tears into J Dub By Design™.

It’s my second proudest accomplishment, after my children.

Actually – that’s inaccurate.  My website was my third greatest accomplishment, after my marriage to David.  

David is all over my writing. All over my work.

He used the people I love, and my desire to find sentimental patterns – God winks – to deliver cruelty in the most calculated way.  

Premeditated poison. 

The tagline for J Dub By Design™ – the one he came up with?

Yeah. That one hits a little differently these days.

I Should Have Known, Right?

Within months of moving to the Hill Country, the successful life I had created before David began to crack and crumble in real time.

It was utterly painful.

Did I recognize it as a red flag?  No.

I turned it inward on myself. Obviously, this is all my fault because I am doing something wrong. 

I could never figure out how to fix it.  That was by design.

My chaos and confusion weren’t accidents – they made me easier to control.  That was the whole point.

My children suffered the consequences.

They lost the mom who had her life together.  They lost the mom they trusted to know how to show up. They lost the mom who could steer the ship.

They lost the mom who knew what to do no matter what.  

His Posse of Pathetic

He has this posse of “friends” who intentionally went out of their way to make me believe they were my friends too.  They made me feel like I was part of a group, part of David’s inner circle of trusted “friends.”

They helped spin the carefully orchestrated stories of David’s past so he was seen in the best possible light.  He was always the victim – the crazy ex-wife, numerous failed relationships, failed marriages, failed partnerships, poor business decisions, the IRS.  Never his fault.  Not once.

When we’d all get together – for someone’s birthday, a Christmas party, the Super Bowl, a bike rally, whatever – I began to feel like I was part of some hidden agenda I hadn’t been let in on.

Let’s take Jennifer shopping.  Jennifer, you stay in this room tonight. Let’s go ahead of everybody else and get a table.  Jennifer, can you help me plan this “surprise”?

Whatever was happening behind my back went completely over my head.   Every time, they humiliated me, and I didn’t even know it. 

A few years ago, David and “his friends” got tired of my ignorance, aggravated that I hadn’t figured out “this enlightened lifestyle” and learned to play along.  So they took it to the next level.

One would be deliberately cruel, for no reason.

Another would make a snide comment, or go cold on me. I’d be left with hurt feelings and then made to feel delusional for having them.  

Punished for something I didn’t understand. Laughed at for my confusion.

They always had plausible deniability.

Things that should never have become arguments with David turned into full-blown crises.  At first, he told me I was imagining things.  Then I was too sensitive. Then it was my fault – I’d burned bridges with people who meant a great deal to him. 

“You can’t get along with anyone, can you?”

Wait – what?

I’d be left sitting in the silent treatment for weeks – because I noticed something was off. But I couldn’t name it.  I couldn’t figure out why I felt so awful, so weird, so unsure of myself.

I was in a state of perpetual confusion.

I asked for clarification.

“Not everything is about you, Jennifer.”

His Mother

Not too long ago, I found the beautiful card his mother sent us after we got married.  She loved me, and I loved her.  She was so happy for us.  So happy David had finally found me.

I loved taking her to lunch after her doctor’s appointments.  I looked forward to spending time with her.  She was funny.  She was strong.  She was a faithful, God-fearing woman.  

She had no idea what was happening to me.  She had no idea what her son was really doing.  She was one of the only real things in all of it.

David didn’t let me say goodbye to her when she passed. 

He punished me by leaving me at home – the silent treatment, over some perceived wrong he accused me of, timed perfectly so I lost my chance to see her.

That was the first Christmas I ever spent completely alone.  

And then, the gift:  he made me responsible for packing up all of her personal belongings and getting her home ready to sell.

The Vacation From Hell

In May 2025, I flew to Panama for a much-needed vacation.

This was the first time I’d seen David since he left in December, 2024.

I’d been too sick to travel – still recovering from the infection that nearly took me out – and he couldn’t come home to me.  So when I was finally well enough, I flew to Panama to be with him and finish decorating the beach house we had purchased the previous year.  

Then the call came.  

My daughter was unexpectedly diagnosed with a large tumor in her stomach. This isn’t my family’s first rodeo with this type of horror.  We had lost Daddy to terminal cancer twenty-six years ago.  My brother got his terminal diagnosis ten years after that.  

When the first doctor – the gastroenterologist – called me:  “Mrs. Williams, I don’t know any other way to say this. I don’t normally see this in someone as young as Eve.  She has a massive tumor in her stomach. I didn’t want to mess around down there too much, because she’s bleeding internally.  I did get a biopsy. I’m going to have the surgical oncologist call you this afternoon, after I have had a chance to fill him in.”  

It was all I could do not to projectile vomit at the table where I was sitting.

I remember begging God to help me stay strong for my little girl. 

“Please God please – not again.  Please don’t take my girl.  Please, please, please don’t put her through this.”

Within minutes, I was in the passenger seat, trying to get to the airport, trying to move my flight, trying to hold myself together, and the man driving me there had lost his mind. 

David was falling apart, and I found myself watching him, agitated.

My child was the one whose world had just collapsed, and he was the one coming undone.  I kept thinking – Can you ever just be there for me?  For any of us?  For Eve?

But underneath my aggravation was something else.  Unease.

Because I couldn’t tell what I was watching.  The signals didn’t match.  It felt theatrical.

I was trying to have conversations with her brothers, her father, the doctor, the nurse, the airline agent. 

The surgeon was telling me the name of the tumor, walking me through her “quality of life” and how it would be diminished, whether she could carry a child, the aftermath, the drugs she would need to take.

I kept telling the doctor he could not do the surgery until I got there. 

He said, “I don’t know if we can wait.  She is losing blood and she needs at least one blood transfusion now.”  

David kept intervening with his own agenda.  

In between all of these phone calls, and trying not to fall apart myself, he told me that I should be the one to explain his absence, his choices, the reason he could not be there for her or for me – his “soulmate.” 

“Honey, say whatever you think is best.”

I kept thinking, your messes are not my problem.

His Messes

David gave up his citizenship in December 2024.  His parents were born here.  He was born here.  He voluntarily gave it up because he said our country was “going to shit.”

He told me he gave up on our country to secure my future.  He told me I should do the same.

I told him I would never put myself in a position where I couldn’t get to one of my children if they needed me.  

He told me he was doing this for me.  That he was so much older than me.  That he could easily ride it out, but I would be the one who would struggle if he passed away before me.

It did not make any sense to me.

This man kept a copy of the Constitution on his desk.

But I tried to understand.  I gave him the benefit of the doubt.  I went out of my way to believe I was part of a team – half of a marriage that was beautiful and strong.  That this would all work itself out.

He insisted I keep it quiet, because that’s just what we do.  No one needs to know.

I trusted him, so I did what he asked.

He completely took advantage of the tremendous loyalty bone God gave me.

The reality? He was living a secret life.  He had been living a secret life the entire time we were married.  Now he is across an ocean, doing the same.

He had no plans for a future with me.  He had plans for his future – with other people. Even people I never knew existed.

Then this unexpected disaster with my child threw him for a loop.  He didn’t see it coming.  No one did.   

And that is why, sitting in that car, I couldn’t tell what I was looking at.

Was it guilt – that he wasn’t there for her to lean on?

Or was it just his ridiculous, over-the-top theater?

The Hospital

I finally made it to the hospital to be with my daughter.  It took a night in a hotel, because I missed the window for the last-minute Panama to San Antonio flight, and then eighteen hours of non-stop travel as God worked a few miracles in my favor.

I walked into her room at 1am that Friday morning.  I have never been so proud.  She was so brave.  And she had a wonderful team of nurses who took such good care of her and kept her calm until her father and I could be there.

Even though I had been up for thirty-six hours straight, I could not sleep. I kept begging. I kept bargaining.  I just could not let it go.

God answered.  I’ve got her, Jennifer.  Go to sleep.  

At 9 am on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, the doctor came in with unexpected news – a change of plans.

Because her nurses were able to get the internal bleeding under control, the surgeon felt confident he could keep her stable through the holiday weekend.  He wanted to put his best team together.  

After consulting with other experts in his field, he believed he could go in robotically and remove the tumor entirely.

No invasive surgery, no huge risk of infection.  Just small incisions along her belly to get inside.  However, he was very clear that if he got inside and saw something different, he would immediately stop, pull out, and re-assess based on the new information.  

I remember watching the clock like a hawk.  I remember the nurse coming out and telling me she was now under anesthesia.

I remember counting the minutes.  When it had been an hour, I took that as a great sign.  He isn’t backing out.  This is going exactly as he planned.  Thank you God.

What he removed from her stomach was something out of a horror movie.  But he got the tumor – every single bit of it – and he saved her entire stomach.

She came out of surgery with her very own NG tube.

Three of us have endured that tube. 

The NG tube — that thin, grotesque, outdated, necessary evil, threaded up through the nose before making a hard turn down into the gut. I used to hate the very sight of it.

Now I think of it as a rite of passage.

Daddy had his for months. Months. Terminal cancer, and he rode that thing out anyway — willing to endure the worst of it, day after day, until they finally gave him some relief and moved the tube to his stomach.

Early on, he was in the hospital shower, and that horrid thing slid right out when he bent down to get the soap.  He cried – because he knew they would have to put it back in with him awake.

That takes a kind of toughness I didn’t fully understand until I had my own.

Mine was five days. Five days, and I was at the end of what I could take. There is no way on God’s earth I could have done months. I did everything imaginable to make those nurses think I was fine. I wasn’t.  But, I didn’t care.  

Eve’s was three.  Three, because I told her about her grandfather’s experience and mine.  You are not a minor, Eve.  I can’t advocate for you.  You will have to do this yourself. You will know when it is time.  But you’d better make sure you can keep the nausea down, or you’ll be up a creek without a paddle.  

By the third afternoon, she was done.  She would not take no for an answer.

She’s her grandfather’s granddaughter, and it shows.

Daddy. Me. Eve.

We don’t go down easy, and we don’t go down quiet.

I think God wanted the three of us to know there’s a there there.

One generation handing the next its stubborn, God-given grit.

Ten days later, my precious Stinkerbelle got her life back.  She fought her way out of the darkness, out of the fear of the unknown. 

She got her very own miracle – a full recovery.

All About Me

Once I knew she was going to recover fully, I did what David asked.

I did what I told him I would never do.  I handled his problem for him. 

And I made it about me.

I kept telling myself – Obviously, I am the best one to tell her this.  That’s why this has unfairly landed in my lap. And I so I did. I gave it the best possible spin I could – for David’s sake.

I made him the hero.

She asked where David was. Why he didn’t come.  My heart hurt for her.

Instead of telling her the very real truth – that he should have been there, holding her hand right there with me, and the only reason he wasn’t was his own stupid choices – I explained it all away.

I made it about how awesome he is.  What a maverick he is.  My David.  How lucky we all are to have him in our lives. 

I stepped up to the plate and did “whatever I thought was best…for David.”

I allowed him to manage me.  I took the job he dumped on me, and instead of being angry that he’d done it, I reframed it into something we could all live with. 

I told her he was looking out for me, because he was so devoted to me. I was his “soulmate.”

He wasn’t there for her because of everything he had done for me.

And because I don’t allow my kids to keep secrets from each other on my behalf, I made the decision to tell her brothers, too. 

Then I let David know what I had done. How I handled it.

Instead of thanking me for handling something that was never mine to handle, he ignored me. 

To let me know I had handled it poorly.  That I had disappointed him.

The Aftermath

Eve got a beautiful miracle.  I didn’t have the time or patience to do anything other than scream praise – so proud of her, and the way she clawed her way back to health, determined and strong.

I was ready for all of us to come together on the other side of that nightmare, closer than we had ever been.

I brought her home to the ranch to recover.  She was so joyful.  So relieved.  So happy to be home with me.  So happy to see her friends, her brother.  

Something happened.

Her recovery became something I still cannot understand.  All I know is the wheels came completely off the bus.  I had worked so hard to knit my family back together – the family I had nurtured and raised as a single mom.

I was determined to make it better than ever.

Instead, I watched in horror as it caved in on itself, despite my best efforts to hang on.  

It was intentional. As I have said before, dishonesty and dysfunction can only thrive in secrecy.  

Big secrets were being kept from me.

I understand now that while I was trying to simply love her through her miracle, a different version of me was being handed to her in the background.

She was being sent messages that made her full recovery about me – about me needing to take credit for it.

What is worse, the rewriting of my good intentions was happening through more than one channel.

Those channels have been very good at weaving together a story that turned my joy in her bravery into something to resent.

I wanted nothing but to be a loving presence in her fight – and others were quietly bending how she saw me.  

I think this is one of the cruelest parts of being managed.  It is not only that they manage me.

It is that they manage how the people I love see me.

They found a way into my relationships from the outside. They tampered with them.

They chipped away at the strength with a lack of context, mixed in with half-truths, innuendo, and outright lies.

People who couldn’t be good parents to their own children, who couldn’t stand watching me do my best to be a good mother to mine set out – quietly, deliberately – to take my children from me.

My bond with mine was the one thing they could never build with their own. They had nothing but deep contempt for me for having it.  And they set out to destroy it.

I had no idea this was happening.  

My intentions were honest and out in the open – and yet I was being distorted into some gross, non-existent version of myself.

My life completely flipped upside down.  

No one who knows what happened will tell me what actually happened. I can only write about what I know to be true. 

I miss my children. I miss you terribly. I love you more than you will ever know.

No matter what happens, I will never not love you more than anything in this world.

The Wreckage

After he relinquished his United States passport – a gift from God he obviously took for granted – things did not go well for David.

He was not allowed back into the country.

He mistakenly thought the US government would immediately grant him a visa – that he could come and go freely, 120 days a year, for the next ten years.

That’s what his accounting firm, and whoever else took our money and encouraged this, led him to believe.  He filed his final tax return, no longer pays taxes, and apparently can enjoy the perks of my country without paying his share like everybody else.

I finally got my health back.

I’ve been trying to run this ranch ever since.

In spite of everything David has deliberately blamed me for and then handed me as my problem, I have done pretty good at maintaining it.

That’s why you saw content of me mowing this massive yard, cleaning this enormous home, and whatever else I was doing back then.

It is astonishing to realize I’ve lived here for the last two years – alone on our ranch – through two of the deadliest, most damaging floods in the Texas Hill Country. I had no experience with anything like this.  

Both times, the waters rose in record time.

Both times, I was flooded in, surrounded by high water, in awe of the magnitude of what I was watching.

I got a first-person view of just how much damage angry, violent water can and will cause in the blink of an eye.

After the waters receded, I handled the repairs and kept the ranch running.

Not because I’ve become some expert on how to run a ranch – because God sent me help.

These people showed up at my door when I was at a loss, when I had absolutely no idea how to begin to correct the problems I was facing.

During all of this, my family and the people who “know me” on social media had no idea any of it was happening.

I even made some of the disasters into “fun” content, with David as my hero – my MacGyver, off fighting the good fight for “our marriage” somewhere else with someone else, unbeknownst to me.  

The 2026 flood was worse than 2025.  Did David help me figure out a plan?  No.

The aftermath has fallen squarely on my shoulders.

God continues to work miracles as more people have appeared in my life to point me in the right direction, so I can handle the cleanup and aftermath of problems as they arise.

I was extremely isolated – and yet, grace kept finding me anyway.

That is a miracle.  

What’s Left of My Marriage

As for my marriage – I don’t even know what has been true in the last 12 years.

What I do know – my silence, the silence I kept to protect David’s secrets, to protect a marriage that is non-existent, has become unsustainable.

In reality, I have been covering up his mistakes while he has been living a completely different secret life I never knew existed. 

This past May 2026, he was finally granted a 30-day, single-use visa.  Because I was still operating as if I had this glorious, romantic marriage, I was thrilled to have him come home to me. 

I could not wait to cook his favorite meals, sip cocktails with him on the patio, hike with him and Reb, visit my family in Mississippi, have exciting conversations about our “awesome future.” 

It did not go as planned.

I saw how different he was the moment I picked him up at the airport. He had changed tremendously – and he could not remember how to fake being a spouse.

I started to see the cracks.  I saw his cruelty. I saw his lies.  I saw through his bullshit. 

We fought.  Every time I asked for clarification, he became cruel and argumentative.

Then he recorded my horrified reaction – to play my pain for someone else who was also participating in the game of “humiliate Jennifer.”  When I realized he had recorded me, he told me I had asked him to do it.

While he was here, he realized I was not taking the blame as easily as he had once been so good at grooming me to do.

So he made me the bad guy.

He yelled at me for telling my kids what he had deliberately done.

He acted as though it was news to him that I would ever do such a thing – as if our conversation in the car had never happened.

He made it my fault that I didn’t appreciate what he had done for me, what we had “agreed” he would do “for us.”

He denied ever giving me the authority to speak on his behalf.  He made me “the crazy one.”

It got worse.  So much worse.

Seeing Behind the Curtain

In the movie, the man who built Truman’s world calls himself the creator.  Even his name – Christof – is a slap in the face to Christ.  

Christof sits above it all.

He controls the weather, controls the people, decides what Truman is allowed to know –  and he does all of it, he says, for Truman’s own good, while an audience of millions watches for entertainment.

He thinks of himself as a god who keeps Truman safe by keeping him in a cage with no bars – a fake movie set.

I lived with a version of that.

My prison was my loyalty – misplaced, and given freely to a man who has never once been loyal to me.

And my audience?  I have no idea how far the reach goes.  They are all still watching.

There were times when David would do something outlandish.  I’d say, “Oh my God” at the outrageousness of his behavior.  His answer was always the same, delivered calm and certain:“David’s fine.”

He spoke about himself as if he were a god.  As if he were controlling something. And he was.

He was controlling everyone’s perception of me – his biggest prop – and, therefore, everyone’s perception of him.

He also saw the pain I carried from the years without my father and brother.   Those two men always had my back.  He used their absence to his advantage.

And then he thoroughly enjoyed watching the beautiful family God gave me implode right in front of him.

I will never forget the cruelest thing he said to me while he was here this past May.  “You weren’t that great of a mom.”

I was crushed.

He sneered.  It still makes me cry.

My children – my proudest accomplishment – and him attempting to reduce them to another failure in my own eyes. 

The next day, he denied it.

For a long time, I thought I was living through chaos I had inadvertently created.

Hard circumstances, a series of messes that were “my fault,” that I was always scrambling to clean up.

The day it changed was Father’s Day this year.

He had just returned to Panama.  He sent me a video about making pizza crust.  I sent him a funny video of Reb pouting on the couch.  He laughed. I picked up the phone and called him.  

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

Those were the last words he spoke directly to me.

I began to realize the life I had been living was built on lies.

And I was not stupid for not knowing.  In fact, I was normal for not recognizing it.

I was never wired to participate in the cruelty of deliberately destroying someone else’s life for sport.  

The messes he made were carefully structured to make me the bad guy. Each piece set up the next.

And every one of them ended with me holding something that was not mine to hold, or losing something that was.

That is deep, deep betrayal. 

Two years ago, after he left for Panama the first time, I had begun to put my family back together. I didn’t realize it at the time – but I did it because I had clarity.

He wasn’t here, managing me and my reactions.  

For a little while, I had them. We were beginning to heal.  We were looking toward the future.

And then, in one swift motion, they were gone.

All of them, at once – right at the beginning of the next beautiful new chapter.

It felt like it happened in the blink of an eye. But that would be untrue.  It was the calculated, slow boiling of the frog.

When it was finished, it was clean, and it was total.

I asked him several times over the last six months to intervene on my behalf.  To fight for me the way I had fought for him.  To reach out to my children and tell them the truth.

He refused.

When he was here, I asked him what I would even say to them if they ever reached out to me.

“They aren’t going to reach out.  They don’t even think about you.”

What Now?

This has been the most disorienting experience of my life.

Right now, I am in a holding pattern, living a life I never saw coming.

Our joint accounts are drained.

David now holds passports for both Vanuatu and Antigua and Barbuda, with permanent residency in both Mexico and Panama.

Based on recent credit card charges, he’s also applying for a passport in Panama.

I started showing up again on social media for a very different reason than I get credit for. 

Being isolated – where no one, NO ONE, knew where I was – wasn’t doing me any favors.  In fact, being isolated and alone on the ranch was done on purpose, and by design.

Being isolated and devastated about my children made me look unstable.  Even suicidal.

Also by design.

I am neither – and I resent the repeated implications in his texts that I am mentally compromised, that I would ever consider taking my own life.

I am grieving – and I believe it is my God-given right to mourn those losses, because they matter.

Not to him. But to me, they do.   

For the record:  in every relationship of David’s that has failed – by his own account – the woman is always at fault.

His ex-wife, “a crazy cheater,” jealous of her daughter.  The wife before her: “a drunk.” The wife before that, also “a cheater.”

The two women he dated before me: “drunk, unstable stalkers.”

He doesn’t get to reframe my grief as something else just because I’ve become an obstacle to whatever his goals are these days.

I have never been more certain that I have a great deal of life left to live.

And, I am going to fight, with every ounce of my being, to live that life.

So here I am.  All of me – authentic and honest.

You seeing me regularly makes it that much harder for someone to remove me without serious questions being raised as to who, and why.

Why would anyone want me gone?

I am an owner of this ranch.  I am also trustee of several important entities.

I am a member in the foundation that holds foreign real estate.

Are those reasons?

I don’t know.

With me gone, those problems solve themselves.

I still don’t know.  I may never know.

My father used to say, “When the money hits the table, you learn an awful lot about what makes a person tick.” 

I’ve had to call 911 three times.

I’ve had a trespasser hiding somewhere on the ranch.

I’ve been followed out to the ranch.  I’ve been followed inside the grocery store.

Dead animals have been carefully arranged on my doormat – one with its head removed.

Someone changed the combination on the tunnel lock.  You have to know the combination to change it – and they changed it to one I don’t know.  

Three people knew that combination.

I had to hire a locksmith to fix that mess.

Was the trespasser ever found?  No. 

The first time I called 911, on July 16, 2026, David texted me within minutes: “What’s going on down there?” In his texts, he claimed the police called him.

The police were not here. Firemen were.

Did he call to make sure I was okay? No.

He hid behind his poorly framed texts and the fact that he’s “in fucking Panama.”  His words – not mine.

Has he spoken directly to me since Father’s Day?  No.

In fact, his texts blame me for his lack of concern.

Then he made fun of me for being concerned about my safety at all:  “Maybe the intruder hiding in the tunnels fixed the pumps.”  

That’s quite an interesting take for my husband to have – especially without any prior knowledge.

His silence, after his lack of concern, has given me the answers I need.

I had to make decisions.  I made them.

There were no cameras on this ranch the entire time we lived here.  I pretended there were.  David told me that was best.

That was by design. 

Today, in terms of security, things are drastically different.

As I said earlier, I asked him what I would say if the kids reached out.  

He said, “They aren’t going to reach out. They don’t even think about you.”

Yes, his words were deliberately cruel.  It’s also more than that. 

How would a man an ocean away, who claims to be uninvolved, know what my children think about — or don’t? How would he know whether they’ll reach out?

I don’t know everything yet.

But I know this: the man who told me my children had forgotten me is the same man who kept threatening me, in texts, to call my son to “find out what’s going on.” 

I raised my children to think for themselves. I have to trust that they do.

My Website Tagline

“The Bitch Without Boundaries.”

His assessment of me – hung over my own front door, over my own hard work, in my own hand.

That’s how he worked. He didn’t just insult me. He got me to wear the insult and call it mine.

When I realized the depths of betrayal I had been experiencing, I beat myself up.

I blamed myself.

Why would God send this man into my life?

God patiently asked me to reframe it.

I sent you to David – to show him what a real marriage looks like, and to be a good mother to his son.

That was the gift. That was the whole point.

He had a choice. Every single day, he had a choice.

God lets everyone make their own choices – freely. Otherwise, what’s the point?

My Future

I don’t know what that looks like.

Through all of this nightmare, I have prayed.  I pray for guidance.  I pray for courage.  I pray for the strength to see it through.  I pray the people who matter will recognize the truth.

I pray with every ounce of my being for my children, and for me.

God has answered my prayers in ways I never considered possible. He has had my back when I couldn’t imagine how.

He is magnificent.

Genesis 50:20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.”

Isaiah 54:17 “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.  This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”  

Now I am waiting.

And while I am waiting, I am determined to find gratitude. To see the beauty in everything – even in the terrifying and unknown.

I have my health.

I have Reb, another gift from God. He knew the perfect time to put this four-legged protector in my life.

I have my creativity and the ability to move forward – no matter how small the steps.

I will find some way to laugh at the things that are meant to destabilize and scare me.

Yesterday, I talked to a friend I’ve had for over 20 years. Her family has meant more to me than she will ever know.

I found myself laughing with her at the sheer absurdity of the story surrounding my own wedding ring.

“Jennifer, you are the strongest person I know.  I don’t know how you’ve found a way to stay standing during this nightmare.”

I responded, “God. The only reason I am still here.”

Psalm 37:7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.”

James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Most of all, I have my faith.

I have stopped apologizing for making people uncomfortable with the truth.

This entire disaster has been running behind the scenes of my life because David took my need to be honest and loyal and turned it into a betrayal – of him, of our fake marriage.

He knew what I wanted. I wanted the happy ending. The beautiful marriage. To die old with him. To belong, finally, in that group of lovers who are also best friends – the ones who make it all the way.

I wanted it so badly that I didn’t let myself see what was right in front of me.

He is the one who betrayed me, my children, and our marriage.

I will never again allow another human being to make me feel disloyal for being honest – or stupid for wanting the fairytale.

The moment I refused to keep his secrets anymore, the “Jennifer Humiliation Project” started to lose its grip.

I have accepted the hardest part.

David, and the flying monkeys who were managing me, never loved me.

They loved the version of me that was useful to them.

Once they thought they had run me into the ground, once I stopped being useful, once I became a problem for his future “new friends” and for this ranch, it was time for him to devalue and discard me.  

But he underestimated God’s plans for me.  And he underestimated my faith.

At the end of the movie, Truman sails to the edge of his world and finds a door in the painted sky. On the other side is everything real, everything unknown, everything frightening.

He stands at that door – and then he walks through.

God has me at the door.  God will guide me through.

I’ll see you when I see you. 

 – Jennifer