Dear XenopusTex:

If you want to get to know this woman better, and she is willing, you can get together with her for this purpose: to learn who she is, what she is about; if she is distressed, is her life falling apart… has been not-together for a long time. Best if you could hear her story in person, better than hearing news from others and trying to fill in the gaps with assumptions. Like you wrote, her choices don’t seem to make sense, so when you feel in the gaps with your sense, your logic, you fill in those gaps with …the wrong logic.

Find out her logic, what she is thinking, feeling; what is motivating her to make the choices she is making. This is, if you are willing and if she is willing. And then, if you sat with her, you’d ask questions gently, not in a pushy, overbearing, prosecutor attorney kind of ways. Sitting with her would be a different context than in a courthouse, and so different kind of asking and listening is required.

For her to talk with you honestly, she would need to be so inclined (to be honest), and she would need to feel safe with you, not negatively criticized. So establishing an atmosphere of safety and empathy would be a must.

Could you meet with her, just-for-information, that is, to try to learn about her, from the source?

anita