Hello,

First of all, congratulations on doing the right thing for yourself and your daughter. Depression is an illness and when you are that low it is easy to delude yourself into blaming certain things as the cause of your depression, i.e. you and your daughter. Perhaps he started to believe the racial prejudice that you faced and bravely overcame. Either way, the only thing that I see you could do is to encourage him to seek help, which it seems you did. You cannot do anymore than that, don’t blame yourself one bit or take on responsibility for how he is feeling, it’s not your fault! Please know this! You can’t persuade him or force him to think differently, no amount of logical reasoning will work against such a person, it will likely just make things worse. The only person ultimately that can make him change is himself.

A word of caution, I have little doubt that there will come a time in the not so distant future when he will start to miss you and may make demands for you to come back to him or similar. I won’t say not to do this, but be very careful! Do not drop everything if and when the time comes just to be with him again even if he says he’s completely changed and he is so sorry etc. Basically, be careful about making any large investments in him straight away, he may just throw it back in your face shortly after. Your love for him may well make you want to give it all up for him to return back to the way things were, be very careful please! If he ever does wish to see you again then you could always just make a low level investment such as visiting him (for a holiday), it you decide this is right for you. But whatever you do, put yourself and your life and you daughter first, which you are already doing so I don’t need to tell you this, I’m just reminding you so that you remember to remember this if he comes calling you back, because the temptation will be so strong due to your past love.

Anyway, you really are a great example. I am proud of you for managing to establish, independently, a good life for yourself and your daughter under such circumstances, you are a very strong person.

Don’t worry, being frightened is OK, it’s natural in such a testing situation. Just know that you are doing the right thing and consequently things will keep getting better for you, it just takes time. The only thing I can say that might help you practically is that whenever you start thinking about the past and your husband and worries, immediately switch your thoughts to your daughter and the life you want to provide for the two of you. Thoughts are unbelievably powerful, the more you think about what is good in your life, the better your life will get, I promise. Try it, you will see…

All the best,

Ben.