What’s happening now?
We, my family and I, need help.
Something bothers me about the recent pictures online of Mica and of Espe. Maybe it’s that they have been photoshopped and bruises erased, but there’s something else there, maybe in their gesture? or their eyes?
I’ve spent a lot of time and many sleepless nights over the last two years trying to make some sense of what is happening with Espe and Mica. I’ve heard that Espe may be Pete now, but since she has not told me anything about herself in a while. I’ll continue to call her Espe. Manon did tell me that she was he and he was named Mica just before we were blocked from reaching him.
I remember my children being healthy, ambitious and relatively happy until the summer of 2015. Mica was leaving for his first year at Reed in Portland, Oregon, and Espe had just returned from studying at Oxford in England. Her plans were to finish her last year at Sarah Lawrence and enter graduate school. She wryly said that she would need to diversify her studies a bit and maybe study something more modern, and be less focused on “the marriage mores of the eighteenth century”. Scott and I were still in Atlanta, downsizing from the home on River Farm, to a smaller house nearby, so that Walt could finish his senior year in the same place.
That summer Espe moved into an off campus apartment in Bronxville with Alisa who would later become Jameson, and Espe’s husband in May 2017.
This is how we need help. I believe that communities of kind people are powerful and can make positive change together. I want family and friends to reach out to Espe and Mica. I’ve waited too long and kept this silence, because I’m afraid I may cause pain to others I love, or that I will not have support from family closest to me.
It seems that those who have assisted, or who have convinced Espe and Mica to live the lives that they are currently living, have also managed to persuade some family and friends that by supporting no contact between them and their parents that they are protecting them from their parents. They have probably done this by intercepting texts, blocking phone calls, and employing misdirection, or creating “smoke screens”.
Since their parents have not hurt them, and Espe and Mica were securely and independently pursuing their goals with all their parents’ support both emotionally and financially in 2015, and today they seem to lack resources, and any selfish ambition, it appears to me that this demand for no contact has been a ploy to isolate Espe and Mica from family and from friends in order to use them.
Although their partners’ actions have been hurtful, I’m not sure their partners were deliberately cruel with malicious intent, or if the lies they may have told Espe and Mica, or the letters they may have withheld from them, were all simply to satisfy a self fulfilling need to control them, or if maybe it was simply business to make money with them. I believe they told Espe and Mica that they were “protecting” them.
None of the reasons really matter. What matters is that Espe and Mica know that I care, that they have family that cares, and that I love them, and I will accept them, as I have since I first held them in my arms. I want them to know that they are strong and that they have the right to live their lives as they wish, not as dictated by those who have not cherished them. We, all of us, are waiting to hear from them.
Two years ago I was told to figure it out. And I have—I’ve gone through years of texts, emails and letters. I’ve swept social media, and I’ve gone through many old papers and photos, and I’ve talked to a lot of knowledgeable people—and I believe that Espe and Mica have been preyed upon slowly and systematically over the last five years. They have been persuaded to mistrust their parents. They have been manipulated into hurting themselves and others.
I know there are ways to mess with someone’s head, slowly and over time. I know something about violent domestic abuse. Maybe Espe or Mica have been subjected to this in the last few years while they have lived with their partners. Or there may have been threats made to them that would cause them to cease normal contact with family and friends.
Espe told her grandmother that I did not pay her hospital bills and that was why she could not talk to us. But I’ve paid every bill I received, and I estimated, sending money for those I didn’t receive, when I could not get a response from Espe.
Both Espe and Mica are isolated. I happened upon a tweet last November from Espe asking if anyone could come for the holidays because she was not in contact with her family.
Does she even know how and why contact has been broken between us? She was taking medicines in 2015/16 that may have affected her memories. I would like to have some communication about Espe and Mica, from someone (not Jameson) who actually sees them regularly, so that I will al least have the assurance that they are physically well.
This is the help we need.
Because of what we have seen and heard about them in the last few months, I do not trust Jameson or anyone in his family to tell me the truth about what Espe and Mica are feeling, or about what is happening to them. Since Jameson has been their spokesperson, they must not be able to tell me themselves. I no longer trust Michelle (Mica’s partner) or her sister or mother for the same reason.
Recently I was told that neither Espe nor Mica had planned to be apart from us for so long.
About love and being there
I want Espe and Mica to know that they have parents who love them very much, and who would welcome them home without judgement and who would help them figure out a way to make any kind of life they want to have happen, even one without their parents. As we have always done, and ever wanted to do, we will help them in any way we can. I have paid the bills.
I have not abandoned them, and I never will.
People tell me that this is their choice. I’d like to believe this because that means they are well. But I know that people make choices based on what they believe their circumstances to be. Neither Espe and nor Mica were thoughtless or unkind as children or adults. They respected themselves and others. They cared about us. I can only believe that somehow they were persuaded that we did not care for them, or support them, or that we could not be trusted with “their” money. A breakdown in communication, texts missed or not received, insidious incessant whispers from a charming voice, may have caused all of this, creating the tenuous place in which they currently find themselves.
Since Scott and I are blocked and they are isolated from most of their family, I hope there is still a friend out there who can reach Espe or Manon and let them know that we love them very much, and that we have not failed to support them, although our messages and the money we sent may have been intercepted. We want them to meet with us and talk to us, or to just show up at our front door.
I don’t know how to say this but…I believe my children have trusted in partners who have, and are, abusing them, and who have taken their dreams, isolated them from their family and friends, and who have mercilessly used their lives to enrich themselves. They told Espe and Manon that it would not be forever, that it would only be for a few months. That was a lie.
I believe Espe wants to come home, Mica too.
I was visiting Portland when I found out where and how they have been living. I wonder if Espe has ever seen the morning dew on the grass there.
I’m not going to believe any clever written reply. I’ll only believe I’m talking to Espe and to MIca when I can sit with them, look at them, and hear their voices.
Some people will say after reading this that we don’t know their side of the story, only yours. And I will reply, I don’t know their side either. They have not said anything to me. Others have said that I’ll embarrass them or other family members by talking about Espe and Mica and what they are doing. But it’s gone way beyond any of that. I believe they are in jeopardy—that they live with fear.
To this day I have not heard either Espe or Mica, in a face to face conversation, tell me what they would like to change in a relationship with me, with us, their parents. I have not heard them describe any conflict that was unresolved. I have received a typed letter from Mica, and a short email from Espe, suddenly, with threats, demanding no contact.
I believe they have had partners who have used their vulnerabilities, and the frailties in our family, and in their parents’ relationship with each other, to control and to manipulate them. They have taken much from Espe, and from Mica, while we have waited, and respected “their choice” patiently, as we were told to do. We have all been given just enough information to be comfortable in telling ourselves that they are okay.
There was and is no reason to be blocked from contact with Espe and Mica, but I have trusted in the wisdom of those who know nothing, and who have suggested that I take care of myself and leave them alone. I have trusted in their opinions because I needed the reassurance that what I’m doing is right.
Kind friends ask “What can we do to help? And I reply, “I don’t know.” I do know that by accepting what is happening we are serving the needs of those who may be benefitting from their pain.
My hope is that with more voices, with more reaching out, from family and friends, we can break the silence.
“Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy…” —Elie Wiesel
