MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR

Tina Swithin

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS BERSBACH

In this installment of our “Meet Your Neighbor” series, SLO LIFE Magazine sits down for a conversation with Tina Swithin. Following her divorce, she faced a highly contentious custody struggle while acting as her own attorney in Family Court. She began to share her experiences during the proceedings through her blog, “One Mom’s Battle.” And last year, after receiving international recognition for her blog, she wrote a book called “Divorcing a Narcissist—One Mom’s Battle,” a gripping, first-person account of her struggle to retain custody of her children. Aside from gaining notoriety as an expert in the matter, Swithin also works with a local marketing firm to promote tourism to the area, and writes travel features for the Huffington Post. She has two young girls, Makena and Kailani, and she recently married Glenn Simpson. Here is her story...

We like to take it from the top, Tina. Where are you from?

I moved here from Chicago with my dad when I was ten-years-old. My mom was 17 and my dad was 19 when I was born. I grew up in Arroyo Grande. It was a big change. I remember being really bored in school because the schools in Chicago were ahead. I was like, “I’ve done all of this last year!” So, it was a big change, but I loved it. I had a really rocky childhood. My biological mother suffered from bipolar disorder and chose to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. My dad did the best he could, but he was a very young father. We moved around a lot. My dad struggled with alcohol when I was little. And, so yeah, it definitely wasn’t the best childhood.

How did you cope?

I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I started my first business when I was 14, in high school. I made chocolate lollipops. We had a friend who owned a restaurant, so I would go in there and they would let me use their kitchen. I would make them there and then sell them at Doc Burnstein’s. A couple of the local hotels had them for sale, too. And then, when I was 19, I started a pet sitting business. I ended up with 13 employees. I did that from the time I was 19 to 26, when I was married. So, I kind of bypassed college. I mean, I took classes at Cuesta, but mostly business-related classes. Even at Arroyo Grande High School I took a marketing class from my favorite teacher, Mr. Brewster. I just knew that was the direction I wanted to go.

So, was your blog started as a business venture?

No, not at all. I started the blog really with the intention of giving my friends and family a place to go and check in to see how things were going. Then one day, I was doing some work at home and I had the Today Show on. I never watch TV, but I just happened to have it on the day they had Christie Brinkley come in for an interview about her divorce from her husband, Peter Cook, a diagnosed malignant narcissist. As Matt Lauer continued to challenge her and convey his skepticism, she finally said to him, “Google ‘divorcing a narcissist.’” That morning I watched as my blog took off across the internet. It went from having a 100 views a month to 30,000.

Wow.

I ended up connecting with Christie. She read my blog, and I didn’t know that. She had her assistant contact me and we went down to LA to meet with her. The way my husband, Glenn, described it was that there were several people backstage to meet Christie, but he said, “Christie was there to meet you!” She just lit up and said, “Thank you so much for sharing your story. It’s so important that you keep talking and helping people so they don’t feel alone.” A couple of weeks after that I said to myself, “I need to put this into a book format,” because I thought I could reach so many more people. So, I started last April just writing a few things every night after the girls went to bed. And six months later I had a book.

I read your book and it kept me up really late one night, which is when my wife walked out to the living room and asked, “What are you doing?” You should have seen the look she gave me when I told her I was reading “Divorcing a Narcissist.” [laughter] But, seriously, what has writing done for your life?

Writing the book was a truly cathartic experience and did more for me than four years of counseling was able to achieve. It was, by far, the most healing thing I have been able to do. I felt like I had huge closure. I got it all out. It’s resonated with people all over the world. I’m to the point where I can’t answer all of the emails I get about the book. There was a lady from Ireland who sent me an email recently and her subject line read, “You saved my life today.” She went on to tell me how she was gone, done, and just felt that she could not go on another day. She told me that the book inspired her, had given her hope, and reignited a spark in her. And she was going to keep fighting. It’s really overwhelming at times because I’m thinking, “I’m just this little ol’ person!” But, I have people contacting me to say, “I want to come to California to meet you.” It’s kind of weird, but it’s good. It makes me feel that I’d go through it again––I don’t know if I would put my daughters through it again––but I would do it again to connect with people the way I have and give people hope.

Has there been any negative feedback?

No, if anything it has inspired people to act. There is a woman in Santa Barbara who is a doctor who recently read my book and sent me an email at 6am the next morning saying, “I have literally been awake all night reading your book and I can’t believe it. You’ve just explained my marriage, my divorce, all of it. I felt so alone before this. I connected with your story. I want to help you.” She hired an attorney for me. I’ve been doing this on my own for four years. It’s been like having a part-time job acting as my own attorney. So she reached out to her friend who is the DA in Santa Barbara to get a recommendation for an attorney up here, and paid a retainer for me to finally have my own attorney.

But, you had been doing great as your own attorney. I found myself pumping my first and saying, “Go, Tina!” when reading the GPS tracking device courtroom scene.

Yes, my ex-husband was caught lying to the judge. Although there is really no such thing as perjury in Family Court, judges do not like to be lied to. When I suspected he was not being straight about where he was taking the girls on the weekends it frightened me. I gave my daughters a cell phone that had been enabled with GPS tracking. It gave me a report of their location every hour on the hour and I had printouts. As he was telling the judge in elaborate detail where he had taken the girls, I waited until he was done and then presented evidence to the contrary. I knew my only chance of proving that he was a liar was to catch him in the act—in the lie. The judge called for a 15 minute recess and came back to announce that there would be sanctions. I was awarded full legal and physical custody and it also ended the girls’ overnight visits with him.

You and your ex-husband ran separate businesses, which both fell apart along with the marriage. What became of your childcare services business, SLO County Sitters?

In the beginning, it took everything in me to stay here where so many bridges had been burned. I was like, “Yes, I was married to him; but, no, I am not the same person.” And guilt by association, and all of that. Luckily it’s a really great community and people have been very supportive. People told me, “This is your home. Don’t leave.” I reached out to a lot of people who were owed an apology, even if it wasn’t my doing. But, I felt that for those people that had a bad experience through my ex-husband’s business dealings needed to hear from me. I just said, “I’m here, I apologize.” And, then when my own business went under, that was really, really hard. That wasn’t just a business to me, that was my third child. I put my heart into that, more than anything else in my life. To have that fail... we lost everything. I mean, everything was gone. And to know that I had let people down who I knew were depending on me for childcare. I was emailing clients to say, “I will come to your house to personally babysit your kids.”

You have such an incredibly inspiring “lemons to lemonade” story. Do you ever speak publicly to share it with others?

Public speaking is one of my fears that I need to get over. It’s just never been my thing. I was just hypnotized for it. I don’t know if worked––I haven’t given a speech yet! [laughter] I was approached by the Today Show about my book a few months ago, and one of the questions they asked me was, “How comfortable are you on camera?” And, I said, “Not at all!” Anyway, I had a two hour hypnosis session. He had something

Excerpt from “Divorcing a Narcissist—One Mom’s Battle”

The fear for my life intensified. I called my local women’s shelter. It was by far the most humbling phone call that I had ever made. This was the very place that I had volunteered every year during Thanksgiving and Christmas. I packed two sleepy, pajama-clad little girls into my car, and we met an intake counselor at a hotel parking lot. After she assessed our situation, we followed her to a hidden residence in town where we stayed.

Driving to the shelter was surreal. My legs were shaking so badly that I could barely keep my foot on the gas pedal. How did my life come to this? I thought I was making the right choices. I had married someone who appeared stable and successful by every sense of the word. He was smart, he went to a good college and his parents had been married for thirty years. Nine short months ago I was living in a brand new home in a gated community. ” Today, I was taking my children to a stay in a women’s shelter.

Swithin’s daughters Makena and Kailani

Swithin with her husband, Glenn hanging from the ceiling and he told me to watch that while he was counting down backwards. I remember the whole thing and it was the most relaxed I had ever been in my entire life. But, it was almost like a counseling session. He went back and talked about childhood things and where you may have been stumped in life. It was kind of weird, but really cool.

Speaking of weird-but-cool, I understand you have a great first date story.

[laughter] Yes, as a matter of fact, I do! Glenn was married for 16 years and has three boys. He had been through a divorce two years before mine started. For the first six months we just had a really solid friendship and I didn’t introduce him to the girls. He’s been a park ranger for the county for 23 years. He’s now the supervising ranger at Lopez Lake. We got married in April. So, our first date was at The Porch in Santa Margarita. It was the first and only date I had been on since my split. We had a great visit and said our goodbyes. Then Glenn broke all of the rules of dating when he called me two hours afterward to say, “Do you want to have lunch?” [laughter] Since I just had eaten lunch, we agreed to meet again that day for another coffee. Those two coffee dates were the beginning of a wonderful, magical friendship based on mutual respect and adoration. I felt alive like I had not felt in a long time.

You’ve been through the ringer, Tina. How do you reconcile all of this?

It starts with taking personal responsibility for the situation that you are in. It would be easy for me to sit here and blame everyone else and say that I’m a victim. I’m not a victim, I don’t ever want to be a victim. I’m a survivor. I’ve learned. I’m moving forward in a positive way and I want to help others. I’ve got another couple of books in the works. And I’m working with someone here locally who is a computer programmer to help me create a Yelp-like website for the Family Court system so that people can review and rate attorneys, social workers, child welfare services, judges, mediators, everybody who has a hand in the Family Court system. That way people can share their experiences and rate them. It will just put a huge spotlight on Family Court.

You’ve gained a lot of wisdom through it all. What can you share with us?

I think that is one of the things that has been the biggest lesson for me. I grew up in a very humble upbringing and didn’t have a lot of things. And then it was sort of like rags to riches and then back again. But, it is really true. Money really does not make you happy. That is one of the most true things that has ever been said. I’m living in a home that is a quarter of the size that I was in before and I’m happier now than I have ever been in my life with a little 1,000-square-foot house and an old Volvo. But, you know, life is good.