
I lost custody of my kids & I'm thrilled – people say I should be ashamed but I now get to pursue my career
Clerichena, from the US, took to socia media to explain that her ex had won custody of their children and she was happy about it.
2
In the clip, the mum said: "This is going to sound crazy but I don't want my children back. It's not because I don't love them.
"I love them so much. I love them wholeheartedly."
"I don't want those children back. And it's not because I don't want to take care of them or anything like that," she continued.
The mum who has two sons and a daughter said the reason she was happy she would not have custody full-time was because she had no support system to help raise them.
"When I take them to the doctor, I don't have an emergency contact. I don't have friends. I don't have family," she explained.
She also says she wants to focus on going back to school to get a law degree, something she wasn't able to do while raising her children alone.
In another clip, Clerichena said she refused to see herself as a victim in this situation and was making the most of it.
She added: "God is fair. That is what I remind myself of when I start to feel like a victim of life's circumstances.
"My situation may not be ideal, but it is not special. I am not the only person that has ever gone through this, and I won't be the only person who has ever gone through this.
" I know this is all working out so that I can be the best version of myself possible.
I lost 'everything' when UC stopped my £4.3k-month payment... now I've been sacked from my new job
"I gave up so much to have my children. I put all of my goals and aspirations on hold in order to be the mom that I wanted to be, in order to devote myself to my children.
"And now I'm taking this as a sign from the universe, a sign from God, in support for me to continue to follow my dreams."
The mum's video quickly went viral on her TikTok account @ clerichena with over 2.4 million views.
Many mums were quick to judge her for not fighting for custody.
One person wrote: "This is insane to me! You are a mom!!!! Shame on you!"
Another commented: "Imagine seeing your mum post about not wanting you to the whole internet."
Single Parent Facts and Figures
Single parent charity Gingerbread is fighting to create a society where all single parents and their children thrive. These are the organisation's latest figures on single parenthood...
There are two million single parents with dependent children in the UK, 89% of which are headed up by single mums
A depressing 44% of children in single parent families are in poverty compared to 26% in couple families
Around 13% of single parent households with dependent children used a food bank in the last 12 months compared to 3% of couple households with dependent children
Less than 1% of single parents are teenagers, and this continues to decline - with the average age of a single parent in the UK being 39-years-old
Research found that 36% of single parent families with dependent children have no savings, compared to 17% of couple families with dependent children
"I raised three with no support system …. Not a good excuse love," penned a third.
Meanwhile a fourth said: "I get that you're tired, rightfully so, but they are your children. It's not their fault that they are in this world."
"A mother's instinct is natural- this scares me,' claimed a fifth
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6 minutes ago
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The Guardian
12 minutes ago
- The Guardian
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(Andrew Lawrence) Where to watch: Head of State is available to stream in the US on Freevee, Tubi, Paramount+ and MGM+, in the UK on Paramount+ and on Amazon Prime in Australia Read the full review Starring: Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon and Paul Bettany Directed by: Brian Helgeland Why our writer loves it: 'To me, watching a feelgood film is an intensely nostalgic exercise. That's because whenever a film is special or timely enough to take up lodging in your heart, rewatching it is also an act of remembering an old version of yourself. A Knight's Tale is shaded by the genuine sadness of Ledger's death only seven years after its release, but when I watch it I also remember the way it used to make me feel, as a girl who loved the jousting because her older brother did, all the while secretly cherishing an action film for being so brazenly sentimental.' (Francesca Carington) Where to watch: A Knight's Tale is available on Amazon Prime in the US and available to rent digitally in the UK and Australia Read the full review Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz and Jennifer Connelly Directed by: Robert Rodriguez Why our writer loves it: 'My feelgood movie for when humanity lets me down is Alita: Battle Angel, a movie where much of humanity hangs out in a city-sized junkpile. And though I don't press play with this aspect particularly in mind, it's nice to imagine a future where things have gone terribly wrong (that just seems realistic at this point) yet unforeseen triumphs still emerge from the tech-nightmare garbage heap. There are plenty of more time-honored films that take a more direct path to temporary bliss, including sci-fi movies better-equipped to restore faith in humanity.' (Jesse Hassenger) Where to watch: Alita: Battle Angel is available to watch on Hulu in the US, on Netflix and Disney+ in the UK and on Disney+ in Australia Read the full review Starring: Wendy Hiller, Roger Livesey, Pamela Brown Directed by: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger Why our writer loves it: 'I Know Where I'm Going! offers up such portentous moments of mystical and romantic significance lightly, alongside comical asides and colourful eccentricity. It's a disarming strategy, which tends to leave the audience every bit as bewitched as (the film's main character) Joan. In this corner of the universe, anything might be possible, even an ancient curse.' (Pamela Hutchinson) Read the full review for I Know Where I'm Going! Where to watch: I Know Where I'm Going! is available to watch on Tubi, Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel in the US and is available to rent digitally Australia and in the UK and watch on BBC iPlayer Read the full review


The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
So Ellen has fled Trump's US for a ‘simpler' life in the Cotswolds. Nice if you have the money, don't you think?
You may remember the first half of 2020, when, as light relief during the early stages of the pandemic, we could look towards the banks of celebrities trying to raise our spirits and come together in mutual hostility. Schools and industries had shut down, key workers were struggling, but the one certainty in life that remained undisrupted was that, as long as Gal Gadot and Natalie Portman kept sharing their inspo-content, we would never run short of a laugh. Covid ended and now we have Donald Trump – and guess what, some of that dynamic is back. It's different this time because the threat is different, but for anyone living in the US who has glanced, longingly, towards Europe or Canada and wondered about the possibility of moving, comments made by Ellen DeGeneres this week may strike a familiar note; specifically, the extraordinary tone deafness that only high net-worth individuals can hit when trying to share in a common experience. DeGeneres and her wife, the actor Portia de Rossi, moved to rural Oxfordshire last year and this week, DeGeneres was interviewed on stage in Cheltenham and gave us some insight into exactly what happened. 'We got here [to England] the day before the election and we woke up to lots of texts from our friends and crying emojis,' said DeGeneres, to a crowd of 600 or so at the Everyman theatre. 'We were like, 'We're staying here, we're not going back, we are not leaving.' So yeah, we bought a house that we thought was going to be a part-time house then we decided we needed a different house and now we're selling that house. If anybody wants a house. It's a beautiful house. It's a beautiful stone farmhouse.' A lot to unpack here, obviously, but let's start with 'we're selling that house / if anybody wants a house / it's a beautiful house'. As anyone who has moved countries knows, there are all sorts of problems to be solved in the first flush of arrival, chief among them panic-buying the first eight-figure house you stumble across and then wondering what to do with the horses. So it was that, while the property to which DeGeneres refers has a pool, a helipad and what E! News described this week as a 'party barn' – which they may or may not believe to be common British usage – sadly it doesn't have a big enough stable. 'Portia couldn't live without her horses,' DeGeneres told the Wall Street Journal this week – there but for the grace of God, etc – anyway if anybody wants it, it's on for £22.5m and the Daily Mail has all the details. There are, of course, real reasons for Americans in general and DeGeneres and her wife in particular to want to flee the US and at the existential level, fear of Trump can strike anyone. During the talk in Cheltenham, the former talkshow host spoke about the threat posed by the US president to LGBTQ+ communities, mentioning in particular the revived enthusiasm among certain Christian sects in the US for rowing back federal protection of same-sex marriage. If necessary, said DeGeneres, the pair would remarry in Britain. But it is also true that, like wealthy women seeking an abortion before 1973 or in southern states today, there is almost no bind that money can't buy you out of – in this case, moving countries without any of the customary friction. And so DeGeneres and her wife find themselves newly absorbed into the immigrant-expat continuum, occupied at one end by undocumented immigrants being seized and deported in the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and at the other, by those so wealthy they can go on holiday and seemingly decide, on a whim, to stay for ever. Each experience is attended by different rules, terminologies and demonisations, and is subject to sometimes fiercely defended distinctions from other, less favourable categories. For instance, I remember making the mistake, once, of asking an American friend about her grandparents' emigration to the US from Europe, assuming rather romantically that they'd gone through Ellis Island. She looked appalled and informed me, crossly, that they'd come in on an ocean liner and docked directly in the city, the family piano safely crated in the hold. No one on that boat was inspected for head lice. 'We were legal.' Those belonging to communities targeted by Trump who also voted for Trump are less baffling when you consider these differences. None of which, of course, pertains to Ellen DeGeneres, who is worth the sort of money (an estimated $450m) that makes the visa problem faced by most Americans hoping to move away from Trump – or stay in the US in spite of Trump – disappear. Still, even among the elite, moving entails a steep learning curve. The new house DeGeneres and her wife have moved into isn't far from the old one but is a much newer building, enabling the Mail to prod one local into calling it a 'monstrosity', and a possibly different local into saying 'it looks like a prison'. DeGeneres, meanwhile, is still in the honeymoon period, and finding it all very beautiful. As she told the crowd at Cheltenham this week, she considers her new compatriots 'polite,' the life here 'simpler', and has reached the conclusion that, 'everything here is better'. Whether that's the charms of the English countryside or the insulating effect of super-wealth we can't know for sure. Either way, we look forward to watching the progress of the entertainer's application to put up a large stable in an area of outstanding natural beauty make its way through the famously helpful and accommodating English planning authorities. Ellen, welcome to Britain! Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist