Mike and I continued to argue. Was there ever a time we hadn't? It seemed to me as if the past eight months were more like years, and as the stress over Ashley built, the "discussions" often turned very ugly.

I remember one night after a particularly wretched day. Our discussion had begun in the kitchen, and Mike, as usual, was complaining about the way I responded to Ashley’s anger. In my own defense, I tried so hard not to let her egg me on, but sometimes when I was over-tired, she just said things in such a way that angered me, and I tried to explain this to Mike.

I guess he expected me to be Superwoman or something, and we were heading for a heated discussion. Hating to argue in front of the children, I suggested we go back to our bedroom to talk, and he agreed. Ashley, for once, was asleep in her room, so we might even get this finished before one of us was missed.

We continued where we left off. Mike said he didn't like my confronting Ash, and the way he described us made it sound as if I was picking a fight with her on purpose. I bitterly replied that he just wasn’t seeing all sides- that Ashley baited me, and if he'd bother to notice he'd see that I was trying to not let her pull me in.

"You know," I ventured, "I've seen Ashley get mad at you, and it's like you can totally tune her out. But I can't. Maybe it's easier for you because you're so depressed, and you don't notice her sarcasm or cussing when she doesn't get her way."

It was the wrong thing to say. Mike drew back as if I’d slapped him and said that he didn’t choose to be depressed, and how dare I insinuate that depression was a positive way to deal with our family’s issues.

I said I didn’t mean it that way, and I wasn't trying to be flip. It was just that, from my perspective, maybe he dealt with her by not really doing anything. Maybe ignoring our daughter and the chaos she caused made him feel less like she was pushing his buttons. Depression, I mentioned, could sometimes affect the way a person responded to stress, causing them to tune people and things out, especially if they were on medication.

Ooooooh, bad move! "What makes you such an expert on my depression, Julie?" he asked fiercely.

"I'm not an expert on your depression," I shot back. "But I'm not stupid either. I've seen you stand in the same room as Ash and me and just ignore the way she speaks to me. Yet, when I respond to her, it's my fault?"

Mike went on the attack, getting highly defensive of both our daughter and his parenting techniques. He began listing everything I was doing wrong as her mother and wouldn't buy any kind of explanation from me about how Ashley contributed to the stress I was under or how I had responsibilities for the other children which weren't being met. But the more I talked, the worse the mess I was making. The more I tried to defend myself and say I didn’t mean it the way it sounded, the angrier he got until he was literally screaming at me. I could hear total silence in the family room through our open bedroom window, and I was aware that our children were all listening to the scene.

But Mike would not calm down. Totally incensed and maybe needing to blow up at somebody (Heaven forbid that the person who deserved to be blown up at was Ashley, the cause of all this.), he ranted and raged at me. I just stood there taking it, listening to his cutting remarks, including him falsely accusing me of carrying on a "written love affair" with an old boyfriend. Finally he stalked out of the bedroom, yelling that he was going to sleep in the motorhome, and I just collapsed in tears.

However, when Mike threw open the bedroom door to leave, there was Ashley crouched quietly, her ear pressed to the wood. Listening again, just like Ashley. Mike's personality changed like lightening, and he gently lifted her up and pulled her away as he closed the door, leaving me to cry.

My penance was to write Mike a letter. Sounds foolish that I would have to be the one to apologize, but I did. I begged forgiveness. I stated that, yes, he was right about me not knowing how to manage Ashley effectively, and since I had told him that he was to be in charge, I would defer to him from now on. I went on to agree that though I was sometimes a lousy wife, I had never been unfaithful to him, and I was not writing love letters to an ex-boyfriend. But, if he wished it, I would leave and go away; he could raise the children as he saw fit. I think I wrote "I’m sorry" once for every year we’d been married, and I still didn’t feel I apologized enough.

Mike turned the letter over to Kerri, and I had to go over the entire argument with her. Instead of jumping on me, as I feared, and thinking I was some kind of bad person for treating Mike’s depression as a positive, she was much more concerned about what the letter revealed- my terrible self-image. She asked Mike what would make him feel he had the right to treat me like that when it was plain that Ashley was playing sides and pitting us against each other, and she'd been doing it all summer? Where was the support for his wife? But typical Mike had no answer; he just swung the question around and accused me of interfering.

Kerri and I had talked about self esteem off and on during therapy, but my writing to Mike revealed just how much I loathed myself and how fragile my ego was. I was under tremendous stress and coming apart at the seams, assuming much more responsibility for the entire family than I should've been burdened with. As Kerri would tell me much later, she was very worried I wasn’t going to make it.