Mama Bear

 

I’m going to share a story with you and then I am not going to talk about it again.  Three years prior to my retirement I was the victim of a stalker.  The company I worked for is based in Idaho with various offices in several states.  During my nearly nine year tenure I worked out of the corporate office and spent three years in the IT department as a software support specialist.  That is where, unbeknownst to me, I picked up my stalker, a fellow employee in an entirely different state.

 

Fast forward a few years and I am now working in an completely different department with little need to interact with this employee and yet there he is.  Contacting me in my new role under the guise that he needed IT help, but “no one over there knew what they were doing” so would I help him.  It went on for months until it took a strange turn and escalated into a sexual harassment situation.  At that point I went to my boss hoping he would just talk with this guy’s supervisor and get him to stop.  However, he informed me he had no choice but to take this to HR.  He also told me he was really worried about my safety with this guy and to take it very seriously.  He felt this employee was stalking me.  Up to this point I wasn’t thinking stalker at all, hadn’t even entered my mind.  I was just thinking my fellow employee had issues and needed some help.  After a one hour interview with HR they began an investigation.  In the meantime the guy was told there was to be no contact with me or he’d be immediately dismissed and he abided by this request.

 

Initially, at the beginning of the investigation this employee told HR that he and I were in a relationship and had been friendly for years.  He even told them things about my children that I knew I’d never discussed with him because I had no reason to.  When I shared this information with my new coworkers one of them Googled my name and came up with my old blog and we knew that was where he was getting his information.  The HR investigator agreed.

 

Within less than two weeks an entire can of worms opened up that I was not expecting.  This employee admitted to everything he had been doing and it was much more than I had ever thought was going on.  He admitted to trying to get me to have a relationship with him, even though he was married.  He also took time off to drive to Idaho, sit in the corporate parking lot, wait for me to leave work and followed me home.  He was driving by my house on a regular basis trying to get the courage to knock on my door.  There is a lot more to this story that I won’t go into but, after his confession he was immediately let go.  My blog alone did not put me at risk, but this situation did make me keenly aware that I need to be very careful with what I choose to share, with anyone.  Had he actually knocked on my door who knows what might have happened?  Things could’ve gone very badly.

 

So I want to be really clear about this.  This blog is my blog and it is about my retirement.  Now that my children are grown and out on their own they are far more vulnerable than when they were living at home under the protection of Mama Bear because I would fight hard and lay down my life for them.  I do not share anything about my adult children or their lives here because I do not want to put them at risk.  I would never forgive myself if anything happened to them because of something I said on my blog that gave some weirdo an idea that spiraled into something sinister.

 

Some of my readers have expressed concern and made comments about the fact that I do not mention my children anymore.  Some of those comments have been downright rude or mean and I’ve chosen not to post those, while others I know come from a good place.  I addressed this subject early on in a blog post, but I know that not everyone reads every single one of my posts (hard as that is to imagine) and that I have picked up new readers along the way too.  Know that I am not alone in this.  There are a lot of bloggers and Youtubers out there that have pulled back and no longer share content about their children due to the risks it could potentially have.  I’m no different.  So no, it isn’t “strange”, there is nothing “wrong”, and no, nothing is “going on”.  Nor have I "erased them from my life" or anything remotely like that.

 

Although I would love nothing more than to scream from the mountain tops about all of their wonderful accomplishments and how incredibly proud I am of them, I’m not going to.  They have a right to their privacy and above all I want them to be safe.  I love all of my children more than words could ever begin to explain and I couldn’t be happier for the way they’ve all turned out.  My cubs are all grown up and have left the den but nonetheless I’m still fiercely protective of them.  When it comes to the most precious people in my life I’m definitely a Mama Bear.  That’s all.  I hope you will understand.