{"id":14658,"date":"2026-10-20T16:12:39","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/?p=14658"},"modified":"2026-10-20T16:12:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T14:12:39","slug":"when-i-stopped-paying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/?p=14658","title":{"rendered":"When I Stopped Paying"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter Sarah sent me a message at 9:45 on a rainy Tuesday night: \u201cMom, David and I need real distance from you. Your negativity and constant involvement have become too much. Please don\u2019t contact us anymore.\u201d I read it three times. Then I remembered the $1,200 mortgage payment and $450 car payment I had been making every month for them. I didn\u2019t argue. I simply canceled the payments, removed their phones from my plan, and sent one message: \u201cI\u2019ll respect your request. I\u2019ll also stop the payments I\u2019ve been covering.\u201d Then I went to bed\u2026 CONTINUE READING<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter Sarah sent me a message at 9:45 on a rainy Tuesday night: \u201cMom, David and I need real distance from you. Your negativity and constant… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14662,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14658\/revisions\/14662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtspminds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}