When Grief Meets a Narcissist
She lost her husband to cancer, then fell for a man who promised to save her. What he did instead almost destroyed her.
When I first connected with Julie Barth, I was struck by her warmth — and her willingness to be honest about something most people would never say out loud.
Julie had already survived the unimaginable. She lost her husband, the father of her four young children, to stage four pancreatic cancer. While she was still grieving, still learning how to breathe again, she met someone new — someone who said all the right things. Someone who seemed to see her when no one else did.
But that man wasn’t who he claimed to be.
He lied. He manipulated. He isolated her from her family. He told her everyone hated her.
And eventually, he threatened to kill her.
When survival meets loneliness
In the episode, Julie said something that stayed with me:
“I didn’t want to be me anymore. I just wanted to ditch my life.”
She wasn’t running from grief, she was running from the version of herself that had been forced to hold everything together for too long. The caregiver. The mother. The widow.
So when someone came along who seemed to offer freedom, who said, “you don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to explain”, it felt like oxygen. But over time, that freedom turned into control.
The isolation crept in quietly:
Moving away from family, losing friends, slowly doubting her own reality.
He convinced her that she was “crazy.”
And the more she fought to prove she wasn’t, the more trapped she became.
“He enjoyed making me react,” Julie said. “Because when I did, he could say, ‘See? You’re crazy.’”
The breaking point
It wasn’t a dramatic movie moment that made her leave. It was her son.
After years of fear, he told her:
“I don’t understand why you keep letting him back. He’s threatened to kill us.”
That was the moment Julie decided, if she couldn’t do it for herself, she would do it for her kids.
Leaving wasn’t easy.
He weaponized the legal system, twisted the story, and tried to make her look unstable.
But she fought back.
She got full custody.
And she built her life from the ground up again — this time, on her own terms.
Turning pain into purpose
Today, Julie runs a nonprofit that helps women in crisis - caregivers, single mothers, and survivors of emotional or financial abuse - find real, tangible resources to start over.
She doesn’t offer abstract “healing.” She offers connection. She’s building a network that helps women pay their bills, find legal help, and keep their homes.
Because as she said so simply:
“You shouldn’t have to lose everything before someone helps you.”
The truth underneath it all
This episode isn’t just about one abusive relationship. It’s about how easy it is to lose yourself when you’re trying to be strong for everyone else.
Julie’s story is a reminder that even when someone tries to rewrite your life, you still have the right to edit it back, to reclaim it.
She said it best:
“If I can’t change what happened, I can use it for good. I can help someone else not have to go through it.”
That’s the heart of The Scarlet Edit — rewriting the stories that were never meant to be buried in silence.
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