Alienated Kids, Parents, and Grandparents Round Table Discussion - Part 2 - Episode 31

As I laid bare the raw edges of my heart, recounting the times my children seemed like distant stars in a sky I could no longer reach, our community conversation took a turn toward the cathartic. We navigated the difficult terrain of parental alienation, a path I've walked with heavy steps, and emerged with a deeper understanding of the healing process that is possible when one embraces accountability and personal growth. As a group, we shed light on the silent struggles and the unexpected gratitude that can blossom from such profound adversity, reshaping relationships and offering a beacon of hope for reconciliation.

This episode is a heartfelt exploration of the transformative journey from estrangement to emotional and spiritual health. It's about the courage it takes to let go of anger and to become receptive to new ways of connecting, sharing, and healing. We delve into the significance of truth-telling within family systems, the vulnerability required to break the cycle of generational trauma, and the gentle balance needed to respect autonomy while fostering connection. By the end, you'll come away with not only a collection of personal recovery stories, but also an invitation to reflect on your own relationships, and perhaps find your own doorway to healing, peace, and a deeper connection with those you love.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Deciding, consciously deciding to do things a different way. So it's that let go of how I've been doing it and the willingness to be, you know, coachable and say, oh God, you know, take accountability.

Speaker 2: 0:13

Hi everyone, Welcome back again to the Family Disappeared podcast. My name is Gio. Again, I'm your co-host for this second episode, walking through alienation with previously alienated children, also parents now.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Hey, all my name is Lawrence Joss and the show is awesome today and if you haven't listened to episode one, please go back and check that out and there's so much incredibly emotional and heart wrenching and heart connecting and some cheerful moments too on the show today, so stick around and listen to it. There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode, we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today.

Speaker 3: 1:17

Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.

Speaker 3: 1:21

I have thought that I was going to die so many different times during this battle with parental alienation, estrangement or erasure and I didn't have any language for it in the beginning and these disasters that were happening in my life and not having contact with my kids almost killed me and I didn't realize that the disasters were actually an opportunity for me to start to look at myself and start to grow and change, and because of the struggles and because of the pain and because of everything that I've gone through, every single relationship in my life has changed.

Speaker 3: 1:47

So it's weird to say, but I'm really grateful for the challenges that I've been through and I think it gives my kids the best opportunity going forward to A have a role model to see, maybe not contact with, and potentially have an incredibly rich and robust relationship with them. Remember to like, subscribe, follow us there's a donate button, as we are a 501-C3 non-profit and we need your support to continue bringing you this information, and sometimes it's going to be a little bit of a challenge and sometimes it's great information, sometimes it's heart wrenching and sometimes it's in between. And for anyone out there, you can always contact us through our email family disappear to gmailcom. You can direct it to me, geo, to anyone else in the community that you have a question for, and we'll make sure they get you back the information. So thank you for coming along for the journey and let's jump in and see what happens next.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Easy for you guys to say I would change everything. What do you mean? What would you change? I would change, but that's what has been. My challenge is accepting what is, and when I'm with you all, I'm learning. How many of us have had to swallow and choke down the pills of pain, and I know you guys would have changed that if you could, but we couldn't. So that's what got us here and to continually be surrounded by you all that are faced with different challenges and how you shift and accept. And that in there in lies for me the ability to accept and have faith of what will be, and really relying on God to guide me here, because, yeah, if it was up to me, I would change so much, but I've learned that's the biggest thing is, I can't change it.

Speaker 3: 3:50

Yeah, and I find myself, Betsy, when you're saying that you wouldn't change anything. I'm thinking like for myself my family system would still be jammed up in the same generational trauma from my parents and my grandparents if this hadn't happened. So I welcome this change and this work and I really feel like I'm standing in the fire and it's really, really, really, really hot and I want to get out a lot of days and sometimes I get out and go eat a candy bar. But it couldn't happen. I couldn't be standing in this fire without parental alienation. So there's a lot of gratitude that I'm doing some work in my family system that no one else would have done.

Speaker 2: 4:25

Doing this work has, as I'm listening to all of you, it's allowed me the opportunity to step into this relationship with my parents, my 84-year-old father, and early November we started connecting and weeks later my father, who struggles with his own emotions, said to me Georgie, you're different, there's something different about you, and they don't know the work I'm doing. I'm coming to the table and communicating, though I guess I'm gonna recognize in a way that is gentler. Maybe it's coming out that I'm learning, that we all come to the table with whatever we learned, like we're talking about, and Maybe I am making a small change. And it's because I've gotten to be. I've gotten to meet so many people and Learn to love and listen to so many people with such beautiful, rich stories, and the impact has been so life-changing. I've been through so much we all have, but too, I would not give it up for the world it has really changed the heart of who I am too.

Speaker 4: 5:40

So you know, a geos comments Play perfectly into a topic that I was gonna broach because it keeps coming up for me is. You know, we've had a couple people on this podcast talk about being reunited with their children to some level or another, and the burning question in my mind is what's changed, what's different? What am I doing differently today that let my children know that that door is open? And I was just trying to describe it to someone yesterday who had had a child reach out to them and she didn't know how to respond. And what? God, I believe my higher power.

Speaker 4: 6:24

The analogy that he gave me is it's like a tennis match. You know, I hit the ball over. Do I keep hitting the balls over? No, I wait for a return. Volley, right, I don't just keep slamming those balls over the net. And this is what we were talking about yesterday. You know, I hit the ball over and then I wait for a return, and then I hit the ball over and I wait for a return.

Speaker 4: 6:47

And that's what has happened with my son that I'm reunited with.

Speaker 4: 6:51

We've done both done a really good job of Balling back and forth and not letting that impatience jump in and say, hey, I haven't heard anything back, immediately I need to hit another ball over there to make sure that he saw that I hit the ball.

Speaker 4: 7:08

No, he knows that I hit the ball. Now I need to wait, and I know for me that patience of waiting for some kind of a response has been Incredibly difficult, but that is what has changed in me that I believed open the door For my son to feel comfortable reaching out to me. He knew that I was no longer just gonna jump on him and suffocate him Every time that he put a handout to me, and so that just kept coming up for me like what's different. Why am I no longer as paralyzed as I was before? And my child is no longer as paralyzed as he was before, and so I just wanted to throw that out there. If you've been reunited with your kids, I'm sure had I not had any Reuniting with my children, I would be asking that question Well, why did it happen, and why did it happen now?

Speaker 7: 8:07

As always, renee, you your your metaphors and analogies just Perfectly describe what I'm thinking about or haven't realized yet, and I really appreciate them. I mean, as a child, I recognize in myself the struggle of Wanting connection, being afraid, moving towards moving away, and it's not. It's not an intentional Game, although I like the metaphor of a tennis match, because you have to be ready for the back and forth and recognize that within Alienated children there is first father, alienated from part of themselves, and I know I struggle with trust and and fear of what will happen, and I just think that's a beautiful metaphor Because that is what's likely to happen. And so, understanding that and being Emotionally sound and regulated and prepared for moves towards pulling back, moves towards pulling back, it is a kind of testing, both to see if, if they can trust you and your reaction, but also within, within myself, just to speak from experience.

Speaker 4: 9:21

I guess I was curious to know with Betsy if you Experienced a change in your behavior that may be contributed to having your children come back to you.

Speaker 1: 9:36

I Think that there is so much to be said about the self scrubbing, discovery and that it just that's a big part of who, of the connection. I think it's like realizing who have I become after all this, through all this and getting the feedback from others, and then Deciding, consciously, deciding to do things a different way. So it's that let go of how I've been doing in the willingness To be, you know, coachable, and say, oh god, you know, take accountability of, like god, that might not have landed so well and I thought I was doing the best I could. But if I shift and I got to a point, renee, where it was, I had to let go.

Speaker 1: 10:21

It's that literally let go. Well, wait, they're supposed to be. I kept fighting, fighting, fighting and everything I was doing when I say fighting to begging for them to follow what was agreed upon, and I thought that was my job to make sure that legally and Spiritually they're aligned. But it wasn't. It wasn't working. So that's when I just really let go, and when I said let go, did start doing things very differently than I had been doing in the past.

Speaker 4: 10:49

Let's face it, we're pretty stubborn people sometimes and In the conversation I was having with someone yesterday, she asked me for specific Suggestions and I gave them to her and her response was well, that kind of feels like I'm Cowtowing or like I'm Bending over and just like letting them do whatever they want and we had a great conversation about this is not a pissing match. My ego has no place in this relationship, because every time my ego has shown up, things go south, and I thought that was something really good that came out of that conversation Is this isn't about winning or losing, or looking better than or worse than, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 11:34

Totally. But that's where people have to understand what's my ego. And understanding that's again like, oh, is this me or is it my ego wanting to have its way? And that understanding that's hard. And we're all like, we're human beings and we're programmed like that human condition of needing to protect ourselves. That fight or flight thing can take, wreak havoc in our lives without us even knowing.

Speaker 3: 11:57

Yeah, and I'm curious, darryl, from from your perspective, being a previously alienated child, and you're looking up in the other direction, at the parent, like what shifted for you to have energy to connect and reach out to your dad, or I don't know if he reached out to you or I'm not exactly sure. Are you willing to talk about that for a couple minutes?

Speaker 7: 12:17

Yeah, so I'm at the point now where we have talked a few times, but never in a way that that was like a reconnection or acknowledging that there was a significant problem and and how it affected things. So I'm struggling to find a way that I'm comfortable communicating that with him. But what I, what I have realized a lot is that a lot of alienated parents focus on they stay in a conflict. Not, they stay in a conflict with their ex and they assume that their ex and the child are almost the same and there are things like enmeshment and and um coerce of control, but it's not brainwashing. Brainwashing is not real.

Speaker 7: 13:02

A lot of what I experienced was well, some of it was based on things I heard and some of it was just me trying to make sense of my life and I filled in gaps and also trying to manage grief.

Speaker 7: 13:14

I didn't recognize questions I didn't recognize like where's my dad in my life, uh, and I couldn't cope with those and I didn't have an adult to support me.

Speaker 7: 13:23

So I had to make sense of it in whatever way I could at, at at whatever age I was, and and I think a lot of alienated parents either aren't able to or or or don't recognize the value of giving up the conflict with the ex and meeting the child wherever they are, whenever they're ready, and that's, I think, I think, as close to a kind of recipe for success is I could imagine it's.

Speaker 7: 13:51

It's by no means an answer, but there are conflicts within me that still persist today, that I still struggle with, that have nothing to do with my dad and are separate from my mom now that I'm an adult, but they're still in me and I still struggle with them and I think understanding that is is maybe a huge part of of starting to accept that the child maybe you picture before the alienation is not the same, but they're not. That's not to say that I'm, my life is the worst and I'm broken and and they'll all turn out horribly. I like to think that that's not true, but there are struggles that are internal to me, that that I think are hard for a lot of parents to understand.

Speaker 3: 14:38

That's that's really rich perspective from from the child's perspective, and just that you had to fill in some gaps. You didn't have someone there to actually like walk you through the process, and that you have matured and in your age and your body, like your process and stuff and differentiating from your mom and trying to figure out stuff with your dad. That's so. That's wonderful. And we are getting close to to the end of the round table and I just want to finish with this one question, because it's a really interesting question that a lot of people have commented on about the podcast, and a lot of these comments have actually come from young adults that are alienated and separated and they're like why are you publicly talking about this on YouTube, on podcasts, on whatever? Like why do you need to talk about this out loud? Why don't you just change and go do this somewhere else? Why are you breaking your anonymity? Why are you talking about that?

Speaker 3: 15:30

And, and are there implications in your family system? Are you creating more harm, which I know for me, before starting this, like thinking, like, is it going to be harm, is it going to be fallout? It was like yes, 100%, there is going to be unintended harm. There's going to be harm that I can actually see coming and there's going to be a tremendous amount of recovery.

Speaker 3: 15:47

But it might not be in my family system, but I think it will affect other family systems, and these kids and young adults that are reaching out sound like they're struggling with their parents and their families, just like I'm struggling in the opposite direction with my daughters and there's a lot of emotions on both sides and we have different folks here in different stages of reconnecting not reconnecting adult children, just adults that are disconnected. So I'm curious like why are you breaking your anonymity? Why are you talking about this publicly? What impact do you think it's having and is there something you want to share about that? So I think we're going to finish up with that and hopefully everyone has a little bit of something to share about that and and maybe more conversation comes from it. So anyone that wants to jump in please?

Speaker 2: 16:29

so I grew up in a household where it was don't ask, don't tell, go to the family get-togethers. You show up, you have a smile on your face, you go to church, you sit in the front row, everybody's dressed right and nobody knows what's going on. And even if you feel like you know what's going on and you say something you know, for me and my mom you know everything was fine, everything is fine. And you know the house was burning down, my hair was on fire and everything was fine, but it but it wasn't fine. And inside of myself I didn't get to develop that insight where I was like this, something's not right, this doesn't feel right, something's wrong. So for me, as even with my kids, as I was raising my kids and they were developing, you know, I wanted to talk about things that were not talked about in my family. I wanted to be more open. Perhaps I didn't do that perfectly and I'm sure I didn't.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Now that I'm in a recovery spot, I am finding for me I need to step out of what's uncomfortable and I need to have put a voice to what I'm feeling. It's really important for me to take risks, to put myself out there and to tell how my feelings. It's, it's my truth. It's not to hurt anyone, it's to bring, if I can bring, awareness to one person that is going to help heal other people. It's just important to be authentic and real, even if it's on camera letting some tears out. That's just real stuff. I'm not gonna mess around with putting myself through a ton of pain to keep some emotion inside. I've got, I've got a lot going on. I'm I didn't know I was going to show up and feel sad today and if something happens I'm gonna put it out there. So for me, I feel that talking and being appropriate and giving a message is real and needed.

Speaker 4: 18:38

I completely agree with what you said, gio, and you said something about having love and not expressing it, and I was in a meeting recently with Jay Hoon actually, who said, and I wrote it down Love and express becomes a blockage. And I write down important things you guys say During meetings and podcasts because I don't want to forget them. And the other thing I wanted to mention I don't know if you can see this or not, but it says sometimes the black sheep is the only one telling the truth, and a lot of times I have to remind myself that it's okay for me to be the black sheep. I'm the black sheep, whether I speak up or not in my family and, as Gio was saying, I have to be able to tell the truth. And what I've also learned in my recovery is secrets grow in the dark. So if I don't shine a light on everything that no one's talking about, then how is that healing ever going to happen? So that's all for me.

Speaker 5: 19:44

For me, there's been so much pain in the family I'm married into and so much pain in my biological family and so much intergenerational pain and so much inability for people within the system to put voice to their feelings. I feel like I give a gift to them when I speak about this and when I make myself vulnerable and it feels like an act of love and there's not been unconditional love very present for myself, in my family, and for me it's a way to spread it and to spread it in community and to give voice to my kids. But to get, it's making me think of my parents as well. They didn't. They tried their best and it's to give voice to them. They never had that opportunity. So, as painful as it is, it feels like it feels like the right thing to do and it feels like a loving thing to do, and I want more of that in the world and it's that everything that everyone is saying feels, like it has a similar tone to the message.

Speaker 1: 20:42

It's amazing. I know I don't want anyone to have to suffer the way that I have in this journey, and so I'm scared. There's a part of me that's scared to share, to be out there with it, because the fear of what others might think or but the more that I continue to stand in my truth and I know that that I've nothing, I'm not looking, I know my intentions aren't looking to hurt anyone and I just want to help, and so when I keep standing in that place of intention, the fear of what might happen starts to lessen. And you know, look, the more vulnerable that I can be, it will help deepen my compassion, my empathy and connection with others in my life. So there's this, this magic that gets created when I'm outside of myself.

Speaker 7: 21:39

I have found when I came across the word parental alienation and read about it, it gave me a key and insight to understand these patterns of behavior that kept repeating after after separation, and it helped to explain why our relationships changed and became so difficult. So it was extremely important to me to help make sense of my situation. But I don't like the term, and the reason is because it sets up in a significant way a bad person and a victim, or two victims, and one of them is the child. And I would not have wanted to be told I was alienated. I would have felt like somebody was taking away my autonomy, that I was just, I was brainwashed. I would have resisted, but it would not have felt good. So I think it's a really important concept for for me now and for us and for the community. But when I talk about it in a situation like this, I really want to emphasize that it's a problem.

Speaker 7: 22:41

It's a dynamic relationship, dynamic rooted in an extreme form of black and white thinking One is all good, one is all bad. Well, what about the child? They're holding that tension within them and as a parent, it helped me to feel like I understand what's happening and those are the behaviors, and it helped me to feel a bit better. But as I continue to kind of think about it and then and then accept my own history, I realized where does that leave me? And what I would like is not to recreate alienation, black and white thinking, categories of people according to their worth, but to understand that life is life is lived in grays and colors, and black and white are traps that I don't want to live in and I don't want to put my daughters in or or either for my parents, but it's been an extremely useful concept for me to start to heal, if that makes sense.

Speaker 6: 23:47

I'm not sure if I qualify for this question as English is not my native language, so probably most of my relatives or parents wouldn't access, or even access wouldn't understand what I'm sharing here. I like to generally talk about the really tension of children who are born into such dysfunctional, split, divided parents, who had who, who are forced to choose one over the other and pendulum swings, who can't kind of find it hard to love both like they want to, but there are many obstacles getting in the way. So even I had two songs title like I wish I hadn't existed to know, unconsciously I was aware, right. And the second title was Live Like you Were Never Born. It's almost like my unconscious was aware I wasn't born fully or I wasn't born to life but to death or struggle. And I felt entrusted and enlisted, even recruited, like a soldier to go through my parents trauma or just generational trauma and to find a way out and justify my existence. So the existential love I didn't feel it had many strings or conditions attached to it. Like my parents could only see me through society's mirror.

Speaker 6: 25:10

As long as society sees me with my external achievements, my parents could know oh, wow, we had a child that's talented and I think I'm coming to realize that maybe the biggest richness is the one of a child with a rich past, with a positive internal working models. I think that also shapes the society. So I think it all starts in the childhood. So the memories, the positive memories and positive working models for a child is so crucial that I think this is where it needs to start, the healing needs to start. Okay, maybe I'm not there anymore, of course, because the memories is sticky and takes a lot of work and suffering, and so much of suffering I think is avoidable with some insights and awareness, I think, like life brings pain but we shouldn't ask for more than it brings, I think. And a lot of ignorance with parenting, I think creates unnecessary, a lot of significant pain, suffering and burden on the offspring.

Speaker 3: 26:16

That's with these programs and communities like this I would love that and new awareness, awareness is shared with parents to be, let's say, that was an incredibly provocative conversation with so many layers and tears that everyone just brought into it and for any alienated children or alienated parents or anyone anywhere on the spectrum, this is a big tent that includes everyone and sometimes it does hurt people intentionally, unintentionally. They are impact zones and we're all just learning and we're all just imperfect folks showing up to try and be of service. I want to thank everyone for their time and their vulnerability and the complex decisions that it makes, that it takes to show up and break your anonymity and share your feelings and your vulnerability. And I just want to say, in case no one's told any of you yet today I love you and I hope all of you have a beautiful day and the community as well. Love you, hope you have a beautiful day. And if everyone just says one word together separately to say goodbye and we're gonna call us around table done.

Speaker 4: 27:24

Goodbye everybody. Thank you, bye.

Speaker 2: 27:30

If I had to be honest, the show was intensely emotional. It opened me up to listening to what I'm probably gonna have to sit within and openly listen to my kiddos if and when they come back to me, and I'm gonna do it. It was really hard, but this show was outstanding.

Speaker 3: 27:55

I'm with you, joe. It was a wow, wow show for me today and again, like, taken into account, the child, young adult, even adults perspective and what they're going through coming up from really having no power in the relationship to becoming a young adult, to having power and agency in their own life and hearing their recovery stories is phenomenal. And the parents today were just off the charts. So many different experiences and perspectives, rich, rich, rich, rich. And we have a bunch of roundtables coming up. So stick around, remember to subscribe, like, share, and please consider being part of the community. Come out to some meetings. Pa, parental alienation anonymous. There's a link in the show notes. There's a link to everything else that we're doing. Check it out, come out and play and you can always contact us through familydisappearedatgmailcom and get some of your questions answered. Until the next show, we see you. And in case no one's told you today, joe, what are we going to say?

Speaker 2: 28:54

Man, I love you guys.

Speaker 3: 28:57

Yeah, I love you too. Have a beautiful day. Bye, bye. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of family disappeared podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.