Navigating the Heartache and Triumph of Parenting from Afar Part 2 - Episode 41

As the sun set on a day marked by my daughter's distant wedding vows, I found comfort not in my solitude, but in the shared resilience and ingenuity that Anna and I bring to the table as we host another episode of Family Disappeared. Together, we peel back the layers of parenting in the absence of traditional contact, revealing the strength found in creative expression and the commitment to marking life's milestones with love and intentionality. The journey of self-rediscovery was illuminated as I celebrated my daughter's marriage from afar, a testament to the power of joy and the reclaiming of our rights to happiness, even amidst the ache of separation.

Honesty and self-advocacy are the bedrock of any intimate relationship, and this episode doesn't shy away from the tough conversations that can lead to transformative apologies and growth. I recount a personal tale of confronting a lie by omission, and the cathartic release that followed—a moment of shared healing and a step towards more profound connections. We don't just talk about relationships, we explore the enrichment that comes from Nonviolent Communication and the potent influence of self-love, weaving these principles into the fabric of our identities as parents and relational beings.

Parenting isn't a solo act, and this rings especially true for those of us navigating the challenges of doing so from a distance. Anna and I reflect on the indispensable role of community in these unconventional dynamics, celebrating the living record we create within the Parental Alienation Anonymous community. This legacy of care, documented in our stories and growth, underscores a shift towards a collective 'we' centric approach. Through laughter and tears, we share our narrative, inviting you to join us in this communal tapestry of healing and self-discovery.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I do feel like I'm actively participating as a parent without access, and some days it looks awesome and some days it feels like it's nothing and other and it but it's there.

Speaker 2: 0:11

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. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.

Speaker 3: 0:44

Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to Family Disappeared Podcast. I have Anna for part two on the show today and she is the co-host, and we had a riveting first part of the conversation for the first part of the show about parenting without access, the challenges of being a parent and showing up and still having a significant impact on our children, but yet having no access. It seems like a complete contradiction to parenting, but it is possible. There is creativity within our pain and within our suffering. And if you haven't listened to the first episode, jump in, check it out, join us for the second episode. If you're new to the community, welcome. There's a plethora of wonderful resources in the show notes PAA, which is our 12-step support group, the family hope project, um, like share. Let people know what we're doing. You know 501c3 nonprofit. We'd love your support on. Yeah, let's jump into the show and see what happens next.

Speaker 3: 1:38

I've been so limited by my fear of losing my children. I've been so limited by the fear of not participating in the graduations and the celebrations and the birthdays in their marriages, in the births of their kids. It's really limited my ability at times to live my own life and today I say no more. You know, today I say I'm gonna love, I'm gonna be a parent and I'm gonna share with my children their celebrations. Right, I'm going to share my children's celebrations even though I'm not directly included. But I can't be excluded completely unless I buy into that line of parental alienation, that line of the alienator, that line of the family system, whatever you want to call it Like. I don't need to buy into that anymore. I can celebrate my kids um several events. I can share with people and I can have a voice. I can take what I would want to say at any one of those several events. I can now document it. I can uh set up an altar in my house, I can send out pictures. I can do so many different things. And this, this, this is life-changing for me. I feel more alive, I feel more present, I feel like I have agency over my own life.

Speaker 3: 2:46

For a long time I thought I had to give up those seminal events because I didn't have contact with my kids, and today I don't. Today I'm celebrating my oldest daughter's marriage and I'm so happy for her and so excited for this next part of her life and I just want to say I love you. I love you. You say it, I love you, I love you. You know, maddie, who's my oldest daughter, and I'm, and I'm just uh tickled that you're launching into another part of your life and I'm your dad and I'm celebrating with you and uh, I just I'm so excited to see what happens next. And it's hard and uh, yeah, so stick around for the episode. Let's all uh, let's all create a new paradigm on how we can navigate these challenging situations and let's support each other.

Speaker 1: 3:24

Okay, so let's go one of the biggest lessons I've learned in recovery is learning how to respond rather than react. So I'm curious when you found out about your daughter's imminent wedding, how, how did you respond? How did you react? How did recovery take a place at the table when you were trying to navigate that?

Speaker 3: 3:48

So, without breaking the anonymity of the person who let me know that my daughter was getting married and it's someone very close to me and we had a conversation about lying right, like finding out my daughter got married, definitely felt triggering, brought up a lot of emotions, fighting out. My daughter got married, definitely felt triggering, brought up a lot of emotions, and sometimes I moderate what I say a lot because I don't want to create additional harm and I don't want to. I want to be really cognizant of how complex these relationships we have are when parental alienation is present. So this person that I was talking to that, uh, shared this with me. I definitely got a little more energetic around it and I'm like, hey, this isn't cool. Like you know, when we have a conversation, we're going to be honest with each other and we can set boundaries and not talk about certain stuff. But when we're lying by omission, I'm not sharing stuff that's actually going on when we're in an intimate relationship together, that really, really feels bad. So I got to advocate for myself in the conversation. I didn't have to make anyone bad, I didn't have to make anyone anything and, from a recovery standpoint, I got to stand up for myself and say, hey, in relationship like I, want people to be able to be honest and if they can't be honest, that's not really a relationship, you know. And saying this in an intimate relationship where you're scared the other person might leave and and all that fear of abandonment kicks up because we don't have access to our kids and possibly grandkids.

Speaker 3: 5:08

It was a really challenging thing and and what I got out of the conversation is this person called me back a little bit later on and I apologized. You know what I mean. They apologized and, uh, it was heartfelt and this is what parenting without access is is this person is really close to me and someone younger than myself that I'm interns, been in my life a long time and because the work that I'm doing, they did their own work within like an hour and they called back to apologize. So I got to be a parent, even though I wasn't at the wedding, even though I wasn't these other different things, I got to be really strong in my body, articulate, present, and I didn't have to hurt or attack anyone. And this person got to look at that stuff and say, wow, that's really crappy If someone wasn't really telling you the truth and they were withholding information in any relationship.

Speaker 3: 6:02

I would feel really, really bad about that. And they got a call and make an amends to me. And if I hadn't been a role model in my recovery, that never would have happened. And having someone call me back, kind of, was like a balloon, deflating to a certain degree Some of that energy and anger and fear and scarcity and longing to be including my daughter's wife. A lot of that went away because I said oh, oh, this is here too. Like I came for a peanut butter sandwich and I got a jelly sandwich and the jelly sandwich, you know, it satiated me in that moment and I was so incredibly grateful, you know.

Speaker 1: 6:38

That sounds really powerful Open communication where there's room for expansion rather than very narrow. I've walked some very narrow. I've walked some very narrow paths in my journey with alienation and trying to deal with certain personalities and individuals where there's just it's not communication, it isn't two-way.

Speaker 3: 6:56

So that sounds very healing yeah, and a lot of times it's not two ways from from us, like I'm so closed off and so reactive and my feelings are so hurt. And so many times in the past when I've been in similar situations around graduations or around birthdays, I've been really reactive and it's created distance and by me being really present and available and being really articulate about how I'm feeling, but not making the other person bad. I think this is a really important point of recovery is once I start to take responsibility for my own feelings and share them in a way where I'm not shaming or blaming the other person. Then it gives space for creativity and and change and that person to come back and for something different to happen. This has a lot to do with the mbc stuff that we've been talking about on the show, and I've learned a lot of these skills through NBC, because I had no skills coming in here. I just was in pain, I wanted my daughters back and I just wanted everything to be okay. So that was a really profound moment for me.

Speaker 3: 7:52

That was a couple weeks ago, you know, and um, yeah, it was really good. That was a great question, thank you. Thank you for asking that. What else you got? Co-host.

Speaker 1: 8:00

I was just um thinking about connection recovery has. I wasn't connected to myself when I joined the program so I didn't. I mean, I love my kids, I love my kids. I did the best I could when I was more of an active mom with them, but it wasn't a healthy. I realize that now. I can say that now in recovery it wasn't a healthy connection. So being in the program, working the steps, being in community, is allowing me to build stronger relationships with everyone, not just my kids, not my parents, whoever it is.

Speaker 1: 8:31

I'm showing up differently and it's really emphasized the difference. I can feel it in myself, the way I show up now as opposed to even six months ago, 12 months ago, two years ago, and it's interesting. 12 months ago, two years ago and it's interesting I didn't, I had no idea that I would be yeah, again in a parental alienation group and I would be working. I didn't have a clue and I've had moments where I wanted to run from that because I part of my own dysfunctional upbringing was that I didn't I actively, didn't feel like I could have a presence at all, and so then I had been conditioned to not connect with people, to put everybody else first. So it's like having the mirror turned around on me and that's making me think about being a stronger parent. I feel like a stronger parent because I actually am connected with myself. I can't take on any of those roles that we talked about if I don't have self-love and I don't have self-connection. I didn't realise that they weren't existing in me before I started doing this work, so it's like opening up a hole.

Speaker 1: 9:30

It's not just about improving my skills as a parent, being able to parent without access.

Speaker 1: 9:36

It's about how I show up in the world in all of my relationships, and that feels like such a gift.

Speaker 1: 9:42

I mean, it's hard work and it's challenging, but I thought I was coming in for one thing and apparently I'm coming in for a whole, which is beautiful, and I wouldn't be here if I hadn't had all of those experiences leading up to this. It's really amazing to sit and think about that and talk about this at a time when I've just had a couple of weeks of grief that has left me almost paralyzed on the sofa, where I'm actually starting to touch on the grief that I feel about not having my kids in my physical space, about having missed really fundamental parts of their growth from young children into teenagehood, into becoming young adults. I've got big chunks of history that I know nothing about, and so I'm in a space in recovery where I can let that grief out, I can be supported in it, I can reach out to people when I'm feeling like there's nothing worth living for and I get to sit and have this kind of conversation with you and think, wow, this big picture that I'm sitting in is amazing. It's truly amazing.

Speaker 3: 10:43

And again, the word big picture is really important for the recovery, because when I got here, I was out of a really small view, a really narrow view of the world, and I was so hyper-focused on this one thing and if this one thing changed, then everything would be okay. And even if this one thing changed and I had access with my kids, parental alienation would still be there. So I'm just going to say this again, and I think it's really important that a lot of people in the community do have access to some kids and older kids, and parental alienation doesn't need. It's still part of the conversation, even though we're not talking about it and we're still navigating around it. But coming back to the idea of parenting without access and this whole wedding idea that we started with, I want to know what you all think out there. Wedding idea that we started with, I want to know what you all think out there. Like, my idea is to record myself on video and express what I would have said at the wedding. Like how else can we commemorate a wedding that we're not invited to? You know, do we set up an altar? Do we set up something at our own house? Like?

Speaker 3: 11:43

That's something that I want to do too to commemorate my daughter's wedding, like having something real and tangible and physical that I can touch with my hands and have it set up on my altar.

Speaker 3: 11:53

I'm like, hey, my daughter got married.

Speaker 3: 11:55

Let me honor this every single day, because I think the tendency is to push it away and not honor it and not acknowledge it and no one talk about it.

Speaker 3: 12:04

But I'm saying, hey, no, I'm a parent, i'm'm gonna love my daughter, I'm gonna honor it and uh, and I want to do that and I want to have something in physical proximity that I can touch another my daughter's marriage instead of, uh, you know, putting it in that box in the back of my head with all the other boxes that I don't want to open because they're too painful, kind of like what you're talking about, lying on the couch and tapping into that grief, like I. I want to walk a more present path, I think, with my kids, even though it's a really crappy, crappy situation, and uh, and, like you said before, like energetically I think. I think they can feel the shift in me, because this is a this is a monumental shift and I'm angry and I'm pissed and I'm sad and I want to see my kids and all these other things are true too, and I want to honor these seminal events in my life as if I did have access.

Speaker 1: 12:54

It's a really interesting discussion. It's also making me think, lawrence, that the people who really know me, who really know me, period but also really know me as a parent that's trying to parent without access to people in community. So I I would love the opportunity whatever that looks like further down the line for my kids to be able to hear other people's reflections of me from within the community space, because you guys are the people that know me, the ones that I share my, the people that my sponsor I mean and the conversations that we have. They're're honouring, like even as we're speaking up. I feel like you talk about people's ears burning when you're talking about them. I feel like, in some ways, my kids can feel it, because this is in honour of my kids. I'm speaking up for my kids where they can't speak for themselves, they don't have the opportunity, they don't have the ability, they don't feel safe. I can't speak for them as much as that.

Speaker 1: 13:47

But I think, as a community, I think it's a great space to be able to somehow create some, yeah, kind of it's the record we're still being parents. We don't have them in the same space. We don't get to go to their weddings. I don't get to go to their birthday parties. But when we show up to meetings, when we work in our sponsorship pods, when we work with our sponsees, we're parenting them. We do that and I would love for them to be able to get a sense of that especially.

Speaker 1: 14:14

I'm thinking about my own kids as they're young adults and turning into, maturing and taking a different perspective on things as well, to be able to understand that parenting doesn't just look one single way and it doesn't stop. Even though I want my kids around me, it doesn't stop. Even though I want my kids around me, it doesn't stop. I'm just. I'm just taking up a different perspective and and working through all the ups and downs that go along with that. It's really interesting and I couldn't do it without the community. I didn't. I have friends that are going through similar thing, but it's not the same as the community work.

Speaker 3: 14:46

And just to speak about the community for a second, if you're new to the show, parental Alienation Anonymous, there's 15, 16, 17 meetings a week. If you're interested, there's a link in the show notes Come join, come play, come meet some people. And recovery doesn't exist without people rowing in the same direction. And it might exist. It just sounds to me really challenging to be among myself and figuring this out alone. Exist. It just sounds to me really challenging to be among myself and figuring this out alone. So you said something else. You said this idea that we're living in this community and we have all these different memories and sponsors and different people that we're working with. But how are the kids going to know about it? And we've spoken about this briefly in the past, but I also started to show off when talking about on living and dying and how we document what's happening and part of the framework that we've put together. I just haven't had the time or the energy, to be quite honest, to fully put it out there and launch it out to the community is actually having people that are bearing witness to who we are today as parents, as community members, as dancers, as painters, as runners or sports fans or whatever, whatever resonates with you. So in this living and dying that we're putting together, this framework is we're actually going to go out to people that know us today and say, hey, are you cool with recording two minutes, three minutes, five minutes voice video preferably so we can store this in this environment where one day, if some god forbid I pass away and I can reach out to my kids and say, hey, I have this if you're interested, or maybe even if I'm alive and I reconnect with my kids that there's this, this document, like who I am, what I've been doing this last one, two, five, twenty, thirty, forty years. You know it's incredibly important and I've had this framework formulated for almost probably a year and I just I just haven't had the energy because it's just showing up and doing podcasts and community. It takes a lot. It takes a lot for us to be here and it's vulnerable and it's interesting and it's a wonderful opportunity to get out of the I and into the we.

Speaker 3: 16:40

So I came here very I centric and everything was about me and getting my kids back in my feelings and everything. And as I got some recovery, it became about we, it became about community. This podcast is a we thing. It's about sharing ideas and recovery so people can get to it sooner, and it's getting rid of the I, because it's vulnerable and if my kids see it then it's probably going to get irritated. You know, possibly at this age and maybe when they're older, maybe not. So I think a huge part of uh, the maturity and the recovery is switching from the I to the we. So this all really comes down to like creativity.

Speaker 3: 17:15

And you were talking a little bit about community and you had no ideas that parenting could have all these different uh dimensions to it. Right, and that parenting in community, as we're having conversations with people, as we're sharing life stories with each other, that there's this spaciousness Because for my family of origin, it was role modeled to me is that this is what a parent is, this is what a parent does, this is how a parent shows up, and when I got here, I thought that's what a parent was. I didn't realize that a parent is so many different things. A parent is me having a relationship with myself, so I can have a relationship with my kid in a in a different, healthier way.

Speaker 3: 17:50

So I really appreciate you bringing that into the conversation, that we get here with a really small idea of what a parent is, and recovery gives us the opportunity to um water our garden so we have more creativity. And what a parent is completely has shifted for me in 18 years. You know what I mean and I'm the best parent that I've ever been and even though I'm not my kid's primary parent, I feel like I'm my kid's primary parent. Everyone else would argue about that, but the work that I'm doing feels really profound, that I really feel like a primary parent, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:27

No, that resonates with me too, lawrence, and it makes me think about what we often share in meetings and I believe strongly for myself, is that I'm doing the recovery work primarily. It is primarily for me. I'm recovering my own life, and that means my life and how I show up as a friend, as a parent, as a colleague, as a daughter. All those things show up as a friend, as a parent, as a colleague, as a daughter. All those things I'm also part of my recovery. And looking back in terms of intergenerational trauma and that kind of and dysfunction, as a parent who's struggling with alienation and disconnection, I'm and this is another gift of recovery that I didn't expect to find I have more compassion for my own parents, and so it feels like it goes both ways. And it's interesting because when I feel like I have a disconnect with my own parents or I have some frustration or some anger coming up, I can switch it around and think how would I feel if my children reacted the way I'm reacting as a child with my own parents? It's an interesting variation on what we're talking about and the piece about parenting without access, because I know for my own parents there have been difficulties in my own upbringing. So it's interesting that it goes down the lines and then when we do this recovery work and we work as a group and as individuals within a group, it spreads out and it affects. It affects those, those generational lines as well. I can feel that because I can feel myself softening if I get very disturbed or upset with something that's going on within my biological family. If I pause which I'm able to do more now because of recovery and think about how it feels like for me as a daughter but also as a parent, I'm like, oh, hang on, there's something else. It's the piece again about the opening. There's more to this than just meets the eye. So it broadens those dimensions again and that's making me think.

Speaker 1: 20:16

It's about the connection piece right, and if you grow up learning really not learning how to connect in a healthy way and you don't have that modeled for you, you have to start over again.

Speaker 1: 20:28

I get a chance to start over in recovery and I get a chance to model that for my children and I get a chance to try and be more compassionate and gentler and softer with the relationship which is can be challenging with my own parents. So it's interesting the way that again, it's that bigger picture I did. I had no idea when I came into the meeting rooms, like what am I doing here? Like I don't quite, I had no clue. And then it opens up and then the connection that we have with one another. Our stories are not the same, but there are similarities, right, and so we grow. We get to grow together and share, and when I get energy from you and you get energy from me, we take that away into our relationships that we have, no matter what they look like, with our kids or our significant others, or the people that we're working with or the people in the supermarket.

Speaker 3: 21:16

It's interesting to be able to reflect on that as well yeah, and I think that's a great point, that transgenerationally, like everything's connected, like nothing's separate, and that a lot of the learning for me also comes, like you were saying, like how I relate to my parents and seeing where I'm not willing to reach or when I'm not willing to reach out to my mother and I'm one of the only contact points she has for like a telephone call. You know what? What does that do and how does she feel? And and what I'm saying is that I know she appreciates it and I'm reaching out with a telephone call and I really believe that by documenting how I feel with my kids, by acknowledging my kids on the altar, that they're going to feel the same way my mother does with that call, because they want to be part of that, even though emotionally and mentally they might not know that or might not feel that, and they might know that might never change for them, but I think on a cellular level, like they want to be part of that, they're craving to be part of that. So there is a lot of learning, transgeneration, for me too, with a connection to my parents and and what's going on for this, and I just like to say, like we as a community get to be creative and all this is emergent and like, how do we celebrate graduation? How do we celebrate births? Like can we do that in community? Like hey, wow, I'm having a grandkid in two days and or I just had a grandkid three weeks ago. A year ago, two years ago, I didn about, like I want to document that, I want to celebrate that, I want to share that with family and friends and we are getting close to the end of the show.

Speaker 3: 22:48

But I think a lot of that stuff for me becomes a secret, like a lot of that stuff I don't really really talk about. Like with intimate friends, I'll let them know, like I'm a grandfather and stuff like that. But with regular people and they're talking about their grandkids, like like, I never mentioned that stuff because it doesn't. I don't want to discuss it. First of all, the strangers, but I think in the not mentioned and I make it a secret and I start to hide it away and it's not reflected or represented anywhere in the whole house. And as I'm saying this, I'm thinking my, my middle daughter I had no contact with for about four years, reached out last year on my birthday and her grandfather just passed away. So I presume a bunch of stuff came up with that and that's why I think she reached out to me and maybe there was something else going on in her life. But when she did reach out to me, she shared pictures of my grandkids which I'd never seen and they're on my phone.

Speaker 3: 23:38

I'm like I never want to look at that again. They don't feel like they're real. They feel like they're just a picture. I think that's a lack of spaciousness in my own heart. They don't have anything to do with mine and my daughter's relationship and transgeneration, but I'm sticking them in the same pool and I could blow up a picture and I could have a picture of my two grandkids in my house. And I'm just thinking that now I don't know if I would want to do that because that sounds scary as hell.

Speaker 3: 24:07

And yeah, maybe I do. Maybe I want to acknowledge that they're alive and that they're real, because they don't. They feel very dusty, they feel very airy, they don't feel real. But in this conversation, like we're practicing recovery together. This is what a meeting looks like. People share ideas, we get to chit-chat before, after the meetings, during meetings, and I'm thinking like maybe I want to know what my grandkids look like, because I've seen their pictures, but I don't remember what the pictures look like because it was too painful to look at when I got them. So that's an interesting piece that's coming up for me that I need to work with.

Speaker 1: 24:38

It is interesting it that I need to work with. It is interesting. It's making me think about what we talked about at the beginning, about having a voice and being authentic, and it's making me also think about living in the gray. So I don't have grandchildren, but I do have pictures of my kids. I've had them up and then I put them down and I've had them up and I'm in a space now where I like to have some of them up so I can touch in or I can touch base with all of the memories. So the memories if they're pictures from when they're younger which they are I can have good feelings about that. Sometimes it feels painful because I don't know what they look like now. So I like the idea that again I can have a foot in both camps. So it's not either or I feel I miss them and I love remembering what it was like when we hang out on the beach that day and you know, whatever the story was, it's nice for me, it feels healthy because then I'm not dismissing.

Speaker 1: 25:31

I spend a lot of time dismissing my feelings and suppressing them. So it's nice to be in a recovery space where I can. I can check in with myself and see how I'm feeling and Do I maybe want to change the picture? Do I want to move it? But I don't want to dismiss them as part of my life and I want to be authentic with my own feelings. Right to be able to, instead of thinking I have to tailor everything to fit a certain narrative. I'm a mum. Why don't I have contact with my kids? So that balance piece is really interesting.

Speaker 3: 26:05

I think it's part of the difficulties that we have in navigating this process right, totally, and the picture no picture. Some seasons there's pictures. Some seasons there's no pictures. I think, uh, I know I've struggled with that and right now I have no pictures up. I've just moved to a new house and, uh, well, I put pictures back up.

Speaker 3: 26:18

It's a great question and um, and there's different seasons and there's different capacities. Sometimes I have more capacity to show up and be a little bit more open-hearted, and sometimes I'm like, huh, I need a break and I think it's cool. And even if I was parenting my kids and had access to them all the time, sometimes I'd have a boundary too. This is just a different kind of boundary, so it feels really healthy and was a lot more painful initially. Now it's more of a choice.

Speaker 3: 26:45

You know, at the beginning it was more of a reaction. Taking down all the pictures, I was angry and hurt, and now it's like, huh, I'm just going to take a time out, I'm just going to sit down here on this bench and I'm just going to relax a little bit and change and I'll just say we've been, we've touched on a lot of different topics here today and in future episodes we're going to jump into some panels with parents and without access. We're going to have some people come in and hopefully share some ideas of what they'd like to say to a child that has graduated or got married or had a kid. Maybe we can play with that a little bit.

Speaker 3: 27:18

There was a transgenerational stuff and the circle connection between our parents and how we relate to our kids and how we relate to our parents, and something that Anna brought in and we bring in often is just coming home to ourselves and finding ourselves. So it's been a really, really rich episode. I hope you all got a bunch out of it and I'm just checking in with you, anna. Do you have any final thoughts or final summation of anything that was a takeaway for you that you'd like to just sum up for anyone that happens to be listening, before I do the final closing?

Speaker 1: 27:47

you know what I like. Well, I liked everything you shared, but the piece at the end about having choice really resonated with me because when I came into program I didn't feel like I had any choices at all, and now I am. I give gratitude every day for the choices that I have and I'm an active participant in my life now. I didn't feel like I was before. So in that sense a nice way to wrap it up I do feel like I'm actively participating as a parent, without access, and some days it looks awesome and some days it feels like it's nothing. But it's there, like I'm actively making changes and I have a sense of agency and a sense of empowerment and choice to be part of that. It's really. It feels really liberating and healing to be able to say that um in this space. So thank you for the conversation tonight. It's been awesome yeah, it was.

Speaker 3: 28:35

It was awesome. Choice, empowerment, agency, volition, community, um, laughter, sorrow, grief, anger, like wow, what a, what a rich, sweet conversation. And if you're new to the community, welcome. And uh, got a bunch of great podcasts in the can that you can go back and look at a bunch of great stuff coming up. Please subscribe and like and join the community and we are a 501c3 non-profit and in order to continue bringing you the content that we're doing, we need your support and donation.

Speaker 3: 29:07

And if you know someone really really well off to let them know us, let them know about us. And uh, the dawn living and dying. We'll get to you, hopefully pretty soon, because I think that's going to be a really neat practice for people that have energy and capacity and want to document their lives in a really meaningful way for other folks. And Emma, thanks for coming out and playing and chatting and being human with us and thank you for everyone. And, in case no one's told you today, I love you. I hope you have a beautiful day and if there's any WOW fans out there WOW, a show, wow can you give us a really big wow to end the show? Anna wow bye y'all.

Speaker 2: 29:51

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.