How to Embrace Unconditional Love While Fighting Parental Alienation and Estrangement Part 1 - Episode 44

When love comes with strings attached, it can entangle our hearts and minds in ways that are hard to unravel. This episode shines a light on entanglements with transactional love, revealing the profound shifts in mindset afforded by the unconditional love experienced through a 12-step recovery program.   In this episode, we have a group discussion, sharing the raw and transformative journey from seeing ourselves as mere objects in a transaction to recognizing our inherent value and worthiness of love, care, and healing.

The road to accepting love without conditions is paved with self-discovery and often, a great deal of discomfort.  This candid discussion transcends individual stories, touching on the universal challenges we face when confronted with love that doesn't ask for anything in return. Prepare to be moved as we trace the indelible marks left by the love we grew up with, and how it shapes the love we give and allow ourselves to receive.

Healing is a personal odyssey—unique, ongoing, and deeply human. This episode invites you into the heart of that process, exploring the role of Parental Alienation Anonymous and the 12-step program in fostering self-love and the ability to accept love from others. You'll hear tales of parenting amidst the pain of estrangement, the search for joy in the midst of loss, and the courage to embrace the love we deserve. Join us as we navigate the complex emotional landscapes of our lives, finding hope and solidarity on the path of recovery.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And the thing that I'm finding, as people are sharing their experiences, is every single thing that I do has been transactional. And if I really want to look at how my life has changed because of 12-step programs is I have to look at the transactional value with myself and how I have transactional love for myself. Right, am I good enough? When parental alienation started, I went out and I tried to become gooder and better enough. I figured if I could get better or gooder enough, then my kids would love me and everything would go back to normal. So I was continuously treating myself as an object. You know what I mean. And it's been incredibly useful. It's opened up so many channels and changed my life and everything like that.

Speaker 1: 0:45

But it's really easy to fall back into that rut, that neuropathway where I just keep trying to get better and trying to get gooder and that keeps me stuck in parental alienation because I miss living my life. 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 2: 1:25

Hi there, my name is Anna Johnson and welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. When I first really started my recovery journey and trying to find a way to address the pain and depression that at that point was really sucking the life out of me because I was alienated from my sons I had no sense of hope. I had zero energy. I had no faith that my life would be anything but what had become a slow and really painful existence. I felt like I was out of options. Joining the community of PIA changed all of that for me. It didn't happen overnight and I know that it was the case when I began, and it's also the case now that I resist the work. Sometimes it hasn't been easy, but what the work has done is made my life more manageable. I know now that I respond differently to all of the situations that life presents me with, and that's because the 12 steps play a part in my daily life. And this is very different to the way I used to show up and the pre-recovery version of me. That version of me was highly reactive. I was used to living in chaos and trauma all the time. So for me, the work, the journey, the connection with community has also brought joy to my life, and alongside that joy, which I also didn't know was possible, the work has opened up avenues of opportunity for me that I had no idea were possible until I started working on a connection with myself. So in today's podcast, I have the opportunity to discuss my own healing journey with the healing journey of other people that are in the program, and the topic we're going to talk about today is the question of love, and we'll talk about transactional love, unconditional love, and how each of us lean into different types of love and work on these different aspects of love as we continue to progress, working on different ways that we heal in our interpersonal relationships and that we show up in these relationships. I know for myself that having these kinds of discussions has been crucial to my healing experience. My hope is that the conversation resonates with you. Hi, my name is Anna. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. I am grateful to have the opportunity today to sit in the host's chair, which feels it feels like a gift. I was thinking about this before. It's a gift to community, it's a gift to my kids. I'm really grateful that I found my voice in recovery and this program.

Speaker 2: 4:04

I have a group of fellow travelers who I'm going to introduce in a minute that are joining me in the conversation. Today we're going to be talking about love. I've been thinking about unconditional love, transactional love, and I've been dealing with a lot of grief recently in my private life grieving the relationship with my kids and it's led me to a place where I'm leaning into supports within my community and people that are providing me with unconditional love. And when I say unconditional love, my understanding of that is that it's love without strings attached. And also, to qualify transactional love, which is what I have been accustomed to for the majority of my younger life and my adulthood, is love that's given with an expectation for something in return. When you do something for someone else, then you're given something, and that's what I'm used to dealing with.

Speaker 2: 4:59

And so when I was thinking about the grief piece and thinking about the love piece, I was thinking about a number of questions that I wanted to put to the community and I wanted to put to myself, because it helps me in my recovery and it speaks to adapting to a new life in recovery and it broadens for me, it broadens the topic from a narrower topic of parental alienation into how I show up in relationships because my life is changing, because I'm changing the way I relate to myself and the way I relate to others. So, that being said, I am going to go around the room and have my fellow travelers introduce themselves. Stephen, would you like to go first? Introduce yourself to the community?

Speaker 3: 5:40

Sure. Thank you, Anna, for having me on today. My name is Steven. I am an alienated dad. I have five children total. I'm in a second marriage, so I have a mixed family. We have mine and hers. I have a 26-year-old high-functioning, autistic son who I have full contact with, a 24-year-old daughter who I have had a little to no contact with over about 11 years since her mom and I separated when she was 13. She's now 24. And I have a 19-year-old son who I've had limited contact with over the past three years but slowly starting to regain portions of contact first email, now some text communication I've actually seen him twice this calendar year. And then I have two stepdaughters I have full contact with. So a rich and full, diverse family life of all kinds of things going on. So, but thank you very much for having me today.

Speaker 2: 6:43

Thank you for qualifying, stephen, and thank you for joining us. Mary, would you like to go next?

Speaker 4: 6:49

Sure Hi. Thanks for inviting me, anna. My name is Mary. I have three adult children ages 40, 37, and 34. I've been divorced since 2012. And my youngest has alienated herself from me since June of 2021. And she has two children that I've not been in relationship with. I'm in relationship with my older two children.

Speaker 2: 7:21

Thank you, Mary. Thank you for joining us, Julie. Please go ahead and share your story with the community.

Speaker 5: 7:28

My name is Julie. I'm the alienated mom of a 14-year-old boy. I've been alienated from him since he was 13, in October of 2022. He made some false accusations about me and my custody was revoked. He's since admitted that it was all made up for attention, but I have not returned to custody and I've been making progress in this community and learning how to move forward. So thank you for letting me be here and practice step 12.

Speaker 2: 8:00

Thank you, Julie. Thank you for joining us and, Lawrence, for those in the community that aren't familiar with your story, could you introduce yourself please?

Speaker 1: 8:08

Hi all, I'm Lawrence and I'm an alienated father and grandfather. I have three daughters. I have a 29-year-old that it's been about nine years with no contact. I have a 26-year-old that it's been about five years with mostly no contact, a little contact last year via text. And I have a 23-year-old I have regular contact with and a couple of grandkids I'm yet to meet and I'm really excited to be here with you today, anna.

Speaker 2: 8:33

Thank you, lawrence. I will qualify for everyone too. I am Anna, alienated mother of two now adult sons a 21-year-old and a 19-year-old and zero contact with either of them since December of 2016. So, when I was thinking about hosting the podcast and grasping hold of that opportunity and being able to stretch my recovery muscles, what prompted the topic that I chose for today about how I receive love in my life was a note that I chose for today about how I receive love in my life was a note that I sent to someone where I talked about how my nervous system is so used to living in crisis and living in trauma that when I receive good things in my life which I'm starting to do now that I'm in recovery it's hard for me to process that. I don't know how to process that. I'm used to surviving in chaos, and I was sharing an example where I was recently submitting my tax papers to have my taxes done and it's the first time that I haven't had to exchange information with my ex-husband, which is progress for me, which means I'm becoming more independent, and I thought in doing that that it would feel awesome, that I would feel like feel relief, and it would feel like a celebration, and when I did it it didn't feel any of those things. I didn't feel ecstatic, it felt crappy and I didn't feel like celebrating and intellectually I could tell myself that it was progress and it was movement forward. But it also felt painful. I didn't expect it to be painful, and when I pushed into those feelings it turned into a bigger narrative about. This is not where I expected to be in midlife. This is not where I expected my family life to be, and I didn't expect to have so many mixed feelings around my divorce. I expected to feel a lot more relief and I expected it to feel a lot more black and white, which is what my nervous system is used to.

Speaker 2: 10:23

And recovery has seen me softening my relationship with myself, really building a relationship with myself, and so it was helpful to have this conversation with this friend, and it led to me thinking that I'm not only do I not know what to do with good circumstances in my life, I'm scared of it being taken away and not lasting, so that stops me from embracing it, and that's what led me down the path of wanting to talk about receiving unconditional love. It's a goal for me in recovery and I want to move away from transactional love, where I always feel like I have to show up for someone. I have to prove, I have to earn their support, their love. I have to earn the right to communicate with them, and I learned to do that in recovery, and that's one part of the puzzle.

Speaker 2: 11:06

But how do I accept it and how do I really take it at face value and not be sitting on my hands thinking, but shouldn't I be doing something right now? Like I feel like I should be doing something right now? And so one of the questions that I thought about in preparation was how do you start to live with more balanced, healthier relationships in your life If you've lived your life, or at least a good part of it, where you're engaged in relationships that are based on transactional love and trauma? And I wonder, julie, would you, how would you feel about answering that question?

Speaker 5: 11:42

Good, I grew up in a house where and I know my mom is going to listen to this mom, I love you. I feel that there is a lot of requirements for me to receive her love and there was a way to behave. There was a way to dress, there was a way to keep my room, there was a way to keep my grades. But that was juxtaposed with my dad, who had a much more unconditional way of loving me, and I've grown up having a lot of mixed feelings about my relationship with my mom and we've had times where we didn't talk and then we'd come back together again. When all of this happened with my son, her response to me was to walk away and don't look back. And I couldn't do that. I couldn't walk away from my 13 year old and I know, having walked this path, that she was trying to protect me you know I'm her baby and she's trying to protect my feelings and I suddenly saw her love in a whole new light. That, on the one hand, I felt like, well, does that mean that's what you would do to me, that you would just walk away? And I had to set that aside because I have to give her grace Now that I'm walking this path and learn that she's doing the best she can to protect herself and her feelings and her baby. But I had to choose something different, and what I've told her again and again because she's still not quite sure that she agrees with how I'm handling this whole thing is that I have always told my son that I love him, no matter what, that there is nothing he can do to make me stop loving him, and that includes making up stories about me abusing him. I still love him and I recognize that he made a mistake. He's a kid, he's 13. He made a mistake and I've made mistakes and we all make mistakes, and I've made mistakes and we all make mistakes. But that doesn't mean we don't deserve love. And I think I had a breakthrough with my son. He was.

Speaker 5: 14:14

You know, we always have our best conversations in the car I think that's true for most parents and they're particularly teen kids and his dad lives a pretty far ways out and I have to drive him back to his dad's house. And his dad lives pretty far ways out and I have to drive him back to his dad's house. And we got into a disagreement in the car and he was telling me. You know just the number of ways that I've screwed up and screwed up his life, and I'm always late and I'm too strict, and you know, the list goes on and on and on and on. And I just said, well, I hope you can love me even though I have done all those things, even though I'm late and even though I'm strict, and even though I yell, and and I went through his list of all the things I've I've done to ruin his life. And I said you know, I love you no matter what and I I hope that you can find a way to love me no matter what too. And he softened, and you know, he said I love you, mom.

Speaker 5: 15:10

And he started tearing up and he got out of the car and he's been different ever since. You know, he's still boy. If I'm five minutes late to pick him up from school, god help me. But he hasn't reverted to the same, just yelling at me and telling me how terrible I am and it's hard to do. I mean, I definitely, when I tell my mom that story, or my friends that story, or even my husband that story, they're like I can't believe you. Let him talk to you that way.

Speaker 5: 15:39

Well, I'm trying to practice grace at the moment and he's obviously got some things he needs to get off of his chest and his shoulders and maybe I just need to be that person for him and later on, when our relationship is maybe stronger, we can have a conversation about how.

Speaker 5: 16:01

That's not a nice way to talk to people, but right now is not that moment and he's going to have to make mistakes on his own. And that's one part of this journey, too, is that I've had to let go totally and let him make similar mistakes to the mistakes I've made. You know he's so quick to anger about how quick to anger I am and I have to let him make that same mistake and he'll have to learn the same lessons in his own way. I can't stop it, and that's one of the greatest things from any of the 12 step programs is how to let go of control and take control of what you can control, which is just you. But all I can control right now is showing my son what unconditional love actually looks like and, despite everything, I still love him. I still show up every Tuesday and Wednesday, as promised, and we have our time together, and that's what I can do. That's what I can control, and it seems to be paying off, so I'm happy about that.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Thank you for sharing that, julie. That sounds like a beautiful way to be able to show up for him, to be able to allow him to have a voice and to feel like he sounds, like he felt like he was being heard, like he felt like he was being heard, which sounds very healing and a great opportunity for you to parent him, even under really difficult circumstances. Stephen, can I put the same question to you? How are you finding living a more balanced life in terms of relationships, if it was the case for you that your past relationships were more based in in trauma and a transactional kind of love?

Speaker 3: 17:47

yeah, I think uh again. Uh, steven, I think I qualified before, so I won't do that again here. But uh, you know, um, for me growing up and having the hindsight now, you know, my parents are in their 80s. Now I know that they, I know clearly at this point in my life that they love me unconditionally. But I, I felt growing up and I'm still, you know, I still struggle with it from time to time. Is this my um appraisal of the situation or was it truly that way? But it felt at times, um, especially with my mom, that love was transactional. If I was able to emotionally support her in the way that she needed to help regulate her nervous system, then I got positive feedback. And when I chose not to do that to protect myself and create a boundary for myself as a child, that that wasn't really my job, it felt at times like there was hell to pay and I love my mom and I love my dad and we have a great relationship.

Speaker 3: 18:51

Now, what I would say is for me and this was prior to 12 Step, although it's definitely been reinforced by the past 14 months of being in Parental Alienation Anonymous is that I think, for for many, many years there, the my struggle with giving unconditional love in a primary relationship or to my kids was that I didn't know that I, I could give, could continue to give Like was the well going to be deep enough or was I at some point I didn't have enough in me to keep giving that Like it felt like. Sometimes it was like I was going to run out of unconditional love and then I would fail, like I didn't have it in me to keep going, especially in a situation where I didn't feel like unconditional love was being returned. And I don't think that changed for me. And this is, you know, this is just my worldview. I don't think that changed for me until I made some really, really big mistakes in my life and one of those mistakes was in my marriage. And one of those mistakes was in my marriage and I had to come to the realization that I had stepped upon and violated my own moral and ethical code and that that was not who I was. But those were decisions that I made and I had to at that time fully accept grace from God and fully accept grace from some of my counseling friends and friends who knew about my life and who I was. And it was like once I was able to accept that and realize that who I am and my value is not based on what I do or decisions I make or whatever. I think that's when I sort of really started to understand unconditional love in a fuller way. And I feel like now and that was 10 or 11 years ago and I can just tell this brief story because it was so profound to me I was in a counseling session and I was working with a counselor and we've been in the community, healing community here in this area for many years.

Speaker 3: 21:02

And he said, steve, I've known you for years, you've known about me. I have so many people that come to me, that go to you too and they say you've done all this great work and you've helped them and all that kind of stuff. And he and he said, um, he said to me, he looked at me and he said he said, steve, you're a really great chiropractor and natural, you know functional medicine practitioner. You're really good.

Speaker 3: 21:27

And when he said that to me in session, I could not look him in the eye. I looked down at the floor, I could not look at him and accept that unconditional love and compliment that he was giving me and he said it again and I still couldn't look at him. The third time he said it I was able to actually look up and look him in the eye and say thank you. So that's where I was. I am not there now and thankfully, through that experience in PAA, I am able to be in a place where I can give my kids full, unconditional love and not worry about the reservoir emptying to the point where I won't be able to do it. I don't do it perfectly, it's in process, but I can do it now and I'm forever grateful for that. So thanks for letting me share.

Speaker 2: 22:16

Can I just ask one question, stephen? That the way you described feeling like you were going to run out of love. Does that apply to you today, or would you phrase it in a different way? Have you learned to love in a different way?

Speaker 3: 22:32

I don't worry about running out of it anymore because I fill myself up right. So I take care of myself now and part of the way I do that is through the 12 steps of recovery. I do it with prayer, I do it with exercise, I do it with connecting with people in this program that I call friends and I love and they love me, and that's how I fill up the bucket. So the bucket is full and, yeah, the bucket's full now and I can give out of that bucket, but it keeps getting replenished. So I don't feel that that, uh, that scary, scary feeling of like I can't do this forever. So, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2: 23:07

That's beautiful. Thank you, yeah, I know one of the biggest things that program has taught me is to love myself, and when I have enough love for myself, I have more than I've always had a lot of love to give to other people. But it feels different now that I'm having a much stronger connection with myself and it's interesting to say that it feels like a beautiful part of everyone's recovery. Lawrence, can I put the same question to you? So how do you start to live with more balanced, healthier relationships if you've lived your life, or at least a good part of it, engaged in relationships that are based on transactional love and trauma?

Speaker 1: 23:43

Yeah, so thanks for everyone sharing their experience and thanks for the question, anna, and it's a really profound question. It brings up a bunch of stuff for me. So I was indoctrinated into the world of transactional love and conditional love in my mother's womb, pre-verbal, you know, and I was taking care of her as a child because she didn't have the capacity to take care of a child, right? So she was bringing something into the world to work with her nervous system to kind of regulate herself. And the thing that I'm finding, as people are sharing their experiences, is every single thing that I do has been transactional. And if I really want to look at how my life has changed because of 12-step programs is I have to look at the transactional value with myself and how I have transactional love for myself. Right, am I good enough?

Speaker 1: 24:31

When parental alienation started, I went out and I tried to become gooder and better enough. I figured if I could get better or gooder enough, then my kids would love me and everything would go back to normal. So I was continuously treating myself as an object. You know what I mean. And it's been incredibly useful. It's opened up so many channels and changed my life and everything like that. But it's really easy to fall back into that rut, that neuropathway where I just keep trying to get better and trying to get gooder and that keeps me stuck in parental alienation because I miss living my life so transactionally with myself. I think the real work is there and I think the 12 steps, even when you do your fourth step, which has really taken an inventory of your whole life, my sponsor said hey, the first person on your fourth step needs to be you, right? This is really about establishing an emotional and spiritual relationship with yourself so you can have an emotional and spiritual relationship with anyone else.

Speaker 1: 25:23

And once I started to do that, then I started to see how transactional every relationship was. You know, like my parents needed something from me when I was growing up and I needed something from my kids, and it's hard to admit, but I want my kids to say I love you dad, I want my kids to love me, I want them to give me a hug, I want them to call me on the telephone, I want them to do all these things and every single one of those are transactional. And that's the world that I was brought up in, the Western world, and it's really hard, it's hard to move away from some of those habitual things and, like someone else had mentioned, because of the pain that I've had to reevaluate what my mainframe looks like, I've had to reevaluate if that programming is useful anymore and it's not. And a lot of times I can behave in a different way and it's not transactional and I can let go and uh, and I default back to that when a lot of stress comes up or a new stimulus is thrown into the equation someone gets married, someone has a kid, and uh, and I want to go back to that transactional thing.

Speaker 1: 26:23

And you know, one of the the most profound things for me is actually being working with, um, sympathetic joy, which is a buddhist form of meditation, and sympathetic joy is just joining someone else's joy and, like anything else that I do, I have to practice it because, like, if something good happens to you and your kid, you know, the old me would have said that's not fair and the new me says, oh, my god, you got to go to a graduation.

Speaker 1: 26:52

You know and I'll just finish this transactional part my oldest daughter just got married, like two weeks ago I found out a couple days before she got married and the old me would have been like I'm not included, all these different things but like from a recovery perspective, oh my God, what an important, special day and I'm so incredibly happy for my daughter and I can only imagine how wonderful it was and where the unconditional love comes into that part is I can hold that space for my daughter.

Speaker 1: 27:18

But can I hold that space for a father myself that is not invited, that is not involved, and what that's looked like and I shared this on a different show is I still got to give a speech. I still got to record a speech, what I would say at my daughter's wedding. I might not have been at the wedding, but I'm not going to exclude myself because I'm not involved in this transactional invite. I'm still showing up for myself unconditionally and getting to share what I want to share as a dad and celebrate it, even though it looks very different than I was programmed at birth. I don't know if any of that any made sense, but that's what I got. Thanks for the question, anna.

Speaker 2: 27:58

That's a lot of insight, lawrence, thank you. Yeah, I can relate to that. I have a very transactional relationship with myself. I am very much a perfectionist and that's very much part of, has been part of, my survival and I get to undo that in recovery and it's awkward and it's good and it's healing and I fight it and I lean into it and I get to do all those things within this community and within my healing journey And's. You know I I love these conversations. To be able to identify this stuff and share, be part of a shared reality with other people makes it easier for me to walk a line that I don't understand where the end is. I want, I want certainty and I don't have certainty and but having these conversations helps me and hopefully helps the broader community to to embrace all the different aspects and the layers and the nuances of healing. Mary, how does this question land with you? What feelings does it bring up for you?

Speaker 4: 28:53

I found your question, you know, very difficult because I had to dig inside myself and really think about myself instead of everything else on the outside. So when I look back now, as I'm going into recovery and the 12 steps, I realized I grew up in a. Leave it to be the family, if anyone knows that and there were six of and it was a family of just utter chaos, with six different personalities and going in six directions. And I always admired my mother. She wasn't a working mom. My dad was working all the time to support us and I just was like, oh my God, she just finished breakfast, now she has to do lunch and then she does dinner, and then there's a thousand other things that go on, and I admire her for holding us all together. But what I realized when I was young was if I just fell in line and stayed out of the fray, then I'd be undetected. I was the middle child. I know I was unconditionally loved by mom and dad. They just were so dedicated to us. But, being in that group of six siblings with all the personalities I shaped myself into one of just being, you know, quiet and always doing the right thing, you know, and I was also a helper. So my youngest brother is 13 years younger than me. So when he was born it was like he was my baby because my mom had five other children to take than me. So when he was born, it was like he was my baby because my mom had five other children to take care of. So, you know, he became my baby. My grandmother across the street if she was, you know, ill or whatever, I'd be sent across to stay with her as a, you know, a 10 year old or 11, if I recall. So I was always used to just giving and helping and I completely disregarded myself. It was always do the right thing.

Speaker 4: 31:14

So I married very young, at 23. And I believe I was in a marriage of transactional love. But the problem was is I never knew when I hit the mark, because there was never acknowledgement that I did enough on a given day. I had three children, so I did exactly what my parents did and everything was scheduled and go, go, go. And as I loved them unconditionally, but I didn't express it, so after my divorce I would be talking to my adult children on the phone, wherever they were, and I began ending the conversations with I love you and I realized that initially. I think that came as a bit of a shock to their systems because that's not the way we were used to operating. That's not the way I was brought up. So it's very simple and easy today, with my older two and my one grandson that I'm in communication with and we just end all conversations with. I love you.

Speaker 4: 32:28

So I think my biggest challenge is loving myself unconditionally and talking to myself the way I would talk to a friend who shares something that's on their mind. And when I was initially alienated by my youngest I, I just completely destroyed myself and shamed myself for what a horrible mother I was and it took me a good couple of years to come out of that. And I have to find some joy in this life while living with this acceptance and then also hoping that someday I'd be in relationship with my daughter again. So I found my way to PAA last September. I came across it and it just has changed me for the better, so much quicker than when I was working on my own with a counselor and reading and so on. So I guess I'm progressing in my recovery. But it's a journey, but to be in meetings and listen to the shares with everyone in PAA. It's just you absorb it into your system and you think about it and you take it into yourself and compare it and it's just helping so much in me trying to find my joy again in spite of the alienation.

Speaker 4: 34:13

So the only other thing I would say is, you know, somebody mentioned, you know, seeing nieces and nephews, and for me, grandnieces and nephews. I have family all around me and everyone tries to go on in spite of the alienation. And so initially I was completely unable to attend birthdays of little ones and so on, because I'd sit there and say, oh, my grandson, this would be his second birthday or his third birthday, and that was, it was so painful. And then I just said this is, these are the people who love me. They've invited me in and I'm going to begin to celebrate them. So I join in now, whereas prior I just would make an excuse to have to stay back. So they love me unconditionally and I have to take that and love myself too and join in in spite of my alienation. So those are my thoughts.

Speaker 2: 35:18

Thank you for sharing that, mary. That's beautiful. One question I wanted to ask, beautiful I. One question I wanted to ask why the last little piece that you shared made me feel like it's a real act of self-love on your part to accept that love and to allow yourself in and to be vulnerable. Um, and the follow-on to that was do you feel like program has helped you learn to love yourself unconditionally if you take your kids out of the equation, your parents out of the equation, your ex-husband out of the equation? So during our conversation you will have heard a lot of talk being and reference being made to the PAA program, which is Parental Alienation Anonymous.

Speaker 2: 35:59

Now there's information in the show notes about the program. There's a website for the program, which is pa-aorg. There's useful information in there, but I also thought I would just explain a little bit. So the program uses the 12-step method of Al-Anon and adapts the literature of Al-Anon and the steps to help people who are suffering from estrangement from their loved ones to actively heal and improve the quality of their lives. And again, the website has a lot of information. If you're curious and you would like to know more. Also, please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel and like us on social media.

Speaker 2: 36:34

Family Disappeared is a community podcast and it's designed to help all who suffer from alienation, and the best way we can help and grow the community is to spread the word, and that means our listeners. You, you can help everyone in the community is to spread the word, and that means our listeners you, you can help everyone in the community, including yourselves, by passing this information on. Please also let us know if you liked the different kind of format we used today with the questions and answers. Let us know. If you didn't like it. Let us know if it resonated with your own experience. And also, please let us know if you have a subject you'd like to hear addressed on the podcast. Help us to help community by letting us know what you, as part of the community, would like to hear about. Finally, please know that you're not alone. There are options out there for support, healing and growth while going through these difficult times. Bye for now and hope to see you on the next podcast.

Speaker 1: 37:26

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.