Family Disappeared

The Best of Family Disappeared: Focusing on Personal Growth After Alienation - Episode 86

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, host Lawrence Joss introduces a compilation of impactful moments from previous episodes, focusing on the theme of parental alienation and its profound effects on families. The conversation highlights personal stories of struggle, recovery, and the importance of community support. Various speakers share their experiences with parental alienation, the journey of healing, and the systemic issues within family courts. The episode emphasizes the need for authenticity, vulnerability, and personal growth in the face of adversity, while also calling for systemic change to better support families in crisis.

Key Takeaways

  • Parental alienation can affect anyone in a family.
  • Emotional and spiritual work is crucial for healing.
  • Support groups provide a sense of community and understanding.
  • Recovery involves focusing on oneself and personal growth.
  • Authenticity in parenting can lead to healthier relationships.
  • Systemic issues in family courts need to be addressed.
  • Parenting roles evolve through personal experiences and recovery.
  • Acceptance of what is can lead to peace and healing.
  • Resources for emotional and legal support are essential.
  • Sharing personal stories can help others feel less alone.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Best of Family Disappeared Podcast

01:36 The Impact of Parental Alienation

03:38 Personal Stories of Struggle and Recovery

09:59 Understanding Parental Alienation

12:40 The Journey of Recovery

15:42 Authenticity and Vulnerability in Parenting

19:12 Systemic Issues in Family Courts

20:16 Evolving Parenting Roles

22:49 Lessons from Recovery Steps

29:43 Resources for Support and Change

33:38 Conclusion and Call to Action

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:

Email-      familydisappeared@gmail.com

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss

(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Please donate to support PAA programs:

https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com

Speaker 1:

Hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. We are doing something a little bit different today. I'm actually taping the intro and the outro from the big island in Hawaii and we're actually going to be doing the best of for the next two episodes. We're going to take pieces and parcels of the 80 plus shows we've done so far and give you the best off so you can have a sampling and a taste of some of the moments we feel are super important. If you're new to the community, welcome to the community. We're a 501c3 non-profit. All our services are free.

Speaker 1:

The podcast is paid for and put on by people willing to contribute to help share this message and share our stories with as many people as possible, to help as many folks as possible. So if you feel called to it, please donate. There's going to be a link in the show notes. Love to have your support to keep this coming to you and I'm hoping you all can hear a little bit of the 80s music in the background, because this is very different from being in an office and taping these things and give a free 12-step program. Parental alienation anonymous. That's in the show notes too. Wonderful, loving, incredible community. I think there's 16 17 meetings a week now and they're put on from all over the world. So jump in there. That's a great, great community and you don't have to do this alone and if you want to do some emotional, spiritual work, it will change your life. There's a bunch of other great resources in the show notes. Love to hear from you what you think about the show. You like the best of. You like a little less formal environment not that I'm formal anyway, but this is super informal. I think I'm gonna be taping some stuff over here and I'll get into that in a little introduction to the show what's happening. And, with that being said, let's jump into the best of and see what we have for you today. 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 1:

So I am recording, like I told you, folks, I'm recording from Hawaii, right, and parental alienation is just horrific Estrangement, erasure, whatever you want to call it. Disconnection doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you're a parent, a grandparent, a child, a family member. It is heartbreaking and challenging. At least that has been my experience. It has nearly killed me in several different iterations. I've had to continue working through it and I'm so grateful that I did the work. And when I talk about the work, I'm talking about emotional and spiritual work. I'm talking about growing as a person. I'm talking about 12-step program, which, again, we have the free 12-step program available to you Parental Alienation Anonymous and the 12-step has changed my life.

Speaker 1:

It gave me a foundation to go out and do a bunch of other work learn how to communicate, learn how to talk to people, learn how to be really articulate with what I'm trying to say and to advocate for change in a useful way, instead of the way that I advocated for change in the beginning of Parental Alienation, where I was just trying to knock a hole through the wall. I thought, if I could just knock a hole through the wall. Someone would change, someone would listen, something would happen. It didn't work for me, and maybe there's a different path that I don't know about. I wouldn't be here without parental alienation. It's forced me to stretch and go to all different places. I'm on an incredible property and I'm just loving it. I'm outdoors, I've got a chainsaw and I've got a weed whacker and I'm whacking and weeding and doing stuff that I never would have done. I would have stayed within the family system and my life would have been amazing.

Speaker 1:

And this is what generational healing looks like, right. What generational healing looks like, right. If I get my kids back, that's wonderful. If I have a great integrated relationship with them, that's wonderful. If I don't, that's okay too. But they get to see a different way that their father is choosing to live, and that's parenting. That is the most extreme part of parenting is I am continuing to parent by growing and healing generational trauma and giving the kids a path forward, and maybe one of them will follow it. And healing generational trauma and giving the kids a path forward, and maybe one of them will follow it. Maybe none of them will follow it, maybe it'll resonate, maybe it won't, but I believe that it will create healing in our community, and the service work that I'm doing and so many people are doing on this podcast is really about creating healing work. So, with that being said, we're going to jump into the best of episodes. I'll also share a little bit more of my Hawaii story at the end of this. Where were you at before you found the support group?

Speaker 3:

I was in a place called hell. I was in total, complete hell. I was in the throes of a legal situation in the court system. I was in the midst of a custody battle where there were amazing and horrendous accusations of abuse on my part. I had lost custody of my daughter. I also had lost my job and my home at the time, and I was emotionally and psychologically devastated.

Speaker 4:

When I first came to the group, I was seriously depressed. I hadn't spoken to my kids in years. I used up a lot of energy navigating the legal system and different arenas where I thought I would find support and wasn't satisfied with the support that I was getting. I did have a job at that point and I had somewhere to live, but I felt like all the life force had been sucked out of me. I felt like I was unlovable. I felt like I'd failed my family, certainly failed my sons. I felt like I was out of options and system working within the system had left me really jaded and beaten down and I was at a point where I thought, if I don't find some kind of group or support network, that I was going to sink into a hole that I would have a lot of trouble getting out of.

Speaker 5:

To be completely honest, I was an absolute mess. I did not have a clue what I was doing. I was so completely dysregulated. What I was doing you know, sitting here listening to Betsy even comment. You know I was in therapy before I actually got divorced. Then, as I was divorced and the placement of the kids, I would take anyone hostage. That's how I did it. I was going to tell everybody. So everybody knew that I'm this great mom. I got it, everything's good. You know, I got to tell you my story so that if I tell that person the story, maybe they'll tell everybody else that Georgia didn't do this this is not on her.

Speaker 5:

And I put so much pressure on doing things to bring myself to this place where my esteem would go back, which I never really had a strong sense of self-esteem anyway. But I was doing things like I went back to college, I got my bachelor's degree, I was working two jobs, I was redefining myself and doing things outside of myself to bring me relief, like okay, you've got this, you're good. I became a marathon runner. I was just beating myself up physically and it was not pretty. I did not know how to walk through this.

Speaker 5:

I didn't know how to do this when my kids would come to my apartment. It was so incredibly hard to even just have them there. I didn't know they were different. I didn't know how to handle them. I couldn't even take care of my own heart and head and the decisions I was making, let alone it was hard for me to fix what was going on in my kids. It was a very tumultuous time and it took me all these years to finally get to a place where I'm like oh, it's starting to click. I'm starting to understand. So my experience was not very pretty. I did not know how to do it.

Speaker 2:

What's interesting, lawrence, is that to say how did I take care of myself? I would love for you to find someone that's gone through this, that they know that they were taking care of themselves, that's gone through this, that they know that they were taking care of themselves, because I'm not quite sure that any of us really, especially moms. Wait a second. My job is to take care of the cooking, the cleaning, the house, the boys, the driving, and so this is my whole, everything. And when that's like been like for me, like poof overnight taken away, I didn't know how to show up. So, like Gio, I was a mess, probably in a lot of ways, and in shock. And like one of the therapists said to me, betsy, it's like you're a refugee walking around, like where are my kids, where's my car? Where's my house? Where am I going? That's how I see it.

Speaker 1:

What did you think you would find out of a community, out of a support group, other parents and grandparents and other family members that were struggling in a similar vein to you?

Speaker 4:

So when I came to the group, I really didn't know what to expect. The first meeting I was just proud of the fact that I, once I'd found the group online, I actually joined and I actually turned my camera on and turned the sound because I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want anyone to see me. I was so done. But there was a glimmer of hope that I would be able to listen to other people that at least were going through the same thing as I was going through and I wouldn't feel so isolated and I wouldn't feel so messed up. There was something wrong that I'd done that I could have corrected. I just so lost. So that was really my hope in the first instance.

Speaker 3:

I was fortunate enough to have crossed paths with a lawyer who couldn't represent me but was able to give me an hour of her time and she said it sounds like you are in the midst of a classic case of parental alienation. So I'm grateful to this person who gave my experience a name. I had never heard of parental alienation, but when it came time for me to reach out for help, I had an experience of divine intervention where I realized that there was no way I was alone and I started to search online and I put in the search engine parental alienation support groups. So I'm grateful to that lawyer who named this for me and I searched probably for five or 10 minutes and I came across some other support groups, but I soon came across Parental Alienation Anonymous. Now I have years and years and years of recovery and another 12-step fellowship so I was inherently drawn to this.

Speaker 3:

I contacted the link and someone was in touch with me right away and 24 hours later I was at my first parental alienation anonymous meeting. I have a lot of experience in meetings so I expected a recovery 12-step culture, but I have to be honest, I was totally expecting to be in a group of 95 to 100% men who had been alienated by women, and I thought I was going to be in a group of a bunch of angry dads and I could not believe how indiscriminate parental alienation is. I mean, almost every meeting I go to it seems like there are equal parts moms and dads. It seems like there are equal parts moms and dads.

Speaker 2:

And I imagine out there, as we continue to grow, there will be non-binary parents and we'll find out that this family disease, so to speak, of alienation, is not specific to moms, dads or genders. When did I realize that alienation was happening? Immediately, because I had to have a major abdominal surgery, hysterectomy, and went into the hospital and I ended up having complications from my surgery and was near fatal, stayed at the hospital for a month and I only saw my kids or spoke to them two times in the time that I was there. So we had split right before this surgery and I didn't have access to my kids. So that is when, very cut and dry, when it started. But I also realized it actually probably started in the marriage and I think undermining you'll hear that word the undermining of the parental authority started and that's kind of like what I'm learning is like a precursor to what may or what could happen.

Speaker 1:

And at that time in the hospital did you have any idea of like a word or framework or something that was going on, or is that something you found out much later on?

Speaker 2:

I found out, I mean, I was panicked. I've never been more than two weeks without my kids. I was with them all the time and so I couldn't understand what was happening, although I will say that the more that I started to start the healing process and understand what may have contributed to this, I saw how my older two were not happy with me because, whatever reason, I was showing that I needed help and I wanted their dad to come together with me. So they started to, as boys, natural member the undermining. I was always the bad cop. So with teenage boys you automatically have like a strike against you and part of our deal was that we would have family therapy and I figured, okay, well, you know what we'll get through, what they must be upset about, but the family therapy didn't happen.

Speaker 1:

What does recovery look like or mean for you today?

Speaker 4:

Wow, that's a good question. That's a big question. For me it really means and it ties in with the piece about me running scared. At the beginning it's I really needed the program and I wanted it, but I was frightened to begin with. But now the focus is entirely on me, and I've realized that unless I have a good relationship with myself, a good connection with myself, unless I learn to love myself, I can't connect to anyone, whether it be my kids, my grandparents, the people that I work with, the neighbor across the road and I was never able to identify that until this point because I lived vicariously through other people. I was so codependent in my relationships that I never had my face up to the mirror to that extent, and so that's what recovery means to me. It's how I interact with people, it's how I respond to situations, how I try not to react in certain situations, and then really discovering where I end and where the other person begins.

Speaker 3:

It is absolutely positively recovering a sane and loving relationship with myself, recovering a sane and loving relationship with my higher power. These are both things that I completely lost when alienation took form in my life and also gathering together the story. Like you know, if you heard my first 10 shares in PAA meetings, it would be like let me tell you what my daughter's mom did this week. Let me tell you what it says in this court motion. Let me tell you how crazy she is in this whole situation. Oh my God, isn't this crazy? And now, today, it's much different. It really is about recognizing what I don't have control over, like other people's perceptions, what other people choose to do or say or write in a court motion. I currently am not caught in a system right. My legal situation has resolved. I've had six months in a row where I get an email from my lawyer and there's a bill and I know what the bill is going to be. It's going to be zero, but do I check it anyway and look?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I do Because I'm like oh my God, look at that, because there were months where it was just like thousands and thousands of dollars. So recovery to me today means how can I be healthy in my life? And alienation changed my family structure. That includes my biological family, like my side of my family was also involved in the dynamics of my alienation story. So now that I've sort of lost my family essentially and I have recovered my relationship with my daughter, the question I have to ask myself is how do I create meaningful, loving, deep relationships with the people who aren't necessarily members of my biological family, whom I don't have relationships with anymore?

Speaker 1:

How does that feel to you being a mom and being exposed and talking about this openly and honestly? Does that bring up any kind of fear with your kids, with your community, with your partners or anyone else in your life?

Speaker 5:

So, first of all, since this work is about taking care of me, I have come to a place of I'm not embarrassed. This is a practice for me to be able to do the podcast, to be on camera. I'm speaking my truth. I'm trying to speak this truth in love, and love for my kids. And you know, I have a legacy that I'm going to leave behind in being able to be, for the first time in my life, authentic with myself, my thoughts, my feelings.

Speaker 5:

This is what life is about. I am present. I am here to get real with myself, and there is nothing more real than to strip yourself down and expose the very essence of who you are and who you've been. And that's just life, it's living, and I want to show up that way, and I am not embarrassed. We all make mistakes, we all make choices, and I am not embarrassed. We all make mistakes, we all make choices, and it's from those failures that I am experiencing the most beautiful richness of living. So, yeah, to be here and put it all out on the table, it's a gift. It's a gift for me and it's a gift I get to give back to other people, and that's what it's all about for me.

Speaker 2:

I am a little bit hesitant because it's been a journey of being falsely accused of a lot of things or twisted things that I've said are intentions, so in the past it's been incredibly nerve wracking. But now that I have relationship with my boys, now that they're 19, 22 and 24, and so much time has gone on and things were missed that now it's like I know I'm standing in my truth and I don't want to hurt anyone. My intentions from the beginning of this were never to hurt anyone and we mutually agreed to split and then it became this thing. That really has been destructive and I don't ever, ever want anyone to have to go through what we've been through.

Speaker 2:

And if there's something that I can, if I have to take a hit for the team, if you will and this gets national notice and I you know I teased when I opened up, when we were first starting and I started singing. You say you want a revolution. That's what I. We need to have a revolution in family court and bring some kind of light to the situation. So in the past I would have been probably like holding a flag of like need to be right and I need to, like Gia was saying about tell my side. And now it's not necessarily about me getting my kids back. It's now about this healing journey, of healing a very broken system and a very unjust system.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for that, betsy, and I'm hearing you acknowledge some fear but also like, hey, this is a systemic issue. I want to show up for everyone out there that's struggling and it's from a place of love and recovery, sustainability, groundedness, so that is really really beautiful and just to share with everyone out there. For me, like I was scared to start a podcast, I was scared to put myself out there, and there is an emotional labor that all of us are paying as we do this for our communities and there is fear that comes along with this. I had a text exchange yesterday with my middle daughter and you know she said, hey, I don't like what you're doing out there. It doesn't resonate with me and my values for my family and what I'm going through right now. And I want to acknowledge that everything she's saying is completely and 100% valid and those are her feelings and I had to acknowledge that to her.

Speaker 1:

And, at the same time, like I'm on the front lines and I'm putting myself in a place because of systemic change, like it's moved from the I to the we, to the community. You know what I mean and that's where I'm finding some relief for myself on an interpersonal level. This is a systemic issue and we are not going to change anything unless we, as people and individuals, come together and create change, because the family court system is not going to do it, the mental health system is not going to do it. Any of the other systems set up in this country right now don't have the wherewithal, the tools or the capacity to really help us, so we need to help ourselves. How has your role as a parent changed as you've gone through this journey? What has been the evolution and what is your relationship to a role as parent at this particular time in your life?

Speaker 2:

My role as a parent has changed and I've become more of like a coach to the kids instead of what I thought it meant to be a parent. And when I say a coach it's kind of like if they want my coaching, if they want my advice, they get to come to me and I'm not there offering the unsolicited do this and you should and you should. And that was different because I've been known to be bossy or opinionated and there's been so many positives that have shined a light on my ways of being that weren't necessarily serving me. So that's the part of the journey of healing uncovering who am I, what am I doing and what does that mean? As a parent, I get to pause and be mindful of their side of things.

Speaker 5:

My kids right now are 27, 25, and 21. So prior to my kids getting out of college or whatever, I didn't get to parent my kids. When the divorce happened, I did not get to have that obvious experience of a parent to sign off on the field trip in school, or I was not informed on doctor's appointments. I did not get to parent, I didn't have help. I didn't know how to do it. So I will fast forward.

Speaker 5:

I've got two older children. They are adults and they've been adults for quite some time and I haven't gotten an opportunity to really parent them. From middle school and high school, my youngest she did come and spend more time with me, so there was that bit of parent and child dance that we did. Today, parenting for me is working on me. I am reparenting little Gio, I am walking through what I didn't get and you know, being in the PAA fellowship, I have a sponsor, I go to meetings and I learned from my sponsor. I am parenting my kids by doing the work. I'm doing the hardy work on myself that is going to bring a change change the trajectory, hopefully, of what life's going to look like for my kids, if I can put the brakes on in this family disease. So, yes, I am parenting my kids through the love and care and devotion I'm giving myself and parenting what I didn't have. That gift is getting sent out through the energy I put into it, so that's my parenting tip.

Speaker 1:

If you had to say your favorite part of a favorite step or your favorite step at this particular moment, what would that be and why?

Speaker 4:

That's a great question. You know what I'm on. Step four the one that means the most to me and the one that I refer back to on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis, is step one and being powerless over other people. Because I need to remind myself of that. When I feel like life is becoming unmanageable and I feel like my brain is scattered and I'm ramping things up either deliberately or outside circumstances are making me speed up my thought processes I need to step back and say what am I contributing to this situation? Am I trying to control the other person? What can I control in this situation? And as soon as I start to do that, I calm down, I make better choices, I respond differently and oftentimes I don't respond at all. I'm getting better at just listening and not piping out or not putting my feet into the fire, and I need to be reminded of that.

Speaker 4:

When I first came to the program the idea that I tried to control other people I was offended. I didn't like that at all and I thought I was a victim and other people had controlled me and, in doing so, had damaged me. And it's taken program work and me doing the steps and being honest with myself and honest with my sponsor to figure out that I've used control to try and make my life more manageable Until the controlling aspect was a big part of my life being unmanageable. So step one really resonates with me, for sure, in recovery.

Speaker 3:

This is the statement that means the most to me. We admitted we were powerless over alienation and that includes people, the alienating parent, the child, all family relationships. And you know, in Al-Anon they talk about the three C's. The three C's are we didn't cause it, we can't control it and we can't cure it. And the three C's, of course, are usually to describe the disease of alcoholism. But it's profound how easy it is to translate alcoholic to alienator and alcoholism to alienation. But, in essence, what the first step has done for me, it has released me from the following dynamic right, I feel like my daughter's mom and I have been chronically unskillful in our co-parenting relationship, and one element of that and I think it's a fair statement to say that we're both trying to more or less trap each other. So let's take her out of the equation and let's talk about me.

Speaker 3:

I have sort of a sick need in me to trap her somehow in some sort of metaphor of a chair that she's tied to, and I basically want to hold up a mirror to her and say look, and I don't want her to look away from this mirror until she sees in her reflection what I see.

Speaker 3:

And this dynamic has caused me so much suffering. I cannot control what she thinks, what she sees, what she says, what she might be doing and believing she's acting in the best interest of our daughter. I have no control. My sanity and my health and my well-being and my chance at recovering a full and vibrant relationship with life rest on my ability to be contained within myself, to change when I can which is usually me and to have a relationship with life that is, a relationship of acceptance with how things are, with how things were in the second half of 2021, and with how things play out. You know, the favorite quote Lao Tzu, I think, said stand in the center of the circle and let all things take their course. So alienation is a family disease. It has power, it has momentum, it's alive and well.

Speaker 2:

It has power, it has momentum, it's alive and well and even though it's not apparent in my life completely, it's there and I have to continually reflect on the first step and powerlessness, specifically over other people I think it's like you said everywhere there I go, there I am and accepting what is, and that's something that ties into going back to me, because I was resisting like this is my way, my will, and it wasn't working and I probably continue. That will be a perpetual issue. For me is my will over god's will, and that has been the single most difficult thing. I got an attorney. If I spend this money, they just help me. It should be like this, and letting go of that should and just accepting what is has been the hardest thing that I've been dealing with.

Speaker 1:

Just what it looks like today, like accepting what is has been really challenging for you, and I'm guessing that you're in more acceptance today, or something to that degree.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely in more acceptance and to let go of how it's supposed to look and how I thought, trying to really stay in the present moment. Because, boy, I love to like go in the back and if I hear a song or if I am with people at a family and I see it, that can really trigger me and my deep, profound sadness and hurt that still. I don't know if that will ever go away, but it certainly doesn't serve me to stay in it and that's something that my challenge is to stay present for today and not future trip and worry about what might happen to them, what might not happen, how am I going to recreate my life? How am I going to support my? Just stay right here is still the biggest challenge for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, just staying present in the moment and working with what is. And I just want to clarify one of the points that you're making Accepting what is for me just means that I can't control other people, places or things, but it doesn't mean that I'm not doing my own work. It doesn't mean that I'm not advocating for myself. It doesn't mean that I'm not in self-agency. It doesn't mean that I'm not showing up. Does that resonate with you, or some version of that, when you say just accepting what is?

Speaker 2:

For sure, which goes into. That, started to make me think of the word surrender that I'd never. My view of the word surrender was when in the you know what fuck. My view of the word surrender was when in the you know what? Fuck it, the fuck it, fuck it. Excuse my French if you're not allowed to cuss on here, but it goes into that part of surrender and accepting. I'm resigned. You know what? That was probably like the old me, and now it's more of the okay, this is how it's supposed to go, and I'm still going to be okay and this whole thing is going to work out how it's supposed to work out, according to surely not my plan.

Speaker 1:

What resources would you like to see out there, or what one or two resources would you like to share?

Speaker 2:

Oh, this is. I love fantasy and I have so many fun things that I think could be of use An 800 line that deals with legal aspects. We're starting to see more of the helplines for emotional and mental stuff, which the emotional, mental stuff is really important as well, having a resource like that, because I think I spent so much of my money contacting my attorney at 350, 550 an hour where I'm just distraught right about what to do, but something where it's a mental health professional that's tied into knowing the legal parts of this situation. I would love to see a school almost like somebody outside of being a guidance counselor or a therapist in school, but that deals with divorce.

Speaker 2:

50% of the kids of the country is divorced. I don't know what the rate is, but we have a massive, massive issue with divorce that we're not serving families very well and it's as it's seen in the amount of people that are struggling like we are. I would like to see leadership development in school, personal development, teaching about responsibility, teaching about ways of being that understanding it's not what you do that matters, it's who you be, and so, in order to have the results that you want to be an astronaut, if you want to be a mathematician. We're teaching kids at an early level how to be healthy human beings, and that's actually been a big part of my trajectory in my career has been about that transformational part of teaching and healing the parts of people that they didn't know weren't serving them, so that they can learn to take responsibility and not be this. We have a lot of justified victims going on out there, so you know, taking responsibility and contributing positively.

Speaker 1:

Gio, if you could tell your younger self one thing not to do, what would that be?

Speaker 5:

Take off the fancy window curtains and embrace the essence of who you are. You don't have to dress up the outside and present that everything's fine, that you have an opinion. Find that you have an opinion. Being nice does not mean being a yes, ma'am, all the time I have my own mind, I have my own thoughts and you know, remembering that these things were not instilled in me as a young girl. So, you know, when we talk about this, it's almost like I feel, like I'm. I mean, I can actually do this now. I can actually visualize a younger version of myself and almost kind of hold her and look at her and say you know, let out who you really are, let her out.

Speaker 5:

You don't have to be appropriate for every single person that walks through your life, because some people just are not going to love you and like you. And it's not about me, it's not always about me, it's just so I would tell her to just love herself and just be, and it's okay, and have your opinions and you can be kind. Even with your own opinion. You can still be acceptable and kind. You can voice that. So, yeah, just be real authentic. It is what it is.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that was great. I really enjoyed those clips that were put together by the team and again, there's a team doing this. You might be seeing me on camera most of the time and I don't do this alone and I couldn't do it alone, and I'm so grateful to all the different players and team members. It's an incredible act of service it's done so the person after us hopefully won't have to have the same challenges and won't have to suffer in some ways. We did, and maybe they will, or maybe you have something else to share. So we'd love to hear from you, email us or me anytime at familydisappeared at gmailcom. Love to hear from you. Love to get different guests on the show cover different topics. Love to get different guests on the show cover different topics. But I think we're really going to be talking a lot about life in upcoming topics and what can shift in our lives by doing the work and how can that shift our relationships with our kids, directly or indirectly, like I believe what I'm doing today is. I'm indirectly shifting the relationship with my kids and I'm creating a path forward by getting back to the land. You know, and again I said I was in hawaii and working on the land and creating community, and I'm so grateful for that, you know, and if you're struggling and if you're in the middle of your battle, just keep working on it. Build community, you know, through Parental Alienation, anonymous, through any other support group, for with people that are struggling with some of the stuff, you need people that have the same life experience to walk the path. At least I do. I don't want to explain myself over and over and over again to people. So if you're struggling and you're in the middle of it, when I was in the middle of it, when I was lying face down on the floor In such extreme emotional and spiritual pain that I didn't know what to do, I just kept going for a little bit longer and it shifted and it's not what I thought it would be, but this is pretty rad. I'm moving now.

Speaker 1:

So I just want to give you a little glimpse of what I'm waking up to in the morning and I'm going to share a little bit more on the next coming episodes, and we're going to be talking about recovery. We're going to talk about recovery and how it can manifest and what it can look like and what we can bring into our lives and how incredibly useful. That is, great resources in the show notes. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. Everyone that volunteers here does not get paid, does not get any kind of anything, including myself. We're all here to be of service and to help the next person that's struggling, and we can't create sustainable systemic change without that, in my opinion.

Speaker 1:

And with that being said, I love you from hawaii, which is like extra special love. It's like wow, love, but I'm feeling lit up, lit up like a rocket. Anyway, I love you, have a beautiful day and I hope to see you around the neighborhood and this might be the neighborhood for a little while. We'll have to see what happens next. 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.