Family Disappeared

“Grateful and Grieving”- A panel of alienated parents share their stories Part 1 - Episode 94

• Lawrence Joss

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This conversation explores the transformative power of gratitude in the context of recovery from parental alienation. Panelists share their personal journeys, reflecting on how their understanding of gratitude has evolved from a self-centered perspective to one that embraces community support and emotional healing. They discuss the challenges of feeling gratitude during times of estrangement and the practices they have adopted to cultivate gratitude in their daily lives. The discussion highlights the importance of recognizing small moments of gratitude and how these can lead to deeper emotional connections and resilience.

Key Takeaways

  • Gratitude can be found even in difficult times.
  • Community support enhances the experience of gratitude.
  • Practicing gratitude requires intentionality and reflection.
  • Alienation can cloud the ability to feel gratitude.
  • Gratitude can transform from a transactional to a heartfelt experience.
  • Daily rituals can help cultivate a gratitude practice.
  • Gratitude can be a pathway to emotional healing.
  • Recognizing small moments of gratitude is essential.
  • Gratitude can help break cycles of intergenerational trauma.
  • Sharing gratitude with others fosters connection and joy.

Chapters

00:00 - The Journey of Gratitude in Recovery
07:12 - Understanding Gratitude Before and After Alienation
14:08 - The Transformation of Gratitude Through Community Support
21:06 - Practicing Gratitude: Daily Rituals and Reflections
30:49 - Gratitude for Children: Navigating Alienation and Estrangement

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:

This process of 12-step recovery has helped me to learn about gratitude in hard times, to have gratitude for things. It's not always the victories and the wins and the job promotions or the this or the that or whatever, but there can be gratitude in difficult times as well, and sometimes that's even more poignant to me.

Speaker 2:

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. Hi, my name is Lauren Strauss and welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast.

Speaker 2:

Today we have a great show. It's going to be on gratitude and if you're new or you're not new and you're thinking a show on gratitude sounds like it's gonna suck, I think you might be wrong. What a great conversation. We have a panel of parents and the reason that I said you might be thinking that a conversation around gratitude is gonna suck, because that's what I thought, you know, early on in my recovery and for for many years I didn't want to hear about gratitude, I didn't want to hear about changes, I just wanted to be stuck in my narrative and in my story and I wanted to grind it out and I wanted stuff to change and gratitude was not a word that I was interested in. So it's a lovely show great conversations, great experiences and if you're new to the community, welcome. Got a bunch of podcasts already in the can and there's stuff around court therapists, I don't know Anything you can imagine. A bunch of different panels and again, the show is on gratitude and we're really grateful to have you here. There's a bunch of great resources. In the show notes there's a link to the free 12-step program which is parental alienation anonymous, and everyone on the panel today participates within that community to whatever extent they do, and it's been a great place and it's been a source of love when I felt unlovable and when life has felt super stuck and I didn't know where to go. And now it's expanded into community and family and friends and all kinds of wonderful things and love to hear anything you have to say. Please, like, share, let folks know what we're doing. We are a 501c3 non-profit. Everything we do is free. Everything is accessible to anyone, whether you have resources or not, and if you do have resources and you want to contribute to help keep this sustainable and also let us expand some of the stuff that we're offering. Please click on the link in the show notes and make a donation, become a monthly donor. We would love to have your support and with that let's jump into the show.

Speaker 2:

I might've shared the story in one of the first episodes but, as we're talking about gratitude, I first got into 12-step program maybe 19 or 20, 20 years ago and I was right in the beginning of parental alienation. I had no language in for it, I didn't know what was happening and it was my I don't know one of my daughter's birthdays. It was my youngest daughter's sixth birthday or my middle daughter's it's probably ninth birthday and I was taking my kids bowling and I was disconnected from my friends and I was really kind of lonely and the friends friends, like some people were going with the ex, some people staying connected with me, and I thought it was just going to be a couple people at bowling. And I just joined 12 step program and I had a sponsor, which is kind of like a guide that helps you through the steps, and I invited my sponsor to the bowling party and his wife and their child. So they showed up at the bowling party and then, a couple minutes later, my sponsor's sponsor showed up with his wife and their two kids, and then my sponsor's sponsor's sponsor showed up with his family and some other people from program showed up and I thought there's going to be six of us or eight of us at this bowling party and they'll ended up being like 30 people and the level of gratitude that I felt in that moment was overwhelming and I couldn't identify the word gratitude. I felt supported and I didn't feel so alone.

Speaker 2:

I thought there was something great to show my kids, but the actual feeling into the gratitude and the depth of that gratitude took a long time.

Speaker 2:

But I feel it today and it's a beautiful story and whether it's 12-step program, other community, other support, god it's so intricate to managing and navigating this super challenging pathology and this is a great show. So I see my dog in the background and this is a great show and I'm really excited for you to listen a little bit. So I'm so excited to have this panel today, everyone we have some great folks from the community that are going to be here today. Some are new and some are not new. So I just want to take a moment for everyone to go ahead and introduce themselves and qualify. And if you're new to the community, qualifying is what we do at meetings, so we can just introduce ourselves and we say our name. You know who in our life might be estranged, alienated or erased and how long that possibly could have been. So let me start off with you, anna. If you could please go first and just say hi to the community and just qualify.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, Lawrence. Hi everyone, my name is Anna. I'm an alienated mother of two adult sons, a 22-year-old and a 20-year-old. I've had zero significant contact with them for the past eight years. I'm happy to be here today.

Speaker 2:

Good to have you here, anna, and thanks for coming back on and playing with us for a little bit. And, stephen, you're up next.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, lawrence. My name is Stephen. I'm a dad to five kids. I have a high-functioning autistic son that's 28. That I have full contact with Two stepdaughters ages 17 and 16. That I have full contact with Two stepdaughters ages 17 and 16, that I have full contact with. And then I'm alienated estranged from a 25-year-old married daughter with a grandchild on the way In September she's due and alienated from a 20-year-old son, with increasing contact over the last year. So glad to be here.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, stephen. Over the last year, so glad to be here. Thank you, stephen, great to have you back and congratulations on the grandchild coming amidst some really challenging nuances and family dynamics, but that's super exciting too.

Speaker 1:

I just want to honor that as well.

Speaker 2:

And, linda, if you could just go ahead and say hello to everyone and just introduce yourself, that'd be wonderful.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, lawrence. Hi everyone, my name is Linda. I have three children. I have a 17-year-old daughter, a 14-year-old son and a 12-year-old son with autism. I have been alienated, slash estranged, slash erased from my daughter for the past 11 months, with limited to no contact, and I have a good relationship with my two boys that I regained 50-50 custody of in January of this year 2025. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

That's great to have you on the show, linda, and it's so wonderful to share that little snippet of regaining your 50-50 parenting time with your boys. That's so beautiful and that's so supportive of the community, because, you know, sharing other people's victories is really part of the recovery. And then hopefully, we each get a turn to and maybe not, but it's just wonderful to hear you know something super positive. Okay, and I didn't qualify, so I'm going to do that. I don't usually do that on the show unless we have a panel. So my name is Lawrence.

Speaker 2:

I'm an alienated father. I have three daughters. I have a 30 year old that it's been about nine years with no contact. I have a 27 year old that I started reconnecting with again, maybe like four or five months ago, and it's just through texting, not sure exactly what's happening, but it is different. And then I have a 24-year-old that I have a great relationship with and a regular contact and full access to. So that is it.

Speaker 2:

And today we're going to have a really fun show. We're going to jump into gratitude and if you're listening out there and you're like I don't want to listen to a show about gratitude, I got to tell you me neither when I first got here, like who wanted to celebrate anyone else's gratitude. That was definitely not on my highlight reel of things I wanted to do. I wanted people to listen to my story, tell me that I was a good person and that everything that was going to be okay, and then help me figure out how to get my kids back. But with that being said, we're going to jump into gratitude and see what happens.

Speaker 2:

So the first question I got here for the community is how has your understanding of gratitude changed since the alienation began and how has it shifted since you've actually entered recovery? And when I'm talking about recovery, I'm talking about Parental Alienation, anonymous, which is a free 12-step support group, and recovery might be different for different people. Other people might find other support groups or other communities spiritual, not spiritual, whatever. So this is kind of like a question for the whole community. But in the context of what I'm asking it's what did gratitude look like before you got here and what was the shift with 12-step perspective on gratitude? My question let's just start with what was gratitude like before you got here? So let's not talk about recovery gratitude yet. We'll add that second part on in a second and we're going to jump in with you first, linda.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, prior when the alienation began, gratitude to me I didn't have any. It was almost in a negative category. I felt very underappreciated. I felt like there were a lot of things that I was doing that wasn't even considered and it was a very me self-centered perspective. It was a reflection of how people were actually grateful for what I did, rather than an outward projection of gratitude. It has now shifted, but that was my original interpretation. Understanding of gratitude from that lens.

Speaker 2:

Right. So what I'm hearing you saying with parental alienation and all the pain and suffering that comes along with it, gratitude wasn't even accessible. It was just something other people had and wasn't anything that you thought was possible to experience. I think that's what I'm hearing.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

Cool, Very cool. Stephen. What did gratitude look like for you before you got here?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know it's a great question. I think for me gratitude looked like a more sort of isolated practice that you put on, meaning you'd have moments of gratitude, you know, sometimes spaced very far apart or sometimes closer together. But it was more like, I guess, kind of to what Linda said, more of a non-connected experience, meaning it was a little bit more external. I'd have life would go along and then every once in a while I kind of wake up and go, oh man, I'm certainly grateful for that, and then life would go back to kind of the way it was, and then I might pop up again and like oh man that was awesome, or I was grateful for that, but it was more sporadic and sort of compartmentalized, I would say, for me.

Speaker 2:

So it came in and out of your life and sometimes you could feel it and sometimes you just were maybe a little bit unconscious just going through the routine of life and you didn't even get an opportunity to appreciate much of it. Right, absolutely yeah, I totally relate to that. And Anna, what about you? What did gratitude look like to you?

Speaker 4:

I'm laughing.

Speaker 2:

I'm so curious what are you laughing?

Speaker 4:

at. Gratitude wasn't even on my radar. I was so emotionally checked out and so obsessed with fixing what was going on in my family I couldn't identify with the alienation process going on. I was there to fix things and everything else got pushed out of the way and I felt I was worn out and felt hard done by and felt like a victim. So yeah, gratitude wasn't even there a thing. I had an intellectual concept of it, but I didn't apply it to my own life at all.

Speaker 2:

I super appreciate you bringing in the idea of just being checked out in the fixing and changing and surviving mode and there's no real comprehension or relationship to gratitude whatsoever. I feel like all of us can relate to that in some form and as I'm thinking about gratitude, for me what comes up is it was super transactional, it was about me and what I was getting out of a situation and it wasn't really about anyone else. I was super self-centric. Yeah, I didn't have a bridge to gratitude, because maybe I hadn't suffered enough, maybe it's my family of origin and how I was raised, and it wasn't really about other people and them having a good time too. It was just about my experience and super self-focused.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I relate to what everyone said what great answer. It was like what a great show. We should shut it down and go home and call it a day. But we're not going to. So, stephen, what does gratitude look like now? And if you could just also share roughly how long you've been around, program and kind of what it's looked like Maybe a little bit of an arc, not too long an arc, but a little bit of arc what it's looked like since you've joined community and support.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I've been part of the Parental Alienation Anonymous 12-step community for about three years, and three years and three months, three years and four months, something like that and I think the way gratitude has changed for me the most is that I experience it throughout my day and my life regularly now, as opposed to it being a sort of a momentary thing that I grab onto and then I kind of put it back in a box and then I pull it out again and put it back in a box, and I guess the best way I can describe that is that I can even experience the feeling of gratitude by hearing somebody else share their gratitude.

Speaker 1:

In other words, I can tap into someone else's share in a meeting about how grateful they are for something in their life, and it gives me an internal feeling of gratitude too, even though it's not my gratitude that's being shared. And so I think that's one of the most powerful things that I've gotten from being a part of the community. And then I guess secondly is just that this process of 12-step recovery has helped me to learn about gratitude in hard times, to have gratitude for things it's not always the victories and the wins and the job promotions or the this or the that or whatever. But there can be gratitude in difficult times as well, and sometimes that's even more poignant to me.

Speaker 2:

That's super beautiful. I really appreciate you sharing that and I just have a quick follow-up question. Like you say, I'm in a meeting and I hear someone else's gratitude and I can feel that, which is something new in a muscle I think most of us are working on. Where does it show up in your body? Does it show up in your body? Does it show up in your head, Like what? How does that manifest when you're at a meeting and you feel that? Have you ever tracked that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would say it. You know, initially there's a processing of what the other person is sharing that they're grateful for, but then I really feel it. It's kind of like the best way I can describe it actually just thought of this was laying in a hammock on the most beautiful day you can think of, and gently swinging back and forth and looking up at the sky and the sun and just feeling that warmth kind of come from the center of your body and the sun and just feeling that warmth kind of come from the center of your body. That's sort of how I would describe it. It's like a calmness and a peace and a feeling of like fullness and joy. I guess is how I would describe it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, that's a great analogy and as you started, with the hammock and the sun and the sway, and I'm like I was ready for a nap, Like that's what comes up for me, let's go nap, but anyway, we're going to keep going With Anna. What does gratitude look like in recovery for you? What are you able to talk about? Track share.

Speaker 4:

Wow, it's really. You know, it's almost like a light has been switched on, because recovery has allowed me to build a relationship. Well, first, identify that I need to build a relationship with myself, but as I do that, then gratitude is a huge part of it. And when I was thinking about these questions for today, gosh, I would, if someone had said this to me at the beginning of my journey, which is like three and a half years ago, yeah, I would have been out of the room probably. But I can now say with hand on heart that I have gratitude for the fact that I had to.

Speaker 4:

Really, because of my situation and the way I was showing up in my connections and my family, the situation became so dire that I had to find a different way to move in the world, and I don't think I would have, I wouldn't have chosen this part. I had. Things had to get really, really, really desperate and to be able to have gratitude for that is huge. I just shared. I didn't have gratitude at all. I felt hard done by and I didn't. Yeah, I just shared. I didn't have gratitude at all. I felt hard done by and I didn't. Yeah, I had a big victim mentality going on and now I'm very grateful that I was pushed into such a dark place that I either had to sink or swim, and I chose to swim and I held on to initially. Yeah, paa came five years after, like I was first alienated from my kids.

Speaker 4:

But it's really interesting to see that shift for me because at the beginning it was hard for me to have gratitude for anything and I thought my life wouldn't be able to go on if I wasn't part of this family unit and I wasn't being what I considered to be an active mum.

Speaker 4:

And now, to look at it from that perspective, I have gratitude for many, many aspects of my life and I can really relate to what Stephen shared. When I'm in meetings and people are sharing their wins and successes, whatever that looks like, I have the biggest smile on my face and that comes from my heart center and that's because I feel like we're part of a family and isolation is reduced when you're in that community and I felt so alone and isolated before I came into the program. That's not an environment that fosters gratitude, not for me, and so to have that you've talked about sympathetic joy before, lawrence to have that sympathetic joy going on is like an extension of my gratitude process and it's so beautiful. And to watch people grow and share their stories is not an aspect I considered before step work either. It's very cool.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that and, for anyone new to the show, sympathetic joy is a Buddhist meditation practice and it's practicing the joy in someone else's joy and it's a really wonderful access point, especially when you're struggling with so many different seminal events graduations, birthdays, breakfast dinners, whatever that you're missing with your children. Actually practicing the joy and joy has brought a lot of relief in my particular life. And one thing you said, anna. You said something about being pushed into this dark place in order to kind of reach these spaces, and I'm curious because that language is interesting as we're talking about gratitude like when you think about this dark space, is there any other languaging you could add to that now that you have a little bit of perspective and time, or does it still feel like that dark space?

Speaker 4:

you know, it's because of work and program. I think in a deeper spiritual connection, it feels like I was being guided in a certain drug. I was determined to have this idea that I was in charge and I was in control, and the more I kept doing that, the more I had had to. I was I don't want to say going off course necessarily, but I had things had to get very dire before I would make changes that I need to make and be able to identify with. The first step in terms of this is all I have control over. I was putting a lot of energy into everything else in my life and everyone else in my life and was, in doing so, avoiding myself, and for me it was a no-win situation. So I had to, yeah, very determined, very stubborn, very singular minded, in a very much just mode of survival, and it had to get super desperate. And, yeah, it felt dark, but I didn't want to leave it. The darkness felt familiar too it's like I know how to do this.

Speaker 4:

I don't like it, but I know how to do it and I had to be shown a different way and I listening to people in the first meetings that I attended and thinking these, these guys have hope and they have joy. There was something in despite the affinity with the darkness, there was something in me that wanted to understand what that looked like, feel what that felt like, and it was very inspiring and that helped lift me up out of that space. I think I have huge gratitude for that.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, anna and Linda. What about you? What does your relationship, like gratitude, look like with program support community?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I landed in my first meeting on November 15th of 2024. I feel like I'm a relative newcomer. I had no experience with the 12-step recovery process, so this was all new to me, learning, and I'm still learning every day. But to add on what I previously thought gratitude meant was more of a social transaction of thank you and please. I mean, I think at that extent, rather than negative, it was just some social transaction of formality, and that's what gratitude was. After being in the community and going through this recovery process, it's allowed me to understand that it can be a reciprocal exchange among people, but it doesn't have to be, and that's how I've been practicing. It is what am I appreciative of, what are the things that I wish people would be grateful and show their appreciation for me? I've translated that to say my mom, my daughter, you know what are some of the things that I wish my daughter appreciated me for? And in thinking about that, it allowed me to reflect and say, gosh, I, you know I'm fortunate enough. My mom is still with me, my parents are still with me. And I thought, gosh, you know, there are all the things that my mom did for me when I was growing up. You know she worked hard. She commuted, she. I was growing up, you know she worked hard, she commuted. She made dinner for us, healthy meals. She would, you know, help us with our schoolwork. She made sure to get us to work extra, I mean in conjunction, of course, with my father.

Speaker 3:

But something came to me of you know, I'm a strong woman because my mother raised me and those are some of the principles that you know I try to instill in my children and you know, think of when I think of my daughter. But it's one of those things for me. Now my gratitude is I look for it, I'm intentional about it. It's not just something that comes, it's kind of like that game, you know, slug bug right Back in the day, when there were VW bugs all around. You know you would look for it. You know you would look for them. I feel like that's where I am in my process is it's a intentional practice that I do regularly, every day, to try and find that in my life. And it really brings me that joy that it doesn't have to be that someone says thank you to me, someone doesn't have to appreciate me. I shouldn't do something just to get gratitude. You know it's not transaction or reciprocal. It can come just from me looking for it.

Speaker 2:

I really appreciate you bringing in the intentionality of it and that it's a muscle and you need to work with it. And as you work with it, it grows and expands. And I'm guessing, as you've stepped deeper into this intentional practice, that you see it grow and expanding and becoming more accessible in more and more instances and places and moments. Would that be accurate?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. It translates to all parts of my life. I've done it with even, like at work, I have a coworker. They, you know, did great work doing, you know, leading on an effort, and I want to congratulate them and tell either their supervisor give them a little applause on our, you know, team's chat, or whatever it might be. So it translates outside of being a parent, to who you are as a human being, and so I think that speaks to what you're saying as far as you know broadening that breadth of where you can show up with you know, your gratitude practices.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. Thank you for that. And I remember one of my first meetings I went to a lot of years ago. There's this gentleman up sharing and he was talking about gratitude and how he had a life and he was living a life and he was living this incredible life and he was smiling and stuff and I share this in meetings often.

Speaker 2:

I hated him, he was the devil, he was like the worst person in the world because he was happy and he was appreciating life and I didn't have the capacity to understand that when I was in a lot of pain and if you're listening to this podcast and you don't understand necessarily how this happens or what we're talking about for every single one of us, it took a lot of time and there's a lot of days today still which we'll get into the conversation that I know I'm not grateful and I presume other people might have that similar feeling and also just want to say that it's counterintuitive. Right, I came to my first meeting looking for relief, looking for a strategy, looking for something to do. I did not come looking for gratitude, and gratitude is it something that there is the intentionality that this is what it is every single day? Is it something you pop into once in a while and trying to track who I started with last time. But whatever, you're up, Anna.

Speaker 4:

I'm grateful for the opportunity. Yeah, I do. I I verbally give gratitudes when I go to bed at night, like I make that a practice of doing that and I'm thinking about I do it during the day as well. I pause during the day and really take note. I've slowed down. Recovery has taught me how to slow down and I practice that pause when I'm responding to things as well. But it's also allowed me to really take note of what's going on in my day and look at what I have rather than what I don't have. I note of what's going on in my day and look at what I have rather than what I don't have.

Speaker 4:

I had that approach when I came and I thought everything had been taken away from me and that wasn't a space for me to acknowledge gratitude either. But now I can see the gifts and before I go to sleep it feels really nice to list through the things in my day that I feel grateful for and that fills up my heart space as well. It's nice even just to talk about having the practice, because I can see gratitude in all aspects the life that I had before this part of my journey and the alienation. I can feel that now, but I didn't feel anything before this anyway. So it's interesting to come from a very emotionally checked out place to one where I'm grateful to be on this podcast today. I would never see myself doing that. I found myself in program and the big part of that is using gratitude to move through my days. It's really it's a very cool process.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and I did hear you say that you're grateful to be on the podcast today. Could you just give us two or three other things that you might be able to track that you're grateful from this day so far? It was probably middle of the day for all of us roughly so a couple of things that might jump to your mind?

Speaker 4:

That's a great question. You know what the sun is shining outside at the moment? I'm in Canada and, yeah, spring is a long time coming the gap between winter on the calendar. It's been spring for a while Now. It actually feels like it and the grass is green and there were kids outside yesterday kicking soccer balls around with their parents and that's just beautiful and I can look at those kids kicking the soccer balls around and think I got to do that with my kids too and I can enjoy the fact that there's a family doing that and it's new life. I'm very grateful for the concept of new life.

Speaker 2:

I love that. And again, for folks listening, like gratitude doesn't need to be this, like shining giant light or this beam coming at you, like gratitude is really the simplest things that we get to notice and from that space it gets to grow and it's not. Hey, I'm grateful today because now my kid's back in my life, I know that's a place that a lot of us would like to reach. But that's not what gratitude is. It's all the little pieces in between, at least in my experience. So, stephen, do you have a regular gratitude practice and what does that look like?

Speaker 1:

I actually do.

Speaker 1:

You know, it's kind of typically when I'm laying in bed at night and I kind of say a prayer at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

That's the first thing that I focus myself around is gratitude as a part of that sort of quiet prayer time that I have at the end of the day, as a part of that sort of quiet prayer time that I have at the end of the day. So that's kind of more, I guess, more formalized somewhat, you know, in that it's a kind of a regular practice that I do. But then what has become more regular for me I would say, since doing program work is, like Anna said, slowing down. I've slowed myself down, hopefully not in mental processing, but slowed myself down to be more observant of myself and the world around me and people around me, and I have found that that is something that really helps my gratitude quotient, if that's a word, increase dramatically, is noticing smaller things because I'm slowing down and I'm being more observant of the world around me and the people around me, and it creates this kind of feeling of wonder about just the present moment.

Speaker 2:

That's something that's increased significantly since coming into program for me, Do you use in the language slowing down like slowing down to you means not being so caught up in life and stuff around you. Like what does slowing down mean when you use that word?

Speaker 1:

I think it'd be more slowing down the chatter that tends to, you know, happen in my brain pretty regularly, where I've got four or five things that are cycling around at any given time and they kind of don't have anything to anchor to. So I think slowing down it's really more about being present and stopping. You know, doing like I do some meditation work I'm not an expert, but I'm trying to get better at it but that slows that mental chatter, which allows me to be more observant and more present, which is really helpful.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Stephen.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 3:

Linda gratitude practice. What might that look like for you? Yeah, so I'll share what has and has not worked for me. I'm a very organized, I'm going to try and do things this way, and I got to plan things out kind of person. And so I thought, well, you know, let me put a reminder on my phone for every two weeks that says programmatic gratitude. And I'd get this alarm and it would say programmatic gratitude. And the very first time it showed up I'm like this isn't going to work. It didn't feel authentic to me, it felt forced, and that's not really what I feel is the intention behind gratitude. So that didn't work for me.

Speaker 3:

What I did start doing was I do have a little spot. You know I work full time and so I have a spot on my little workbook. So on Monday mornings I'll write down the things that I'm grateful for, and they're the standard boilerplate things that people can say they're grateful. I'm grateful for a home, a roof over my head, I'm grateful for my children. I'm grateful for and they're the standard boilerplate things that people can say they're grateful. I'm grateful for a home, a roof over my head, I'm grateful for my children, I'm grateful for my health, and those are, you know, pretty much stay general and consistent, but writing those out sets up the foundation for me to, throughout the week, think of more specific things, and that's where I build up a little bit more of a manifest of why, specifically, I'm grateful for things, because I think meaningful gratitude is about having specifics.

Speaker 3:

You know, saying that you're grateful for the roof over your head, that's great, but you know I'm grateful for the roof over my head because, gosh, there was a big storm and a lot of people maybe you know, either suffer property damage or you know you're stuck in floods, whatever it might be. So that's worked a little better for me. I also do journaling and I do that gratitude in my journaling and it really a lot of times leads to prayer. So I have a prayer list as well, and so you know, for me sometimes they're connected. When I start doing my gratitude, it leads me into a prayer list and thinking of people and the way things, ways that I can support them, just whether it's in prayer and not necessarily being right next to them.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, and I like this gratitude at a little bit higher level, though. I got the roof over my head and then kind of breaking it down and dropping down and looking at the lower levels of hey, I'm not wet, you know what I mean, I'm not this or I'm not that. I think that's really useful. And again, coming back to the intentionality that you have around the gratitude and the practice and building the muscle is super cool and I'd asked even this question earlier. I'm like when you're sitting in a meeting, like where do you feel it? And I think this is a really important part of my gratitude practices.

Speaker 2:

My access point was through meditation and conscious communication and I always thought that I would feel gratitude as a thought. But it really is a feeling, a feeling tone within my body, and then the thought comes on board later and and that's the practice that I've cultivated I can be sitting at a restaurant and I can see someone having an interaction with someone and I feel it in my body and then I pay attention to what's actually happening. That's super sweet because I don't need anything. I don't even know most of the people when I feel gratitude about it and I cultivate this resource and this resilience in myself that I take out into every conversation.

Speaker 2:

Relationships I love everyone's little nuances, as they're talking about gratitude, so this isn't on our question list, but this is where my mind goes is we're talking about gratitude and we have kids and we have grandkids and we have family members that we have some challenging instances with. Did you have any sense of gratitude for your children and the life that they were living, even though they were choosing not to incorporate you in that life? And if that question doesn't make sense, please ask for clarification, and I'm going to start with you, linda. Did you feel gratitude for their day-to-day existence and what was happening in their life? Could you even touch that?

Speaker 3:

I couldn't. I couldn't at the time I was really self-focused and the injustices that had been done on me that you know. There was access that their father had to the children that I didn't have, and it was really me, me, me. And so I'm not sure if you want me to go into what it is like for me today, because I do have gratitude towards my daughter, whom a strange alienated erased from today, and that did shift for me. But because I do have gratitude towards my daughter, whom a strange alienated erased from today, and that did shift for me. But at you know at the time that either the initial incident happened or the alienation started before I came to the program. I couldn't, I couldn't see any of that. I was just blinded by my own grief, by my own anger, by the details of my circumstances that I could not grasp any way to say that there was anything good that was coming from it that I could be grateful for.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, and I think a lot of us have the same experience when we come and we can't see the gratitude, we can't relate to the joy and some of the positive things that are happening in our kids' lives. Because we want to be a parent, we want to be included, we want to be involved, we want to do all these things. So, like that, stuff is super clouded and I appreciate your description, linda. And yeah, I'm super curious to hear what that looks like today with your daughter, like what are you grateful for today that you might not have been able to identify yesterday?

Speaker 3:

So it actually came to me and just being in one of the meetings, and I didn't even consider myself really a spiritual person, I have a Buddhist background and I consider it more of a philosophy rather than religion, or you know principles that you practice in life, at least from the way that I was raised around it, and it's one of those that I now understand and describe as a spiritual awakening or, you know, connection with your higher power. And what it was was that I thought, wow, you know my son, okay, okay. So we're driving. And my son said to me mom, why did you let that car get in front of you, go in front of you? I'm like because they needed to get in and I could stop and allow that to happen. He's like, yeah, but you could have just kept on going. And I said, well, you know, those are the things that I like to do. I like to, you know, pay it forward. You know, pass on just those.

Speaker 3:

Maybe he may do that in the future, maybe he won't, but what I hold on to is, even though I no longer have a relationship with my daughter over the 16 years, that we did have a relationship. There are values that I instilled in her. There are things that little details of what I, when I was with her and raised her with, that she's going to take and continue on with for the rest of her life. It may never come around that I was the one that attributed to it and I don't need the credit, but I can hold on in my heart knowing that I've contributed to this responsible, intelligent, you know human being and that there's a part that I was able to instill in her that she's going to take into the rest of her life and be a good human being and citizen. So that's the gratitude I have from afar, without having contact.

Speaker 2:

I love that. I love that. Yeah, and good question. Your son asked and you know, super cool Like we need five, 10, 15, 20 years to see if any of that gets allowed in. Anna, gratitude for the kids when you first got here, was that existent? Could you touch into that whatsoever?

Speaker 4:

no, and I'm thinking the whole the alienation process. When I really started to see oh, I didn't have a label for it. Then, when I started to really recognize what was going on, I was already very emotionally checked out and upregulated. It paralyzed me even more, so I didn't know. I went into a deeper form of survival mode, I think, and almost felt like I was yeah, I was very much reacting to my situation. Rather than responding so anything, anything to do with the emotional side of it, I just had to shut it down because I felt stunned.

Speaker 4:

Most of the time I just felt stunned, and so I couldn't yeah, being able to be a little bit detached and disconnected, which is what I can find myself being now, in order to view it from a different perspective and have some gratitude. I felt like I was frantically treading water and all I could do was keep doing that and everything was happening around me and I had no say in it and no control and no way. Yeah, it was not a nice headspace to be in at all. Very hard to see anything to be grateful for. I couldn't even see how I was going to survive, and it's saying that I still had the idea in my head that somehow I was going to fix it. If I kept doing what I'd always done all my life, something would shift, someone would change, my ex would maybe change, or the system would step in and help me and see how horrendous everything was and I'd be rescued. I wanted, I was waiting to be rescued.

Speaker 2:

Yeah and see how horrendous everything was and I'd be rescued. I was waiting to be rescued. Yeah, it's fascinating how those old family of origin strategies that saved our lives when we were two, three, four, five years old, that we're adults struggling with relationships and we're still waiting for someone to rescue us, for something to change, for something different to happen. And it's still there. And we're curious why our kids are behaving the way that they're behaving, but they're using the same skill sets that they used to survive at two, three, four, five years old. And they're young adults, but or not young adults, or teenagers, whatever age they are.

Speaker 2:

And I had this visual when you said you were stunned most of the time, and I think that's such a powerful visual and what came up to mind for me was someone just getting hit with like a taser and just, you know, like someone shooting a taser, and that that's literally like that cut off where you can't get anywhere beyond that because there's nowhere else to go. You're just in that buzz. So that that's my visual. I don't know if anyone else had that visual. But, and, anna, what does, what does a little bit of gratitude look like today for your kids? What would you say, say about that Maybe an example or so.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, so gratitude, can you clarify a bit more, lawrence? Gratitude for what they're going through or gratitude for what the whole experience has allowed me to see?

Speaker 2:

and feel that's a great question. But I would say, for this particular question, something that your kids are experiencing, or you think they're experiencing, that you don't have any kind of contact with, but that you can feel gratitude in your heart and your body, and you're not looking to get something, you're not looking to exchange something, you're just experiencing gratitude.

Speaker 4:

I don't know if this answers the question necessarily, but a lot of the work I've done and continue to do in recovery is and I've spoken about this before I think about the intergenerational trauma.

Speaker 4:

I have a sense when you ask that question. I have gratitude for my kids in the sense that the work I'm doing is interrupting a bigger. My belief is it's interrupting a bigger family system of dysfunction and intergenerational trauma and my doing the work now how I feel like I'm spiritually connected to my kids and have gratitude for that, is that the work that I unpack now lightens the load for them. So my hope is and I may never get to see this and I'm becoming more okay with that is that they will come to some space in their some time in their life where they first have the opportunity, but also welcome the opportunity, to connect differently with people, because I can't imagine that the way that I raised them, as well as their dad, is going to allow them to have a lot of what I would consider healthy connections with people. So I can see a bigger picture now and I'm grateful for that.

Speaker 4:

And I don't know if that's answering the question at all, but that's what's coming into my head. I have gratitude for that and that. Saying that that feels almost a little bit esoteric for me that I wouldn't have had the bandwidth had I not done the work in the program to be able to be expansive enough to see that, because that narrow little space where I was stunned and just frozen, there wasn't capacity for any of that and I may never know what that looks like and I might not be connected with them again. But that feels healing on like a very, very much a family level. But then also I can feel that expand too. I like the idea that ripples into communities and that's part of my spiritual journey. I've been pushed into that dark space in order to find a different way and in finding a different way I find a different way for my kids too.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, anna, and the transgenerational healing and stepping into the space and doing that deep work to maybe shift the family system, either in this generation, next generation, whatever that looks like is profoundly powerful and challenging work. Wow, what a great show. So many great perspectives, so much rich learning and different people sharing part of the story, and I hope it was super useful, because talking about gratitude again is counterintuitive to what so many of us are experiencing and knowing that as we work with this pain and this trauma and these things that are going on, that there are other layers and higher frequencies we can get to and that we can start to sit in this gratitude and we can start to reframe some of our thoughts and our lives can start to shift. And I believe, with the shifting of our lives and engaging gratitude on a different level, that it changes every relationship in our life and will trickle down to our kids and grandkids and I see it manifesting in so many different relationships in my life. So I'm so grateful.

Speaker 2:

If you're new to the community, again, welcome. There's a bunch of great resources in the show notes. Please email me at family disappeared at gmailcom if you want to just say you're grateful for something, I'd love to hear that. Or if you want to suggest different people on the show and like, comment, share, and that must probably is a greater place to share. What are you grateful for today? And if you don't usually comment on youtube or one of the other things, let's make an exception. I want to know five things that you're grateful for today. And, yeah, let's see how many people we can get to engage in that.

Speaker 2:

And with that, thank you for coming out to play today. We hope to see you around the neighborhood and if no one's told you yet, today I love you and that's part of my gratitude practices that I can take in love and I can also give love out. So have a beautiful day and we'll see you around the neighborhood. 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.