Family Disappeared

Letting Go, Holding On: The Paradox of Healing from Alienation & Estrangement Part 1 - Episode 98

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, the panel discusses the complexities of gratitude in the context of parental alienation and emotional pain. They share personal stories of healing, the challenges of navigating family dynamics, and the importance of finding joy in small moments. The conversation emphasizes the need for self-care and the journey of letting go of emotional attachments while fostering resilience and community support.

Key Takeaways

  • Gratitude can coexist with pain and emotional hurt.
  • Personal stories of alienation highlight the journey of healing.
  • Finding joy in small moments is essential for emotional well-being.
  • It's important to acknowledge the complexity of gratitude.
  • Self-care is crucial when navigating difficult family dynamics.
  • Letting go of emotional attachments can lead to personal growth.
  • Community support plays a vital role in healing.
  • Emotional responses to family dynamics can vary greatly.
  • Practicing gratitude can shift one's perspective on life.
  • The journey of healing is ongoing and requires patience.

Chapters

00:00 - Navigating Gratitude Amidst Pain
04:10 - Personal Stories of Alienation and Healing
10:51 - The Complexity of Gratitude
17:06 - Emotional Responses to Family Dynamics
24:20 - Finding Joy in Others' Happiness
30:48 - Letting Go of Emotional Attachments
33:14 - Reflections on Gratitude and Life Changes

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:

what I try to do more and more is not compare at all, not compare the good, not compare the bad, but just yeah, I am grateful for what I have, but that doesn't change hurt I may have experienced. That doesn't change the pain of what it feels like to go through this experience, and it's hard hi, my name is laurence joss and welcome to the family disappeared podcast.

Speaker 2:

Today we're going to have a couple of parents on a panel and we are going to be continuing our conversation around gratitude. But we're going to dive into some more nuances around gratitude and family and lessons learned. And if you didn't listen to the first two episodes on gratitude they were a couple of weeks ago We'll put a link in the show notes and I'd highly suggest jumping back to those two episodes and then jumping into these two current episodes. And if you're new to the community, welcome. It's great to have you here today.

Speaker 2:

There's a plethora of podcasts that have been taped already, all over different kinds of subjects attorneys, therapists, what to do, what not to do so there's a bunch of different stuff with a bunch of different subject matters. So I highly suggest checking all that stuff out and hopefully we have up all our new playlists for this episode up on YouTube so you can see a bunch of curated stuff, so you can get a little bit more of cross-section of everything we've been talking about Again. There's other great information in the show notes. We have a free 12-step support program, parental Alienation Anonymous. We talk about that a lot in today's episode, and it's a great group, it's free, there's no real barrier to access, and there's other great groups out there and other great supports out there that are useful too. Also, in the show notes you'll see a link to our 501c3 nonprofit donation button. We'd love to have any resources you have available to help us continue to bring all these services to you for free, and they will always remain free.

Speaker 2:

So we're grateful to have you along for the ride today and it's time to jump in and see what this panel of parents has to say. You know, gratitude is such an interesting thing and I was going to share this little story during the taping on the panel of the ladies, but I thought I'd save it for this little intro into the show. And when I first got here I was in a lot of pain. My life was falling apart. I didn't have a relationship with my kids, I didn't know what to do. And life has changed and there's been some connections, some still disconnection and stuff like that.

Speaker 2:

But I heard someone in the room say that my paper cut doesn't hurt any less because you have a broken arm. And I'd say, when I first got into program I felt like my arm was broken. I was completely frozen. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't work. I was in so much emotional pain. I just wanted to get my kids back. I couldn't understand anything.

Speaker 2:

And then slowly that changed. I built up some resources, I built up some resilience, I stopped causing a lot of fractures and a lot of fires myself and then I just started navigating the system a little bit differently and then my broken arm felt more like a sprained ankle and then sometimes now it only feels like a paper cut. But my paper cut can still really hurt, even though I'm long into this journey. There's times where that's just excruciating and it kind of feels like a broken arm again. So I'm just saying that we're all on different paths and on different offshoots of this trip, that we're on with parental alienation, estrangement and erasure, and my gratitude might be really big.

Speaker 2:

One day I might feel like my broken arm is only like this little paper cut, so I'm able to tap into gratitude, and sometimes, even when my broken arm's really hurting, I can still tap into gratitude. And it's such a relief that I have access to gratitude, because when I got here I wasn't grateful for anything. I don't know if any of that made any sense, but the show is going to be great. So let's hear what everyone has to say. I am so excited for our guests today and for anyone out there that hasn't met these folks that are part of our community, and on the parent panel today I'm going to have them go ahead and qualify and introduce themselves, and when I ask them to qualify, it's just what we do at meetings how we introduce ourselves to each other and how we keep the rooms and the community safe. So, julie, if you could please just qualify and go ahead and introduce yourself to the community.

Speaker 1:

I'm Julie. I'm the alienated mom of a 15, almost 16 year old boy and also a 23 year old stepson. I have contact with my 15 year old. It's growing more and more. I do get regular custody, but the events that we've gone through in the last couple of years are still in the forefront of things and I have no contact with my stepson.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, julie, great to have you here today and thanks for taking the time to come play with us for a little bit, and Anna, if you could please go ahead and just introduce yourself and qualify.

Speaker 3:

Hi everyone, I'm Anna. I'm the alienated mother of two adult sons, a 22-year-old and a 20-year-old. I currently don't have contact with either of them.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, anna, great to have you here again. I'm going to qualify, which I don't do on all the shows, but my name is Lawrence. I'm an alienated father and grandfather. I have three daughters. I have a 31-year-old that has been about eight or nine years with no contact. I have a 28 year old that we've started having contact the last six months or so and that is a slippery slope, like Julie said in her introduction and it's nice to have some contact and I have a 24 year old that.

Speaker 2:

I have regular contact with and I have a couple of grandkids that I'm yet to meet. I have seen some beautiful pictures of them over the last several months and if you're new and you're hearing us qualify, we're not doing this to say we're this way and someone else is another way. We're just letting folks know what our family situation is and that's pretty much it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we're going to continue on with our gratitude conversation that we started, I think, four episodes ago and we're going to jump into a little bit more nuanced versions of it, and I had this conversation with the ladies before we started. So, anyway, we're going to start with that. But we're going to start with something super basic here and what's something small that brought you joy this week.

Speaker 3:

Anna, you can go first, I get to go first, you know what it's nice to reflect that I have more moments of joy in my life, since I've been doing been on this healing journey.

Speaker 3:

But something that really struck me about this week was that I was meeting up with a friend that I've known I don't know the last four or five years and she's been helping me in the processes I've been going through and she was commenting and it was unprompted how she can see a change in me and it felt very affirmative and affirming, I should say, and positive, and it was about I'm in a much more expansive state than I used to be.

Speaker 3:

It was an interesting comment and when I first started working with her, I was emotionally very contracted and physically contracted too, and she said it feels like you're blossoming like a flower, and I thought that was really a very sweet thing to say and it was pertinent to the conversation we were having. It was also helpful to me because I can't see my progress. Always I feel like I've made progress, but sometimes I feel like I'm a scaling a mountain. That's like this, and so it was really nice to have someone that's followed me along the way and seeing me in a lot of physical and emotional pain and seeing the changes and been able to. We had a really good conversation following on from that. So it was just it nice to hear and it brought me a lot of joy, because it's nice to hear that from a friend and she knew it would mean a lot to me and it felt good, it made me feel positive.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I got a big smile on my face, Anne, and I love it when someone that we care about and that has been able to track us over a period of time is able to reflect back a healthy mirror of what they're experiencing from us and what we're going through and and like you said, we get to see some of our growth that we can't necessarily track, but other people that aren't in our heads can track in a more useful way. So that's a great little piece of gratitude and, Julie, what's something that you are grateful for?

Speaker 1:

Well, I mean, this happened after I got divorced and it happened again when my son was alienated from me. But you find that you have all this time on your hands and what do you do with it? And both times I went back to doing things that I had loved and maybe had fallen away from before the marriage or before I was alienated. And for me, that's sailing. And so this week I volunteered to help teach some Navy boys who you would think would be good sailors, but they've never actually been on small boats. I sail dinghies. So we took them out sailing and it was sunset and it was just beautiful.

Speaker 1:

I shouldn't say Navy boys, it was Navy men and women and some veterans too. But we just we went out and we're teaching them to sail and had a great time. And you know, it made me happy. It's something I'd given up for a long time because it was hard to do with a small child, but now, even though he's back in my life, he's a big boy and he doesn't need me 24, seven and I was out on the lake and it was a great time.

Speaker 2:

That's really sweet. Nice to learn that you like to sail and you're coming back to sailing and you got to go out with a bunch of Navy folks and then teach them a little bit of sailing and also get to just be in that position of moving around the lake. That sounds divine. You know, I'm connected to Hawaii now a little bit and they actually have a sailing club out there.

Speaker 2:

And you go to the sailing club and you take a lesson and then after you take a lesson you have access to all the small dinghies and all the small boats and something like that, and you pay a hundred dollars a year to be part of the community and you come and clean up and do different stuff on the weekend. So I'm feeling a lot of your joy in you telling that story, cause I go back in a little bit and I'm going to sail for the first time in what close to 30 years.

Speaker 1:

Oh wow, Good for you.

Speaker 2:

Yay, that's a gratitude that I have. That wasn't what I was going to share. So what I'm going to share about is I texted my middle daughter after mother's day and said happy mother's day. And asked some follow-up questions and you know, I got nothing. You know, when there's that indignation that comes up, like I'm gonna send the text and I'm gonna say, hey, we're connecting. And is this really connecting? Are we really doing anything? And and rah, rah, you know, like I don't, I'm presuming other people there have iterations of this in their head and I'm like doing all this stuff and then I'm like, okay, I don't need to do anything right now, I can just wait and just see what happens next. And then I forgot about it and I got a text from her this week, you know, saying, hey, this. I got a text from her this week, you know, saying, hey, this is how my mother's day was. You know, we, we did this, we did that, and she sent a beautiful picture of her and my grandson and it's like, oh, there it is again Like the initial wanting to jump into the parental alienation mechanism and I would have propelled some kind of pain or some kind of injury by just kind of projecting what was going on in me and I just wanted her to respond, which is a natural thing that we all feel, and at the same time as our kids are younger, middle-aged, older, they have stuff going on and it doesn't work on my timeline and I don't know what's happening, but I'm grateful for that moment that I didn't screw anything up.

Speaker 2:

So that's my gratitude, and let's see what we have here. This is a good question. I like this one. Has anyone ever told you to just be grateful for what you have, and how did that feel? And Julie?

Speaker 1:

you're going to compare and say, well, you know it could be so much worse. But what I try to do more and more is is not compare at all, not compare the good, not compare the bad, but just, yeah, I am grateful for what I have, but that doesn't change hurt the pain of what it feels like to go through this experience, and it's hard. It's hard when other people have. I have a friend with four kids that are almost all adults and they still I mean, maybe this is a little extreme, but they still want to live at home and they still want to be part of her daily life. And I know that's not going to be part of my journey and that's okay. But it's still easy to draw comparisons and say, well, you have it better than this other person. And it's really easy for us to say, well, but I have it worse than this other person. And I think the strategy is just to bring yourself back to center and, yes, I'm thankful for what I have and I'm still hurt by what was taken.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that. And I'm hearing you're hurt and like what are the feelings come up initially when someone says you know, are you just grateful for what you have? Is there other emotions that come up? And has that arc kind of like shifted as you have some recovery? If we revert back to not quite the recovery lens like what comes up.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I think part of you feels like there's kind of an insinuation that maybe you're being selfish, that you want too much. It's hard to say what is me wanting too much. Is it too much to ask that my child actually respond? Is that too much? You don't know until you're going through it and each person has their own thing that they wish were different or they miss.

Speaker 1:

When I went off to college, I remember my parents saying the thing they missed the most was me singing in the house, and I always thought that was silly because I was never like, I'm not a singer, I was just, you know, going through the house and singing whatever was in my head. And the first thing I noticed was when my son was gone, that I wasn't hearing him chinker on the piano anymore, and he couldn't even play the piano, but he would tinker on it and he had this one song that he was trying to learn. And one day I heard somebody playing that song and it immediately brought tears to my eyes like where's my son? I wanted to believe it was him and it wasn't him, of course. And yeah, we miss those little things and nobody else is allowed to tell us that's not a big deal to miss that. Whatever that thing is that you miss, we have the things we miss. We have the things we're sad about, and it's not selfish to be sad or to miss something right, yeah, and we all miss different things.

Speaker 2:

And, like in the first part of that thing you said, some people are saying like, hey, you've got enough, you just want more, and again same context that you're talking about. Like it's an individual reaction and it's what we need and what we're looking for in that moment and it shifts and changes. So, yeah, I appreciate that perspective and you, anna, has anyone ever told you to be grateful and how did that make you feel?

Speaker 3:

you know what? I haven't had that direct sentiment extended to me and I was thinking about it in the context of alienation and I was remembering I did. I haven't really shared my story with a lot of people, certainly not before I joined program and then I was really talking about it to people within the community so that they understood I had a context right and they had an understanding. I didn't have to explain myself. But if I did happen to share it or it came up in a conversation with people that didn't necessarily have a broader understanding of it, I remember what it felt like to have that expression on people's faces of shock or horror or whatever. I remember thinking then and even thinking it even more now.

Speaker 3:

Why could you not just say something along the lines of I can't imagine what that feels like. You're making me feel even more isolated, even more, having a sense of shame. It was shocking. I don't know if that's answering the question, but I remember what that felt like and lots of situations prompt a feeling of being uncomfortable and not knowing what to say. But you can still say I don't know what to say and a lot of the few times where I had to come out in a conversation, people were stumped for words.

Speaker 3:

I'm like do you not have any empathy? Is there no compassion? Like this is really painful. Can you not just say that sounds really painful, because it made me want to talk about it even less and it made me feel more isolated. It made me feel like I'd done something wrong and that was not a nice sensation and it didn't feel like it was fair at the time. I don't even know if it feels like it's fair now, but it was interesting that that question brought that up for me yeah, no, that's a lot of different emotions and super valid and a great perspective and bringing the shame in when someone asks.

Speaker 2:

that, I think, is really relevant for a lot of us and as I read the question, you know has anyone ever told you to be grateful Again, languaging grateful in 12 step program, you go to the rooms of 12 step and there's this thing that everyone says to you when you're new and they say keep coming back and that kind of sounds to me like just be grateful and like my initial response to that is screw you. You know, you keep coming back, you be grateful, you know. I mean I don't want to hear that from anyone. This is super painful and stuff and it brings up for me. It brings up anger, frustration, dread, shame, hopelessness. You know it's a super challenging thing to hear from someone and anyone that's out there struggling with any variation of grateful or keep coming back or whatever. You know what I mean. It's it's perfectly normal to be angry about it and I would say, as we're talking about it from a recovery lens, it shifts and changes and some of that anger moves to introspection and watching my behavior and kind of like what anna says, where she hasn't shared a story with a lot of people, like we start practicing discernment where's the right place to share it. When someone asks me that kind of question or makes that kind of comment around, you should just be grateful. A lot of times I just don't engage because there's nowhere to go with it and it is an evolution and it's great that we get angry and pissed and sad and shameful, because those are all regular human experiences and it's part of, like, the gratitude loop that we're going to be talking about today, as we get into some of the more nuanced portions of gratitude. I don't know if any of this makes sense, I don't know what I'm even talking about, but anyway, I'm going to move on to the next question.

Speaker 2:

This is a really interesting question. Like I'm out, I'm at the park, I'm at the mall, I'm doing something in life, and I see a family together and they look happy. How does that feel Like? Is there resentment? Is there anger? Is there joy? What does that arc look like from the time you've started, you know, learning some different tools or come into program or whatever the resources you're using now? So, anna, I'm going to ask that to you first whole families. What did they used to bring up for you? What does it bring up for you and what does it look like now?

Speaker 3:

At the beginning of doing the healing work and being part of the PA community. It was hard and if I'm thinking about it and as I'm thinking about it now, I think I tried not to even see it Like I tried to wrap myself up in a bubble and not register what was going on, even though I live in a suburban community and I'm surrounded by families and I go to the store and I do all of those things. I didn't want to register it because I wasn't feeling joy myself and it also felt like if I did register it then I would feel even more the stark contrast between what my reality was and what other people's realities were and I couldn't touch those emotions. I couldn't do it. But as I've unpacked a lot of that stuff and my journey and in conversations with people, I have joy seeing other families out doing their thing, playing spring soccer and at the store and buying ice creams and all that kind of stuff together.

Speaker 3:

I also have thoughts around the fact that when my kids were younger, I was a stay-at-home mum and I got to spend a lot of time with them With extracurricular stuff. I was involved in their classrooms, I was a volunteer parent and not every parent gets the opportunity to do that and I can say that now and reflect on that and feel joy in that, whereas the beginning of doing the work I couldn't, because everything felt like a loss, everything felt like something that had been taken away from me. I couldn't reflect on anything in a positive manner, everything felt black and white, it was negative. So the balance is more there now that I can apply that balanced feeling to seeing other families doing their thing and enjoying their joy alongside them and recognizing the fact that my experience with my kids had black and white and gray in it as well, like there was a mixture, rather than me trying to just only feel pain and not acknowledge anything else.

Speaker 3:

That hasn't been an easy process and it still hurts sometimes and in those moments when it really hurts and and in those moments when it really hurts and I'm feeling feelings of envy, I try and remind myself that the pain that I'm going through with the alienation it's real and it's acute and it's lessened over time, but there's still that ache there. I want a different relationship with my kids. I can't. That's not my reality. And I have a community now and I have friends now that I can have conversations around this, on all different aspects around it, and I can have support and I can practice accepting a reality that I don't necessarily like all the time.

Speaker 2:

And just to repeat back what I heard you say in the beginning it was much harder to take in much of the stuff that was happening and it was a little bit darker. And as you practice a little bit, you could see some joy and have joy in families. Practice a little bit, you could see some joy and have joy in families. And sometimes you're just sad and angry too and you just want the relationship back with your kids the way that you would like it to be. So you're staying within this arc, but you're going back and forth. It's not so static as it sounds like it was in the beginning. Does that sound accurate?

Speaker 3:

It does sound accurate and I'm able to feel all of the feels instead of just being stuck in the mindset of everything being negative and out of balance. It's a nicer place to occupy, for sure.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, Anna and Julie. What about you? How did you handle resentment or feelings or stuff that came up in the early days when you first started on this journey, and what does it kind of look like now?

Speaker 1:

I mean, I think really it started way before the official alienation. It started with the divorce. I got divorced when my son was only two, so you can imagine there weren't a whole lot of other parents that had two-year-olds whose parents were already going through divorce. That was hard back then to be the single mom taking my son to teeny tiny preschool and I definitely felt a little ostracized. I felt like they were. I definitely felt on the outside of things and but I learned to take advantage of what I did have.

Speaker 1:

We quickly moved to joint custody, which has many downsides, but I had to embrace the fact that I didn't have my son a hundred percent of the time when he wasn't with me, to get to rest and recuperate and be a better version of myself when he was with me. Instead of seeing it all as negative, which I mean it hurts. It hurts to have a three-year-old that you don't see half of the time. But sometimes I just had to find joy in my friends who were exhausted and I'd gotten to sleep because I didn't have a toddler climbing in my bed in the middle of the night every single night and I had to find some of that again when I was alienated, that it sucked. But I had friends that were going through. You know, the nightly homework battles that for a little while I don't have to have. I don't have to have the homework battles Somebody else gets to have. I don't have to have the homework battles, somebody else gets to have those battles. And I just had to find the positive side of the situation that I was in, because there was nothing I could do to change the situation I was in. So embrace the part that brings you joy, in whatever capacity that is. I mean, it's hard. I'll never forget a day.

Speaker 1:

You know, I was trying to figure out how to still be a mom, even though my son was not in my life and there was nothing to say that I couldn't still volunteer at his school and it wasn't to see him, but he just transferred to a new school. I didn't know any of the other parents. There was no way for me to know the other parents unless I met them. So I would volunteer at the school store and one day my son came up to the office, which was right in front of the school store, and I just saw him from afar through the glass doors and I saw his father come pick him up and I saw him walk across the parking lot and of course, the other moms that were volunteering with me in the store had no idea what was going on and I just you know, the tears are streaming down my face and they said isn't that your son? I was like yes.

Speaker 1:

They said did you not know he was coming to the office? I was like nope, and I didn't know if he was being picked up because he was sick. I didn't know if he was getting sent home for because he did something wrong. I have no idea why he got called into the office and sent home with his dad and you know, and they started asking me all the questions and it was just, I don't know. I don't have that kind of contact with my son, but I'm sure if he goes to the doctor I'll get the bill and then I'll find out.

Speaker 1:

That's where I was and it was. I mean, thankfully the other ladies could see that obviously something was going on that they didn't understand and they gave me space. But it was so hard in those moments that you know, other people know whether their kids have a doctor appointment and I didn't, and it hurt, but I took joy in the fact that I got to see him, and I hadn't been able to see him in months, so, and he didn't see me, he didn't know I was there. There was no cross-contamination, if you will. I just got to lay eyes on him and know that he was safe, which is a lot of what you're longing for when you're separated from your kid yeah, just being separated, not knowing about doctor's appointments or a's on a test or what they had for breakfast and stuff, is super, super, super challenging.

Speaker 2:

So having that huge emotional reaction makes Perfect sense and superhuman and yeah, and I like that. There was some joy in that because it's super complicated to get that to that joy early on when that's happening. And like for me, how do you handle families and stuff in the beginning is, I hated it. I hated seeing families together. I hated them being happy. I resented them. I was in so much pain. I just wanted that and it was hard to differentiate my feelings and my projections that I was putting on to these other families that I didn't know, differentiate my feelings and my projections that I was putting onto these other families that I didn't know, and at times it got me stuck more in my own crap.

Speaker 2:

What I learned and what people suggested to me is that like if you don't feel great, don't go to places that you're going to put yourself in a position to be around a bunch of families and a bunch of people celebrating or doing stuff. And that was some really great advice that someone gave me early on, because there were times that I was feeling super upregulated and I wasn't super friendly or I wasn't sleeping or I was hungry or whatever those things were. That made me a little bit more irritable, that I just said, oh, I get to make a different decision, I get to take care of myself. You know, and one of the great things that one of my friends told me in program is I'm like, hey, you know, I'm going to Ralph's or supermarket, whatever it is, and sometimes I bump into my kid or see someone's shadow or whatever it is and dude's like go to a different market. And that didn't dawn on me Like this was the market that I've always gone to, but it was such a simple something that someone could say to me that really changed my perspective on recovery. And if you're out there struggling and you're in the early days and it's your market or your parking lot or you're something else, my personal care became so much important so I could be available in those moments that I didn't need to be available for for my kids, for my friends, for my parents, for work, for whatever. Like I had to start to manage my own emotional ecosystem because seeing families together was super challenging in the beginning.

Speaker 2:

And I will say this for me now when I see families together. I love it when I see little things happen within personal friends and there's some really sweet connection. While I'm just sitting down and I'm seeing a son and a mom hanging out or some other folks in a family hanging out and they're just having a good time, there's so much joy in being able to slow down in that moment and just realize how precious that is and how much gratitude there is in seeing someone being able to share those little moments that I, as a parent, took for granted. There's a lot of joy and it builds up my resilience. The more I see other people having fun, it actually makes me feel better and makes me feel more grounded versus in the early days.

Speaker 2:

It totally used to dysregulate me. So it's a balance and it's an arc and it changes and some days it sucks to see families together and I leave. You know it feels like I'm at starbucks and if I want to stay cool, if I don't want to stay cool so I think that's a really important thing is to take care of yourself and figure out what taking care of yourself looks like. So do either of you have something on taking care of yourself and that kind of like shift of perspective, when you used to put yourself in situations that you would maybe have more emotional shrapnel come in your way and then you made a different decision. Do either of you have like a short little something you want to share on that?

Speaker 1:

I mean, it was a big decision, but what you talked about brought up for me is that I had stayed in the house that I had purchased with my ex-husband because I felt like that provided stability for my son to stay in that house. And when he was taken away from me and I was still in that house and now not only is it the house from my first marriage and it's the house that has a room in it that you know I rocked my baby to sleep in, who's no longer with me. I made the decision to move after 20 years and it turned out to be the best decision I could have made and it was something that I needed to do for me and even though most people I mean not even my current husband or my parents nobody understood why I needed to leave a perfectly good house, but I did. That's what I needed to do for me and to get away from, I like to say you know the ghosts in that house and it was good for me.

Speaker 1:

And once my son was able to see the new house after we'd moved in, he loved it. I mean, I think that on some level, it was hard for him to be in the old house where he remembered his mom and dad living there together, which is hard to imagine, but he says he can remember that and that was a move I needed to make. And I encourage my sponsees who, a lot of them, seem to have the same feeling, that they want to get out of the house that has all these memories, and I encourage them that, if you can go for it, get a fresh start, if that is going to help you do it.

Speaker 2:

What a powerful story Just acting on your own volition and taking care of yourself. And in taking care of yourself you're actually taking care of your son, which you did not know in that decision point, at that inflection point. But getting out of our own way sometimes is so challenging, and even not going to places where there are a bunch of kids creates more space in my life. So when there are interactions, I'm available. Exactly what Julie's saying. You know, with the house move, which sounds like a wonderful, beautiful thing that you did for yourself, I celebrate that feels like that was part of your sailing out on the lake was you know moving from the house.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, anna, is there any thing that that brings up for you that you'd like to share with something shifted or moved for you?

Speaker 3:

it's interesting, it's making me think and this might sound strange, it's funny what holds emotional weight for us.

Speaker 3:

But we used to have a family doctor and a family dentist and it was hard and I knew in my head that I wanted to change those practices for myself as an individual, but that that felt really painful for me.

Speaker 3:

It was much more emotional than it was anything like I liked the people that we worked with and that, but it felt like I was being forced to let go of other things that made me feel like a mom. That made me feel like a mom for some reason and it was hard for me to change those practices. And it still can some. And it's been quite a few years now since I've involved in any of that or really been involved with my kids. But sometimes I get a message from a pharmacy saying a prescription is ready for a family member and it hits me right in the heart and I can be feeling pretty balanced and I've got much more balance in my life. But there's something around medical care and because I was typically the one that took the kids to doctor's appointments and dentists, so they knew they felt like an extended part of the fact or I think, an extended part of my role as a mum and I didn't realize that that would that that having been taken away from me.

Speaker 3:

It was another access point of information that I wasn't getting and I was getting excluded from that. And I don't really know even as I'm saying it out loud, I don't quite know why that hit me so, but it was hard and I held onto it for a little while and I thought what am I doing? And it was. Then it was starting to feel like it was taking up too much space in my head, so I changed and it felt good, but it felt it was me moving away from the role of being the mom and being the wife, and it hurt too. And I didn't expect that. It is strange, saying it out loud, it hadn't occurred to me till we started having this conversation. It's weird.

Speaker 2:

Again a really powerful nuance of just that agency to be able to show up at our kid's place at doctor, dentist, and also having the familiarity and the family ties and the history of taking the kids there for a day, a year, 10 years, and then needing to make that decision at a point. While this is not necessarily useful for my mental health and I'm going to move away from this and I heard that there's still some pangs come up and you get a random something, but the overall feeling of moving away and kind of like taking that file out of your file cabinet. You said good, but does it feel more spacious? Did you feel less anxious? Did it like? Is any other kind of feeling tones you want to add to that for people that are maybe at that decision point now?

Speaker 3:

As I look at it now, it felt like there was some desperation around clinging to. I wanted any source of information that I could get. I wanted to be able to receive, and I think there was a part of if I pull away from the dentist, if I pull away from the doctor. My arrangement, the way things landed out legally, was that I had 50, joint custody, 50-50, right, so I could have still phoned them up and asked them for information. But in theory it wasn't necessarily.

Speaker 3:

It didn't always play out that way, but psychologically it was damaging me because it felt like it was desperate and it was me trying to hold on to things that I thought I had some control over. So in hindsight it didn't feel like it was helpful. But I also have compassion for the notion that I did feel like so many. I just didn't have any information about my kids and anything I thought that I could hold onto, that even had an echo of that, or that I might run into them, which would have been arresting for my nervous system too. But if, maybe I'd run into them at the doctors or the dentists or whatever, so, letting go of that, I didn't have very many of those access points, so it was a very psychological thing and also not healthy. And it's interesting, now that they're young adults and life has changed quite significantly, that felt different when they were younger and in the school system to the way it does now. That's totally shifted.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, powerful decision. And again, yeah, I totally relate to the idea of wanting any little touch point, any kind of shadow, any kind of anything, any kind of information. And we hold on to some of those areas and they actually create a lot of friction and pain and we let go and there's still that friction and pain, but just not as sharp. It's not as violent would be, maybe even be the word that I would use. That's what it felt like to me. I wasn't as violent as still super hurt when I got information, but moving myself out of situations that didn't feel as violent and moved me off my center as much. So I think that's what you're basically saying.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that resonates with me for sure.

Speaker 2:

Wow, what a great show today. It was a lot more nuanced than I thought it was going to be. The conversation was going to be gratitude and I always think we're going to jump into these conversations and it's going to be light and grateful. And I'm grateful for birds and cats and dogs and getting to go out to sushi. And the reality is is our lives are so complex and there's so much pain and there's so many challenges and gratitude is such a great sell for the wound. And the more I can tap into gratitude, my life starts to change a little bit and it is counterintuitive because I know for me, I just wanted my kids back and I just wanted my life back, and I'm really grateful I didn't get that same life back. I'm really grateful that I'm living this life today. I really feel like I'm a beacon for my kids one day that they're going to be able to find and maybe it'll be their kids and maybe it won't be anyone's kids that I know, including my own, maybe it'll be a friend or someone I don't even know and then that friend or someone I don't even know might be a beacon for my kids. I'm not really sure, but I'm feeling a lot of gratitude after that conversation. A lot of thought provoking stuff came up Again. If you're new, welcome to the community.

Speaker 2:

Great resources in the show notes. Please check it out. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. Please donate if you have the resources and like and share. Please like and share. We'd like to get this out to as many people as possible and share in as many different ways and channels as possible. I want to hear your comments. If you have anything to say. Family disappeared at gmailcom. Love to hear what you have to say and likes, even if you don't like something.

Speaker 2:

Love to hear about that too. It's great to have all the different perspectives and we're all not rowing in the same direction, and some of us are alienated kids or young adults and some of us are parents or grandparents. Every story is valid here, and I just want to acknowledge. A lot of times we're all looking at the parent and the grandparents perspective, and if there's more young folks out there or older folks out there that were alienated or are alienated, estranged from their parents and grandparents, we'd love to hear from you too and include you in a more comprehensive way in the show. And with that, I hope you all have a beautiful day and I hope to see you around the neighborhood somewhere. And if no one's told you yet today, I love you, I hope you have a wondrous sunny day.

Speaker 2:

Maybe you want to ski and you want some snow, Not really sure. Anyway, I got gotta stop talking bye.