Family Disappeared
Have you lost contact with your child? What about your parent, or grandparent, sibling, or any other family member? You might be experiencing estrangement, alienation, or erasure. All of these terms speak to the trauma and dysfunction that so many families face.
A family is a complex living and breathing system. Each member plays a role in the family dynamic. When families carry generational trauma and/or experience new trauma, challenges, or dysfunction, this can result in a break in the family system.
These reaction strategies are habitual and very often interwoven into every aspect of how our family interacts.
Hi! I´m Lawrence Joss and I’ve learned that I need to cultivate a spiritual, emotional, and physical relationship with myself in order to have healthy relationships with others and everything in my life. It is my mission to help you create and nurture that relationship with yourself first and provide you with tools that might help you heal and strengthen family relationships.
This podcast is an opportunity to explore our healing journey together through the complexities of our families.
Welcome to the FAMILY DISAPPEARED podcast.
For more information, visit:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
Family Disappeared
Letting Go, Holding On: The Paradox of Healing from Alienation & Estrangement Part 2 - Episode 99
This conversation explores the themes of self-love, gratitude, and recovery from alienation. The speakers share their personal journeys, emphasizing the importance of connecting with oneself and the transformative power of gratitude. They discuss how alienation has led to unexpected connections and deeper empathy in relationships, as well as the challenges and growth that come from navigating these experiences. The conversation highlights the significance of community support and the ongoing process of healing and personal development.
Key Takeaways
- Learning to love oneself is crucial for recovery.
- Gratitude can shift perspectives and enhance life experiences.
- Alienation can lead to unexpected and valuable connections.
- Empathy for others can transform relationships.
- Past experiences shape our current perspectives on relationships.
- Self-connection is essential for healthy relationships with others.
- Recovery is a long process that requires patience and humility.
- Community support is vital in the journey of healing.
- Recognizing the importance of small wins in recovery is key.
- Gratitude can be found in the most challenging situations.
Chapters
00:00 - The Journey of Self-Love
02:05 - Understanding Gratitude in Recovery
04:00 - Alienation and Unexpected Connections
09:20 - Transforming Relationships Through Empathy
13:00 - Lessons from Past Relationships
20:22 - The Importance of Self-Connection
25:41 - Hope and Community in Recovery
29:38 - Gratitude for Future Opportunities
Related Gratitude Episodes:
- “Grateful and Grieving” – A panel of alienated parents share their stories Part 1
- “Grateful and Grieving” – A panel of alienated parents share their stories Part 2
- Letting Go, Holding On: The Paradox of Healing from Alienation & 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
The biggest piece for me at the beginning and it continues to be front of mind for me is learning to love myself unconditionally, have a connection with myself. Everything was external. I was looking for external validation, it was an outside source right, and so to have the mirror turn back on me was extremely uncomfortable at the beginning, but it's been the cornerstone of my recovery and the more I've learned to love myself and practice loving myself and loving all aspects of myself, the shadow stuff as well as the stuff that I consider to be positive has just had so many positive ripple effects and in many aspects of my life but certainly with the alienation it's changed the nature of the ache, the pain that I feel around the disconnection with my kids.
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 Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.
Speaker 2:Today we have the second part of our gratitude episode and if you're just popping into this episode, there's actually three other episodes I suggest going back to listen to so you can catch up to where we are now, or you could just jump into this conversation as well. We'll put those in the show notes so you can find those easily enough. And if you're new to the community, welcome. We have a panel of parents on again today talking about gratitude. We also have a free 12-step support group program if you're interested in finding folks that are struggling with similar stuff and you would think like, why would I want to do that? And for me personally, I get to share my story with people that understand the language. I get to get support and I also get to support people and I also get to track people's recovery and see their lives change. It's a super rewarding and healing thing, and we'd love to hear from you at familydisappeared at gmailcom. Please like. Share comment. I know that sounds super silly and everyone asks you to do that, but the more we do that, the more folks we can reach, and the point of this whole thing is to help the next person that's coming in through the door so they don't have to go through as much as maybe we've been through. Not sure what else to say, but thanks for coming along for the journey today. And just remember there's a donate button in the show notes for the 501c3 nonprofit so we can continue bringing all the stuff to you for free. So let's get into the show.
Speaker 2:You know the word gratitude is so nuanced Like. We think about gratitude and we're looking sometimes for these like really big things that are happening, and I didn't really have any gratitude when this stuff started happening and my life started falling apart. I didn't have language and I didn't have words. I didn't have anything and gratitude was definitely not something that I had.
Speaker 2:As I've been going through this journey, like gratitude has shifted because I've practiced and worked with gratitude, like my sponsor, mentors, different people in my life actually had me write a gratitude list and I want to. You know, like I saw my kid and my kid said they love me. You know, like these bigger, monumental things and one of these folks pointed out to me like, be grateful you can take a walk, that you have eyes, that you have resources to buy a meal. You know, and as I started working on more of the nuances of gratitude, then I was actually able to receive so much more. I was able to identify so many different things in life that I could be grateful for.
Speaker 2:That made these other bigger things more accessible when they were available and also not as important when they weren't available. So wanting to see my kid was everything that I thought about. And as I started to appreciate some of these other things that I was grateful for for having community, for having a place to go, like a 12-step meeting or to a friend's house then me not seeing my kid, yeah, sucked and it's terrible and it's not what I want, but I had these other things that I was grateful for. So I was retraining my life. I was retraining my life, I was retraining my brain, I was retraining how I perceive stuff, and that's incredibly useful.
Speaker 2:At least it has been for me, and I hope this is a useful conversation for you too. So let's jump into the second part of this episode. So we're going to move into a little bit of a gratitude question, but a cloudy one. So alienation gives us all these opportunities to practice a bunch of wicked skills that you know. At least for me, I didn't even know that I had. So are there people you've grown close to because of alienation, and are there people in your life that you've actually had some sort of touch point or relationship with because of alienation that you're grateful for that? You would have had no idea that you would have gratitude to have those people in your life.
Speaker 3:Julie's nodding emphatically so I'm going to go right to you. You know I've always had a fraught relationship with my own mother. We've never been in an alienated situation, but we've had our struggles and having my son tell stories on me that I realize are his, that's the way he saw it, that is his truth. That's not the way I saw it, but that is his truth. And I can hear my own mother saying the same thing to me when I would say, when I was little and this thing happened, and she'd say what are you talking about? That didn't happen. And I would get so frustrated and suddenly I could put the shoe on the other foot and feel what my mother was feeling, that she and I do not remember events in my life the same, or at all in some cases. And I found a lot more empathy for my mom that my version of what I think happened in my childhood is not the same as what my mom thinks happened. And I've had to realize that both can be true, that my version is true for me, but that doesn't make her version less true for her. That's the way she remembers it and I've had to stop wanting to insist that my version is the only correct version and it's drawn me closer to my own mother.
Speaker 3:I have a lot more compassion for her, I have a lot more empathy and even though somewhere inside I'm still like, yeah, that's really not how that happened. I don't have to argue with her about it anymore. I don't have to get into a fight with her about it. It doesn't matter, she doesn't see it the same way. It doesn't make my feelings less valid. I also don't need to push that on my mom. She's never going to see the same events the same way. That's never like I think. I used to want to fight with her to get her to see it my way. It's not going to happen, so I let go. And it's drawn me a lot closer to my mom and I'm grateful for that.
Speaker 3:And oddly, it's still not a conversation I can really even have with my mom because she still is like what are you talking about? None of those things happened in your childhood. I'm like no, no, no, you're missing the point. And I have compassion now for my son that I remember things completely differently from his version. But I know how hurtful it is for your own mother to say you're lying. That is not what happened.
Speaker 3:So I refrain. There's no point in saying that that's what he remembers. And so I've had to take the path that is really hard to take and just say it must have really hurt to feel like your own mother was saying that, even though in my head I'm like, yeah, I never said that. There's no point. Hold that in and then reciprocate that with my own mother and let her have her truth. Let my son have his truth and find solace on my own, separately from the two of them, of my own truth, and not have this driving desire to fight my son or fight my mom and try and convince them that my truth is the only truth. There's no point. It's been really good for my relationship with my own mom and I'm really grateful for that.
Speaker 2:That's super beautiful, to be able to rekindle that relationship by your mom and actually letting go of what it needs to look like or what it needs to sound like, or even letting go of the words sometimes. And then that's circling back to your relationship with your son, where now you don't have to argue about that because you're having that experience with your mother and it's transforming the relationship by not arguing. You know, I I love that. That's a great story. Julie, thank you for that. And anna, what about you? Any people you've grown closer to because of alienation, and that you're grateful for these connections, or there definitely are.
Speaker 1:In the first instance, it makes me think of the alienated parents and grandparents that I've met in the program and in community, and I never would have met the two of you had I not been walking this path right, for example. But it's also the alienation that has been part of my journey in this last little while has made me, as part of the 12-step work, look at my connection with myself and then, in turn, looked at my connection with other people and realized how codependent a lot of my kind of local friendships and relationships were. So a lot of those relationships have fallen away and the ones that are closer are closer because of the healing that I've done and because of the resonance that's gone on, and I can feel it's. I have less people in my friendship circle, but they're more valuable friendships. The ones that that I have are more discerning. I'm more careful who I share my energy with, who I share my story with.
Speaker 1:There's not a desperation around me wanting to resort to being the people pleaser that I was, or desperately holding onto a relationship just so I could say I had a relationship and I wouldn't have been aware of any of that if I hadn't gone through alienation and been forced to look at my part in all of this, and so I'm grateful for that. And it feels odd to say I'm grateful for alienation out loud, but it's one of the nuances, right. It's what makes me appreciate this work. Every day, every step reveals something different, and it enriches my relationship with myself, which helps me to have stronger relationships with those around me. There's huge value in that, and a lot of stuff had to break down and I had to eat a lot of humble pie before I could jump to those conclusions, but it's it's interesting that that's something to be grateful for in this process.
Speaker 2:I love that. You said you know, julie and I, sitting with you, are people that you're grateful for and like alienation has taken you on this topsy-turvy road and we've met all these different kinds of people and we have them in our lives and it's specifically because of parental alienation and you're grateful for that, but don't want to be involved in parental alienation like it's all true at the same time. But yeah, like, yeah, just sitting the three of us together, super cool. And the story that came to mind for me when I first got separated you there was this other couple that we were really close with. They had three young boys that were the same age as my three daughters and my ex-wife was best friend with the lady and she's the one that kind of helped her with getting the divorce started and stuff like that, and was super, super angry at me and had this whole narrative and stuff like that that I tried to correct in the beginning.
Speaker 2:And then what I got to with with my sponsor during the eighth and nine steps, which is actually making amends for some of your behavior. It's not about what other people do, but on the ninth step I actually got to make an amends to this person and just own my behavior and what had happened that I would have liked to have changed by myself in our relationship, but irrelevant of anything they were saying, and I got to just make this amends. And what happened from making this amends is my ex-wife and this lady landed up not becoming friends because they did whatever they did. And I became friendly with these folks and I'd see them at different events and still on Facebook I'm connected to them and these were the people that in the beginning I hated more than anything in my life.
Speaker 2:But I got to look at myself. I got to clean up my side of the street and stay out of their side of the street and it gave me all these pathways to connect to community, to my kids, even though I didn't have access to my kids in a different kind of way. So, like I'm grateful for some of the people that have been the most vitriol in certain points, you know, and it sounds super weird and counterintuitive, but everyone's just reacting and stuck in their own stories and their own projections and if I can get out of the way and just acknowledge my behavior, I've been able to build some really incredible bridges with people that I would have thought, you know like I'd prefer burning them in a barrel or something. You know that's pretty descriptive. But you know, and you're in enough pain, where you're thinking about, you know, digging some holes brings those descriptions oh, lordy, okay if I can tag on to anna.
Speaker 3:I mean my pod is now four people. We were big and small and now we're big Well, big of four. But one of my sponsees was traveling across the country and she was traveling through New Orleans during Jazz Fest and she stayed with me and we went to go see Dave Matthews at Jazz Fest and we had this amazing afternoon. And none of that would have happened without this dastardly devil that is in our lives. But it was a fun afternoon and it was very memorable and we'll both have that memory.
Speaker 2:so that was fun and I'm grateful for that oh my god, jazz fest with a fellow traveler sounds wonderful. And just to clarify you know, juliet briefly mentioned the word pod and within parental alienation, if you're in the 12-step there's pods and the sponsorship and the sponsorship pods and it's just a group of parents or grandparents or the alienated folks that get together and they work through the 12 steps together and they support each other. And that's what a pod looks like, so that you're traversing the country together a little bit is magnificent, country together, a little bit is magnificent. So just kind of piggybacking on that last question, is there something your past self wouldn't believe that you're grateful for today?
Speaker 1:And Anna let's start with you on that question. Yeah, lots of things came into my head when I was thinking about this, but the one that's been prominent lately is I'm grateful that my marriage didn't work out the way I really desperately wanted it to, and that my family life because I tried really, really hard in a very, very desperate manner to make it work and I was going to control everything and making it work was going to take all my emotional pain away and fix everything and I was going to feel awesome and I'm so glad that it didn't turn. And that doesn't mean that I want to be alienated from my kids the pain that was incurred while we were in the marriage and together as a family unit, and the pain that's incurred after. I don't wish for any of that, but had I had my way, things would have been really, really catastrophic and disastrous and I wouldn't be sitting here now sharing gratitude about my recovery journey if it had worked out that way.
Speaker 1:And I never thought I'd be saying anything like that, because it's taken me many, many years to let go of that dream of I'm going to create a family life that makes me feel like I'm important and loved and seen and heard and it was meant to blow up in my face and I'm not in charge. Apparently I'm not in charge, but it is good to say that too, and it gets the balance piece right and to have gratitude for that, because I was beating my head up against a brick wall when everything was falling down around me, desperately trying to make things work and proving to myself, to my biological family, to everybody that I was. I had the power to force the relationship, which wasn't. None of the relationships were healthy right. It's humbling to say that I too right. And I never yeah, we would have been so stuck. It wasn't meant to be that way. There's a bigger picture going on and I need to surrender to that.
Speaker 2:And I love that you identify that as the thing that you're grateful for, because I know for me, when I got here, like saving the marriage, saving the family, all that thing was like paramount of that didn't happen. I was going to die, and that you have enough perspective and recovery to say, oh wow, thank you, like I couldn't have planned this part any better. And, yes, I miss my kids and wish alienation wasn't there. But really identifying that connection to the marriage and the old behavior and the old potential, enmeshment, whatever else is there for you, I think, is super, super, super powerful. Julie. Is there something your past self wouldn't believe you're grateful for now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, this journey has changed a lot about me. Part of the reason for the alienation, if I'm honest, of my stepson is that I was very strict and I did it out of love. I honestly believe that that was the best way to raise him, that he needed firm boundaries and high expectations, and he did not like that and there's no question that that's a big part of why he definitely doesn't want anything to do with me and, unfortunately, as a side effect, does not want a whole lot to do with his father either, which is devastating. And I was continuing to raise my son with the idea of being very strict. I had genuinely good reasons for why I wanted to be a strict parent.
Speaker 3:But last weekend my son was with me and he was going to a party, which was fine, and I dropped him off at the party. We had a clear understanding of when he was supposed to come home and I woke up at 2.30 in the morning and realized he still wasn't home. Part of it was panic of like, oh my God, is his father going to use this against me? And then it's like well, what am I going to find? Is he drunk? Is he passed out? Is a friend of his drunk and passed out Like, and I jumped in the car. I texted him and said don't move, I'm coming. I went to the house and he came out and, you know, head hanging down, and he got in the car and he was just silent and he was like I'm really sorry, mom, and I could feel him shaking. He was so scared of me and I said it's okay, you're safe. That's all I was worried about. I was worried that I was going to find you in a pile of vomit and need to take you to the hospital. Everything's okay. Whatever happened, we can work through it. The important part is that you're safe. Let's just go home and go to bed and we'll worry about this tomorrow.
Speaker 3:My old self would have just unleashed on him and punished, you know, punished him until he was 30. And I didn't have to do that anymore. He was able to take time to regulate his own nervous system because he was positive that I was just going to remove his head from his body and I didn't. But I was also able to hold a boundary and say well, I think you've proven that we need to work up to a later curfew. So now your curfew is and I've.
Speaker 3:You know I've set an earlier curfew. It'll be something that we work on, but I'm grateful that I'm able to let go more and recognize what's important. And my son following my rules to the letter is not the important part. Making sure my son is safe is the important part, and making sure, hopefully, if my son ever is in a situation where he's drunk or a friend's drunk or something terrible is happening, he can call me because he's no longer terrified that I'm going to bite his head off. I wish it didn't have to happen this way, but if this is how I needed to learn how to change my parenting style, then I guess I'm grateful for that that's a super cool story and I'm curious.
Speaker 2:Like your son gets in the car, you see him kind of shaking and waiting for the hammer to drop, and then you're going through a process and you're like, hey well, I'm glad that you're safe and this is great, we're going to talk in the morning. But like on your internal mechanism, by not having to engage and maybe set a limit or another boundary with him, did you feel more spacious? Did you feel more at ease? Were you able to sleep? Okay, like, how did that look versus how it would have looked in the past?
Speaker 3:So much better I was, so much more I was not. I mean, I would have been up all night from the adrenaline rush of just like you know, when the monster unleashes from the inside of my skull. But I didn't have to go through any of that. I just needed him to get home and get home safe, and I did that, and then I went back to sleep. All was well.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of. Right after I got separated, I took my youngest daughter out to sushi and she was maybe like five or six and was sitting at the sushi bar and she spilled a whole glass of water like all over the place. And before recovery, before any kind of support or resources, I would have had like a really strong reaction and I saw her physically shrink and get scared and wait for a reaction and then I just cleaned it up and we went along with dinner. But if I wasn't practicing recovery, if I wasn't working on myself, I would never have noticed that she shrunk, I would never notice that moment, I would never have had that pause and something never would have changed. And that's what I'm hearing you saying too. And it's such a big part of recovery and it's such a big part of working with parental alienation, because there's so many instances where I was just on automatic response, on survival, on all those different things and I talk about this a lot like I perpetuated the motion of parental alienation at times just by my behavior, even if I wasn't doing a parental alienation tactic. That behavior reacting to that spill of glass water just pushes that ball forward. It gives license for so many different things. So this is is super, super important nuance. If you're new, if you're in the middle of this, if you've been doing this forever, this is a super great nuance that Julie just brought up.
Speaker 2:I would say for me in my past that I wouldn't believe that I'd be grateful for today is that I didn't realize. I wouldn't say what a crappy person I was, but what an asleep person I was, like I was just going through the parenting motions, I was just going through the being married motions, I was just going through the work motions, but I wasn't actually really present in my life and that's what I was role modeling to everyone around me, including my kids, and, most of all, to myself. The amount of harm I did by not being in my own life was massive and I'm so grateful that I'm not that person. You know there's parts of me that come out like I got that little dude inside me too that wants to jump out and, you know, bite a tree trunk, you know. But I'm grateful that he doesn't come out quite as often.
Speaker 2:Let's see what we have here. As we're getting closer to the end here, let me see what would be a good question If someone just starting this journey is out there, listening today or wherever they find this on social media. What would you say to them about gratitude and time and also gratitude sounds like a big word but there's so many small pieces that in the beginning gratitude is like a grain of rice. Like a grain of rice. So, just from a perspective of being in recovery and gratitude and your experience, what would you like to say to someone that's relatively new out there or just finding that there are resources out there? And, anna, let's go with you first.
Speaker 1:The biggest piece for me at the beginning and it continues to be front of mind for me is learning to love myself unconditionally, have a connection with myself. Everything was external. I was looking for external validation, it was an outside source right, and so to have the mirror turn back on me was extremely uncomfortable at the beginning, but it's been the cornerstone of my recovery and the more I've learned to love myself and practice loving myself and loving all aspects of myself, the shadow stuff, as well as the stuff that I consider to be positive, has just had so many positive ripple effects and in many aspects of my life but certainly with the alienation, it's changed the nature of the ache, the pain that I feel around the disconnection with my kids, and allowed me to recognize that I wasn't connected to myself when I was more involved with them when we were living under the same roof and I needed to work on that and that way.
Speaker 1:I do feel like a stronger version of a parent, because I'm more connected to myself, and I'm sorry that I wasn't connected in that way when I was with them. I did the best that I could. I feel like I'm rambling all over the place right now, but identifying that piece around, I need to work on my relationship with myself first and foremost, and I need to be in a community of people where they hold space when I'm sharing the good stuff, but also hold me to account when it feels difficult, because that's the only way I'm going to grow. And if I keep burying my head in the sand and reverting to old, faulty coping mechanisms, if I can't make advances in my relationship with myself, everything else is going to be impacted. I have to start there and I have to be humble and I have to be patient and I need to slow down and I need to take time and space and move my head away from wanting to change and control the external relationships and really focus on the one with myself, and I need program to do that. I need to do service work. To do that, I need a sponsor and I need to sponsor other people in order to have a real sense of what that feels like and feel embodied, and when I'm feeling that way, everything else, the balance changes, the perspective changes. It makes my life more manageable and that's what I needed.
Speaker 1:When I came into program I didn't know that that's what it was going to look like and I did not like that answer at the beginning. I did not like that solution. I wanted to go but I didn't. And it's really paid off.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that, and there's a lot of wonderful stuff that I hear that you're working on in community and being of service and asking for help, and it all started with what you said in the beginning was love yourself, just finding an access point to start to appreciate yourself, to start to love yourself, and I'm also guessing it's super baby steps, like you don't just get to say you love yourself one day and then you love yourself and it's great, like this loving yourself adventure that you're on right now, that you're centering as a thing you would suggest to a newer person, is taking time and is not linear. Would that be accurate to say?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it's three steps forward and two steps back. And the more I practice loving myself and able to receive messages of love and unconditional love from other people and I unpack my baggage a little bit more and I see the way I showed up in relationships when I was in a less functional state. I don't always love those aspects of myself either. I know I can identify it as part of the process, but it can feel gross too and I need to have space for all of that in order to move forward and have compassion and tell myself that now I know better, I'll try and do better.
Speaker 1:Right, but it's not just a massive love fest the whole way through and it's not toxic positivity, because some of the stuff, when I really start to own it, it feels ugly and I'm not proud of myself and that's part and parcel of the whole thing. I understood that, I think, intellectually, but I wasn't embodying it and I wasn't aligned with myself in that way. I wanted everything to be perfect, to be black and either perfect or terrible, and there was nothing between and the self-love. It's much bigger than that and you have to be flexible. You need to be able to pivot.
Speaker 2:I like when you say self-love, you get this big grin on your face, which is super cool. That maybe is my favorite part so far of the show is just you loving yourself. What a great example. Thank you for that, Anna and Julie. For someone new just starting this journey, what would you like to say to them?
Speaker 3:I've now been in the program for two years and I was part of another 12-step program for a long time before that. But what I've learned is that a lot of us come into this particular program at a point of such severe hopelessness we oftentimes are ready to end our lives. That's how desperate we've gotten and I want everybody to know that if you're in that position, there is hope. This community can help you. Knowing that there are other people that are going through what you're going through can be just that. Just the knowledge that you are not alone in this journey can be so helpful and I would absolutely encourage you. I mean you can start with the podcast. You don't have to reveal your story to anybody. It's in the privacy of your own home or your own car, wherever you are. So don't feel like now you've got to go get on a Zoom call with 85 strangers. You don't, but it's really helpful if you do. But there is hope. I mean two years ago, when I came into this program, I had been alienated for six months. I had just just gotten to the point where I was allowed to see my son without supervision. Just just gotten to the point where I was allowed to see my son without supervision and I immediately screwed up and said all the wrong things and he was taken from me a second time and it was just devastating and I was mad at myself and I was mad at the whole system and I was part of me was mad at my son and I luckily found this group and this program and started a long, long process. That, in fact, I was talking to my husband last night and he said, well, what step are you on? And I said, well, we just, we're really just beginning step four. He was like step four You've been in this for two years. I said I've been doing 12 step for longer than that. It's a long, long process and there isn't an end. You get to step 12 and then you start over again.
Speaker 3:But the whole point is to help you, not to help anybody else. It's to help you and for you to see that there is joy, there is hope, there is a reason to live, there are things to be grateful for and you can keep going. Definitely did not want to hear when I first started and nobody wants to hear is, it takes time and it sucks, but two years later I'm grateful for the winding path I had to take to get where I am now. I'm a lot better off than I was two years ago and I have grown a lot and I've learned a lot about myself and I've improved a lot of my relationships because I realized how much I needed to change. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you deserve it, it doesn't mean that you caused it, it doesn't mean any of that. But here you are and you have to get through it. So there's a way through it, and I think this program is a really good place to start.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and I love that you brought up the word hope and that we don't get here in the best shape. We get here battered and bruised and dying of thirst sometimes. You know what I mean. But there is hope and it's a slow, tedious process that takes work, but there are some wonderful people. And also, like Julie said, like a low threshold of entry if that's where you're at, like just listening to the podcast, looking for other resources that are recovery based is great advice.
Speaker 2:And then, when you're ready, you expand out into community, and it might be the PAA 12 step community, it might be another sort of community where you can get some support. They're all wonderful and I don't know if one's better than the other, they're just going to be different. But hope, baby steps and what a wonderful podcast. And we're going to finish this off with telling me two things that you have coming up in the next week, month or so that you are super grateful for, and we're going to keep it pretty simple so we can wrap up kind of on time. So, julie, a couple of things that you're grateful for.
Speaker 3:Well, I am amazingly lucky. Two years ago my son was taken from me the second time and now here we are. He is going on a school trip to France and he was supposed to fly back from France on his 16th birthday, which was going to be like an 18 hour day of traveling. And, through a lot of court battles and lawyer battles and all kinds of things, I have gotten permission to go meet him in Paris on his 16th birthday and pick him up and travel for a week in France and I am so excited. We've got the whole thing planned out and he worked with me to plan it out and he wanted to see Normandy. I've never seen normandy so off we go to learn about world war ii history and I just I cannot be more excited and two years ago I couldn't imagine that I would have come this far, based on where I was at the time, and I'm really grateful for that.
Speaker 2:That's an incredible piece of gratitude to share. And I saw Anna with this big grin. I got this big grin. I got goosies. I'm like friends, let's go.
Speaker 2:What a wonderful gift for you, for your son, for the community at large. This is kind of like where we tied into in the beginning. We were like, can you have gratitude in someone else's joy of seeing families together, seeing someone to have experience? I'm like a hell. Yes, like yeah, julie's going to france with her kid. Two years later, after the world was coming to end, they're going to france. Yes, that's gratitude, that's wow. I'm not even going to ask anna this question now. Actually, anna, what do you have coming up in the next little bit that you're super grateful for? I am?
Speaker 1:traveling to australia in the summer is where I grew're super grateful for I am traveling to Australia in the summer. It's where I grew up and I haven't been there 15 years I guess it's been a while I live in Canada now. Preparing for it's been very emotional. It's involved a lot of recovery work on my part and I want to be able to be present when I'm visiting. In a way, I wasn't when I was growing up there and it's got lots of other sort of extra energy around.
Speaker 1:There's lots of other stuff attached to the trip, but it's been interesting and I'm grateful for the process leading up to it, because I've had stops and starts and so much of it's been emotional. But because of the work I've been doing and because of these sorts of conversations, I've been able to work through it and I can feel the healing power of the journey and I haven't even stepped off the plane yet and that's really cool. And I've been lucky enough in my life to travel in lots of different places and live in lots of different places. But it's only now that I'm feeling really present and embodied that I know it's going to be a different kind of trip because of that and I'm grateful for the preparation of the conversations and being.
Speaker 1:I'm proud of how I've been able to meet myself in those anxious spots and work through it and let go. It's making me think of the hope and the gratitude. Let go of the expectations and recognize that the energy that I'm putting into it now and the work that I'm doing is such a big part of it and part of the joy and part of the progress and part of being in an expansive mindset as opposed to a contracted one. It's a luxury, it's a great trip, but it's more than that. For me, too, it feels more than that and it's really a trip for myself. A lot of the trips I've made have been about a million and one other different things, and this is for me and that feels really cool to say that out loud.
Speaker 2:That sounds incredible and, through the lens of recovery and having different resources and different skills, you've been building up to navigate the bumps leading up to this.
Speaker 2:Like what came to mind, like you were saying, like a victory for you, I like I don't know if anyone knows like chariots of fire, which I don't even really remember, but I see like Anna running around like a track, like a victory lap, like her Anna flag going me Yay, you know, that's what a what a great way to end. And I'd say for me, I'm going to go back to Hawaii for a little bit and I'm going to learn how to drive a tractor and I want to drag a tree with the tractor. I want to be like a three-year-old little boy dragging a tree with a tractor for no reason other than to drag a tree with a tractor. So that's what I'm looking forward to and thank you, ladies, for a great conversation and gratitudes and some super depth, some super good stuff we touched on today. And thank you Wonderful having you both here again today and hope to see you somewhere around the neighborhood or in France or Australia, hawaii, hawaii. Thank you both. That was super cool.
Speaker 3:This was really. This was a good session.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really was. There's always lots to talk about, especially around the gratitude piece. It's interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was around gratitude, but it kind of felt like sometimes it was gratitude adjacent. We were moving to some of the depths which might be harder to connect to gratitude, but it was certainly linked to gratitude, so it was super cool. I like that I use the word gratitude adjacent, so that's a good place to we're still recording.
Speaker 1:We're still recording.
Speaker 2:So okay, go home. Wow, good stuff. Sometimes I get surprised by the conversations and I have this preconceived notion again how the podcast is gonna go and we land up digging into some other stuff and I remember stuff I haven't thought about. And I hear some other folks share some really wonderful and poignant and powerful stories and I heard about hope. I heard about looking at ourselves. I heard about being grateful for the little wins and then I heard some super big wins at the end of the show, with Julie getting to go to Europe to grab her son and travel around a little bit and Anna getting to go back to Australia and me, you know, hopefully getting to ride a tractor. Like these are big wins and these are things that seem unimaginable when we first get here. Who we just don't want to die. So I'm so grateful for gratitude, I'm grateful for the conversation, I'm grateful for the community. Thanks for coming out to play today and we spoke a lot about the 12-step program and you heard people reference it in all kinds of ways during the show.
Speaker 2:Please come out and check it out. It's a really low bar. You jump onto zoom. You come to a meeting. If you like it, you stay. If you don't like it, you leave Super accessible, and there's a bunch of other great resources in the show notes, like comment share. Send me an email if you got any kind of questions, suggestions for guests, if you like something, if you didn't like something, we'd love to get feedback so we know we're rowing in the right direction. Or if there's parts of the conversation you want expanded, we'd love to get feedback so we can provide that too. Otherwise, we're just here kind of brainstorming together and seeing what comes up next for us. So with that, I hope you have a beautiful day. And if no one's told you yet today I love you and that's part of my gratitude for me that I'm able to say that out loud, and I know it's coming out to you when I say that.
Speaker 2:But I had to love myself in order to be able to love you, or love anyone else too, so I'm super, super grateful for that. Thank you, happy days. See you soon. 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.