Family Disappeared

Healing from Parental Alienation | Survey Findings, Generational Trauma & Self-Work | Family Disappeared Part 2 - Ep. 101

• Lawrence Joss

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In this episode of the Family Disappeared podcast, Lawrence Joss discusses the importance of community service, personal transformation, and emotional well-being, particularly in the context of parental alienation. He shares his experiences with nature, the significance of having a plan for emotionally charged days like Father's Day, and the impact of nonviolent communication and 12-step programs on mental health. The episode emphasizes the value of podcasts as a resource for support and encourages listeners to engage with their communities and contribute to the cause.

Key Takeaways

  • Commit to picking up a service position and show up at meetings.
  • Personal transformation can occur through connection with nature.
  • Having a plan for emotionally charged days is crucial.
  • Dance and movement can help reconnect with emotions.
  • Podcasts can significantly improve mental health and coping mechanisms.
  • Regular attendance in 12-step programs leads to significant lifestyle changes.
  • Service to the community can provide personal relief and fulfillment.
  • Sharing resources and information is vital for community support.
  • Engagement in community activities can help alleviate feelings of isolation.
  • It's important to express gratitude and love, even in challenging relationships.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Community and Service
02:45 - Personal Transformation Through Nature
06:01 - Navigating Father's Day Emotions
08:56 - The Importance of Communication and Connection
11:51 - The Role of Nonviolent Communication
14:44 - The Impact of 12-Step Programs
17:58 - The Power of Service and Community Engagement

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:

Commit to picking up a service position, a secretary position, a leader position, a timer position. Volunteer for something else and show up at the meetings and be of service. And if you go to some meetings that aren't great, be of service. We need more people that are rowing in the same direction to make everything a little bit more consistent. 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. So hi, my name is Lawrence Joss and welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today is going to be the second part, talking about our survey for parental alienation advocates, which is just phenomenal Some great information. If you didn't listen to the first part, I highly suggest you go back. It was a fantastic show. Some of the survey results are life-affirming and changing and interesting. The conversation with myself was great. I really, really really enjoyed it. And if you're new to the community, welcome. That sounds a little goofy, you know, today I feel a little goofy, so that's okay. Welcome. And it sounds a little goofy, you know, today I feel a little goofy, so it's okay.

Speaker 1:

There's a bunch of podcasts. There's 99 other podcasts that are out there and available for you, talking about lawyers, therapists, psychiatrists, panels of parents all kinds of great conversations. If you're looking for a specific topic and this touches on a lot of stuff today too, which is super fun and exciting yeah, well, worth listening to. So again, if you're new, welcome. If you've been around for a while, welcome. If you took a break for a little while and you're back, a bigger welcome. There's some great information in the show notes. There's a link to the survey, which is great to check out and please share in any and every direction that you can. There's also a link to our free 12-step program, parental Alienation Anonymous.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful, wonderful community. Come by and check it out, and I suggest trying multiple meetings because it can be a little bit hard on the nervous system at first and if you're not comfortable in that kind of environment, maybe some stuff is off-putting and some people are going to be like whoa. A lightning bolt struck me and I feel so great, I'm so great to have found community. So, whatever it is, try it out. And if that doesn't work for you, go find community. Find some support. We're also a 501c3 nonprofit. Donate if you can. If you can't and you have some extra time and you want to volunteer, please send us an email at familydisappearedatgmailcom. Let us know what your skills are and we'll see where we can fit you in. And if you have done that in the past, we have a stack of different people that want to volunteer and we're just trying to get a little bit more resources and a little bit more organized and we will be reaching out to you and also love to hear votes on different guests, ideas, feedback on the show, victories, stuff you loved, stuff you didn't like, curiosities, whatever that is. I think that's enough out of me, let's jump into the show.

Speaker 1:

So I shared this in the previous episode that I'm on the big island in Hawaii and I'm taping here in the meditation studio where I live, and I just want to say this I am finding myself in a completely different way by being out in nature and working in the soil, and this might not resonate with you, but I just want you to kind of like expand it a little bit. And is it music? Is it movement? Is it dance? Is it some other art? Is it volunteering? Is it service? Like what is it? But what I'm finding for myself right now is I'm really finding myself in the dirt and I'm getting out of my head. I'm getting out of on myself because I'm showing up at 12-step meetings, because I volunteer a lot. I'm of service. I share resources with the community to help out when I can, and those resources sometimes are time, sometimes they're a donation. They're all different things for me, depending on where I am in my life. But I just want to say, like, life is really rich and I've gotten so many rewards out of parental alienation, which sounds counterintuitive, like how do you get a reward when you're really struggling? You just want your kids back in your life, and that's what I thought for a lot of years. And then I started to live my own life and I started to prioritize myself. And now I'm on the big island in Hawaii in a meditation center where I live part-time falling in love with the dirt and, in doing that, falling in love with myself all over again and falling in love with my kids all over again. So I just wanted to share that little piece, and again, it might be some other access point for you, but it gives me a lot of relief and it gives me a lot of hope and peace.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's jump into the second part, and I just want to spend a moment here just talking about Father's Day. Mother's Day, parents' Day If you don't identify as a mother or father, then there's a different word that feels better for you. I want to be inclusive as possible and if there's any languaging that might be useful and anyone wants to share about that, that'll be wonderful. But on Father's Day, early on, I would just wait to get some kind of connection. I'd be available and I'd be around and I'd just be craving some kind of connection. And as the years have gone by, the most important thing that I can do for myself on Father's Day that I've learned is have a plan. And I say this about holidays, mother's Day, I don't care what it is, any seminal day, graduations, marriages, whatever. A plan is life-saving and life-affirming, right. So I had a plan on father's day, which is today, you know.

Speaker 1:

I got up in the morning, I went to the local farmer's market. It was a little bit rainy. So there's this wonderful local indigenous lady that makes thai papaya salads and these other rolls and her food is just to die for, and she stands in this one booth and she's there for like seven or eight hours like crushing the stuff in front of you, cutting it up, and there's always this huge line. I was so excited to go get my papaya salad and my rolls and she wasn't there. It's probably because it was rainy a little bit, but uh, like that's what I did to take care of myself and I wandered around the farmer's market and got another role from somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

So that was good, it wasn't like the superstar role and uh, bought some other stuff at the farmer's market and then I headed out to something called ecstatic dance, where a bunch of people get together and listen to some really groovy dj music and dance kind of like freestyle. It's not like, hey, you gotta like have some really cool moves, you just express yourself. And dance has been such a phenomenal way for me to get back into my body and touch feelings and express myself and also be in community doing this, instead of in a closet doing this or in my house or in a locker room doing this. I'm learning to express myself through movement and also to have other people express themselves in all different kinds of ways, in some ways that would have maybe felt a little overwhelming in the past. So this is part of my spiritual growth.

Speaker 1:

And then from there I drove into Hilo, which is a little town here on the big island and they have a booch bar. They have this root beer kombucha which is woof. If you ever come to Hilo on the big island, you need to go to the booch and you need to get some of the root beer kombucha. So I had some kombucha and a wonderful salad and hung out and then came back and bumped into one of my friends and sat on the step for a little while and talked about father's day and how hard it's feeling in that moment. It was like six o'clock at night.

Speaker 1:

I really started feeling some suffering and some missing and wanting to. You know, have contact with my kids and you know my heart was breaking a little bit and I do want to preface this. My middle daughter texted me at 7am in the morning and said Happy Father's Day. We've been connecting only now, for about six or seven months and it's only been through text and it doesn't feel like enough. It doesn't feel like we're really in relationship and it was important enough for her to text me first thing in the morning and say happy Father's Day. So there is a victory there. And it's hard, it's hard and I'm curious who else relates to this? Like it's hard, feeling like I'm getting crumbs and I want more. And at the same time she's living a really complex life and maybe this is a filet mignon that she's given me. So I'm really in that thing of trying to understand gratitude and in relationship to my middle daughter and her saying happy Father's Day and I'm not really sure how to process it. I'm not sure what to do with it, I'm not sure what to do next, but it was really sweet.

Speaker 1:

And then my youngest daughter, who I have regular contact with, you know, texted me and called me and said happy Father's Day and we got caught up and it was super beautiful and I only have a relationship with my youngest daughter. Again, this is from my perspective and experience. The same day my middle daughter stopped talking to me was the day that I got engaged Three years ago, no well, six years ago, six or seven years ago, I don't even know. And that same day, my youngest daughter texted me and said hey, I think I need to take a break from you, and because I had some recovery, because I was working on communication, because I was available and present, I said, wow, yeah, I totally understand that you're upset about me getting engaged and you don't necessarily want to talk to me, but can we meet for coffee and let's discuss this and figure this out and come to some kind of agreement? And she met me for coffee and our relationship never got severed.

Speaker 1:

I was able to show up, her nervous system was able to regulate and our relationship is challenging at times because she's living in both these different family systems and for me it's super triggering but I no longer have to talk to her about it. And for me it's super triggering but I no longer have to talk to her about it. I come and talk to you about it, I do a podcast about it, I go to a meeting, I call a friend and it was great. It was great to hear from her and my oldest daughter. It's been like nine years and just nothing, and last year I actually called and wished her happy father's day. So maybe I'll do that too, maybe I'll leave her a message and say happy father's day. I know we don't get to celebrate it together and even think about each other, you know, in this particular moment, but I just want to say I'm so grateful to be your dad and like, can you do that with a child that doesn't want anything to do with you? And I'm talking to you, anyone out there listening to this podcast Mother's Day, father's Day, whatever seminal event it is can you do that? Can you be grateful? Can you be gracious and just love them where they are Super challenging At least for me it is. Maybe other folks are kinder, sweeter, but that's my Father's Day, and let me get back to the survey here.

Speaker 1:

So I spoke a little bit about one of the pillars, which is our foundational trainings. In theory, we're going to have foundational trainings in nonviolent communication and for our first year of the program, we had trainings in nonviolent communication. I ran the trainings. It was great. There was so much incredible change maybe more change in communication in people's lives than any other one thing that I can track that in just a response to an email or a text or a conversation, people were able to shift the dynamic of the conversation. They weren't able to make it perfect, but they were able to not create any more harm and sometimes even come away with more connection.

Speaker 1:

So I say this as a training in theory, because we need more resources. You know we are a bunch of volunteers and you see my face on this podcast but there's a bunch of people in the background spending a bunch of hours. There's people in the 12-step program that are volunteering. Everything's peer-to-peer in the 12-step program. We do have some assistants that help us with the editing and stuff with the podcast, because it's impossible for us to do that, but everything else is just done by volunteers. We raise almost no money through our 501c3 and that's probably on me or the other people on the board where we need to be a little bit more aggressive with that. But we also need your donations or if you're connected to grants or anything else that you can help or you write grants, we'd love to have your help so we can get these foundational trainings moving and actually have to pay some people to come in to do them and offer them for free or at a very low cost to folks, or sliding scale or something.

Speaker 1:

And these are life-changing Nonviolent communication, somatic tracking, byron, katie the work which will be an episode family systems theory, constellations Wow, there's some wicked cool stuff out there. So, yeah, I just wanted to say that, like so, many people are craving this stuff and it's unaffordable to a majority of people to tap into a lot of these different resources, because life is crazy, they don't have time, they're just trying to get through the day. They might not have any resources, and there's other people that do have resources. So can we share those resources, even when we might not attend one of these trainings? Can we do that? Can we donate X amount a month to help get the trainings going? And that's a question for you. Can you do that?

Speaker 1:

It's not about you, it's about the community and it's not about me. It's about the next person coming to the community. Like if I was to just show up today and there was these trainings and these resources and all these things available, I would change the trajectory of my family system. So it's not about me. It took a long time to go from I to we. I had to surrender over and over and over again to finally get there because the pain was so bad.

Speaker 1:

And that's how the 12-step program started and that's how the podcast started. Like, this is a lot of work and it's about community and I don't have a great relationship, or any relationship, with some of my daughters, but I'm still showing up for the community and you can do that too in any way that feels useful and financially would be great. If people have resources, we don't need a lot. So I'm just saying that 501c3, non-profitable tax, deductible information. The show notes love to have you sign up as a monthly donor or not. Everyone's welcome with it or without it. I just want to say that and we want to get those foundational trainings going, hopefully sooner than later, and kind of like when the podcast started and the 12-step program started when it was the next indicated step, and that's kind of how my life works. It's like sometimes I just don't have capacity and then I reach some kind of density and I reach capacity and then something new happens and now there's other people within the community and within the organization that have energy and then something different happens.

Speaker 1:

Another thing on the survey is the podcast right? You're listening to it now and it's cool, like we surveyed people and asked them how many podcasts they listened to, and then we also tracked more podcasts. What was the quality of life? What has changed? And we found that people that had listened to more than five podcasts had significant change in their mental health, in some coping mechanisms and how they showed up in situations and not feeling alone and not feeling so depressed and not feeling so isolated. And people that had listened to over 10 podcasts all those percentages went up their mental health, their physical health, their being out in the world, the changes in their lives reconnecting with people, strengthening relationships, building community. So the podcast is a significant free way to resource yourself and I don't care if you're struggling in court and you don't know what to do with the judge on Monday to a podcast.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't matter if it's about that or not. You're going to hear something that's going to be useful and potentially really, really help you and change your life. Listen to the ones about court too, but if you're in pain and you're just looking for a silver bullet, it does not exist. I looked everywhere for it and the only silver bullet that I found was myself. Right, so I am. I am the silver bullet. I need to do the work, I need to show up. I need to listen to podcasts. I need to build community. I need to, I want to. I don't want to die. So these are the things that I do. And if you want to change your life, these are the things that you're going to need to do too. So listen to a bunch of podcasts. That's the takeaway. And then the last thing I want to talk about is just the 12-step program.

Speaker 1:

Folks on the survey that attended meetings on a regular basis, that engaged in sponsorship, that were at service on the meeting level. The change in their life and lifestyle is so incredibly significant, and 12-step programs aren't for everyone and they aren't for the faint of heart. You know, when I came to my first 12-step meeting, I wanted someone to tell me how to fix my wife. I wanted someone to tell me how to get my family back. I wanted someone to tell me how to make the pain stop. Those are the questions that I came into a 12-step meeting with. I didn't come to a 12-step meeting to look at my stuff. I was looking at your stuff, and if I could fix your stuff, then everything was going to be okay and that's how I live my life and it doesn't work. And if you're trying to do that, good luck. Maybe it'll work for you, but for me it nearly killed me. So I had to start working on my own stuff.

Speaker 1:

And the 12-step program has been around for 90 years. This isn't something that just got invented or someone just thought about. This has been around for 90 years, which is Alcoholics Anonymous. Al-anon came along maybe five or 10 years after that, so maybe 80 years. This technology has been used and we're using the Al-Anon platform that we adopted for parental alienation, estrangement and erasure. So this is technology that has proof of tens of hundreds of thousands of people around the world that it has changed their life. And some people might be dealing with their kids having drug addiction or any other form of trauma or drama, and it's worked, as they've had to work through stuff that we work through anxiety, depression, not having contact, choosing not to have contact. And we're talking about relational. We're talking about relationships with our kids, with our family members, with our exes. So the program works and you have to work it. It doesn't do it for you.

Speaker 1:

So if you're interested in 12-step program and you've been to a meeting or two and you're like, eh, here's the challenge. Commit to go into I don't know three to five meetings a week. Commit to picking up a service position, a secretary position, a leader position, a timer position, volunteer for something else and show up at the meetings and be of service. And if you go to some meetings that aren't great, be of service. We need more people that are rowing in the same direction to make everything a little bit more consistent and a little bit more continuity. And if you find meetings you just love and you adore and you're growing and you're changing and you're learning, keep going to those meetings. Find the ones that you like and go to those. Not every meeting is going to be for you, because I know it's not for me.

Speaker 1:

So so many things that I've talked about in the survey are just incredibly important and it's incredibly important to get the survey in as many people's hands as possible and we're sending the survey out to the list of therapists, attorneys, judges that we have Maybe it's like 20,000 people and we want to educate people. We want to let them know that there's resources out there for people, whether it's a podcast, a 12-step program, the trainings that hopefully get started back up or any of the other stuff that we offer. And I'm asking you to share this with your therapist, to share this with other people in your world that might be connected to other people. And I know you're in a lot of pain and it really felt like it was all about me and my pain. I didn't really have space or time for anyone else.

Speaker 1:

But service has been the greatest bomb Bomb, is that what you call it? Like, if you get a cut, you put some kind of bomb on something or you put some disinfectant in a band-aid I mean, a band-aid is a bad analogy, but service has saved my life. Showing up in meetings, being a timer, being a secretary, being a leader, volunteering on the organizational level to help develop what we're doing here in parental alienation, advocacy, the podcast, like all these things are service. You know what I mean. Like just seeing my face out there, other people's faces out there. This has got nothing to do with us wanting to be out there. This has to do with being of service and getting relief, and each time we talk about this, each time we have a really intricate conversation, each time we dig into these different layers and we go, oh, yeah, me too. Oh, I remember that. Or I hear someone that just got their kid back, or they have a relationship and they went to this or they went to that. It's like my whole ecosystem comes online and life just gets a little bit richer. Right, yeah, I don't care where you are in your life, you know, be of service. We'd really love you to be of service in the community so we can carry this message to the next person coming in and the next person that's suffering, the next person that's isolated, the next person that's just stuck. They're not going to know about this unless you tell them about it or unless you share it with a friend.

Speaker 1:

You know, I was at a clothing store down here in Pahoa, which is another little town on the big island, and I on the big island and I was talking to one of the salespeople and then one of the ladies and I'm like what do you do? And I told him what do I do? I help run the organization. I'm the director right now. And I told him about the podcast and dude sitting on the couch is like, oh my god, I don't talk to my daughter. And then the one lady's like my partner, two of the kids, don't talk to them. We're talking about this stuff and there's so many people struggling with this that don't know there's any resources out there. So share the resources, share the love, be of service, jump into the community. We need as much help as possible.

Speaker 1:

Donate Whatever it looks like, and I want to hear from you Comment Like, get involved, ask for different content, ask for more of the same content. Let us know we're doing something good and that it's touching your life so we can share that with other people. I've been getting so many great emails from people that just say oh my God, this was so great, this really helped me. I didn't know about this or I really love this perspective from this professional that came on and it's life affirming and changing. But if you don't let us know that it's great, we don't know. And if we don't know that it's great, then we can't get more people like that on there. So you have a job. You have something to do, too in this community if you want to participate.

Speaker 1:

Wow, quality show Lawrence. I really enjoyed that, and what an honor to get to do this on Father's Day, which is a rough day for so many of us, and Mother's Day and any other seminal event is just rough, and I got to be of service and I get to be of service in the community in this way, and I'm also taking care of myself by doing it and talking about it, because just keeping that all inside is just going to fester and kill me. So I chose not to die today. I chose to record a podcast and come out and play with you all. I want to thank you for listening to the show.

Speaker 1:

I want to welcome anyone new to the community. Remind you about all the resources in the show notes. Please like, share, tell everyone about the podcast, the meetings, whatever feels appropriate to you, the surveys in the show notes please check that out. Donate if you can Come, check out some meetings if that feels appropriate. If not, go find some community and support somewhere. That's paramount. And with that I am going to say goodbye. I love you. I hope to see you around the neighborhood sometime and have a beautiful day, bye-bye. 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.