Parental Alienation & Dying: Living When Reunification May Never Come - Episode 132

Lawrence Joss explores the profound themes of mortality, parental alienation, and the emotional struggles that accompany them. He shares his personal journey through anxiety, recovery, and the fear of dying without reconciling with his children. The conversation delves into the importance of preparing for death, leaving a legacy, and the impact of community support in navigating these challenges. Joss emphasizes the need for proactive measures in parenting and the significance of sharing one's story with future generations.

Key Takeaways

• Am I gonna die before I get a relationship back with my kids?
• Death and grieving are monumental events.
• I thought I was there to stop drinking.
• I was in a white bed, in a white room.
• I was scared to die and I was sure I was going to die.
• I want them to see who I am in this moment.
• I never stopped parenting.
• Let's talk about this.
• I want to share some resources with my children now.
• This is a universal pain and suffering.

Chapters

00:00 - Facing the Unthinkable Question
02:00 - Panic, Addiction Recovery & Not Knowing What Was Happening
04:30 - Community as Lifeline & Learning I Couldn’t Do This Alone
06:45 - When the Body Holds Unresolved Grief
08:45 - Making Friends with Death & Understanding the Family System
10:45 - A Near-Death Medical Moment
13:30 - Parenting Without Access Over Decades
15:45 - Reclaiming Agency Through Legacy
18:30 - From Me to We: Community, Meaning & Continuing to Live Fully

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=SDLTX8TBSZNXSsa bottom part

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

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

Transcript

Mortality Fears In Estrangement;

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Am I gonna die before I get a relationship back with my kids? Am I gonna die before I ever get to meet my grandchildren? Like, what's that gonna look like? And am I okay with that? Like, will I ever be okay with that? Do you ever think that I'm gonna die and I'm never gonna see my kids again, or I'm gonna die, I'm never gonna get to meet my grandparents, or maybe your child thinking, hey, I'm gonna die, and I'm never gonna get to tell my parents what I think. I'm never gonna get to have them in my life again, or any other family member. Like death and grieving and all these things that we deal with with parental alienation, estrangement, and erasure are monumental events. And where do you put them? What do you do with them? Well, on today's show, we're gonna talk about that. And I'm gonna share some experiences I've had over the last several months and take you through my thought process, the tools that I'm using, some good, some not good. You know, it's definitely an evolution. But if you're new to the show, welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. My name's Lauren Strauss. It's great to have you here. Please like, share if this content feels good and useful. And again, if you're new to the show, we've got over 120 podcasts taped on every kind of subject you can imagine. Check it out, see what resonates with you. Today's show, we're going to try a little bit different format about dying and sickness and health and fear and all those different things that come up with it. And uh, if you've been around a long time, hold on tight. We're going for a ride. And uh, thanks for coming out to play today. Remember to check the show notes. We have a free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous, great place to find community, save my life, a pivotal part of my story. And hopefully you can check it out too. And if not, find a group, find some support, so find some love, find some people that uh can show up for you. The neat thing about community is um we don't have to do it alone. So, with that said, let's jump into dying. So, in the beginning of parental alienation, and again, I didn't know what this was for eight or nine years, and the anxiety, the fear, panic attacks were a part of my story, um, lots of anxiety before I got into a 12-step program. I actually started an Alcoholics Anonymous right in the beginning of this journey, and I thought I was there to stop drinking. I came to learn that my life was unmanageable and I didn't know what to do. So I actually got sober, and 90 days into my sobriety, I had the most severe anxiety, the most intense panic attacks that I've ever had in my life. And you're like, what was that about? And that was about me not understanding what the hell was going on with my kids. I love these kids. I was there, I was a blackout drinker, I wasn't a hope to die, a hide in the closet kind of alcoholic, and we're all the same. We're all just people using coping mechanisms to to try to cope with life, and I don't care what it is. You know, it happened to be alcohol, drugs, food, people, TV, spending buying. It doesn't matter. Like, this is not what this is about. This is about that these through these things going on. And I thought if I dealt with that thing, then I'd be okay. And that 90 days sober, not understanding the system, the family system is what I'm talking about, parental alienation. I was going nuts, man. I thought I was gonna have to claw my way out of my skin. And what I did is I went to the doctor. I'm like, hey, doc, not feeling so good here. Like, what can you do? And they put me on antidepressants. And I had a negative experience with antidepressants, and other people have had wonderful experiences. This isn't about antidepressants, this is about my story. So I'm taking these antidepressants, I'm a day or two into it, and I feel like I need to peel off my skin. And I find out that I'm allergic to SSRIs, which is a form of antidepressants. So, what I do is I go to my sponsor, and a sponsor in a 12-step program is just a trusted person that's walking this path of recovery and sharing their experience, hope, and strength with you. And it doesn't matter if it's in a 12-step program or a religious affiliation or a book club or just a friend or family member. Like I reached out to this person. I'm like, hey, don't know what to do. And so at 90 Days Sober, they checked me into a rehab. This is super funny. I get to the rehab, get checked in, go to sleep, and I wake up in the morning. And I don't know if you've seen one flew over the cuckoo's nest, but I was in a white bed in a white room with everything painted white, and it just was insanity. And I didn't know what to do. And I totally freaked out. And I called a buddy of mine that I grew up with a new since I was like 10 years old, and said, Hey, this isn't working for me. He said, Hey, whatever you need, I'm gonna come pick you up. And then I reached out to my sister and she found me a different rehab that had a 12-step component to it. So my friend picks me up and drives me halfway. I meet my parents and they drive me to this rehab in Southern California, and I land up there and I learn how to be with myself. You know what I mean? And I don't care what it is. I don't, I don't care if it's alcoholism, I don't care if it's panic, I don't care if it's anxiety. I couldn't do it by myself. I said, hey, hey, I need some help. So I land up at this place and I start to learn about myself. You know, this hypnotherapy therapy, this therapist, there's group work, there's safety, there's a container where you're not getting bombarded by information the whole time. So I go there and I start to learn about myself and start to work with my anxiety and my fear and my panic attacks, and then stuff starts to become more manageable. And I start meditating, and and meditating feels super, super familiar to me. So then I get through that part of it, and I'm going back, I'm back in life, and things are happening, and the panic and the anxiety is completely manageable, and I'm doing 12-step work and I'm helping other people, and other people are helping me, and I'm building this incredibly robust community. And I land up this probably about uh eight years, nine years into my journey, right around the time I found parental alienation, and my whole body starts to just shut down. Chronic pain, you know, mine was in my pelvis, like just from holding and holding and holding and pushing down and not understanding what was happening and being so desperate. And still that anxiety was still inside of me, but it was actually my body tightening. You know what I mean? Just boop, boop, boop. My body locked up. And what I decided to do at that time, I'm not gonna tell you the whole thing, but I'll ended up going to do a two-year Buddhist chaplaincy program in New Mexico at a place called Japaya. The abbot there was uh Joan Holifax. And I specifically went there because I was scared to die, and I was sure that I was gonna die. So I went there to make friends with death because I didn't really know anything about it. And it was there that one of the trainings was on systems theory. Joshin, a dear friend of mine, the vice abbot at that time, did the systems training and we broke into a triad, which is just three people, and we spoke about systems, and people were talking about medical systems, uh, legal systems, whatever. And I was thinking family system. Like, I don't know what to do. I'm in pain, my body's in pain, I don't know what to do. So we we look at my family system, and I realized that the idea of the parents being at the top of the family system wasn't true in my system. I was actually at the bottom of the family system, and my ex-wife or my wife still at that time had elevated my oldest daughter into a parental role, and the other kids like elevated above me as she's passing on information and creating parts of this dysfunction. Because I definitely came in with some dysfunction myself. Like, I don't want to just say, hey, that person did this one thing. Like the environment was created that way based on how I was raised. So I learned about death and making friends with death and the process of death and did a lot of reading on death and dying. And it served me so much. And I've done hospice work and all other kinds of work, and it's really changed my understanding and trajectory of life. And that's just a long ass story. But what I'm gonna get into now is like, hey, am I gonna die before I get a relationship back with my kids? Am I gonna die before I ever get to meet my grandchildren? Like, what's that gonna look like? And am I okay with that? Like, will I ever be okay with that? So now we get to the story, right? So I've been spending a good amount of time in Hawaii off-grid where I am right now, like living a different kind of lifestyle. And I go back to the mainland and I go to uh, where did I go? I went to Oregon to go on a couple retreats and just do some more interpersonal work because I'm an interpersonal work junkie. Yeah, I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to stretch, I want to improve as a human being. And it's a wonderful thing. And at the same time, there's also this component of me that always wants to be gooder and better. And if I get gooder and better, then my kids will love me, or my neighbor will love me, or I, you know what, I maybe I'll love myself. I'm not sure what it is, but we we don't need to get into that. So I go on this retreat. Day one, I'm on this retreat, and I'm having dinner, I'm having chicken, super tasty. And uh, I get a piece of chicken stuck in my esophagus, you know, and um I've been having some issues previously to that. But anyway, the chicken gets stuck in my esophagus. And previously, when stuffs got stuck, I'd drink liquid and it would go down and resolve. But this time, like nothing would pass the blockage. You know, like water wouldn't go down. Incredibly, incredibly painful. So I had to be thrown up the whole time, and we're like an hour and a half away from any kind of services, and I'm like, this is gonna pass. Three hours in, it doesn't pass, so I land up at the emergency ward, and uh, there's nothing much they can do. So they send me to the hospital and they have to do an emergency endoscopy to remove the chicken. I can still breathe fine and everything like that. It's not life-threatening, but in those moments, you don't know what's really going on. So they get some surgeons to come in at like three in the morning in the middle of God knows where and to come do the endoscopy. And I'm lying on the table in the surgery room and they tell me that they're gonna have to intubate me. So I've never been intubated before, and if you're not familiar with that, it's when they stick the breathing tube down your throat. And in that moment, I'm like, oh, I might die. Not that that was real or wasn't real. I don't think that's the point. The point is, like, oh, this is a reality. Will I ever see my children again? Will I ever meet my grandchildren? And in that moment, I'm thinking, like, if something happens, my best friend and and ex-partner would be the one that would have to call my kids and let them know, hey, something happened to your dad. And she's super villainized in the family system and everyone hates her. And I'm just thinking, Jesus, this is like scary. Like it's the first time that I was really, really scared that uh I would never see my kids again. And that they would never get to see me because as I mature and as I continue to do this work, I realize that hey, I'm doing this work to prepare myself potentially not to ever, ever meet my kids again or see my kids again, or actually meet my grandchildren. But my kids aren't doing any of this work. If something was to happen to me, again, in theory, you would think they would be upset and they would have to do all this work in tandem with living their lives and whatever's going on, and that and that would be incredibly painful. So I go through the procedure, they do whatever, and you know, I'm in contact with my youngest daughter, and we we have a good relationship of the best possible relationship we can have, you know, considering the circumstances. A week after this happens, I call her and let her know what happened. You know, and she was worried about me and she was loving and she was kind and stuff, but I waited a little bit of time to tell her because I didn't feel safe telling anyone. Like, you know, like the craziness is the stuff's happening to you, and you're like thinking, huh, I want to tell my daughter what's going on. And if I tell my daughter, does that get thrown back into the family system and becomes this whole thing and dad's faking something? God knows what would come up in the family system. So it was really interesting watching my mind, deciding what am I gonna do, what am I not gonna do, when I tell her what her reaction is. I was loving and kind, and she just said, Hey, if you ever need anything, give me a call. You know, if you're struggling or it's something that's happening, like I I want to know about it. So that was that was healing to a degree, and at the same degree, heartbreaking because our relationship is sweet and loving, and when we spend time together, it's great, but yet it's super challenged by the family system. So I finished that episode and uh and I've never shared this information with my middle daughter who I have a little bit of contact with, and my oldest daughter, nothing. You know what I mean? So it brings up this thing like what do we do? How do we prepare for death while we're living? How do we take care of ourselves? How do we leave something behind for our kids in case they're curious? So that's where I'm sitting in my life, and I'm curious. Are you going through this? Have you decided how you're gonna prepare potentially for your own death and how that's gonna relate to the system of parental alienation? And are you just gonna go quietly into the shadows and say, hey, that's what it is. My kids don't love me, they weren't there, so I'm done. Or are you gonna proactively prepare on what that looks like? So I'm sitting in that chair too, and I'm saying, yeah, I'm gonna proactively prepare. Like developmentally, the research shows that critical thinking comes fully online in the mid-30s. And I know for me, like in the beginning of my story, I told you 36 is when I landed up getting sober. That's when I really started to see different shades, even in my parents' behaviors and how I showed up and the places in my life that I could improve. So 36 years old was for me when that critical development really, really kicked in. I was incredibly successful. I was doing a bunch of great stuff. I had kids, I had stuff, but on an interpersonal, emotional, spiritual level, I was super immature and undeveloped. And I don't know why I or anyone else would have an expectation of our children and our grandchildren to be any different than we are. And I'm not saying what you are or aren't, so I'll just talk for myself. I can't expect them to be any different than I am. And I was 36, you know, coming into this work. Hopefully they get there a couple years earlier. So the onus of what I'm saying, and I've mentioned this time before, like it's really important for me to have a plan for my kids. And that includes leaving videos about what I'm doing, who I am. You know what I mean? And some of the testimonials are basically our conversation right here, but a lot of them are intentionally for the kids. And I have three girls, and just to qualify, I have a 31-year-old, a 28-year-old, and a 25-year-old. Is that right? Something like that. Yeah, no, that's right. And uh I want them to see who I am in this moment if they choose. And if they don't choose, I'm sharing it anyway. You know what I mean? I talk about parenting without access all the time, and this is how I choose to parent, even in the question of death. I am gonna proactively prepare for what that looks like for me. No one's gonna get to have their own tale or their their own projection or their own manipulation of what my life looked like. You know what I mean? Not my ex, not my kids, not some random person that had one conversation with me. Like I'm gonna put myself in a position to present a little bit about who I am. My intention is to do is create videos and videos that can be shared with all three girls and also individual videos that are specific for each child so they can learn a little bit about me, a little bit about what kind of struggle I'm in. And the other stuff that feels really important for me is for there to be some witnesses to bear witness to my life. Like it's great for me to say, hey, nice guy over here. I'm your dad. These are some things I want to tell you. And it's also super powerful for Angie or Bob or White to say, hey, I happen to bump into your dad, Lawrence, through X, Y, or Z, or you know, on a bus, whatever it is. And wow, this is what I experienced of him in those moments, in those days, in those years, or whatever it was. And this is what I want to share that I know about your dad. And I just want to share the story or something like that degree. And in this legacy that I'm creating for myself to leave for my kids, I'm healing myself. And I and I'm actually getting to speak this out loud. I'm getting to parent without my kids being present, parenting without access. But I'm also creating a living legacy, maybe even for my grandkids, and maybe for no one. Maybe this is just for me. But I just want to say like so much of parental alienation is stripping away our agency, you know, government institutions stripping away our rights, other parents making up stories, whatever it is. It's like I have no agency, but that's just not true. When it comes to dye and I have plenty of agency, it's a matter of how I want to use it. And I think this the subject matter starts off as pretty morbid, but the reality is, is like, let's talk about this. Let's think about what we're gonna do in this conversation and how we can present ourselves. And as we're speaking, I've been talking about this for maybe a year or so. There's a program that I'm gonna be launching, which is called On Living and Dying, which will give you a format to put all these different ideas into one place so your kids will be able to find it, including an app for you to record and save and put all these memories in one place. And I'd love to tell you that I'm doing this for someone else besides myself, but I'm not. And if I can produce this and do this for myself to share with the community too, it seems like a no-brainer. I don't know. What would you want your kids to know about you if you were about to die? You know, and the things that I want uh my kids to know about me is I want them to know that I never stopped parenting. I never stopped. Me working on myself and doing all these spiritual things and popping in and out of all these different places is my ultimate and most important parenting. To grow and stretch as a human being and present in a different kind of way is incredible. And I will say that parenting was always about me possessing something or me having control over or letting my kids know what to do. And as kids mature, like I am not their higher power, I'm not their guard, I'm not their anything. I'm just another human being that happens to be their parent. So letting go of those attachments to how we want to tell other people to live their lives is a really powerful and profound thing. And yet I can still show up as a parent and share my experience, strength, and hope. I don't even know if any of this makes any sense to anyone out there, but talking about death and dying for me feels really important. And it's not a subject we get to discuss the whole time. So we're going to be bringing in some people to talk about this more in depth. What are your plans? What are you in plans for inheritance? Are you going to leave your kids anything? Are you not going to leave your kids anything? You know, one of the decisions that I made about was probably about two years ago, two and a half years ago, is I wanted to start sharing some of the resources I had with my children now. Irrelevant if they have any kind of relationship with me or not. You know, and I had a third party that I trusted contact my kids and say, hey, these are some gifts your father wants to give you. And you don't have to have any kind of contact with them. This has nothing to do with that. But they're available if you want to take them, take them up. You know, so I'm actually getting to do part of parenting and sharing some resources I've been able to acquire with my children. And also there's this extreme freedom of letting go and not having to control what they do or don't do with it. But I will tell you this: the money that I'm sending for my grandkids that's supposed to be for like a college fund or something, is super challenging not to know if that's actually going in a college fund. You know, I thought about this years before and left a message from my middle daughter specifically because she has two kids saying that I wanted to do this, but I would set up the college fund and she would be the beneficiary. And her and her husband said no. And I'm like, how can you say no to money for the kids? And that's none of my business, right? That's none of my business from a recovery perspective. What was my business is why did I want to have any kind of control? I wanted to have control because I want to make sure it was going to the right place, done the right thing with. I wanted it to be my way. Ultimately, I want to be a parent and I want to share with no strings attached. You know, my kids use it usefully, great. If they do something that I don't agree with, great. That's their stuff to work out and their stuff to live with. So this complexity of living and dying and how we do that and what legacy we leave is incredibly, incredibly important and incredible, important subject matter. And that's why I'm talking about it today. And I'm not sure how this lands with me just gibbering and jabbering away, but I think it's important and hopefully it stimulates some thoughts for everyone. I'd love to hear from you. Please comment, share, send me an email at familydisapear at gmail.com. Tell me what your thoughts are on living and dying. You know, you are you interested in leaving a legacy for yourself? And you are you interested in the agency around that and getting to decide how you present yourself instead of just surrendering to someone else doing that for you. So as I'm sitting here and thinking about this, I'm feeling some sadness. I can feel some emotions in my eyes. I miss my kids dearly, as I'm sure you all do, and my grandkids, I'd love to have an opportunity to meet. And if you're missing your parents or another family member, man, it's hard. It's a hard path. We're all trudging and we're all trudging in different directions. And we're all on a similar path, and they might be divergent at different times and have different intersections depending if we're missing a parent or a child or a grandchild or another family member, whatever it is, but it's still a path that we're trudging together. We get to decide what it looks like. We have agency. There's a lot of wonderful organizations doing a lot of work, including our organization. And super excited when we get to bring this stuff to you, hopefully later this year. What a great conversation I had with myself. I truly appreciate you, Lawrence. I like listening to what you have to say. And it's good to say it out loud because now I would like to hold myself accountable to move forward with actually doing the stuff that I tell you that I'm doing and do it continuously and really create this legacy. And oh, yeah, a huge part of this journey and this step is a perspective shift. And it's from the I to the we. And it's kind of like hey, when my kids are young, like I'm omnipotent, I'm their parent, I tell them what to do, I protect them, I do all these things, and I have this idea that I'm their God. I'm not, I'm just their parent and their caregiver. In that way. And as they age, that kind of like shifts and they they find their own way and their own higher power and stuff like that. And that's in kind of like the I. And a huge part of my recovery is switching to the we. And that's where this video comes from is the we, is the community, is sharing with the community. How do we lift up each other? How do I help the next person in that maybe this is going to be incredibly salient and incredibly important? And my story is going to be a little bit different because I'm much further along on the bell curve. But how do we switch from the I to the we? Because this is a universal suffering. This is a universal pain. And I know you're in pain, but it is a universal pain and a universal suffering. And the more of us that switch our focus to the universal, the more we switch to the systemic to the whole system and how everything's operating. That's when we get to change lives. And it might not have the biggest, most major impact directly on my personal relationships with my kids. But if it has a systemic and a larger impact, my kids are going to impact it as well. And maybe not for me. And I don't think that's important anymore. It used to be really, really important to me. And that's it. Thanks for coming out to play in the sandbox today. I'd love to hear what you thought of this conversation. Great resources in the show notes. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. And what I just said about helping the next person in is what I'm asking you to do. This isn't about you donating so you can have access to this. You already have access. You already know about it. It's about you donating so the next person in can have it. Donate what you can, make it monthly. Donate a large sum if you have access to resources. We are a 501c3 nonprofit, so it's tax deductible. Let us bring these things to you sooner. If we have more resources to help move through some of these trainings on living and dying and these other things that are going on, they'll come sooner. If not, we will stay our grassroots organization and build one break at a time and hopefully create some kind of sustainable change. And in case no one's told you yet today, I love you. I hope you have a beautiful day. I hope you have a nice walk around the woods or the neighborhood or the Kmart or whatever else it might be. So have a beautiful day, and I will see you soon around the neighborhood.