The Long Road Back to Your Child | Parental Alienation & Reconnection

This conversation explores what parental alienation actually feels like for the parents and grandparents living through it. Lawrence Joss brings together several parents who share their lived experiences, the urgency, grief, and emotional chaos that often accompany the early years of alienation.

Together, they reflect on how their understanding evolved over time. What once felt like a crisis to fix quickly slowly became a longer journey of patience, self-awareness, and support. Through honest stories and hard-earned perspective, the panel discusses how community, emotional regulation, and learning the “long view” can change the way parents navigate alienation and keep the door open for future reconnection.

Key Takeaways

• Patience allows children space to heal and process
• Urgency often leads to poor decision-making.
• The emotional impact of alienation can feel overwhelming
• Community support is crucial for healing.
• Understanding the long view helps in managing expectations.
• Parents often feel like they are drowning emotionally.
• Pleading one's case can push children further away.
• The journey of reconnecting is often bumpy and unpredictable.
• Vulnerability builds trust during the reconnection process
• Calming the nervous system prevents reactive, harmful mistakes
• The healing that went on just by being present in the same space was significant.
• Accept small gestures without demanding more contact.
• Patience is where the magic happens in relationships.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Parental Alienation
05:05 - Personal Stories of Alienation
10:02 - Understanding the Long View of Alienation
14:46 - The Impact of Urgency on Decisions
20:13 - Reflections on Emotional Responses
20:42 - Navigating Parental Challenges
23:09 - Building Connections with Children
26:45 - The Journey of Reconnection
32:35 - The Role of Patience and Safety
40:50 - Transformative Conversations and Healing

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:
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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

Welcome And Resources For Parents

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I feel like it was led by her. It wasn't me leading it and forcing into, which is what I would do without patience. But man, it's hard. I'll tell you what. It is, I have to, I feel like I have to tranquilize myself and go like this to not jump in there.

Panel Introductions And Time In PAA

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Do you wonder, like, am I ever going to have contact with my kids? And do you wonder are there any people out there that are actually starting to build relationships? Well, I'm here to tell you that the show today is super, super great. We have a panel of four parents and grandparents that are talking about reconnecting with their children, adult children, grandchildren, and what it looks like. And we're talking about the commonalities and the intersections of what we're all experiencing after being around this community for the last four or five years. It's a super powerful show. And uh, if you're new to this community, we have over 130 podcasts taped over all different subjects. This is a panel of parents that are in the middle of this talking about the experience and sharing some of the most important information you're gonna find out there on what the arc of connection looks like and some really salient points that we should all be practicing in order to get there. If you're someone that's been around the show a long time, thanks for coming out. We are a 501c3 nonprofit. Please donate. You're not donating for yourself, you're donating for someone that hasn't found these free resources yet. Love you to donate often if that's possible. And if it's not, volunteer. Please share, like, let people know the stuff's going on. There's great links in the show notes. There's a free 12-step program, which you'll hear us reference over and over in this discussion. It's parental alienation anonymous. And there's also some other good stuff in there. And with that, let's jump right into the show. So we're so excited to have some familiar faces today on a panel. And today's panel is gonna be super cool. We're gonna be talking about the long view when parental alienation or estrangement or whatever your initial experience is kind of like starts. Uh there's always this idea that it's gonna quickly dissipate or something's gonna shift, and we're gonna get back to some sense of normalcy. That's just a little teaser. And with that, I'm just gonna let everyone re-introduce themselves and just name how long you've been in program so we can kind of like track that through the conversation as we're talking about the long view in relationship to more of like a 12-step program or more of whatever kind of spiritual emotional help people are delving into. Like, what does that view look like? What are the intersections? So please go ahead and introduce yourself and let's start off with you first, Anna.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Hi everyone, I'm Anna, a grateful member of PAA. I've been alienated from my kids since 2016, but recently there's been a little bit of contact. I'm grateful to be on the show this morning and thinking about the questions has helped me. It helps me to heal to do the prep and it also helps to actually do the recording. And it feels like a really good way to be of service and to shed light on the alienation situation.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Thank you, Anna. Let's go to you next, Stephen.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Hi, um Steven. Glad to be here today with this group, my family. Let's see. I am alienated from a 26-year-old married daughter with um definitely having some increasing contact the last three or four months. She had uh a baby at the end of September, so first my first grandchild. And then I'm uh alienated from a 20 and a half year old son. We had no contact for a while, then some increasing contact, and then um we're back to no contact again pretty much for the last two months. But grateful to be here. Very excited to think about these questions and delve into them. It's uh very interesting and helpful.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Thank you, Stephen. Renee, you are up.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Thanks, Lawrence. I too am really excited about doing this. Enjoyed going through the questions and jotting down a few notes. I am uh alienated from two adult boys, ages 38 and 39, almost 40, for over 30 years with on again, off again contact. Right now with my oldest son, we are in contact with my youngest son. I haven't had contact for probably nine months now. I did get a text from him wishing me a happy birthday a couple weeks ago, but other than that, no real contact to speak of. I do have four grandchildren. I've seen them all a handful of times, but it's extremely rare.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

Thank you, Renee. And uh just to qualify for myself quickly, my name is Lawrence. I'm an alienated father and grandfather. I have a 31-year-old that it's been about eight or nine years without any kind of contact. I have a 28-year-old that we started connecting about 18 months ago. And yes, and we'll get more into that in the show. And I have a 25-year-old that I have regular contact with, and I too am excited to be sitting here with part of my family of choice and having this conversation. And I think the one thing that we didn't really cover on our introductions that we can just do quickly is like, how long have you been participating in PAA, which is parental alienation anonymous? So we can kind of like track our stories a little bit over this arc, even though our like you like my arc for parental alienation is maybe 20 years, but like in program, we're gonna try to track it to that, and maybe we'll use the big arc also. So I've been around program for a bit less than five years. And uh, what about you, Renee? How long have you been around?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Pretty much the same. I think six months less than you, so about four and a half years.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Thank you, Renee. And uh Anna?

SPEAKER_01 5:43

For me, it will be five years this October. So again, a similar amount of time.

SPEAKER_03 5:48

Stephen?

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Four years for me this week.

When You Realize It Is Long-Term

SPEAKER_03 5:51

Wow. You have a birthday today, four years this week. You got a you got a lot of stuff going. So just a happy. It is. That's uh that's super cool. I guess for the the the people out there, when you first started this journey, maybe some of us knew parental alienation, maybe some of us had no idea of the terminology whatsoever. Did it feel like this would be solved quickly? Did it feel like this was just kind of like a a blip in parenting and the thought that this would just go? You know, I'm curious if you had that thought, and at what time in your journey did you go, oh yes, uh, this isn't necessarily going to be what I initially thought. And uh let's start with you first, Steven.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I definitely thought at the beginning that this was a very temporary situation, that you know, maybe there was just some some misunderstandings and you know, things just needed to be explained, or you know, discussions just needed needed to be had and everything would sort of change. In my mind, it was these like like this idea of having these real reasoned discussions, right? Where we just you know have these have these conversations that make sense and we just talk about things and go, okay, well, we don't have to do this. Let's be problem solvers and and figure this out. And yeah, I definitely thought it was going to be a quick solution at the beginning, you know, that things would things would turn around. I think initially I was very kind of mystified at things a little bit, but I I didn't realize that there was some alienating behavior going on for a while. You know, I didn't I didn't recognize it as that, so it may have been going on longer than I first thought. So yeah, I definitely thought it would be solved quickly. And I did think that if I if I just did the right stuff, you know, if I just had the said the right words, supported in the right way, you know, all those kind of things, that things would just be solved and and back to normal, you know, which is uh I like things to be very smooth and just kind of the same, you know, all the time. And life is I don't I don't like a ton of change. And so yeah, I I thought we'd just get back to status quo really quickly. Unfortunately not.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Thank you for that, Stephen. And Renee, why don't we have you go next?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Okay. So my answer is very similar to Steven's. I had no idea what I was up against. You know, when this first started for me, there wasn't even a name for it, as far as I knew. And I really believe that if we just acted like adults and we played nice, we could work anything out. I mean, we'd been married for seven years, so I thought, you know, we can we can work this out just like we have other things. I had no idea about what was going on in the background. And so for the second part of your question, I would say there wasn't any definitive moment when I was like, uh-oh, this isn't gonna be a quick fix. I would say it was a slow, extremely slow awakening to the reality that, okay, something is really wrong here. And I don't see this being fixed quickly, and maybe not even at all. And there was a lot of devastation with that.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Yeah, no, I hear that a lot of devastation, and also with the like the years that that you came in and started dealing with the stuff with your kids, it does predate a lot of any kind of research, literature, anything like that. So it's a super cool arc in a way to track Renee. So I I I appreciate your insights. And Anna, what would you have to say about that question?

SPEAKER_01 9:32

I did not think that it would be fixed easily. I didn't come into program thinking that I could change the contact with my kids because they when I do the backtracking, the alienation process has started many years before. And when I came to program, it was it was much more in trend, it had been entrenched for about five years. And so I didn't I didn't come into program looking looking for that kind of fix, or not even a fix for myself. I I felt like I was drowning emotionally and I didn't know what else to do, and I knew enough about alienation. I thought this is a program that supports people going through alienation. I need something, I need a life raft to hold on to because I feel like I'm going to drown. And I didn't realise at the time, I think in answer to the second part of the question, is that I a bit similar to Renee, there wasn't a definitive point where I thought, okay, what I am wanting to get from this program is X, Y, or Z. It was when my nervous system started to calm down and went from being in survival mode day to day to at the longer view that I was able to view things in a different way. But that's taken time and it's been bumpy. And it's again, I think for me to survive the lack of contact with my kids, almost as soon as I came into the programme, I already had it in my head that I wasn't ever going to be able to speak to them again. Which was I that's come up as I've been thinking about these questions. I thought that's that sounds like me checking out in a way it was. It was also my survival because I tried it felt like there was an impenetrable wall between me and them, and I didn't know how to I couldn't see any source of light, any chink in the armor. So in order to live with that, that's what I did. And that view has changed as I slift listen to people in community, but it was it's what helped me in the beginning, and it's interesting to reflect on that for sure.

Urgency Mistakes And Early Strategies

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, I think you bring up a wonderful and maybe a completely different show topic about this idea that we come in and we have to just let go of the relationship and feel like we're never going to get it back, and it feels insurmountable and we're underwater and we don't know what to do. And and how does that view look? What happens with that? And we'll touch a little bit on that. So I really appreciate you you bringing that into the conversation. And uh, and for me, when it first happened, um, you know, no one in my family had ever been divorced, and I'm like, this is whatever, you know, you figure it out, everything goes okay, the kids are teenagers and going through natural growth patterns, and you know, how can this happen? And I remember I was at a I was at a 12-step meeting, I was at a men's meeting, and uh I was sharing, I was sharing with someone at a break, and I'm like, yo, this sucks. This is this is crazy. Like, I'm working so hard, I'm doing all these things, and you know, I I I I'm I'm I'm thinking, you know, it'll take a little bit of time to get there. And he's like, hey, it might take into your into their 30s. And this was a guy that had experienced something similar. And in that moment, I hated him. I just wanted him to melt into the floor, like, you know, like how dare you say it's gonna be into the 30s. And unfortunately, developmentally, from what I've learned and what's actually happening in some of these similar intersections that we have, it seems like as they mature and as they as critical thinking comes on board, which is in the early 30s, that there is a great opportunity. And uh there's some great research out there that supports that if you want to look that up. Just moving on with these questions and building on that last question. Like in in those early years, uh, how did like urgency shape your decisions? You know what I mean? And urgency in in the different strategies you tried, and in whatever that thing was that you kept trying to, you know, put the round peg and the square hole, the square peg and the round hole. Like how did that shape your decisions early on before you maybe had some different tools? And uh this time let's start with uh Renee.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Thanks, Lawrence. You know, for me, I just felt a huge sense of desperation. I was in panic mode for years and years, and I desperately loved and missed my kids, and it just didn't even seem fathomable that I could not have a relationship with them. The way that I behaved back then was like someone in panic mode, highly emotional, highly agitated, and just desperate. I made a lot of mistakes back then too. I shared things with my children that I shouldn't have shared, you know, things that should have been shared with an adult, not with kids. And I really I felt like, you know, in looking back now, I felt like I was pleading my case because I felt like there was a sense of urgency. Somehow intuitively I knew I only had a limited set amount of time to try to write this incredible wrong. And all that really did was push my kids further and further away. And I find it interesting that both you and Anna have referenced water, whether it's drowning or a life raft or whatever. I too was thinking in terms of, you know, I'm sure that to my kids I look like a drowning, desperate person that was just reaching for a life preserver that I couldn't get a hold of. And I believe that that behavior made me look crazy and out of control. I did not look like a loving, stable parent.

SPEAKER_03 14:46

So, Renee, you said a couple phenomenal things there. You said the idea about pleading your case, which I think is just so familiar in my body when you said like that pleading your case. I think it's a great part of this conversation of trying to prove that we're worthy and we're lovable and all these different things, and just wanting people to see that. And then the idea of the like the water and the drowning, you know, and when you were saying that, I'm thinking like a like a little chihuahua that's like super wet and just kind of like shaking off the water and then getting in the water and like not knowing what to do. So that was super touching. That really that that was really moving. And Anna, what about you? Urgency, early decisions, strategies, how did that shape stuff for you?

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Um, my nervous system was really upregulated. So there was a sense of urgency and a little bit similar to, and I had a sense that I needed to try and initiate some contact. The further the lack of contact went on, the harder it was going to be to establish some side of some kind of contact. But I'm I was thinking um about a few times where I essentially thinking about it, I tried, well, I I tried to arrange a couple of instances where I would meet with my kids. I remember thinking, I felt like I was calm in organizing it, but I was also not living really with any sense of reality. I mean, neither of those circumstances ended well. They weren't necessarily one was a little bit more catastrophic than the other in terms of emotional fallout, but it was I went into it almost blind, thinking that I'm gonna ask for it. This is I'm just wanting to be the parent that's involved with the child and go and do these things. And so I in my head I'd assumed that it would just happen. And then when it didn't, I didn't really process, I didn't know what to do with it, other than because it didn't work out and I didn't get to see them, I thought, okay, this is not gonna be a route that I can follow. So I intellectualised it. I think I thought I can't keep pushing this, and I also there was other there were other concerns that made me feel like if I really push this, this is actually going to make things worse for everybody. So that's what I decided to do. But there wasn't a lot of clarity of thought going on because I was dysregulated and I suppressed a lot of the feelings that accompanied not being able to see them, and again, that was my survival because now some of that stuff starts to come up now as I look back and on the choices that I made, and it's like, wow, I didn't uh I was checked out, I didn't know any other way to be. It felt everything felt surreal, and I didn't know how to control everything, anything. So I tried to have these things happen and they didn't, and I'm kind of like, oh, because I can't do that, so I need to do something else. But I wasn't emotionally involved in it. It feels more emotional now to talk about it than it did when I was going through it. So it's just an interesting reflection.

SPEAKER_03 17:24

Thank you, and that really taps into like some huge vulnerability, you know, that I can relate to too, is with that emotional overwhelm and that cutting off and just kind of like going through the emotions, but not really moving with them because there's nowhere to go. And then we go back to this drowning analogy where, like, hey, I'm just treading water. How do you want me to think or do something different? Like, I I'm drowning, you know, like I'm going down. So super, super powerful. Uh, what about you, Steven?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Uh, yeah, I think you used the word urgency, right? I I would go one step said one step beyond that and say I was frenetic. The alienation in my case with with my daughter and my son are separated by you know about eight years. And so they're really two different circumstances. And I thought, you know, in hindsight, you know, that the first one was before I was, you know, was even aware of PAA. So I was kind of just dealing with it on my own. And when my ex and I separated, I had a a big part to play in the uh ending of that relationship, my actions. And when my ex said, you know, my daughter doesn't want to come to your house, it was like this weird quick thinking of like, okay, wait, I don't want to. So the only way she's gonna come to my house is if I she was almost 14 at the time. And in in Texas, you know, I was told that she would have to, you know, go before the judge and you know, state where she wanted to be. I just made this very quick decision. Like, I can't do that to my daughter, like I can't make her, you know, have to get up in front of a judge and choose one of her parents. That's horrible. And and I didn't want to be the one putting her. So I just made this very quick decision of like, I can't do that, so I guess she's not gonna be coming to my house. So then I defaulted to, okay, well, I'll just go to all her activities. So I went to every, I mean, and when I say every, every activity, and sometimes I had to find out what those activities were because my ex wasn't giving me any information about where the activities were, so I had to call the school and right, but I was showing up and I thought, man, if I just show up, you know, kind of real intently, you know, kind of like that, certainly she'll reconnect. And then that didn't happen, right? So I went from that frenetic to kind of like at some point feeling like I it wasn't working, and so then I felt like I sort of like didn't know what to do, and I sort of gave up for a while, and then I tried to maybe figure out some other things, and so but yes, definitely there was urgency there, and then you know, you would think eight years later that when things happened with my son, that I would have maybe learned a thing or two, or and maybe I did, but it was almost worse. I had already lost a child early on in my relationship with my ex. So when my daughter was disconnected, that felt like that. I think it brought up the emotions that previous loss. And then when it happened with my son, it almost felt like it magnified it. So I almost felt more frenetic when it happened with my son years later. I just tried to take all the, you know, quickly responding to text, trying to communicate very quickly and try to predict things ahead of time that I would need to do, and and all of it was really being motivated by this kind of this urgency, which many times wasn't the best for clear-headed thinking and you know, that kind of thing.

What Reconnection Looks Like Today

SPEAKER_03 20:45

Thank you for that, Stephen. And I I love the word frenetic, you know what I mean? Like like overperforming, over-exerting, overdoing all these things because everything feels like an emergency, you know what I mean? I I super relate to that and I I hear that a lot in the community. And I would say for me, early on, because I didn't have any understanding, there was a lot of spaciousness giving my kids a lot of space to make their own decisions, you know what I mean? Letting them have a say where at their their younger age, my oldest was 13, wasn't necessarily useful in retrospect, you know what I mean? I thought the family system would just recalibrate and everything would go back to some form of normalcy. You know what I mean? And I I called it for myself like the ostrich mentality, where I'd pop my head up, I'd address what was happening, I'd stick my head back in the sand, just hoping everything would go back, but I wasn't really doing a lot of work. And then another strategy, which other folks might find interesting, is I just tried to become gooder over and over again by taking different trainings, by learning how to communicate differently. And I figured if I just got good enough, then then I would be lovable. You know what I mean? Really pushed on a core wound, like I was damaged, that I was yeah, that there was something wrong with me. And then those strategies just kind of like amplified themselves. And I like to say for anyone out there listening, like. Everything that we're talking about was perfect because it was the best that we could do at the time. And the point of the show and the panel and the community is there are access points and pressure points where we can change the direction of our relationship so they don't have to have necessarily these same processes because there's more uh services, there's there's there's more research, there's more stuff accessible, and that's why this conversation is so important to someone that's a little bit newer than us or people that are longer on in the conversation too. And I want to say this too all of us are experiencing some kind of connection with our children now. So if you're listening to this and you go, Whoa, this is crappy, like when does it get uncrappy? I just want to say, like, we're coming together today where we all have some sort of connection that's different than where we were four or five years ago. And I'm gonna take a pause here where let's just talk about what connection we have now and just like track it in like a short, kind of like concise way of what it was, maybe one challenge that's going on now, and then we'll just continue to move into the questions. But I just want to rephrase it. This is a positive, life-affirming opportunity that this this podcast is building on in this particular conversation. So uh Anna, why don't you go first on this one?

SPEAKER_01 23:15

Thank you, Lawrence. And I realize I didn't uh speak to my the ages or the agendas of my children when I introduced myself, but I have a 23-year-old and a 21-year-old, and it's been nine years since any real significant contact. But last December, my 23-year-old reached out, and it led to some in-person conversations, which were amazing, and but also I still I realize I haven't quite come to it's lovely, but I'm like, wow, is this really happening? I have to pinch myself a little bit, but I'm very much aware of how much uh program work and be and having a better relationship with myself has allowed me to be in a different relationship with him.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

And have you had any connection with your younger son at all? Is it just the 23-year-old that you've had this this new kind of exploration going on?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

At the moment, it's just the 23-year-old. The younger one, a couple of years ago, there was some connection, but that's been quiet for the last couple of years.

SPEAKER_03 24:09

So Thank you, Anna. And and how about you, Stephen?

SPEAKER_02 24:12

With my two kids, it's been kind of this the like it's been kind of like this thing. Uh anyway, but uh my my daughter, uh I basically lost any semblance of connection when we s when my ex and I separated in 2013. She was uh 13 going on almost 14 years old. And I just saw her at, you know, activities. I would see her at some I think a couple of family events, but you know, my entire family was cut off by both my alienated children as well. So there were not family events on our side, but if there were if there was something going on with a kid, you know, that was kind of a family-oriented thing, like a graduation or something like that. So for many, many years there was very little contact. And then my daughter was getting married two years ago, so the fall of 2023. And at the last minute, like maybe three weeks, four weeks before the wedding, I was I was invited to the wedding. I was not invited to participate in the wedding just to sort of observe the wedding and wasn't invited to the um, you know, any of the festivities around the wedding. And then I think I got a Father's Day card that year for the first year in eight years, and then uh things kind of went silent again. There was some little text back and forth, but pretty much, you know, no, no in-person contact for exact almost exactly two years. And then my daughter had a uh baby here at the end of September, and since that baby has come along, I have seen her one, two, three uh three separate times since early October, one of them being my granddaughter's uh baptism, which was just yesterday. So that situation, my son, there was no contact initially. He had to leave our home for a variety of you know reasons, and within 24 hours was fully alienated. There was no contact at all for six or eight months, and then there was some very sporadic contact, usually around financial needs and that kind of thing. And then last year we reconnected and we went on a trip this summer to Spain for seven or eight days, had a great time. We're talking more via text, a couple calls about things that were going on personally for him that he asked my advice on. And then graduation came in early December, and my son went completely silent again from that date. That's kind of the two separate situations.

SPEAKER_03 26:34

Yes, a lot of moving parts in in all of us and in our stories, and you know, that they're windy, they come in and out of season, and I think that's part of the conversation we're going to be having. And Renee, what about you? What does your arc look like?

SPEAKER_00 26:45

You know, that's a big part of the conversation, Lawrence. How it ebbs and flows constantly. And I love the way that Stephen described, you know, it's this, and then it's this, and then it's this, and then it's this, and it's all over the map. For me, I haven't physically seen my youngest son in 12 years. And at that point, he had just had a new baby. And by the way, I've learned about all babies, all weddings on Facebook, on social media, and I saw that they had had their baby and that the baby was in ICU, and I reached out to him and the baby was doing fine, but they spent, you know, like 30 days in ICU. And I just said, you know, is there something I can do? Would it be helpful if I came to Texas? Because we lived in different states. And to my surprise, he said yes. And I went down there and they basically handed me my grandson and said, We're going back to work. You guys have a good week. And I saw him in the evenings. We had lots of catch-up time, and my son had a lot of questions for me about his childhood, and I really thought everything is going to be different now. And then it completely, as Steven says, it went silent again for years. Then a couple years ago, because of the work that I've done in this fellowship, when he did reach out, I was able to respond appropriately, and we had some really amazing conversations that were hours in length with my grandchildren in the background. And again, I thought, oh, everything's different now. And now he's been silent for several months. With my oldest son, he's a little more consistent. I see him about once a year, but it's always me reaching out to him when I'm in the state that he lives in. So he's not shown any interest in coming to see me where I live. He started doing in about the last year really cute videos that he makes me for the holidays or for my birthday. And sometimes it's just him, and sometimes it's him and his new wife and my grandchildren. So never really know what it's gonna look like, but any contact is great.

SPEAKER_03 29:06

Thank you for that, Renee. And got a big smile on my face when you're talking about the videos, and it's a new thing, and it's a different, it's a different avenue of connection that maybe there's a there's some safety for him in there, and it seems like you really enjoyed. And I just want to say, like, when you and Steven were both talking about this and this, like for anyone that's listening to the podcast, they were raising one hand higher and then another hand lower, and then they were rotating one hand higher and one hand lower. But I was getting such a kick out of it. Like, if people listening to the podcast, they're like, What's this and what's this? Am I missing something super, super profound? And you were, and maybe you weren't. My story is similar and a little bit different. You know, when my oldest daughter was 12 years old, from 12 to 13, she didn't talk to me. I had no idea what alienation was. I still had contact with her sisters and had them 50% of the time. And after a year, there was some kind of you know, crisis in her house, and we got a relationship back and we're connected for the next five years, five years, maybe six, seven years, you know, into her second or so year in college. And then it started shifting at once she graduated high school, and then it you know, it it totally cut off completely. And then my my middle daughter, you know, she was 17 when it kind of started, and then we'd go in and out of these things where there'd be some strange no contact for three or four months, and it would be really cool. We'd build trust, we'd build debt for the next eight months, and then the then the cycle would start, and it would usually start around a graduation, a prom, something like that, where it maybe it was too overwhelming on her nervous system, and she couldn't include me in those situations, so she chose not to. That's from my perspective, and she might have a completely different perspective. And then with my middle daughter, then I had maybe like four years, zero contact, no way to get hold of her. She had a couple kids, got married, all that stuff. I wasn't included or didn't know really about anything. And now for the last 18 months, we've been having some contact, and I got to see her in person once, have had one Zoom call with her, and I will get to see her again in about a month and a half and potentially meet my grandchildren. And then my oldest daughter, yeah, there's nothing and and I'll say this also my my youngest daughter, there was a cutoff point that my middle daughter cut off. That that same thing could have happened with my youngest daughter, and I've said this before, without the program, without these tools, I don't know if I'd have that relationship, but that stayed pretty consistent and continues to build really well.

Patience Builds Safety And Trust

SPEAKER_02 31:34

Yeah, when Renee was talking about her son sending those, you know, those videos, and sometimes it's him, sometimes it's the family. I I just wanted to piggyback on that, that that's actually one of the ways that my daughter, I think, felt safe to communicate. So initially I would just get these, and this is since the babies come, I would get three pictures texted every week, and it would be pictures of the baby, no, no text wording, just pictures. And I know that's where she is, that feels safe to her, right? To send those pictures. But you know, again, like Renee said, any any contact was wonderful, and those are beautiful pictures of my granddaughter, but a very similar thing that that was uh maybe a way for my daughter to feel safe to create some connection without actually having a conversation or going back and forth with text, and then that started to turn into some longer texting back and forth. We still don't talk actually on on the phone yet. So I just wanted to piggyback on that because I had a similar experience to Renee.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

Yeah, and I think this is a great segue to turn a little bit into what we're talking about, which I'm hearing is patience and safety. You know what I mean? Like what does patience look like now versus what it looked like, you know, in in earlier stages, and what results are you seeing because of the patients, and is the patients maybe creating some safety for both sides? So why don't we have you start this time, Steven?

SPEAKER_02 33:00

For me, that's probably one of the biggest things that parental alienation 12-step community has has taught me as patients. Um, I was talking to a sponsor one time and I said, I think behind all 12 steps, one of the big messages behind the 12 steps is this idea of patience. You know, at first, like I said, I would I would feel like I had to take quick action. You know, if I got a text, I had to respond immediately because there was a chance of a connection and I gotta do this right now. And sometimes that wasn't that really wasn't the most helpful way to interact. And um also I think sometimes when I didn't allow that space and and I wasn't being patient in either my responses or just in my own personal way of being, I think sometimes in the space of that patience is where the magic happens. What I've realized over the course of my journey is that in many ways there aren't a lot of things that I can do to fix the problem because so much of the fix is allowing my children to have their space to process what all it is they're experiencing and to be able to decide when they feel safe and when it's right for them to do something. But I definitely can do a bunch of wrong things that will screw things up. And that's where the patience comes in because without that patience, I do things that screw things up.

SPEAKER_03 34:31

Thank you for that, Stephen. Just to clarify in your relationship with your daughter that you're just talking about and getting the pictures. Like what I heard when you described it is that you have been very patient and just accepting what was offered, getting support outside of your daughter for those pictures that were coming in, because it brought up a lot of emotions. And can you correlate your patience to creating more safety for her and yourself by being patient and not creating any kind of big ruckus that connected to, oh my God, now I'm at this baptism. Do you feel like safety is the bridge?

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Yeah, I do actually, because what I would do when I would get those pictures initially, right, was I was like, okay, well, I I want to respond in some way, right? Because, you know, there's an old saying with parenting with with young children, right? It's like the things you want to see happen more, you praise, and the things you want to see happen less, you ignore. So when I would get these, you know, three three pictures or four pictures, whatever, I would always just say, Oh my goodness, she's so beautiful. Thank you so much for sending these pictures. The end. I wouldn't go into, by the way, how's your week going? And tell me how married life is and all these other things, because I wasn't invited, there was no invitation into that conversation, right? But that's a normal inclination for a parent to want to know about their about their child, right? I had a very, very close relationship with my daughter up until 13. Very connected. And so, you know, as a dad, I want to know everything that's going on. Like, how's your job? And how's how's how are you adjusting to having a baby? And she went back and started taking ballet class. How is your now? Have I been able to ask? Yeah. Three months later, she she told me, she started texting me a little bit more information, like, oh, she's she's getting bigger, or hey, she's wearing this outfit you send, you know, or whatever. And then I could then I could ask, oh my goodness, I can't believe she's into that outfit already. She's you know, that's a that's a six-month outfit, she's three months old. You know, that started to happen, right? But it was all I I feel like it was led by her. It wasn't led, it wasn't me leading it and and and forcing into which is what I would do without patience. But man, it's hard. I'll tell you what. It is, I have to, I feel like I have to tranquilize myself and and go like this to not not jump in there. Sorry, I'm using my hands again. I just took my hand, I took my hand for about six feet and brought it down to about three.

SPEAKER_03 37:04

Uh I I love that. And this is this derivative of of patience and safety that we think we're doing for our kids. But I'm also hearing like the thread, like this patience and safety is really for us. And it creates connection with our kids because they're they're getting the residue of the patience and safety too. That's at least that's what I'm feeling. I might I think that's what I heard too. But anyway, Anna, patience and safety, and and how it maybe you can tell us how it's relating to this new exploration that you're on with your older son.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

I feel like I had a crash course in that over the because it's been so long since I had contact, and then I was able to have in-person contact. And I'm realizing listening, having gone through the questions, but listening to some of the responses too, I had to really be patient with myself because what I was getting from my son was that he wanted to see me being vulnerable, and that was really hard for me to do. And we met over three on three occasions over a fairly like over about a 12-day period, so it was concentrated as it needed to be, but in between times, my nervous system was all over the place. I leant into programme, I had conversations about it, and I also I would go back to the conversations and found myself talking about how I don't necessarily know what I'm doing, and that's kind of what he wanted to hear. I didn't need to hear, well, I wasn't there looking to hear a bunch of narrative from him or to deliver my own narrative. Uh, I wanted to be in space with him. We spent a lot of time sitting in the same space but not saying anything, and that's when the healing was happening. And I didn't realize that that would be a thing, and that, but it it was almost like it was intuitive, and that's what he wanted, and that's what created, I think, some trust and some safety, the fact that I could be there, but I was present in a way that I wasn't able to be when he was younger and when the family was all together under one roof because of the work that I've done on my nervous system, and because I I wanted to gift that to him, and I had a sense of what that felt like because I've had other people give that to me as I've been healing. And so it involved my patience involved not using a lot of words necessarily or being careful in my choice of them, but it was easier to do than I thought that it would be, and there was a little bit of uh freneticism in between times, but when I was with him, is that the healing that went on just by we I felt like we were attuned to one another, and it reminded me of what it felt like when he was little, when I had that connection with him when he was smaller, and we were able to pick back up on that, so it was uh that was interesting, and again, it's all of this process and this journey has reminded me of how checked out I've been my entire life, not just with my kids, not just in my marriage. And so this process is allowing me to be attuned to myself, which means I get to have a different relationship with my son, and I don't want to go back to the relationship we had because it was codependent and it was very dysfunctional, and this feels like a new beginning, and it feels like a lot of trust was built, and I don't know what's gonna happen, and we're still in contact via text, but it was a beautiful experience, and I remember when I probably the third visit when I really started being openly vulnerable with him, he paid attention to that and he said, Wow, it's good to see you actually crying, mum. Like I I'm seeing some emotion. I didn't, it felt like he was coaching me and he was almost the parent and I was the child, right? And I'm like, wow, this is what you want, and hey, this is what I wanted from my own family. Wow, this is something, something. And it was very and it's making me emotional talking about it, but it's I wouldn't have been able to be patient or to have slowed down. I was revving so high when I joined program in most of my life that I wanted, I was doing this, this, this, and now I'm back in my body. The healing and the trust can be done in a very, very different way, certainly from my perspective.

Closing Support The Nonprofit

SPEAKER_03 40:50

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Wherever you are, I would give a wow for that first part of the show. What a what a great conversation, so much incredible information. And again, like we shared in the show, like having this information available 20 years ago, 10 years ago for myself would have changed the trajectory of my relationships. And I hope people can really get to the nuggets of what we're talking about and also see the connection between the four of us that are learned to really appreciate and love each other just by showing up to work on ourselves. And then we have these common intersectionalities with our children as we're regaining some kind of connection. That's really fascinating. Like we actually have data that supports what reconnection looks like. Like, we're not someone that's selling a$10,000 program and telling people what to do. We're just regular people living our lives, tracking what's happening, sharing our experiences with other people. And now we have this commonality, this data, and this information that can really change your trajectory of so many other people's lives if they're curious. So thanks for coming out to listen today. Please like, share, email me at family disappeared at gmail.com if you've got any guests, ideas, likes, dislikes, donate. We're a 501c3 nonprofit. There's so many great things we can add to what we're offering to help support parents and families out there. We just need some people to share some resources if that is possible. Great show notes stuff. We also have a free 12-step program that we keep talking about. So uh check that out. So again, have a beautiful week in case no one's told you yet today. I love you. See you around the neighborhood.