Learning to Live Without Answers | Parental Alienation & Uncertainty

This second part of the panel conversation explores what begins to change when parents shift from urgency to patience. Lawrence Joss and the panel reflect on the role of emotional safety, vulnerability, and self-awareness when relationships with children begin to reopen, even in small ways.

Through deeply personal reflections, the panel discusses how reconnection rarely happens through persuasion or explanation. Instead, it often emerges slowly through presence, patience, and emotional steadiness. The conversation highlights how recovery communities, self-care, and learning to regulate one's own emotional responses can create the conditions for trust, healing, and sometimes renewed relationships.

Key Takeaways

• Taking care of oneself is crucial in building relationships.
• Patience is essential when communicating with loved ones.
• Safety cues can help foster trust in relationships.
• Emotional flooding can be managed through self-awareness.
• Recovery work provides a framework for personal growth.
• Finding balance in connection and disconnection is important.
• Community support plays a vital role in healing.
• Practicing self-compassion allows for better interactions with others.
• It's okay to take a pause during emotional conversations.
• The journey of recovery is ongoing and requires continuous effort.

Chapters

00:00 - Navigating Safety and Self-Care in Relationships
03:10 - The Importance of Patience in Communication
05:55 - Understanding Safety and Trust in Interpersonal Dynamics
08:48 - Emotional Flooding and Managing Reactions
12:10 - The Role of Recovery in Building Relationships
14:59 - Finding Balance in Connection and Disconnection
17:46 - Reflections on Emotional Highs and Lows
20:58 - The Power of Community and Support
23:52 - Final Thoughts on Personal Growth and Connection

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

Transcript

Wanting Connection And Facing Loss

SPEAKER_02 0:00

We want the best. We want relationships with our kids. We want full connection. We want to be able to share those poignant moments, you know, births, marriages, baptisms, graduations, all the things. We should want everything in life, but can we be okay if we don't get what we want?

Welcome And Panel Setup

Why Support Beats Going Alone

Safety Cues And Capacity Pauses

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Do you not know what to do when you get emotionally flooded from a conversation with one of your kids or grandkids, or you get emotionally flooded from not having those conversations? And are you prepared to step into a conversation? Are you taking care of yourself? Do you not know what that even means? Are you curious what other parents and grandparents are doing that is useful, trackable, sustainable, and real, like a real intersection of what people are actually doing to change your trajectory of their relationships in the midst of parental alienation, estrangement, and erasure? Then you land a good today. And again, my name is Lawrence Straws. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast. Today we have the second half of a panel with uh some parents and grandparents that have been around this community for four or five years talking about what it's looked like, what connections look like, why there is connection, what the trajectory of connection can be, how to practice patience, what safety and safety cues look like. It's a really phenomenal show that just keeps getting better. We pinned a couple spots in there. We chuckled together a little bit. So I really hope you enjoyed it. If you're new to the community, welcome. We have 130 some odd podcasts in the can already over all subjects: attorneys, judges, therapists, other panels. Check the stuff out. Uh, I really highly suggest listening to the first episode before this episode. Super, super powerful. Please like, share, let people know that the stuff is available for free. And we're also 501 C3 nonprofit can use your resources and support to bring you a lot more content for free. And again, you're not helping yourself, you're helping the person that hasn't found the resources yet. And in the show notes, you'll find a link to Parental Alienation Anonymous, which is a 12-step program in the community that we're talking about the whole time on this program. And like I always say, don't like that community, go find another community. Find community, find people that are rowing in the same direction and doing recovery work, not people that are talking about all the stuff. Like, what are we doing to change our lives, ourselves, and the trajectory of our relationships? And with that, let's hear the second half of the show. As I've shared before, I had no idea what parental alienation was, and I didn't really know what the path forward looked like. And as I'm part of this community now, and as we have these four or five years, and as we're seeing these different markers that we can track in each other's relationships that actually reflect back to our relationship and that we're going through similar stuff, it's like this bright light is finally available, and I can actually see it on the other side of the bridge. And this is going to help me and it's going to help my family. But I think the important thing that all four of us here are doing is we're being of service to the broader community and sharing how this can help everyone's lives. Like just paying attention to some of the stuff that we're sharing and some of the trajectories of our stories can dramatically change what you're doing. And you can't do it by yourself. You can't just listen to a podcast, you need support, whether it's a professional support, whether it's a 12-step group, whether it's some other kind of support group, every single one of us on this panel has not done anything alone. So that is a golden nugget. And let's see what the rest of the folks have to say. In the safety and being with your son, were you able to take care of yourself? Did you have agency? Could you move in and out of conversations or take days or time between responding to something that might have come up? Like what did that safety look like for yourself being safe with you? And then I said, I think you said your son received you being safe with yourself as a safety cue for him to be safe with himself, so you guys could attune. I'm not sure if that's accurate, but I think that's what I heard.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

That's a great reflection, and that's what it felt like. And in terms of taking care of myself, I was the one that each sort of set of conversations were maybe a couple of hours in length, and towards the end of the time, I would reach a saturation point. And I would say to him, I'm at capacity right now, I would I want to continue the conversation, but I need to step back and process some of what we've talked about. And I think the first few times it surprised him a little bit. And he talked about me looking as if I was overwhelmed. And I spoke to that and I said, At the moment, I am feeling overwhelmed, but it doesn't mean that I don't want to keep talking to you, but I need to pause. And gosh, I've never been able to do that. But it felt comfortable, and I was watching his response and the trust, talking about the trust building piece, I did that at the end of the first conversation, and the first conversation was probably the hardest because there's been no contact. It felt surreal, like the whole thing felt really surreal. And I probably was almost visibly shaking at the end of it. And he, I could thinking about it now, he was trying to figure out how he needed to be in that moment and what to do about it. I just said, I need to press pause, but I'd like to continue if you're open to doing that. And he was, and then it was it was kind of an odd ending because he then just kind of left and I I went, whoo! And then went and cried into the arms of someone who cares about me and said, Oh my god, that was all of these things. But because I had spoken to it that way and I kept in contact with him via text the next time, we both honoured coming and we I spoke a little bit about that and about that process, which felt really raw and vulnerable, but I also felt a really strong need to do it because in my modelling that it felt like it would give him the opportunity to do the same if he wanted to, not that he had to. So it was like a very intense workshop in how to connect after years of not really not knowing somebody. And I was proud of the way that I was able to ask for a pause, and I only knew how to do that because of listening to people in program and thinking, okay, how do I navigate this? Because I don't know what I'm doing and I don't know what this means, but I want to try. And I would really love if you would join me at the table and tried with me. And that it that played out, it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

That is just incredibly profound. Got some goosebumps with that, and just the idea of being a mirror for your son on how you can take care of yourself, how you can acknowledge that you're feeling overwhelmed, how you can acknowledge that you're saturated. I know when we're talking about urgency and the the metaphor we're using for like drowning, like when I'm drowning, you know what I mean? I I'm there's no way I I don't have a capacity to say, hey, I'm saturated, I'm wet, I'm drowning. Like I just pretend that I'm not drowning and everyone's looking, go, hey, dude's drowning, you know, even our kids, and to actually have that corrective modeling mirroring experience. My gosh, I think if you're out there and you're struggling and you're just connecting, like just listening to these pieces that these beautiful people are sharing about these intersections of patience and safety. My God, I wish I had this information, you know, 20 years ago. And with that wonderful whatever I said, Renee, patience and safety. What is that? What does that look like for you in your arc?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Oh gosh, yeah. If I'd had this 20, 30 years ago, it would have changed a lot. I'm not by nature a patient person. It's been a work in progress, and so you can imagine how impatient I was for many, many years. I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it right now, and that just proved to create even more problems than there already were. This is such an important conversation because, you know, the analogy that my higher power, if you will, has given me that I use with a lot of women that I sponsor is, you know, when they're struggling, well, I don't know when to keep bringing something up or when to be silent or when to push this or push that. The analogy I use is think of it as a tennis match. You know, you hit the ball and then you wait for a return volley. You don't get to have a whole bucket of balls and you just keep slamming them over the net because pretty soon they're just gonna walk off the court and leave. But I've learned that I've have to exercise patience while I'm waiting for their return volley. And if I can get a concept like that in my mind, then I have a chance to not ruin this opportunity to communicate with my kids. Yeah, it's been a huge lesson in patience, and it's taken a lot of time, and it's not saying things that I want to say right when I want to say them. And it's been through the school of hard knocks, you know. I don't know what else to say about it. It's been definitely been an uphill battle at times, but as time has gone on, it's become far easier. It's become an automatic response to just practice patience. And in terms of the safety, I love what you said. It never occurred to me with the videos that that is a safe way for my son to reach out to me in a very meaningful and loving way. And he started it probably a year and a half ago at Christmas time or a little over a year ago. The safety piece I found is very important to them because when they're not feeling safe, they seem to just disappear like a wild animal. It's like all of a sudden they are just gone, and I'm left sitting there going, I don't understand what just happened.

SPEAKER_03 9:38

And just following up on the idea of safety, Renee, do you and your environment, your house, your friends, when you sponsor, do you feel safe? Does safety correlate in your own personal life by not reacting, by not jumping in, by not doing these other things that you used to do in all aspects of your life? How does safety manifest as you continue to work on yourself on an interpersonal and a home life?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Well, I think safety for me and safety for those around me depends upon me being respectful. Depends on asking myself questions like does this need to be said? And if it does need to be said, does it need to be said by me? And if the answer to both those questions are yes, then does it need to be said by me right now? Or is this a conversation I have a little bit later? You know, it's doing that reflecting, and I think that builds trust with people because they know that you are gonna give them time to process, you're going to reevaluate your behavior, you know, you're gonna question yourself, like, hmm, I wonder if I could have said that differently, or if maybe I shouldn't have said that at all. And in my relationships, both in recovery and at home, that just fosters a huge sense of, you know, there's nothing that we can't come to the table with together and have a discussion about.

Doing Nothing Without Checking Out

Staying Steady When Contact Fades

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Thank you, Renee. And I'm gonna share a wonderful analogy that you're all gonna find tintillating or not. So on my porch, I'm I'm out in Hawaii right now, and some there's a lot of wild pigs. And I have my my dog here, she's she's a lab and an Afghan hound makes and super sweet and super playful. She sees a pig come out, and she just like jumps off the porch, runs up to the pig, is like rah rah rah rah rah, like play with me, love me, who are you, what's going on? And I relate to that with my children, and then the pig runs away a little bit, but as soon as it exposes its pig back, which is the most vulnerable part of the pig, it's like, oh no. So the pig turns around and faces the dog, and they go through this kind of thing until they both start to have some safety cues. And the pig goes back to eating, my dog goes back to figuring out if the pig wants to play, and then the pig wanders away, and the dog comes back on the porch. You know what I mean? But it takes this whole kind of thing of like going back and forth, and initially with my kids, like like everyone else is saying, like, I'm just in. There's like a little hole I'm in. I want to talk about this, I want to talk about that. And in the early days, they need to know about parental alienation, they need to know how bad I'm feeling. Call me dad, tell me you love me. You know, and it's it's nuts. And I I will say for me, you know, sitting in meetings and and hearing old timers share that time takes time. I hated that. I hated that, but literally, like someone I'd have an experience in 12-step program, and a year later I'd go, Oh, now I know what they were saying. So I actually had an embodied experience of like time takes time, and the same thing is happening with the children. And someone else shared in a meeting one time that their higher power, their God, put them on a timeout. They said, Go sit in the corner. You know what I mean? This is good stuff, even though it's it might sound silly or it might sound useful. And then uh the the most profound thing I ever heard anyone said to me is sit still and do nothing. And just doing nothing doesn't mean not doing my own interpersonal work, it means not creating a ruckus outside of my environment. And the last thing I'm gonna say about patience and safety with connecting with my middle daughter. I saw her like three months ago, and I'm like, we had a decent conversation, it was nice, but it was just like like checking each other out and you know, seeing if people are safe. And I think it was really a safety check to see if I was safe. And then we didn't have much connection, and then she sent out a text. And when I got this last text, I'm like, huh. Like, this isn't feeling really connecting. Like, what do I want to do in this relationship? How can I engage with her from a place of connection, but also self-agency and safety for myself? So I didn't respond for like 14 days or 16 days, and then I got another text from her, and she shared you know, she shared something super intimate and personal that she hadn't shared with a lot of people, and now this conversation has evolved again, and it's not because I did anything, it's because I sat still and I did nothing, and I spoke to my sponsor and I spoke to people on the program, I spoke to some friends I really trust, and I didn't have to do anything. And the the doing, the doing is super undermining to the relationships, in my experience. You know, we've spoken about this a little bit, but we all are having some different intersections of connection, and connection comes and connection goes. Like, how do you handle when you get kind of like this download of connection and then you go into kind of like this ambiguous state of maybe no connection, maybe a different form of connection, photos, videos, or whatever. Like, how do you handle that and what do you do to take care of yourself in this, like in Buddhism, they would say a groundless ground? Like, I don't really have anything to step on. What do I do? Let's start with you, Anna.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yeah, it's a great question. Not easy to navigate. I think the thing that's helped me the most is that when I have the contact with my kids, I talk about it me being uh along the lines of me being in conversation with them. So I don't yet have a new relationship with them, but I'm in conversation with them, and I try and focus on the moment, the situation, so I cherish the fact that that's happened and put a different emphasis around it, considering that it's nearly a decade, I think, where I just I didn't think this was possible. So the fact that they're reaching out, and in both instances, they've been the ones that reach out. I haven't, I've consistently tried to send them a trail of sort of breadcrumbs of birthday cards and that kind of thing, but when the contact has really happened, they've been the ones that have instigated that. So I try and highlight and have gratitude for the fact that they have instigated it and almost treat the interactions as a kind of a one-off thing, which I think maybe that's a little bit of suppression and a bit of checking out, although I don't know that it is, it's just a way of trying to be gentle with it. I don't know what's gonna happen, they don't, and it's such a delicate balance and process. I'm I program workers allowed me to really lean into the concept of not knowing what's gonna happen. Because for me, going from being someone that's very controlling and I want to make decisions that I know are gonna have a very black and white answer, and I'm gonna get what I want. Program workers allowed me to unpack all of that, and I've fallen on my face multiple times, and I've screamed and shouted, and and also been joyous around it. And because I have that sense and that feeling, I'm able to hold the conversations in a different light and think maybe they're the seeds that will form a bigger relationship, but I don't know what that will look like, and I really need to leave it in their hands because I get the sense that if I push it in any sense, it's going to pierce that feeling of trust and the safety feeling, and they're gonna run in another direction. So I need to approach it really, really gently and really lightly. And because of the work I've done on myself and building a much stronger relationship with myself, I don't there's not that sense of urgency, and I'm not desperately needing to be in connection with my kids. I would love it, and I'd like to form a new relationship with them, but it doesn't feel desperate, so that allows me to handle that the whole the hands going up and down by that whole roller coaster thing that can be connection with them as they go through their own journeys. Yeah, again, I've been able to test that feeling lately because there has been more connection and it just it feels more peaceful, and it doesn't mean that I don't get moments where I'm I'm holding my breath and I'm freaking out, but the extremes are not there anymore, and I can take care of myself in a different way and appreciate that they're probably going through something similar. And how would I feel if I was them? And it's gonna feel extremely vulnerable and exposed for them. So if I can give some space for that and some allowance for that, that feels powerful too.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

And I just want to add this other layer on top of the question, this idea of emotional flooding. Like sometimes we see someone that we love, our kids, or someone else, and our nervous system shows up, and then we just have this high and we literally get overrun with emotions, and then maybe there's high anxiety or like a dip into depression or like some depressive stuff, and then we kind of come back to equilibrium. Does any of that resonate with you, Anna? And if it does, was it a real quick journey for you with your son? Does that does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 18:15

It does make sense. You know, I'm thinking about one of the in-person conversations that we had where I felt like I was getting saturated, but it was also a point where he was really opening up and I didn't want to interrupt that flow, but I also needed to take care of myself. So I literally I got up and ordered something from the candle, went to the bathroom because I thought, ooh, I need to, I'm feeling overwhelmed, which means, and I I can't remember the content, but I think I was feeling a sense of I'm gonna start getting reactive, and I didn't want to be reactive, I wanted to be able to hold space and be responsive. So I did get flooded, and it was interesting that I it didn't feel like I needed to end the conversation, but I needed to do something. I needed to move my body and shift my energy to process it because it is highly emotional. So I definitely experienced that. And I think if if I hadn't interrupted not interrupt, if I hadn't uh pressed pause on the conversations that we had, I would have gone into a state of being emotionally flooded, which would have for me looked like me not talking. I would have shut down, and that was not the face that I wanted to show my son. That was the face I think that he probably saw when he was younger and I was trying to fix my marriage and solve all the problems in my family. And I I really, really didn't want that to be the case. So yeah, it's uh interesting question. It's hard, it's hard to manage the emotional piece for sure. Understatement.

Staying Present At Family Milestones

SPEAKER_03 19:32

And I would say anyone that that's listening, like put a pin in what Anna said as like a highlight where I got up and ordered something and went to the bathroom. I took a breath, I felt my feet on the ground. Like, yes, oh my god, I want to do that. Thank you. Thank you for role modeling that and sharing that. And I think that's a super profound moment. Just go to the bathroom if you need to or don't. Steven, same same question for you, please.

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Hopefully I'll uh stay true to the question here. I think I remember sort of what it was, but yeah, I mean, I just had this, uh I just had this happen yesterday, so it's fresh in my mind. I haven't seen, you know, or or had any communication with my son, but I saw him yesterday at my granddaughter's baptism, and I had this feeling of I need to ask him why all of a sudden he cut off communication. We went, we went on a trip this summer. I thought we had a good time. Maybe it was just me that had a good time, and I wasn't, you know, I wanted to literally in that moment feeling some dysregulation still about this new thing of like, man, I thought we were heading in a certain direction, and now, man, I feel like we hit a brick wall and the car's, you know, turning on the other direction. I was thinking in my head, I think I'm gonna ask him why he completely cut off communication in early December. And then I was gonna ask him, were we connecting more? Did we have a good trip in Spain? You know, those kind of questions. Thankfully, thank God for this program, I had the patience to reach out to two people. I a trusted friend, and I called another person in program, and I was able to get a hold of one of the two people, and they basically just said, like, you know, today's thing is a baptism for your granddaughter. That's not appropriate for today. I can completely understand why you would feel that way and why you might want to ask that question because you have no other, you're having no context, so this is a chance where the person's my son's there, and I could ask him. I just remember again, like the patience and staying present in that moment and and and staying present to the moment I was in. And then one thing that somebody in program told me before is they they use the I think it's a slogan in the 12 step program is just for today. And just for today. For me, it was enjoying that moment with my daughter and the people who were there and celebrating the baptism of my granddaughter. So that's what I do. I call sponsors, and this is four years down the road, right? You think, man, I don't I shouldn't need to do that anymore. But these things change and with each, you know, kind of shift and change, and they're all different situations. So I haven't faced this one before, you know, and it feels it feels almost brand new. And I'm just grateful for the program that I have trusted people in my life that I can before I do something really crazy and something that's really going to be damaging and hurtful, I can reach out and get some sound wisdom. You know, a lot of times now I I kind of have the answer. Sometimes I sometimes I just need the other person to confirm that the answer that I was, the thing that I was gonna do was the wrong thing, and then I need to think like my my second thought was the correct thing. And again, that thing of doing nothing, like what Lawrence mentioned. Like sometimes it's just doing nothing. So I still have those questions, they didn't go away, they're still sitting there, but I don't have to have them answered right now.

Trusting Their Pace And Parameters

SPEAKER_03 23:07

Thank you, Stephen. Again, another thing to put a pen in like the patience, and I I think we all I think at least I was grinning like a Cheshire cat when Stephen was talking about I had these questions. Like if I could write down how many times I had these questions, like for the first 10 years I asked them. And then kind of like Stephen, like, like, why am I here? How important is it? Is it loving kind and necessary? Do I feel safe? You know what I mean? And can I create a safe space by doing this? You know, like actually having some experience with making a mess. And we're here to share our messes, so maybe you don't have to make as big a mess. I heard someone say this at a meeting, which is super silly, but they say get your poop in a group. You know what I mean? Like just stop throwing stuff all over the place. Just stick it in a group, anyway. Renee, same question for you. And I can't even remember what the question is. Oh, about highs and lows, and if there's an emotional hangover, flooding, any of that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Yes, and and I have to tell you, listening to everybody's stories just makes me love recovery even more because 30 years ago, there was no one I could talk to about this. I couldn't call a sponsor, I couldn't phone a friend and say, hey, this is what's going on, what do you think? And you know, you talk about the emotions and the highs and lows. I was a very emotional person anyway, and then when this situation hit me, it was off the charts. And I was in my emotions a lot, and those extremes that somebody mentioned earlier, the highs and lows, you know, getting so excited when they would reach out, and it was too excited, and I didn't know that. You know, I I was demanding all kinds of explanations and answers, and why this and why that? And I called you a month ago and I didn't hear back from you. What's going on? And all it did was serve to push my kids away. And today, if we are part of a recovery program, we don't have to go through all those mental and in some cases physical gymnastics, right? We can reach out and go, hey, this is what I'm thinking. What do you think? You know, and we just bypass all this other pain and heartache and wasted time. And it's hitting me what a gift that is. And in terms of like when there's a reach out from one of my kids, how I keep things in check more rather than uh how I just describe doing it in the past is I try to compartmentalize, and I know that that's a thing men are really good at, but I'm developing those skills of compartmentalization. You know, each opportunity that I have to connect with my kids is one opportunity. It is in this moment right now. I don't need to be thinking, why hasn't this happened in the last five years? Or I wonder if this is gonna happen again next week. I just need to be present and enjoy the opportunity that we're in. I don't need to keep muddying the waters with, you know, I know we talked today. Are we gonna talk next week? Or, you know, if they say that, that's okay. My son recently said to me after a Zoom call, you know, Mom, I'd like to do this with you every week. And I said, sure, absolutely. And then I let a couple weeks go by, and then I reached out to him and said, Hey, you want to do FaceTime? And he said, Yeah, Mom, I'd love that. Let's do it this week. It's trusting the parameters that he gives me. You know, I don't need to say, well, I wanted to do it right now. If he says, Yeah, let's do it this week, I'm like, cool, let's do that. You know, go with the flow. I do not, and I think mentioned that we can be very controlling. I do not need to try to exert my control because that's what got me into trouble over the last 30 years, was trying to harness a wild stallion, which was this whole situation.

Recovery Lessons Across Every Story

SPEAKER_03 27:22

Thank you, Renee. And I think another another red pin moment where you said, Hey, we had an agreement, you're like you brought up the subject, we're gonna talk Zoom, FaceTime once a week. And then you waited two weeks, and then you checked in again. And there was space and safety cues and patience and recovery, and then he's like, Yeah. I was like, ah, what a deal. And your analogy that kind of went sideways, I think you actually improved it. Just so you know, I think it's you've taken it to a new level. And for me, for this idea of flooding, parental alienation, a stranger in a racial, whatever you want to do, is super challenging and super challenging on my nervous system. And as I I'm I'm more seeped in it, the harder stuff gets a little bit easier because it's so familiar and it feels like it's a disproportionate amount of what's going on. So when I do have a connection moment, I do have my daughter sharing something with me like she did a week and a half ago, it floored me. Like I hit the floor, I was crying, I was wailing, like I was releasing all the stuff. Like my I'd been holding my breath for years, but I was able to come back to my center much quicker. But like I just say, like this flooding comes in and out, and I need to titrate in and out, and sometimes I need to go to more meetings or like Steven was saying, he still calls his sponsor four or five years in. I still call my sponsor 30 some odd years in. Like, you know what I mean? Left to my own devices, I'm gonna create a mess. You know what I mean? I'm gonna park in the wrong spot, without a doubt. And uh, we're getting close to wrapping up, and like usual, we're not gonna get to most of the questions, but uh I'd just like everyone to just give kind of like a reflection about maybe the intersectionality of all our stories. We've spoken about safety, we've spoken about patience. Is there anything else you want to talk about that you've heard today for people out there that are listening and saying, like, hey, all of us have been around this program for four to five years and are doing other kinds of work as well? But like, what can we see as we're starting to watch our friends and our families' arcs? Where do we see commonalities? Because we have so many professionals out there selling something or doing something or snake oil or something really useful. But what are we all experiencing to some degree that feels similar and has a as a has a similar kind of arc? You know, and as I as I'm saying that, like the patients thing, super familiar with everyone here, safety cues, feeling safe to other people, feeling safe to ourselves, you know, learning to titrate back and forth. Any intersections that you're noticing or that you want to speak to as you're doing a last checkout over here? So let's go with you first, Steven. Is there any kind of things you feel that are coming up?

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah, absolutely. What strikes me, because I I know all these people, uh this family here in this room fairly well over time, is that I have a mentor in some of the work that I do outside of uh 12-step recovery. And one of the things that that mentor said is we should want everything in life, meaning we want the best. We want relationships with our kids, we want full connection, we want to be able to share those poignant moments, you know, births, marriages, baptisms, graduations, all the things. His quote is, we should want everything in life, but can we be okay if we don't get what we want? What I hear through everybody's story is the idea that recovery work and recovering is what helps us get to that place of being okay, even if right now we're not fully getting what we want. That's my hope for anybody who's listening to this is that you know that you should want, you know, a full connection with your alienated person, you know, because that's what we all want. But how are we navigating and learning to be okay if we don't get exactly what we want? I think everybody in this room has shared that their recovery story has helped them to be okay even when they don't get what they want exactly. And maybe that's just for now. What you want might be down the road five years or ten years, or in some people's cases, 30 years. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Great, great reflection. And uh Renee, if you'd go next, please.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah, what a great question. And and I have a couple things. First of all, I think the thing that I would want to uh communicate is that after doing this recovery work, and what I mean by that is working with a sponsor, working the 12 steps of parental alienation, being of service, you know, going to meetings, all of the things that we do to recover, that I'm gonna be okay whether at my kids in my life or not. And that has been a huge relief because that means I can stay on the beam, and if my kids come in, I'm not jumping up and down on the beam, I'm so excited, and if they go away, I'm not falling off the beam, balling my head off. You know, it's like I'm able to stay pretty balanced during those experiences. And the other big thing that stands out for me is if you're going through this, find your tribe. And what I mean by that is you talk to the support people that can hear you. And in my case, it was not my family of origin, and to a certain degree, it wasn't even my current spouse. He doesn't really have the experience with alienation that I do, even though he too is alienated from my kids. They weren't super close because the alienation happened at such a young age. So he's never really had interest in being on these meetings, for example, or coming to these meetings or learning about it. So I talked to him about it, but it's in very limited amounts. I think it's important to pay attention to who has the ability to hear this and who doesn't. And as was mentioned before, if you're somebody that doesn't feel heard or seen, and then you're trying to talk to people that aren't going to hear or see you when you're talking about this, for me, it compounded my pain that much more by trying to force someone to see and hear me.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

Thank you for that, Renee. I really appreciate that. So, Anna, same question for you. Like, what are you noticing that's similar between all of us over this arc? And you know, any any final thoughts you have?

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Well, the commonality that we share, I mean, is the 12-step program. I I for myself I didn't know anything about 12-steps when I came into the program. I shared earlier that I didn't come in wanting to get my children back or thinking that it was a way to increase contact with them. But what's happened to me now, like coming up for five years in, is that the 12-steps are the foundation for my life. And I didn't have that structure and what and it's allowed me to build a relationship with myself. I didn't know what I needed until I came into the program, and what I needed was to have an emotional connection with myself. Otherwise, I can't connect emotionally with anyone in my life, especially my children. And if I reflect on the topic for today and like the contact and how we deal with the contact, I would not have been able to show up for my son the way I did had it not been for doing the work and doing the work on myself so I can show up for myself in a way that's compassionate and graceful and forgiving. I get to do that with him, and I get to do that with all the people in my life. And I would not have known how to approach that had it not been for 12-steps and doing the deep diving and doing the service work and listening to other people talk about how they're navigating this path, which is can feel really fragile, can feel super confusing, and I'm so grateful to have 12-step, yeah, to have that framework and that found something that I can lean into. I'm someone that needs structure and I can be controlling. In 12-step, I can learn to let go of the control and practice doing that and have a framework to fall back on, and that does so much for my nervous system. That's just had such a huge impact.

Closing Thanks And Support Options

SPEAKER_03 35:32

Thank you for that. And just to reflect on some of these intersections that I'm seeing in all of our lives. I'm hearing patience, I'm hearing safety, I'm hearing community, I'm hearing pausing, going to the bathroom. I'm I'm hearing, you know, getting on the telephone just to double check where you're at. I'm also seeing that every single person here is doing interpersonal work and actually curious about their own inner ecosystem. So we're not trying to control or fix something outside of ourselves by relating to ourselves, our lives are changing that everyone is reflecting over here. You know, and that there's another component that every single person on the show that's doing is they everyone's doing service work, whether they're volunteering in a 12-step program where they're showing up to do this podcast and sharing their time. And it's a super intricate thread that connects everything together, is is helping someone outside of yourself in order to kind of find your way back to yourself. And with that being said, what a great show! Thank you for coming out to play in the sandbox today. I I love all of you, and I hope you all have a beautiful day. I don't have enough wells for this, so I'm just gonna go wow, wow, wow. I love these people. I love the show. It was a great conversation, and again, it's so nice to be able to see the reflections in everyone's relationships that A are healthy mirrors, and B, that there's some kind of consistency and continuity between the reflections that we're sharing. Like this isn't just a puddle of water. There's there's some real stuff here that as we work on ourselves, we start to see reflected in other people that are doing similar work. So thanks for coming out to play in the sandbox today. Love to hear your thoughts on the show. Please like, share, email us at familydisapeared at gmail.com with any questions, suggestions, topics, likes, dislikes, please donate. We are a 501c3 nonprofit and we have so much to bring to you if we get the opportunity and are able to expand the resources with people that are helping out. And yeah, we can't just do this as a grassroots organization and continue to expand and grow and bring more resources at this point. So please help. And someone might be able to help a lot and help the whole community, and someone might not be able to help more than a dollar or two, and that's that's welcome as well. So again, have a beautiful week. In case no one's told you yet today, I love you. I love these people on the show. We get to say we love each other all the time, and what a gift that is alone. I will see you around the neighborhood someplace, somewhere, sometime.