When Even the Good Feels Too Much | Parental Alienation & Reconnection

Lawrence Joss reflects on a deeply personal milestone, reconnecting with his daughter and meeting his grandchildren after years of parental alienation. What might seem like a moment of relief unfolds instead as something far more complex, bringing waves of emotion, uncertainty, and the challenge of learning how to show up in a relationship that is still taking shape.

As he shares this experience, Lawrence explores the often-unspoken reality of reconnection: the emotional overwhelm, the return of grief, and the need for patience, boundaries, and nervous system regulation. This episode offers an honest look at what comes after contact returns, reminding us that healing is not a single moment, but an ongoing process. Living fully, even within uncertainty, is not giving up, but an act of love, integrity, and steady presence.

Key Takeaways

• Reconnecting after long-term parental alienation
• Why reconnection can feel overwhelming, not relieving
•  Managing emotional activation before and after contact
•  The non-linear nature of rebuilding relationships
•  Setting boundaries during early reconnection
•  Nervous system regulation in high-emotion moments
•  The role of support systems in recovery
•  Living fully without guaranteed outcomes

Chapters
00:00 - Navigating Overwhelm and Capacity
02:52 - Reconnecting with Family: Expectations and Challenges
06:01 - The Impact of Parental Alienation on Relationships
08:54 - Managing Emotional Responses to Positive and Negative Experiences
11:37 - Preparing for Reconnection: Questions and Boundaries
15:01 - The Journey of Self-Reflection and Compassion
17:57 - Understanding the Non-Linear Nature of Reconnection
20:46 - Finding Grace in the Process of Reconnection
23:39 - The Role of Support Systems in Healing
26:51 - Integrating Life Beyond Parental Alienation
29:40 - Embracing the Journey of Reconnection
32:53 - Final Thoughts and Moving Forward

Support & Community:

Parental Alienation Anonymous (PAA): Join our free 12-step support group with 16 online meetings weekly for parents, grandparents, family members, and previously alienated individuals seeking healing and recovery.

PA-A.org: Parental Alienation Advocates is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to fostering education, advocacy, and support for individuals grappling with the distressing impact of parental alienation, estrangement, erasure, and family disconnection.

All our services are free and sustained by grants and community donations. Your support helps us continue offering these vital resources.
Donate here: https://pa-a.mykajabi.com/donations-for-the-12-step-program

Connect with Us:
Email your questions or insights: familydisappeared@gmail.com
Like, share, and comment to help us reach more families in need.

If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:
 
 Email - familydisappeared@gmail.com
 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss
(All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)

Please donate to support PAA programs:
https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS

This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team:
Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host
Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager

Connect with Lawrence Joss:
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
Email-         familydisappeared@gmail.com

Transcript

Overwhelmed And Starting Again

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Been doing so much work for so many years, you would think that this would be easier. And I just want to say it's not. There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually, and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding, we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode, we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today. Welcome to the Family Disappeared Podcast. Have you ever felt completely overwhelmed underwater that you don't have capacity to do anything? Like even the simple, trivial things that you would do during the day feel overwhelming. That's how I've been feeling like the last six or eight weeks. And I just want to acknowledge that last week was the first week we did not have a podcast air. And I'd love to tell you there was some kind of technical difficulties or there were no guests available or something like that. But the reality is, is I was at capacity and uh emotionally and have been overwhelmed for the last maybe six or eight weeks. You know, I'm having the opportunity to reconnect with one of my daughters and meet my grandkids for the first time, and it's been so incredibly challenging. And it's been challenging in ways that we'll get into in the show that I didn't even see. Like I'm getting that thing that I thought that I wanted. And I do want, but in getting that and getting there, it's not so simple as just arriving at a destination. Like you book a flight from LA to New York, you land at New York, you're like, hey, I'm in New York. This is great. That is not the experience of reconnecting with my kids and and my grandkids. You know what I mean? And I've been doing so much work for so many years, you would think that this would be easier. And I just want to say it's not. And again, I want to apologize for not having a podcast last week. And it's not a matter of not having the podcast, it's a matter of not having communication with the community. You know, I'm just one person in the community, and there's a lot of people that participate and help make the podcast happen. I happen to just be the voice, but I'm definitely not the most important person. But my behavior has an impact on everyone else that is volunteering to bring the stuff to the community and has an impact on the community who is part of this podcast because we're interacting with each other even though we're not in the same room. So, with all that being said, welcome to anyone that's new to the podcast. We have over 140 podcasts in the can uh available on pretty much any subject related to parental alienation, estrangement, and erasure. It's been an unbelievable and incredible journey. And today we're gonna talk about what it's like to reconnect with our kids, what the expectations are, what some of the pitfalls are, what are some of the challenges that we haven't even thought about. And I'm gonna be sharing my personal story and what this has looked like for the last eight weeks or so for me, and what the impact has been on me personally and and on people and stakeholders that are in my environment and around me. And I have some fear and a little bit of low-level anxiety that I'm feeling in my body as I get to share this stuff with you all. And I think it's an incredibly important part of the conversation and it's getting more and more nuanced. And as we go along as a community and as this podcast continues, like we need to dig into some of these other nuances because I don't think there's enough out there that prepares us for what these conversations look like once we actually get to them. And with that being said, we are a 501c3 nonprofit. We'd love to get some resources donated if you have them. And it's not for you, it's for the next person that hasn't found the podcast. So please donate if you can. We also have a free 12-step program, Parental Alienation Anonymous. 12-step has saved my life. I've been involved for nearly 30 years in 12-step, and it's really been the building blocks of all these other wonderful things I've had the opportunity to do. And please like, share, let people know what we're doing. This is a great resource, and it's free and accessible. And that's enough out of me for the introduction. But uh just want to share like the story as I get into the show today. I'm getting to meet my grandkids, and they're nearly four and five, and it's super surreal. Like they haven't seemed real and tangible to me until now, until that I've actually got to meet them. And a lot of it is just me compartmentalizing and storing them away in a box in the back of my head in the furthest corner, so I don't have to necessarily feel the pain and longing and sorrow that comes along with these dynamics. And I want to be clear here if you're a parent, a grandparent, or if you're a young adult or adult and you experience this on any side of this, like no one's wrong here, in my opinion. Like we're all struggling with different levels of trauma and complex trauma, and we're just trying to get through the day. So, what I'm sharing today happens to be my perspective, but there's impact in every single direction, and everyone's just trying to step forward and figure out how to safely move through these situations when they get the opportunity. And it is messy. There's nothing clean and simple, and there's no like indicated roadmap. It's really just showing up minute to minute and seeing what happens next and then moving through that. And I know for me it's been incredibly hard. And if I didn't have all the skills and all the resources I had, I think I'd be missing so much of the puzzle. And that's why we're going to talk about some of the puzzle today. I just want to touch back in on this one point, this idea of the podcast missing a week, it brings up a lot of feelings that I've experienced in my journey with parental alienation where there's a lack of information available. And I don't know if you feel this way too, but whether it's the podcast, whether it's one of our kids or one of our parents and not knowing what's going on, without a continuum of information or access to information why certain things are happening, like the mind tends to go crazy. And even my projection here that I'm so important, not so important, that's bad, but that I had impact on all these other people that are helping bring out the podcast and the the community is really my projection that it's a really important thing, and it might be to some people and it might not. But the overarching theme that ties into every one of our lives is the lack of information. Like, why is stuff happening and why isn't stuff happening? So for me, I've been really struggling the last several weeks with not being able to record podcasts. I had several guests lined up and I kept canceling guests, which I apologized for and is not the best way to show up, and it was the best thing that I could do in the moment. And in those moments, I was just taking care of myself. You know, I was just resting, I was just trying to get through the day. It felt overwhelming to tape a podcast, and I really didn't want to talk to anyone. You know what I mean? I was really going inside internally a lot to move through this. And this buildup to getting to meet my grandkids and spending time with my daughter and son-in-law was so intense in my body, and it was a good thing. So I don't know if you can relate to this, but parental alienation takes up so much space and so much energy. And in the early days, it's really negative connotations. It's about getting through the divorce, it's about being scared of the male, it's about being emotionally lying on the ground and wiped out and just wanting your family back and confused. At least these are my perspectives. And then the other perspectives are abandonment and then being misunderstood and being disappeared. And I think those go for the kids as well as the parents. You know, a lot of the things that each person is feeling is murdered by the other person. If we actually get to sit down and talk to different people that are coming from different angles, who will actually see that we're having very similar experiences, even though developmentally we're processing them and metabolizing them in very different ways. I think that's the key component here. When folks are on either side of the spectrum, whether you're a young adult at 20 years old and a parent or grandparent at 40 or 50, you might be having similar experiences, but because of developmental and life experiences, we're processing it on a different level. So again, that whole idea of not having communication, I think is important to just acknowledge and that it has an impact on our nervous system. And yeah, I just wanted to clean that up and acknowledge that and apologize for any kind of impact I might have had in a negative way. And I don't know, maybe that's over the top, but who knows? So getting back to this idea of positive things, like I'm used to really bad stuff happening, like I was saying, and really complex things happening and not understanding anything and not having any information. And now having some good stuff happening, my body still gets activated and it still responds the same way to a positive or a negative stimuli, right? And I think that's a really important thing to understand. If you're having some good stuff coming up and you're feeling overwhelmed, then you're having some negative stuff coming up and you're feeling overwhelmed, you're like, why am I getting overwhelmed when the good stuff's coming up too? And it's the whole nervous system gets the stimulation and this all this different input coming in, and it's just reacting to any kind of stimulation in the same way because it's become a survival mechanism and a way our body is adapting. Right? So all these things we've been talking about for the last three years meditation, breath work, getting into some kind of support group, therapy, whatever it is, all these things work with our nervous system to kind of like titrate out some of those really high levels of stimulation that come in. And then our bodies are able to relax. So this good stuff and has been overwhelming my nervous system, and there's a lot of uncertainty with it because I have no idea what's really happening, and it's positive. I'm showing up and I'm enjoying it when I'm there and in the moment, but when I'm done, I'm crashing. I'm crashing the same way that I'd crash when something not great would be happening in my life. And I think it's important to look at this and be prepared for this. You know what I mean? Like, how do I resource myself for the good stuff? And it's the same way as I resource myself for the negative stuff, except that I have to actually be aware that this is overloading my system. Like I'm running out of capacity, like I can't do all these different things on the good and the bad. So there's plenty of work to get done. And when I'm feeling overloaded, if I'm not going back to my resources and I just keep being overloaded. And it's kind of like when the electricity trips at your house, you got to go to the breaker and trip the breaker back on. But if there's still too much load, it's just not going to come back on. And that's what it's felt like as I'm coming out of this fog. I'm starting to see all these places that I haven't been taking care of myself. I haven't been resourcing myself. The messaging has been really rough. Like, you're a bad parent, you're a bad person, you did these different things, like all these things are coming up, even though I'm experiencing good stuff. Like these are all the interruptions in my life that are keeping me out of my life. So here I am taping a podcast, coming back into my body, being more present, acknowledging what's happening, and also sharing this experience because it's paramount to talk about, and it's directly related to my trauma, possibly some form of PTSD, and all the players in the system, all the stakeholders, the kids, the other parents, everyone's struggling with this trauma. So it's a universal trauma to some degree, too. And I think it's important for me to have some compassion for everyone that's in the system. You know, and I can I can materialize as fear, anticipation, uncertainty, anxiety, overeating, drinking, alcohol, over-exercising, shopping, whatever it is, like it manifests in all these different ways. And if I can like look at it, I can see that it's related to, oh wow, this is something good that's happening. You know, I just want to share like some of the things like that are running through my mind or were running through my mind before I actually got to see my daughter and and her family was like, what am I walking into? What it's gonna look like, what's gonna be on the walls? You know what I mean? Am I gonna be able to introduce myself as grandfather? Like, what does that look like? And I'll I will say along this process and building up to this stuff because of the work that I am doing and the community and the meetings, that I'm I'm asking these questions ahead of time. You know, I'm checking in with my daughter and saying, Hey, how would you like me to introduce myself to the kids? What are any other considerations like we're walking into? Is there anything else that I need to know when I'm coming into your house that you would like? You know, and these are vulnerable and uncomfortable things to ask for me, and at the same time, they're imperative that I ask them so I'm resourcing my nervous system so I can be as present as possible. And I believe these are things that everyone that's gonna be there is kind of nervous and anxious about. So in advocating for myself and asking the questions in a meaningful way and a useful way, I think it really sets the table or set the table for me to have a phenomenal experience. And I did have a phenomenal experience, which I'll I get into a little bit later. And I want to say for people out there that are struggling with other components that are a result of the trauma, and and for me, it's sometimes it's chronic pain. Like my pain and anxiety level went through the roof over the last like eight weeks or so, and I had to deal with different things, and they were all related to the buildup to actually getting to say hello, you know, all this buildup just to say hello, and I and I couldn't interrupt a lot of these noises, I could just get kind of like to the finish line. Again, a marvelous experience, but I think it's important to note that if you're getting ready to step into one of these situations or you're being invited in even for like a tiny peek, like what do you need to think about? Like, what do you need to prepare yourself for? Are there questions that you need to ask to really understand other people's boundaries when you're coming into their space? Like, what needs to happen? How can you show up as your best version? You know, how do you resource yourself? Who's available on the telephone if you need someone to talk to? What happens if you arrive somewhere and you're feeling super anxious? Do you you say, hey, wow, I'm feeling super anxious and like I'm just gonna go take a walk? Like that was my plan. Like if I got to the point where the anxiety fell really a lot, or even if I just felt overwhelmed and wasn't as present as I'd like to be, to take a moment and just say, Hey, I'm just gonna go take a quick walk around the block. And what I did is I just used the bathroom a lot. And I just go to the bathroom and just be with myself for a couple minutes, take some deep breaths, look at myself. I think that's something really important that I want to share is through this whole process, there's this distorted mirroring, and generally we say there's this distorted mirroring from other people, like we're having a reality, and the people like our kids or our parents, whoever are having a different reality, and we talk about it in that version. But in this version of distorted reality, it's when I'm having a distorted reality of who I am and my relationship to myself, whether it's that negative self-talk, you're a bad person, you're a bad parent, or I just I hate you. You know, there's like I feel that I feel like bubbling up in myself, and I never talk to myself that way, but I have been in this last several weeks. And the thing that really helps me is going to the mirror and looking at myself, right? I get like disembodied and then I get stuck in all this stuff and this anxiety and these feelings. But once I actually look at myself, make eye contact with myself in the mirror, take some deep breaths, get back into my body, I'm like, oh wow, I like this dude. He's a cool cat. You know what I mean? And I think that's a profoundly simple and important thing that I do for myself and have done for myself in this process. And as I'm saying it out loud, it's definitely stuff that I could do more often because that that would really bring me back into my body. And I just want to talk about capacity a little bit here. And I said, hey, I didn't tape these podcasts, I canceled all these podcasts. I wasn't very available or active in my community. And I also found myself having no patience for people. Like if I was gonna be in a conversation, there was a lot of small talk that was superficial, I was just maxed out on people and would leave those conversations. And what I've come to realize that for me is like I just needed people to be super present with me and super available. And that's not generally how life works. We move in and out of conversations and interactions, and some people in our lives can fill those needs. And I think I was not super present or super in my body, so I was looking for something outside of myself. If you were just present enough with me, then I would be okay. And I was trying to tend to an internal wound with an external solution. Yeah, I left a lot of events and left a lot of things in those six or eight weeks and didn't talk to a lot of people because I I just couldn't. You know, I was shutting down, avoiding people, didn't have capacity. I really just had capacity to navigate my inner world and some really close people in my life and prepare for this trip. But it's fascinating to see that behavior in myself. And, you know, like it's not sustainable. Like I was a six or eight-week period of time, and man, it beat me up. And then on the other end of it, coming down from it, like a lot of that stuff dissipated, but there's still like a lot of anxiety and fear over every single interaction, and it creates these little micro bubbles instead of this eight-week bubble, it creates a day bubble or two-day bubble each time I have some kind of interaction. And it's just fascinating talking about this with other people because so many people having this experience, they're starting to reconnect with a family member, and it's not like there's really deep emotional connection, it's really this more superficial, you know, safety cues, trust, building continuity, building consistency, and there's this longing for it to be deeper and more meaningful, I think, to soothe my nervous system. But it is really deep and it is really meaningful. It just looks different, it's just wrapped in a different color, wrapping paper. And I'm not sure if any of this makes any sense. But yeah, I have this expectation that these relationships are going to be a particular way and the conversation and connection is going to be super easy and super flowy, and it's not. We're just relearning how to be with each other. But the safety cues are phenomenal. Like there's so much love there that I can feel the energetic love. And and I don't know what it turns into, if it turns into a fully functional, really deeply connected relationship or relationships, or if it's not. And I think it's okay. I think I'm okay. I think the thing is if I keep coming back to myself and I'm present over and over and over again, that these relationships will deepen, not because the other person is doing something, but because I'm continuously showing up and available. And if I can really take that in, I think it's going to be transformative. And this is kind of like a therapy session, like talking about this stuff out loud and sharing it with everyone out there. And I want to hear your comments. Like, which of these things are you struggling with too? What things are you struggling with as you start to reconnect or even think about reconnecting that we're not discussing or I'm not bringing up? Like there's so many nuances here, and we want to get into those because unfortunately it's about the next person in. Like more resources we can put together, more conversations that are useful that we can put together, the next person coming in is going to have these, and hopefully their trajectory and timeline is going to be a little bit shorter than ours. And I know that sounds crappy. And for a lot of years, I was like, I didn't care about anyone else. I just wanted to get some relief and get my family back. But the reality is I'm getting the relief and getting my family back by doing this work and talking about this in an efficient and useful way. And I just want to say, like, with canceling the podcast, with not really engaging with people, that doesn't mean that I'm a failure. That doesn't mean that I did anything wrong. That just meant that I was taking care of myself. And I think that's the other side of the coin where I say, like, I have all these skills and all these things that I've worked on, and I'm like beating myself up that I wasn't fully able to show up. But I think part of the fully being able to show up was this retraction of being able to just go internal and take care of myself and move through this process as easeful as I could. And it wasn't easeful, it was it was super, super challenging. And like there's got to be some grace for myself that I went inside, that I took care of myself, that I said no to the podcast, that I had boundaries. You know, it's hard. It's hard to have boundaries. It's hard to have boundaries when we're struggling. And some of the relief I get is being of service and helping other people, but just taking care of myself and saying, no, this is just my time. This is just for me. This is the best I can do right now, is just me. Was hard. And I I have some guilt and some shame around that. And uh it's good to say it out loud because I think this relates to so many of our experiences. So I have this eight-week buildup, and I get to see my daughter and meet my grandkids, and God, the kids are just magnificent, beautiful little beings, and you know, it's like this is sound weird, but it's like going like on that first date, or you're getting to you're going to school for the first time, or you're just getting to college and you're excited to meet these people, and and it's awkward and it's weird, and no one really knows. And then like just the kids' stuff just kind of like breaks through that. They're just so curious and they're watching you, even though they're not fully out, you know. And as the first day went on, you know, we got to have more and more interactions, and it was super sweet. Super sweet, super wonderful little beans, and and reconnecting with my daughter and and my son-in-law was really, really nice. They were really welcoming and inviting, and was really centered around the kids, you know. And I know for so many of us, like resolution, what happened, what's going on, like all that stuff feels super important. And and in the moment, it w it wasn't what was important. What was important was me taking care of myself, being able to show up and being as present as possible over and over and over again. You know, and when I went back to the hotel at night or during the day, you know, there's definitely stuff that was coming up, and I processed more stuff and I got stuck. Stuck in some different loops, you know, and cry. There's a lot of emotion and you know, and a lot of fear that it would just go away. And I still have that fear every single day. I'm not quite sure how this evolves because I've never had this experience before. And I haven't heard a lot of people talk about this experience, like just the getting through the hour by hour, day by day, text by text. And the communication and connection is challenging. Like I want deep, I want to know what's going on. I want to be part of the life. And I'm like five years behind with the relationships with the kids and then all the other relatives in the family system. And I'm not sure what my place is. Do I have a place? Am I really invited in? And there's so many questions. Yet when I'm able to like step back and go, like I was saying before, and make eye contact with myself in the mirror and breathe and like put this into perspective. This is monumental. This is incredible. All this work that I've done has led to this moment. And I'm continuing to show up over and over again, imperfectly, but in the best version of myself. And you know, we're coming back to all the stuff we've spoken about, like really learning how to communicate, how to respond to text, what to ask for, how to ask for it, and also to check it out with trusted people, just to make sure I'm not overreaching because I want to solve this, I want to clean this up, I want to put a ribbon on it, and I want to understand everything. I want ultimately, I just want to be loved. You know, but I I make it super complicated, and I'm not sure what all of that means. And I don't know if I can just let that all go at one particular point and just be okay with just meeting the relationship where it is and not having to resolve anything, or developmentally, if that just naturally happens as people get safer and trust is built. I'm not really sure how that works out, you know? And I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this term, and I've used it before, and from a Buddhist perspective, it's called monkey mind. And monkey mind is being in these situations, and our minds are telling us all these different outcomes that are or aren't going to happen, like these six or eight weeks before I got to have this wonderful experience. My mind's like, this isn't gonna happen. This is gonna happen. What's it gonna look like? Yes, I've checked in. I can I be called grandpa, like what's I don't know what is. People are gonna be angry at me, am I gonna be angry at people? You know, and my mind makes up all these different scenarios and it takes me out of the present, and then I don't connect with people, I cancel podcasts, like all this craziness happens. And I like to have a word like monkey mind to label the struggles that go along with all these stories we tell ourselves and all these internal projections and this even this internalized oppression about being in the middle of parental alienation and being a bad parent and a bad person and a a this and a that. You know what I mean? Like these these are things that have a major impact on our nervous systems, on how we show up. But being able to label it and being able to work with it is super profound. And I also want to clarify this one point. I canceled all these podcast tapings after I got to meet my daughter and grandkids. And the anxiety and a lot of the fear dissipated by like 70 or 80 percent. But each interaction after I've got to meet them has created similar waves in my life. And even though I got through that point, I still didn't have capacity to show up in my life. It's taken another three weeks where I'm like finally like going, okay. Yeah, I haven't been breathing, I haven't been looking in the mirror, I haven't been meditating on a regular basis. You know, I've just been getting through it. You know, one of my favorite things to check out on my life is sugar, and I've been in a lot of sugar, and you know, and it's fascinating because I get so hyper-focused on these relationships that I don't realize how much it affects every relationship in my life. And being integrated in all my relationships in my life is so vitally important to me surviving parental alienation and building continuity in the relationships affected by parental alienation. But when I stop practicing this continuity in my whole life and let parental alienation become my life, even the reconnected with my loved ones, it still takes up a disproportionate amount of space. Yes, it's super emotional and overwhelming. And I gotta look like when I acquiesce my life force to the situation, and I become the situation instead of I'm Lawrence and I have all these different complexities and layers to me, and I'm living in all these different directions. You know, like my joy shuts down, my happiness shuts down. All I can really touch is a lot of like grief and longing and anxiety and fear, and I kind of I've lost my way for like eight or ten weeks, and it feels super hard. Like, how do I find my way back to like joy and happiness and these different things? And for me, it's talking about it, it's getting back to my physical practices, like the meditation, working out, being around other people, socializing, which I'm not doing very well right now. But I just want to say, like, if you're struggling with similar things and you can relate to what I'm saying, and you can see yourself kind of like moving out of some parts of your life when you under-resource, like, hey, you're not alone. This is what we're all going through, and we need to talk about it and we need support to get through it. Like, my support is not my mind. Like, sometimes it's an okay resource, but if it's just me and my mind together, we create a really unhealthy environment, you know? And also just want to stick with this reconnecting for a second. Like this last 17 years or whatever, 20 years, 15 years, whatever it is. I can't even count anymore how long this has been super in my face in my life. I think it's been present since before any of my kids were born, based on my trauma in my life and my ex's trauma in her life. But like that, this has really been noticeable in my life and has really had a major impact. It's probably somewhere between 17 and 20 years. And the goal the whole time is to reconnect with my kids, to meet my grandkids, to become part of the family. And if I can just get there, then everything is gonna be all right. And like I was saying with the analogy before flying from Los Angeles to New York, you're in New York. And by getting these relationships back, you're in these relationships, and that's not accurate. This thing isn't linear, even in reconnecting. You know what I mean? My experience is I'm connecting, and then there's these kind of like waves where it's super challenging to figure out what connection looks like, and then there's some more connection, and it feels stable but not trustworthy in my own body, and then I go through another wave, and then I wait for some other reconnection, and it's just not a linear cycle, and it's not predictable because if I'm trying to predict it using my mind, I'm taking myself out of the present moment and I'm creating all these scenarios with my monkey mind that that aren't real. And I'm getting so many wonderful, beautiful safety cues from my daughter, and they're different than what I thought they would be. We're really centering the kids and the relationship with my grandkids and connecting in that kind of way, and it's feeling like a really safe access point. We can really love and enjoy each other as a conduit through me enjoying the kids. That's what I'm guessing is happening for me, and this is all brand new, so I could be wrong in the next show. I could tell you something different, but that's what it's feeling like, and I'm also curious. Anyone out there that's in the reconnection process or wanting to reconnect or desiring to reconnect or has reconnected, like what was the life for you in those moments? What does it look like now that you've had a little bit of time? Or is this a really useful conversation that we can continue having? Like, how do we do this in the real time when this actually shows up? And some people really reconnect quickly. Like of all the conversations that I've had, I've seen maybe I would guess somewhere around 3%. Uh maybe it's four, maybe it's two, maybe it's five, where uh people that are usually in the earliest stages of struggling with these dynamics get reconnected with the kids and drop in when the kids usually are a younger age much quicker, and sometimes even when they're a little bit older. And then for most folks, there's a slower trajectory of trust, safety cues, continuity over and over again in these little waves, and each time it builds a little bit more kind of like mycelium that connects like all the trees under the roots, and how it's all like this connection, like we're re-building these and reconnecting these tiny little strands together. At least that's what it feels like to me. And I'd say another thing that's been really important for me in reconnecting to the degree that I've reconnected is getting to spend the couple days with my daughter and seeing how busy her life is as a young mom, having young kids, and her husband and her working really, really hard to provide for everyone and all the stimulation and everything they're doing, and how exhausting that is. I forget. I'm really removed from that. And I just want this connection so badly that I feel like I have the energy to prioritize and put it all in there. And I'm not in the situation of raising young kids or trying to figure out how to support myself, how to do any of these things. So it's really giving me some grace and empathy for what they're going through and the pace that they're going through, and and get reminded of that over and over and over again as I'm wanting things to be different and quicker and whatever. And when I'm able to slow down and realize, hey, this is just a natural progression of life, and I went through this too. It really gives me some relief. So I just want to finish up by saying, I hope this is useful and me ex sharing some of these little bit more intimate details and feels vulnerable and I feel a little scared and anxious as I'm taping this. I don't know if any of it makes any kind of sense, and I'm and I'm hoping it does. But I would say, like, what are you doing to prepare? Like, are you able to tap into the resources you're creating? Have you not really started to reconcile your life outside of parental alienation and outside of just wanting your kids? You know what I mean? Do you have a support group that you attend regularly? And it doesn't have to be a 12-step, it can be a spiritual, it can be whatever suits you, but the 12-step languaging and the 12-step model is actually about coming home to yourself, about finding yourself, is about looking at yourself and all the different dynamics that have created you and then how those intersect and interrelate to all the other people in your life. And it has been life-saving. So, with all that being said, today I'm gonna meditate. I'm gonna work out. I just tape this podcast and I'm gonna try to look at myself three times in the mirror today and breathe. And that's what I want to do for myself today. I want to really work with some of that negative chatter that's still going on and some of that fear and anxiety that I'm carrying around that's affecting how I show up in my joy and in my play. So those are the things that I'm gonna do today. Thank you for coming out to listen to the show today. We have a great couple of episodes coming up around PTSD and trauma, and uh really love those conversations and directly relate to what I'm talking about, directly relate to these last eight weeks or so of my life, and uh yeah, actually taping that podcast felt like a therapy session for me because I'm processing and moving through the stuff the whole time. So, yeah, thanks for coming out to play in the playground. Again, donate. There's a donate link in the show notes. Come check out a meeting if that resonates with you. Find some support somewhere else. If that doesn't, love to hear from you. Family disappeared at gmail.com. Let's talk about some of these nuances. Let us know what we're missing, what you want to talk about, maybe part of your experience, and we can, you know, bring some of that conversation into one of the podcasts. We don't have to use your name or anything like that. Like, share, let people know what we're doing. You know, there's people out there that need to hear this. And I don't care if you're a parent, grandparent, child, young adult, adult, you know, even if it's just a family member that's not identifying with parental alienation or estrangement, but you're just struggling to move through connection. This is useful. This is useful stuff. So thank you. Do I give myself a wow? I'm not sure if you've enjoyed this. I'd love some wows or some comments just to let me know that this resonated to some degree. And yeah, with that being said, I love you. I feel a little exposed and emotional and vulnerable in this moment and maybe a little nauseous. Again, yeah, it's hard talking into this vortex, and uh, I'm not sure how it translates, but uh I love you. If someone's told you that today or someone hasn't told you that today, either way, I love you. I hope you have a beautiful day, and I will see you around the playground somewhere, someplace, sometime. Take care, bye-bye. Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.