Ep.9:Radical Acceptance- Accepting the Unacceptable

In this Episode, I talk about the importance of radical acceptance, reframing and mantras to help survivors, specifically those protective parents, navigate the ultra marathon that "co-parenting" with an active narcissistic counter parent is. I then move into a discussion about how these tools can help those protective parents whose children have been turned against them. It's a powerful episode full of insights and tools and mindset shifts to help you live a life you love, despite what the narcissist in your life, does, or doesn't do. 

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Transcript

0:02

Welcome everybody to their Survivor's Playbook. This is the podcast for every survivor of abuse. If abusers can have a playbook, why can't survivors also have a playbook? I am your host, Chantal Contorines. Today things are gonna be a little bit different. We don't have an extra guest. It's just gonna be me, myself, and I talking for a little bit about something that's so incredibly important for so many survivors. Especially so many protective parents who are actively still being abused by their counter parent through their children. And this nugget is radical acceptance, and I really wanted to dive into this important topic because it is such a powerful tool for so many people who are still experiencing abuse. So let's dive right in. What is radical acceptance and what does it mean for protective parents? And really, when I say protective parents, I'm speaking directly to them today, but it can be for any survivor of abuse it could be your parent who's abusing you still. It could be your partner. It could be your colleague, but I'm talking to protective parents today. But please do feel free to change that to suit your own needs. So radical acceptance is a powerful mindset shift that allows protective parents to free themselves from the emotional turmoil of trying to change or control a narcissistic counter parent. Remember, you can never control them. They are uncontrollable. So when you focus on controlling their actions, you're actually divesting yourself of your own emotional bandwidth focusing on yourself and recharging yourself and focusing on what you can actually control. You can't control them. They're uncontrollable, as you probably are aware of that by now. So it's the process of fully acknowledging reality. So you're acknowledging reality. You're not saying that you agree with it, even when this reality is incredibly painful or unfair, which, if you have an abuser in your life, if they are an active counter parent, all of this is incredibly painful. It's designed to be painful for you, and it's incredibly unfair and unjust so that you can focus on what you can control instead of being stuck in frustration, resentment and or emotional exhaustion. Radical acceptance is not approval for the narcissist behavior. You're not approving of it. You're not saying that you agree with it, but it's acknowledging it. It's not giving up or letting them win. You may have to lose some battles, but you'll win this war they're waging against you. It is not about suppressing your emotions. Or pretending things don't bother you. We don't suppress emotions because that leads to long-term health issues, both mental as well as physical, and it's not passively resigning yourself to this. So it's not passive resignation, it's a tool for reclaiming your power. I want that to really sit with you. It's about you reclaiming your power when so much of what you're dealing with and experiencing is outside of your control. And when things are outside of your control, you can really start to feel powerless and helpless and hopeless. So radical acceptance is a tool that can help you reclaim your power. What is radical acceptance? It's acknowledging that the narcissist will not change and adjusting your expectations accordingly. They're not gonna change. You still have this little nugget of hope that maybe this time they'll act accordingly. Maybe this time they'll have some human decency. Maybe this time they'll actually put your children's interest at heart and put them in the center of what they do. So it's accepting that family court may not always be fair or protective. In fact, it's oftentimes very unfair, unjust, and enables and empowers and emboldens abusers, while retraumatizing victims, both adults and children alike. But, you can still strategize effectively, right? So you focus on what you can control. You can't control the outcome, but you can control how you document, how you show up, how you present, who you hired help you. It's letting go of emotional battles you cannot win, so that you can focus on protecting your children and your own wellbeing. There is gonna be a lot of stuff that you are just gonna have to let go. Is it fair? Absolutely not. But nothing about being tethered to a narcissist and an abuser is fair. You have to let that notion of fairness go. You have to radically accept that none of is fair. It's making peace with the reality that co-parenting with a narcissist will never be normal, and you have to grieve that. You really have to grieve. Most survivors, most victims, irrespective of how poorly and badly and horribly they've been treated by their co-parent, would still gladly co-parent. Why? Because it would benefit their children. When you have a narcissistic ex on the other end and children in the middle, they are incapable of co-parenting. They will always counter parent. So you have to grieve that because you would do that irrespective of your bruised ego and how much they've hurt you because it would benefit your children and you grieve that whole process. The fact that your children don't get to have two happily divorce parents who put their needs above everything else. And you grieve the fact that you will not have that partner on the other end. Even if you're divorced, if you were with a normal person, a healthy person, they would be able to put their children's needs above their own. If your children were suffering this person, you could call them up and say, we need to, come together to talk about how we can help our child, manage what they're dealing with and find them some sort of support. You'll never get that with this person, and you need to grieve that. It is making peace with the reality that co-parenting with a narcissist will never be a normal or cooperative experience. There's no cooperation here. You know this. Hopefully by now, it's choosing to not engage in unnecessary conflict even when provoked. You have to remember, they thrive on conflict and chaos. They thrive on this. The average person becomes depleted, this type of person literally, it feeds them, it fuels them, it energizes them. So if you can't do it for yourself, at least do it so that you're not giving them extra supply. You're not feeding right into what they want from you, and they want more from you. They don't care what kind of attention they get from you so long as they get attention. Now, how can radical acceptance help protective parents? This is the really important stuff here, and this is a really hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. Why should I have to accept something that's unacceptable? And essentially that is what you're being forced to do is accept the unacceptable. But if you don't, you're going to be stuck in this perpetual state of anger, resentment, bitterness, and focusing on things that are outside of your control. And if you choose, you actually can make a choice here. If you choose that route, you are absolutely entitled to choose that route. What you're experiencing is completely unfair. It is unfathomable to most, which is why most people don't understand or believe when you talk about this, because how could this possibly be the truth? But if you actually start to focus on what you can control, if you let go of what you can't control, and focus on what you can do as a protective parent, so much of your life will start to change and shift. It doesn't mean you won't grieve, it doesn't mean there won't be pain, but you'll be less focused on them and the injustice of everything to do with this person and more focused on you and what you can do, not only for yourself, but also for your children, even if your children are currently aligning with this abusive parent and have stopped having contact with you. So how can this help you? It reduces your emotional suffering constantly hoping that the narcissist in your life will suddenly act reasonably or co-parent fairly leads to repeated disappointments and emotional distress. It really does, and so many of my clients, my members, my followers, even though they understand the reality, they still have a little bit of nugget of hope. You've got to extinguish that hope that they're ever gonna change, that they're ever gonna see the light, that they might actually hear what you're saying this time, even though you've had this conversation a million times before. And you accept reality. And when you do that, it allows you to stop the cycle of anger and resentment, freeing up more energy for what truly actually matters, your children and your own mental health. It prevents unnecessary power struggles, narcissists, as you probably know, thrive on emotional reactions and conflict. When you accept that they will always be difficult and manipulative, you can disengage instead of being caught in endless battles. You know those conversations that go nowhere and you leave them feeling exhausted. That's what they want. Those circular conversations, they thrive on that chaos and exhaustion that they create. You can use neutral, low contact communication like the Biff Method, created by Bill Eddie- Brief, informative, friendly, and firm. You can also use Jade where you never justify, argue, defend, and explain yourself. So the whole point of all of this is to become more responsive and less reactive, less emotionally triggered by this person, and that then takes away their power. If they no longer have the capacity to trigger you and elicit a reaction, an emotional reaction, they don't care if it's sadness, anger, whatever, so long as they get something from you, you're literally taking away they're fire, you're extinguishing it. They no longer can look to you to get their source of narcissistic supply, and it shifts the focus on what you can actually control. So instead of focusing on how unfair, the situation is, and again, I can't say this enough, it is so unfair. There's nothing fair about this. It focuses on things that you can control. So you can control documentation about incidents for legal. Purposes and learn how to do that properly so that you're actually documenting in a way that's strategic, intentional, and methodical and organized. You can create strong boundaries. You can practice emotional detachment, seek therapy and coaching, and other forms of support to help you navigate this ultra marathon you have not signed up for. It's not gonna be a sprint people, it's gonna be an ultra marathon that you're running. Backwards blindfolded, barefoot over hot holes up a mountain. We put so much focus on what they're doing or not doing in their home, that we actually forget to focus on what we can do in our own homes to support our children. Through this, you have to equip your children with the right tools in their toolbox to be able to navigate this parent. Unfortunately, this is their reality. Their parent will always be their parent. Whether you like it or not, whether they like them or not, this is their parent. They have to learn the proper strategies and tools to deal with this person. They have to learn the proper boundaries. And guess what? It all starts with you. Your modeling is so incredibly important. It helps you navigate the legal system with a clear mind. So court decisions and custody battles can feel incredibly unjust. Instead of getting stuck in anger over unfair rulings, which so many people experience radical acceptance allows you to strategize, okay, yep, I'm gonna lick my wounds. That was a big blow, even though I anticipated that it would probably end this way. What can I do now? So what are my next legal steps? How can I build a stronger case over time? What documentation do I need to prove a pattern of behavior? How can I best protect my children within the system? As it is. The system is is bad. It's bad all over the world. It's a family court crisis, and it's a worldwide one. So you can't fix that right now. Don't focus on trying to fix that. When you're done with this, maybe that can be your next thing is to focus on how you can fix. Something that's so incredibly, I would say broken, but it's not even broken. It works exactly as it's designed to, which is to be unfair and enable embolden and empower abusers. So holding onto anger and frustration about things you can't control, harms your mental and physical health, it accepts you. Acceptance allows you to shift towards self-care, healing, and building a fulfilling life despite the difficulties and the stress and the anxiety of co-parenting. And I use that with quotes with a narcissist. Do you see how liberating it can be when you actually start to understand the premise of what radical acceptance really is and what it's not? It can help you as a protective parent. And again, or as this a survivor of abuse, right? This is designed for protective parents today, but really this can be applied to anybody who's dealing with a narcissist on an ongoing basis. Let's talk about how you can apply this in real life.'cause that's pretty helpful when you actually, you hear all this stuff, but how can I use that in my real life? Let's dive in. Here's an example that I hear all the time from clients and members and followers and friends. Remember I have friends and family who are dealing with this too. How surprised are you by this statement? The narcissistic co-parent is unreliable. Your old mindset. They should respect the schedule. It's so unfair that they always mess things up. Yep. That's a really fair sentiment. Because they do and they do this intentionally'cause they don't care. It doesn't bother them, but it surely bothers you and that's what they want. So your radical acceptance- they've never been reliable and they will likely continue to be this way. Instead of wasting my precious energy on frustration, I will document each incident, stick to parallel parenting, and have a backup plan for my child. You're not condoning their behavior, but you're accepting that this is your reality and you're coming up with a backup plan. So that you are no longer emotionally exhausted and reactive when they do things that you know that they're going to do, that they're capable of doing, because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And these people aren't original. They don't change. They're exactly the same. They like you to think that they're unique, but they really, truly are not. Example number two, how many of you, can feel this one? Raise your hand. Family court is unfair and it is. Why can't the court see the truth? This is so wrong. The very people who are responsible for protecting you and your children, are oftentimes uneducated, ignorant about these issues, don't have the time, don't have the inclination or the care, and sometimes, oftentimes, I think that they might actually be exactly like this type of person, and it is so wrong because their job. Like their one job is to protect victims, to protect adults and children, and they constantly do not do their job. The legal system is incredibly imperfect and many narcissists manipulate it. They do. Instead of staying stuck in this anger, I will focus on strengthening my case with clear documentation, expert support, and a long-term strategy. That's all you can do. You can't control the legal system. You can't control the judge. You can to some extent control your lawyer, but really only in life, the only person, the only thing that you can ever actually control is yourself. Not even your children, not your partner, maybe your dog, if you train them well, but only you, you can only control yourself. So let's focus more on that. Next example. The narcissist provokes you. Man, they live for that. They love to provoke you any way possible. They'd rather that you adored them, and that was a source of, you know, narcissistic supply that you gave them. But if they can't, because that ship has long sailed away, they just want an emotional reaction from you. Why? It makes them feel powerful, right? To have that kind of power over a person. Just think about that. If you can elicit some sort of emotion from somebody, you have power over that person. So your old mindset, I can't believe they just sent that email. I have to respond and put them in their place. Yep. Journal that, call up your bestie, you know, talk to your coach, talk to your therapist, but do not send them the supply they're so desperately looking for. Your radical acceptance, they thrive on conflict. I accept that they will continue to bait me and I am not going to engage. I'll respond in a neutral, factual way and not at all if it's unnecessary. Remember, so much of what they send you doesn't actually merit, deserve, or need a response from you. That's your new communication boundary is learning what actually needs a response. And what doesn't need a response. And if you're dealing with children, the only things that ever need a response are about your children. And even then you can be selective. You keep everything Biff, and you don't jade, and you move on. How to practice radical acceptance daily. So when you feel frustrated, pause and ask yourself, am I resisting reality right now? Are you, is part of what you're experiencing the resistance to the reality of your situation as unfair and unjust as it is? Mantra Man, I love a good mantra. So repeat and acceptance mantra. You can create your own. I have one here for you if you wanna copy and paste this one. This is the situation. I cannot change them, only my response to them. That's really where your power lies. So you can take that, you can alter it, edit it. Discard it completely. If it doesn't suit you, or you can just use it, that's okay. It's not trademarked. You don't even have to say, Chantal Contorines told me so. Focus on solutions instead of ruminating on the unfairness of it all. So rumination keeps you stuck. Being stuck means that you're not taking action. Inaction causes stress and anxiety. So you can accept it, right? You can. You can talk about it to yourself. You can journal about it, but don't get stuck there. So what can you do? Taking action helps to alleviate the anxiety and reduce your stress. Even if taking action can be stressful in and of itself, especially if you're stuck in a freeze response, right? Give yourself 10 minutes. Do 10 minutes. I'm gonna do this hard thing for 10 minutes and then I'm gonna give myself a break. Maybe eat some chocolate, go for a walk, have a glass of wine, connect with a friend, pet my dog. Some sort of reward for yourself for doing the hard thing. Keep a journal where you practice reframing difficult situations through the lens of radical acceptance. This is a process, it's not gonna happen overnight, but with actual intentional, concerted effort and daily repetition. To create a habit, you have to do it daily. Try it for at least 21 to 30 days. You can drastically shift your mindset and reframe the injustice, the resentment, and the justifiable anger that you naturally feel. Right? All these emotions are justifiable. This is maddening that it's so clear to you and me what's going on, and yet it continues unchecked, unpunished, and they just are allowed to do what they do, especially those super sneaky covert ones whose even their texts sound so. Normal on the surface, but if you actually know what coercive control is and how abusers present, you can actually start to read between the lines and see the coercion even in a seemingly, thoughtfully written out text to you. Is this starting to make sense? Hopefully it is. So for a lot of protective parents, because the number one thing that abusers love to do, when you share children with them is they love to slowly but methodically, turn your children against you. And this process was happening even while you were married. They were devaluing you in so many microwaves. Sometimes it was very overt. Oftentimes it was very covert. The underlying premise was that they wanted your child to doubt you as a leader. As a parent who loved them and so your child was already getting this messaging while you were still partnered, your leaving them did not cause this to happen. Regardless of whether or not you stayed or left. I have many people who come to me in their sixties and say, I stayed for my children and my children still turned against me. So leaving didn't activate this, it was already happening and it's their go-to. They love this. It makes them feel powerful and they know this also hurts you so much. So a lot of people that I work with, a lot of members, a lot of clients that I have, have children who have been turned against them. This is painful for protective parents because. What do you love more than anything else in the world is your child or your children. They've played upon your biggest fear and the biggest pain point for you is to turn a loving child against a loving, engaged, and present parent, and sometimes stepparent, right? When I say protective parent, that encapsulate. Anybody who is involved with this child, be it a biological parent, be it an adopted parent, or be it a stepparent, if this parent in any form that they come in is loving and engaged and present, you're a protective parent. So I use that term as an umbrella term, but it includes all of those aforementioned. So for so many protective parents, they are dealing with a loss of a child who historically has come to them because they've been the safe port in this crazy storm that the narcissist creates. So you have to start to reframe from loss to evolution and first grieve. These tips, these tools that I'm giving you are not meant to happen overnight. This is. A process, just like any kind of grieving and healing. It's a process. It's not a destination. But it is a journey and you have to be intentional in how you show up for this. In however forum you show up. So right now, if you have lost contact with a child, despite how much you've loved this child or these children, sometimes it happens to more than just one child and you've invested so much time and energy and love, you've poured and until there's nothing left to poor. But this child, quote unquote, has chosen their abuser. They've actually. Don't have a choice, right? When coercion is part of the equation, choice is no longer on the table. There is no choice. Just like there was no choice if you were partnered with this person to do what they wanted to do, you did whatever you could to secure safety with this person. A child is incredibly vulnerable, far more vulnerable than you as an adult. Were in this relationship and they rely upon this parent, so they will do whatever it takes to garner any modicum of affection and attention they can with this parent. So while it feels like they're choosing their abuser, they're actually choosing safety by any means necessary. And right now what that looks like. Is siding with the abuser against you because that's exactly what their abuser wants. And when they do so they get a reprieve from the abuse that they experience. But you have to remember, your love is imprinted in your children's DNA. That doesn't go away. It just might be currently hibernating during this period. So if you're in this. Please understand that it can absolutely feel like everything's falling apart, that your role as a protective parent, that your connection with your children, your sense of home, even your grip on what's fair and just is falling apart. And let's be honest, this does feel like a kind of death. You are grieving a child who's still alive that is horrible and painful, which is exactly why a narcissistic counter parent will do this. And so it's not just the time with your kids, but the life and the future that you envisioned, that you work so hard to create. The pain is very real. You're not imagining it. You've done nothing to deserve this. If your ex, if you're active counter parent wanted this to happen, no matter what you did or didn't do, this was going to be the end result. So you have to divest yourself of any guilt or shame or feeling like you did something wrong, and it's no wonder that you're feeling like you're unraveling, but this is not the end of your story, and it's not the end of your children's story. This is a chapter in your novel. And it's incredibly painful. I'm not trying to dismiss that because it is very painful. Again, that's why they do this. It's a premature evolution of the parent child relationship, right? So typically in a normal family, children would live with you until they're 17, 18, 19, and then more likely, right? Go off to college or university, they would fly the nest. You've equipped them with all the tools, hopefully, so that they can be independent and successful out there on their own while you sit back and bite your fingernails thinking, oh my gosh, are they okay? This is just a premature evolution of that, and it would've happened in a few short years. Anyways, the injustice in this is that this was. Orchestrated by somebody who hates you more than they quote unquote, love their kids. And I use quotes around that. If you followed me, if you've worked with me, if you know me, you know that I firmly believe that love and abuse cannot coexist. So if you love somebody, you don't abuse them. And if you abuse somebody, you don't love them. So I use love with quotes when I talk about abusive parents because I don't believe that they actually love their children. But this isn't the end. So most parents begin to experience separation and distance when their children go off to university. You are just facing it sooner and under far more painful and unfair circumstances. You didn't choose this timing, you didn't agree to the plan, you had no voice in it or control over it. And worse, it's been masked as their decision. How many narcissistic counter parents do not support their children in anything unless it's exactly what they want, and suddenly they're merely supporting their children's decision. Oh, like they're the most supportive and loving, engaged parent ever. When in fact, it's coercion. The child might actually say, this is what I want. But it's not actually what they want, it's what they've been forced to parrot back. And then the counter parent then says, I'm just supporting them. They don't feel safe coming back to your house and what would you like me to do? Their anxiety is so high every time they even think about you, it would be so unfair to them to force them to come back into an unsafe house like yours. It's masked as their own decision. Even though they've been subtly and sometimes not so subtly and very powerfully influenced by someone, they fear displeasing. That's really important because fear is a very powerful motivator. It is for you. It is for me. It is for most people in society, especially for a child who is dependent on a parent for love, safety, and security, and this person is unpredictable. And this person has taught them, has conditioned them that their love is conditional and transactional. In your home love is unconditional, no matter how your children show up, how rude they are, how dismissive they are, you love your children unconditionally. In this household, there is no such thing as unconditional love, quote unquote, any love that they experience is based on how your children behave, on what they do, on what they say, or on what they don't do, on what they don't say. It is transactional. If you do this for me, I'll give you this little breadcrumb of affection and attention if you don't do this for me, sayonara to that breadcrumb of affection and attention. It's gone. You're not getting it. And not only will you not get it, and I'll ignore you and Stonewall, you, I'll make you feel like you are, so ridiculously low on my needs list. I'll probably compare you to your siblings unfavorably. I'll probably criticize you openly. I'll triangulate your siblings against you and it'll be us against you. Even though this has happened, what you do now actually still matters. Your kids are not rejecting you because you failed them. They're reacting to an incredible amount of emotional forces. They don't fully understand. How would they understand? How would they know that this is possible? Society tells children that parents love them. What they're experiencing is love from this parent, right? How are they supposed to know what emotional manipulation looks like? What gaslighting looks like that a parent would outright lie to their children? They're trying to form independence, to escape tension, to side with ease, and to avoid any discomfort. All of what this parent does creates incredible unease, stress, anxiety, and discomfort. So right now they don't realize what's been taken from them or from you, but one day they will. This isn't about giving up. I'm not telling you to give up. This is about accepting what is so that you can stay strong enough to show up when they come back, and they will in time because relationships rooted in love and consistency don't die. They may just go underground and hibernate for awhile. So what you do while your child is no longer speaking to you can make the difference between them coming back and them not coming back. Between them coming back within a year or two years and with, and or with them coming back within 10 years. What you do for yourself, you are modeling what is possible for your children. On the other side of escaping abuse, you escaped your abuser as an adult. Your children at some point, hopefully will be able to escape their abuser. And what they see you doing, how you are, what escape looks like for you is gonna make it either seem palatable or simply too much. The escaping comes at too high of a cost. So if you're broken, if you're barely existing, if you're merely surviving, if you're just getting by, why would they escape? It looks too hard. It's easier and safer to stay with what they know, than what you are showing them on the other side. Again, this isn't to shame you, but it's to make you realize not only for yourself, but also for your children, how important it is that you create a life that you love, irrespective of what this person does or doesn't do. So I'm gonna wrap up with a little bit on building an identity outside of motherhood, fatherhood. So much of every parent's role and job and identity revolves around our children, never more so than in our current day modern society, in the fifties, as good or bad as it was, parents really had lives outside of their children. But right now, so much of our focus is around our children. So we actually lose touch with who we are. What we need because we're so focused on meeting our children's needs and on creating, these children who can speak Mandarin and Latin and Greek and play four different instruments and have five different sports that they play, that we actually lose touch with what we need. And so it's really important for anybody listening, but never more so than for a protective parent to start to create an identity outside of your children, outside of motherhood and fatherhood. So let's redefine. I'm a mother or a father, but I'm also a woman or a man. I'm a partner, a builder of a life that my kids will one day want to return to. For years, being a stepparent or a parent has been your everything. It's not just what you do, it's who you are. You've built your entire life around being present, involved and deeply connected with your kids. You didn't miss the moments you chose them over and over again. So it makes perfect sense that right now in this unexpected separation, you feel like you're losing not just them, but also yourself because your identity has been tied to your children or stepchildren, that hollow empty feeling, that's not weakness. That's what happens when something sacred is forcefully taken without warning or closure. But you are not gone. You are still here. Your children are still here. You are still standing. And now you are being asked to do something incredibly hard, something that feels impossible to begin the slow work of remembering the person you were before you became a mom, a dad, or stepparent, and re-imagining the person you want to be while still being a parent from a distance. This isn't about abandoning your children or pretending it doesn't hurt because that pain is so real, right? When you're healing, you still grieve, right? You can still have a great life while still having pain in your life. Those two things can exist. They can coexist. It's about making sure that there's still a life worth living while you wait for the fog of confusion to lift for your children. Your kids don't need you to collapse in grief, although at first, please do collapse in grief, grieve, cry, rage journal run. Hit a punching bag, talk to your therapist, find a coach. Get a community of protective parents who understand what you're going through, but then start to create a life right start to rise up from those ashes. Your narcissistic counterpart would love nothing more than for you to break. For you just to be a shell of the person you were to be merely surviving day to day. Please do not give them that satisfaction. They need you to survive this. And also start to thrive through this and to build something beautiful that they can return to, even if they don't know it yet. You're modeling for them. What happens on the other side of escaping and escaping just like it was for you, is gonna be an incredibly courageous and scary thing for your children to do, even more so. For you because it's their parent and that you can never really rid yourself of a parent. That parent's always gonna be there. You can't divorce from them. Okay, so I'm gonna end with some mantras for you because I really do believe if you repeat these mantras often enough, you actually start to reframe and retrain your brain. So it can feel like quicksand. You wake up each morning swallowed by thoughts. You can't stop pain you didn't cause and fear that you'll never get your kids back. That's trauma, right? You're experiencing real life trauma and it needs anchors. You need words not just to soothe, but to counter the lies that despair tells you. When your mind says they're gone forever, you say, this is temporary. I am still their mother, father, stepparent. When guilt whispers, you should have fought harder. You remind yourself, I chose peace over control. That was an act of love. When rage says, this is so unfair, you affirm, I can't fix what's unjust, but I can stay rooted in love. These aren't just phrases. They're daily armor not to pretend you're fine, but to keep your feet on the ground while the storm swirls around you. Repeat them, write them, post them, say them when it feels fake. They work by repetition, not by instant transformation. I hope you all have taken at least something from today's podcast episode because radical. Acceptance reframing are such important tools for every survivor of abuse and never more so than for a protective parent, especially those protective parents who are facing incredibly unjust, unfair separation from their child. Thank you so much for listening to The Survivor's Playbook. If today's episode help you feel less alone, more confident, empowered, more educated, please share it with someone else who might need it. And if you're ready for deeper support, you can join my monthly membership or grab free tools on my website. All links are listed below in the show notes. Remember, your clarity is your power. Your calm is your resistance. You are not crazy. You are not alone, and you are not powerless. Until next time, keep going. I see you.