The Winner Takes It All
I had a dream last night. One of those really vivid dreams that feels like it’s real life and you’re wide awake. It stayed with me long after I had woken up. I was with one of my sons and I kept hugging him and begging him not to believe the awful things his dad was saying about me. “You know me…and you know how much I love you”, I said to him, over and over. We were hugging really tight, crying, and then at the same exact time we both said, “ I wish we could just stay like this forever”. In my dream he was still a little boy with wide blue eyes. The same age he was when his father & I divorced. - Continued further down the page…
Parental Alienation: When one parent, often through manipulative behavior, intentionally turns their children against the other parent. It is a distortion of the intentions, attitudes, and behaviors of the alienated parent in an effort to control, punish, or demean the other parent. It is a form of brainwashing.- Ann Silvers, MA
Dr. Amy Baker, Parental Alienation Expert and Author describes 3 prevailing messages in Parental Alienation:
I am the only parent who really cares about you and loves you, and you need me in order to feel good about yourself
The other parent is sick, dangerous, unavailable and or abandoned you.
Pursuing a relationship with that parent jeopardizes your relationship with me.
An Alienating Parent might:
Make the children think that the AP’s happiness is dependent on them choosing the AP over the other parent
Sabotage the other parent’s ability to spend time with the children (Bribery, gifts, events, special visitors, etc.)
Lie about the other parent and or exaggerate the other parents flaws.
Lead the children to believe the other parent doesn’t care about them.
Isolate the children from the other parents extended family, including grandparents.
Interfere with the Childrens relationship with the other parents new partner.
Dr. Joshua Coleman, PhD writes:
Children know that there are limited emotional and financial resources in every family and they have to use whatever they have at their disposal to ensure that they get what the believe they need or is their due. The child may believe choosing one parent over the other parent, increases their chances of getting more love, support, or financial help from that parent.
Again, reiterating the following strategies of an alienating parent:
1. Poisonous messages to the child about the targeted parent in which he/she is portrayed as unloving, unavailable ,or unsafe.
2. Limiting contact/communication with the child and targeted parent.
3. Erasing and replacing the targeted parent in the heart and mind of the child
4. Encouraging the child to betray the targeted parent’s trust
5. Undermining the authority of targeted parent - fostering conflict and psychological distance between the child and the targeted parent.
Continuation: My thoughts are racing as I wake up. They aren’t really structured so I apologize if it’s not very coherent. I was jotting them down as they came
.Another morning….as the trees come into focus, so does the ever persistent ache of loss.
The hollow pit in my stomach where grief permanently resides now.
The flood of relief I feel on nearly a daily basis as I make my own choices, think my own thoughts without ridicule or judgement, even today … 19 YEARS LATER. The deep breath that comes as I realize I’m no longer bound to a man I don’t - can’t- respect. Chaos. A bully who hurt everyone with his words and anger…with an inability to love, really love. No manipulations or strings attached. Just Love.
Left behind. Him. Only HIM.
But money always wins….in life….in a court room.
I Left Him - not them.
The programming began immediately. Aimed at my children, about me… their mother; “She must be sick, the devil has her heart, mommy left you…mommy abandoned you…mommy doesn’t care about you.” They say when you hear something enough, it becomes your truth. Childhood Stolen. The very definition of Parental Alienation aimed at my children, by the bully who can not lose. He wins with hate filled words, vitriol, power - money. He wins Christmas and graduations and celebrations. He wins my family.
Blind loyalty required, they stay their distance in subtle ways, and not so subtle ways. What was the difference…staying, leaving? Save myself, lose them? It’s not supposed to be that way. LOVE does not hurt. Love is not spiteful and vengeful. Love brings people together, it doesn’t divide. Love doesn’t seek revenge. Love doesn’t punish.
Love doesn’t tell his children not to love their mom.
The stabbing pain and the guilt for breaking free of him, the helplessness, the loss… Watching their lives from the outside, always.
I started this blog because of my estrangement from my oldest daughter. But as I’ve been in my grief over the past few years, navigating life through this fog, I’ve noticed the space in other relationships that I spent so much time trying to fight. I’d say this is the cost of divorce, but I really don’t believe that. I know so many who have divorced and found ways to parent together with love. Coming together for the children. He told me time and time again the fall out in later years would be devastating to me….and he orchestrated it so beautifully. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t just blame him. I know my own anxieties and fears have kept me from living the full life I imagined. As I get older it gets worse. I don’t reach out like I should. I isolate. I can’t afford to travel to see them like most parents do. I can’t give them what theyre asking for monetarily and that makes me feel even more deficient. Always less than. So I fall into this hole. And they don’t know….they don’t get it. They just feel the lack, the absence. I live 9 hours from everyone…I am still raising a child, who is immersed in activities, who goes to school and I take care of my 80 year old mother, keeping me tied to this house as she can’t be left on her own. These feel like excuses to them, but they are a fact of my life. Because I am not the one paying for college, or cars or homes, I am the one who is asked not to attend life events like graduations or celebrations. Only the one who has been paying the bills is allowed to attend. After all, it’s only fair, right?
Money always wins.
I’m rambling. I’m in this place in my life, at 53 years old and I want to scream. My own skin feels uncomfortable. The pain of parenting is sometimes so overwhelming. Loving human beings with every cell, and feeling too much, the knowing that I’ll never be good enough.
