God, Are You My Mother?

If I were to look at my life through an old fashioned movie reel, there’d be two frames that’d stand out above all the rest, and in stark contrast to each other. The first frame would show the worst thing that ever happened to me: being torn from my mother at the age of four. The other frame would be the bestthing: the day I met God.

I’ve written about the worst thing many times. My mother loss is the soul wound that I’ve tried to patch up, wanting to be whole with all my might. Page after page, I’ve been trying to piece myself back together. It is a labor of love, using whatever love I can muster up for myself. That I was taken from my mother, that is painful for people to read. But bad things happen and people believe it. It is true. My mother loved me. I loved her. She was good and I was told to believe she was bad. She was alive and I was expected to pretend she was dead.  It has been scary to tell my truth, but how could I not tell it?

But the good thing, the best day, the day that I became whole, well that has taken me over fifteen years to even contemplate writing about.  I recall that day with  just as much clarity as the worst day; so much clarity in fact that it is almost blinding to my senses when I recall it, even now.

Why didn’t I write about it sooner? For one thing, what if the telling makes it less real? What if I am giving something away that was meant only for me? But also, there is only so much I can expect people to believe.  It might sound unbelievable to some, especially those who don’t believe in miracles.

Which brings me back to God and the day I met Him. Or Her. Or perhaps more accurately, All That Is.  Creator.  Higher Self or Inner Being.   I am not a particularly religious person in the traditional sense. I don’t go to church. I’ve never read the bible. But when you think you’ve been broken, eventually you turn to God to fix you. I prayed, I meditated,  I did God my own way, which was privately, quietly, and with my whole heart.

Then one day God showed up like a Mother. I mean he showed up in a Very Big Way. I had gone to bed the night before distraught over something, the details of which are not important, but that had everything to do realizing I was not  yet whole. I felt desperate to be whole. Desperate. I could not undo the past. I could not fix myself. I had all the material things I needed, and I had true love in my life.  I also had my writing, my passions. But I still had that gaping hole where my wound was and that night I really felt it. That night, I lost hope that I could fix myself, so I turned it over to God. I turned my un-whole self over.  I recall that I  surrendered, completely and intentionally; I am talking Jesus take the wheel surrender. And then I fell asleep.

The next morning, well, how can I tell you about this? How do I frame it?  I was new.  Real.  Whole. And so very alive.  I remember it all so clearly, so I will tell it clearly too. There were five feelings, or knowings, – there were five things that I awoke to find myself being – without even trying. There were just these five ways of being that took me over. Nothing at all was new on the outside, but I was suddenly different on the inside.

Presence  I was completely in the moment. My mind was not on the past or the future. I remember the phone ringing and not wanting to answer it, because I absolutely did not want to be pulled out of the present moment. I was totally, completely, there, mind, body and spirit. Instead of overthinking, worrying, and analyzing, I was simply being. I spent much less time in my head, and more time in in my body where my heart dwelled, where my feelings could flow through me. Instead of thinking, thinking, thinking, I was living. Life was now.

Joy  I was completely satisfied with the moment. Whether I was doing a jigsaw puzzle with my children, or taking a walk alone, it was joyful. I had no craving, no desire for something different. I was enjoying life in the purest sense of the word.

Love  I was filled with love for myself and others. I was overflowing with love. I was love.

Self-Care  I recognized and met my own needs, moment by moment, simply, and directly. When I was hungry I ate. When I was full, I stopped.  When I was tired, I laid down.  I exercised moderately and without fanfare or much planning. I just did it.  And I accepted my body completely, knowing I was giving it whatever it needed, without obsessing or even thinking about it, really.

Belief  I knew that anything was possible. I had met God. God was within me.  My self-imposed limits vanished. I knew that the more I “let go”, and allowed myself to be guided into right action, the better chance of achieving whatever I wanted.
And that is it. That is all of what I felt, and all of what I became that day that I met God. I was living, not in my head, but in my Whole Self . I was whole and it felt amazing. But before I lead you astray, I must confess something.

This did not last.

IT lasted a few days, or a week at most. And they were the most glorious days. But slowly, my doubt came back. My distracted mind returned. I judged people again, including myself,  and I neglected my own care, or expected others to meet the needs that were mine to meet. Bit by bit, I gave my power away without meaning to. My ego woke back up.  I got busy and overwhelmed. I didn’t pay attention. I didn’t check in with my Self. I started to lose my way again.

 

But  the really good news is that I know what to strive for now: To be more present, to find joy in my life every single day, to love and care for myself and to find the best in others. To believe that all of this is possible. Every. Single. Day. 

My dreams are possible.

So are yours.

 

I aim to feel this way every day now and I fall short, every single time, but sometimes I get close. And God always meets me in the middle.

 

Perhaps I was meant to tell you about the day I met God.

Maybe the story was never mine to keep.

It does not feel less real, now that I’ve given it away, now that I’ve told you about this.

It feels more real.

And I feel more real.

I am whole, just like you. I was all along. I’d just forgotten.

Suggestions for alienated parents

I recently spoke at a support group for alienated parents, PAS Intervention. It was heartwarming and heart-wrenching at the same time, to meet so many wonderful parents. If their children could be freed from the alienating spell they are under, I am certain they would want to run back to these loving parents.

I was given a list of questions to address and here are my notes.  They are based on my own experiences. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

What goes through a child’s mind?

*It is not a conscious choice to reject a parent; it feels like an automatic survival mechanism

*Repression of true feelings (love for the targeted parent) and therefore repression of authentic Self.

*An entire new persona can be built around this inauthentic self, especially in the case of the very brainwashed child. (In my case, I “held onto” my own mind but felt anxious/numb/powerless)

What can a parent say or do to help a child who is a minor?

*Get help/find a trusted, PA- educated professional & If possible, do not allow them to skip visits.

*Let them know you sympathize with their position & will always love them.

*Opportunities to interact w/out telling the alienating parent

What can a parent say to a young adult child?

*Let them know you sympathize with their position

*Opportunities to interact w/out telling the alienating parent

*Encourage them to think for themselves; contradict the alienator through your actions.

*Give them fact based information

*Tell them you love them and will not choose to “go away”.

Anything that might help a parent to find ways back into their child’s life:

*Maintain contact in “nonthreatening ways”

*Encourage trusted acquaintances keep contact with your child if possible-people who would speak highly of you.

*Take care of yourself: show confidence and health and stability and love and self-respect. The alienator is coming across as “all knowing/all confident/all powerful” to the child. You must top that with authentic power.

Anything that might help a parent stay in their child’s life:

DO stay in touch however possible but try not to overwhelm them w/ steps that are bigger than what they are capable of handling at this time. They would need an absolute guarantee of protection from the alienator and/or enough time completely away from him/her in order to ‘deprogram’. Until then, it does not feel safe to reconnect with you. This is true whether they are five years old or twenty years old.

 

New website: Please visit

Please follow me to my new website here:  My new home base

 

 

 

 

The Stories We Tell

Published in 1995, The Liars’ Club dramatically revived the art of memoir. Mary Carr’s command of the English language, along with her honesty, grit and courage left me in awe. I read Carr’s other memoirs as well and by the end of the last one I actually felt a sense of grief parting with these real life characters I had gotten to know so well.

Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini is fiction that reads like memoir. Like a lot of fiction, the author’s real experiences are on the page. Calling it fiction allowed his father, the tyrant in the story, to temporarily deny its truth. Conroy offers up his angst to the page, one scene at a time. Like Mary Carr’s, his words do not convey self-pity, but rather a detached yet descriptive unfolding of his history. In the end, his father owned up to the truths in the book, and the two men redeemed their relationship.

I considered writing my book as fiction, but have made my choice to call it what it is, a memoir. Still, I definitely understand Conroy’s choice. To call a true story fiction is an act of self-protection, or maybe of protection of others as well, to offer them up the possibility that it was all made up. It’s just a tale, something from nothing, no big deal, we can all go home now. I do see the appeal in that.

My own memoir-in-progress tells the story of being alienated from my mother after my parents’ volatile divorce, when I was four.

Secrets and suffering are ingredients of nearly every memoir.  Mine is no exception.

My father threw my mother out of our home when he discovered her affair, and capitalizing on her shame and her already low self-esteem, he essentially bullied her out of my life completely. My mother, a broken woman after five years of marriage with a man who intimidated her, after some struggle to maintain contact with us, slipped away quietly.

My father remarried soon after and insisted we call his second wife “Mom”.  He convinced himself he had put life back in order and he never mentioned my mother again.

The absence of truth is usually a lie, and in the case of family tragedy, pretending to the outside world that all is well leads the most introspective amongst us to take notes, both literally and metaphorically speaking. My memoir is the accumulation of all my mental notes. They started when I was four.

I know something of that need to bring “the thing” to light by way of the written word.  The desire is compelling, and almost beyond choice.  Most memoirists have suffered greatly before they craft their story for the public. But many suffer even more afterwards, or so I hear. That part is scary and surely tests the desire to offer the story up to the world.

From the outside, my family was ordinary by anyone’s standards.   But the loss of my mother was extraordinary and therefore I must write it.

As I am nearing the end of it, I imagine my father’s response to my words.  He somehow had convinced himself that erasing my mother was excusable, even necessary.  To face 250 pages from the lens of my loss is not going to sit well with him. But it is also quite possible that he will never read it.

And I understand that- the not wanting to read it- or even needing to deny that it is written. I empathize with the pain of being exposed, and the vulnerability.

And in the depths of my soul, I know that we are all vulnerable.  My father has been my teacher and the lessons have been hard, really hard. But I believe in something of a soul agreement, chosen before we even come here to this this side of the veil.  It helps to believe that I actually chose my particular lessons, and that  I needed my father to help carry them out. We all have our lessons, and my story just happens to contain mine.

I hope I am learning to speak up for myself and make up for the betrayal of childhood; to dig through the rubble and reach authenticity, even when it hurts like hell.  I hope I am learning truth and courage and forgiveness too.

I have written what I have lived, my experiences, my thoughts, my feelings, my words.  And that’s all a writer can do in the end, is just to say it is the truth, her truth, and hope others can understand that  it had to be told.

Memoir Update

In my last post, I wrote about my intention to discuss the alienation (from my mother) with my father, and to include mention of my memoir-in-progress.  https://wordpress.com/stats/insights/thefourthagreement.wordpress.com

Shortly after writing that, my father experienced a health crisis, which he is now recovering from. I am waiting until he is fully recovered from this before I initiate this overdue conversation with him.

In the meantime, I am continuing to edit my memoir, and am remaining open to a new ending.  I have received some encouraging responses to my writing, but the search for a literary agent continues. I have been told it is somewhat of a numbers game, and that as long as the proposal is the best we can make it, we have to be willing to send it to many, many agents before finding our match. Memoir is a tough genre, but it is the one I have been called to write in, so onward I go. I am trying to find a balance between searching for the next literary agent to send my proposal to, and spending my time polishing my memoir. In addition, I suspect the conversation with my father, once it finally happens, may change the ending of my book.

Although I know it can be a long, arduous process, I am very hopeful that my book will eventually be out into the world. It feels very purposeful to me, and at the risk of sounding mystical, I believe that our souls are not given authentic desires without also being given the means to achieve those desires. It is a matter of doing our best, persevering even when it is very difficult, and having faith in the timing of things.

In addition to completing my memoir, and finding a literary agent and publisher, I plan to create a website which will contain my articles, blog and other information all in one spot. I would like to combine my passion for simplifying, which I write about on my other blog, Musing Simplicity, with my work on “parent alienation” issues.

Although the two topics seem to be vastly unrelated,  they are not. I believe it is by clearing out the clutter in all its forms, that we are able to reach our authentic selves. It is this Self that carries our wounds as well as our strengths. Clear the clutter, face the wounds, find your strength. It is that simple and that difficult.

So that is my goal: in the spirit of simplicity, one website, one blog, with my name on it. Choice by choice, and word by word, and day by day, I hope I am always moving forward. To harness the lessons of the past and shine them on the present-perhaps that is the best we can do.

 

 

 

 

A difficult conversation

In anticipation of speaking with my alienating parent, I have been advised to set my intentions carefully and clearly; this is so that I do not get sidetracked in arguing smaller points.

I want to prepare for this conversation with my father, in order to avoid flailing words at him or letting my emotions take over. I don’t want to allow him to hijack the conversation, stonewall me, or point the finger at everyone but himself.

But I also know I cannot control his reactions, only my own. This is a new position for me, to let go of my father’s response, after decades of taking his emotional temperature.

So with my own intentions crystal clear, finally,  I will  have this long overdue conversation. In the end, I want to know I did my best to speak my own truth and then I want to move forward, freely.

  My intentions are:

*To let him know I refuse to pretend my mother does not exist. This does not mean I will be sharing details of our reconnection, but that I will not go out of my way to avoid mentioning my mother to him or to my stepmother or sisters. It stops now. 

 *To let him know that the book I am writing is indeed a memoir, and not a novel as he has called it in the past, and also to make it clear that I am writing my story from  my own creative and authentic desire and also as a way to help others. It is not all about me. Nor is it all about him.  “Parental alienation” is a terrible epidemic of psychological child abuse, and I believe I am assisting others with my story.  My professional and creative work does and will continue to include speaking and writing on this topic. He is not expected to share in my interest nor read or comment on any of it. But I will not apologize for the work I feel called to do. My intentions have nothing to do with retaliation and everything to do with truth and empowerment and healing-for all those affected.  

*To find out as soon as possible if his acceptance of me is contingent upon my silence and compliance with his wishes.  If speaking and writing my truth will result in his rejection, I would like to know now so that I can move on without him in my life. But I hope he will recognize the opportunity for his own healing; it will require him to hear me though, for the first time. 

*To reach a place of peace and forgiveness, with or without his cooperation. This includes forgiveness of myself for taking so damn long to have the courage to speak up with clear and firm intentions. 

If I keep those intentions in mind as I initiate this conversation, I think I stand a good chance of saying what needs to be said. The truth shall set you free.  I say it’s about time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solving the mystery

   A few years after the mysterious disappearance of my mother, my sister and I found a kite in our yard that did not belong to us. We took it upon ourselves to travel about the neighborhood, searching for its rightful owner. It was a challenge, a game of sorts, to try to find the child who had lost his kite.

  But  to me, it felt like more than a game. It wasn’t that I was overly concerned with the kite owner’s loss; it was that I had an unfulfilled need to solve a mystery. It felt urgent to me, like an obsession, or an all consuming task. The mystery had landed in my own backyard, and I had a burning desire to get to the bottom of it.

  Maybe if I could solve the tiny mysteries,  some day I would find out the big truths.

 To my disappointment, we never did find out who the kite belonged to, but I never forgot that day, or the feeling that was evoked in me. I recognized that feeling  at seventeen, when I searched my parents’ divorce files at the courthouse, looking for clues. It consumed me  again as an adult when I contacted my mother’s lover, the one who was going to help her escape my father.

Fortunately, my unrelenting truth seeking led me to my mother, where I could get her story. It also led me to family members, both hers and my fathers, who could help me to fill in some missing pieces, or in many cases, validate what my childhood memory held.

She was a good mother.

She was afraid of my father. 

Even though she had no car, my father refused to drop my sister and me off to see her after he threw her out of our home. He made it as difficult as possible for her to see us. 

He told people that she asked him to take custody of us because “he could take care of us better than she could”.   

Although  this story has been tragic, I believe the ending is a happy one.  I am talking with my mother and we are having the big, important conversations. I threw caution to the wind, and took the chance that I might scare her away with discussing the painful past.  This led to a breakthrough in our relationship. I think with each conversation we have, she is getting just a tiny bit stronger, and so am I.

It is not easy being a truth seeker when much of the truth is ugly. But here’s the thing: the truth is beautiful too. I have not sought evidence against my father, as much as I have sought evidence for my mother.

And though it has taken me decades, the clues were easy to find. They have been tucked away in my heart and memories my whole life.  The years, and the seeking, were just an excavation of what was there. I already knew.

  *This photo of my sister and me was given to me by mother.  It was taken shortly before my parents’ divorce. We had no idea we were about to be torn from our mother.                                                                     PARENTAL ALIENATION MUST STOP

The gift of our wounds

Unhealed trauma muffles the inner impulses that guide your authentic brilliance to fully emerge.

In order to disrupt the faulty systems, we have to be willing to withstand criticism and disapproval from others while rooted in the greater vision that motivates us.

-Bethany Webster

***

The adult alienated child, if able to see the truth of their childhood, faces the daunting task of holding the alienator accountable. Ideally, adults in the child’s life would have been able to handle this task long ago, if not stopping the alienating, at least making it more difficult for him. But all this parent really needs is access to the child’s mind, and some of the child’s time, in order to begin the damage. And in the unfortunate trauma that is parent alienation, it is often the targeted, alienated parent who is made into the villain, not only by the alienator, but also by the other people who surround the child. The disgrace fallen upon the out casted parent can be shockingly insidious.

I can recall sitting outside with my sister and a neighborhood friend about a year or two after my mother was cast out of my life. We were young children, and one of us brought up the subject of my mother, a very rare occurrence. Our neighbor, a little girl of about six years old, said “I remember she used to give us whole bottles of coke”. She was referring to the individual bottles of coke. It wasn’t what she said that spoke volumes, but the tone in which she said it, implying that our mother  was a bad, irresponsible mother. This was a childhood friend, a neighbor who had been welcomed into our home by our mother. Somehow even this innocent little girl had gotten on board the hate wagon.

This influence spread far and wide and each time I was witness to it, I remained silent.  I only had four years with my mother; how could I prove to anyone that she was good? I was a child when she disappeared from my life, and I was led to believe it was irresponsible abandonment. I did not believe this, but how does a young child explain that their heart tells them otherwise, while living in an atmosphere that forbids such declaration?

They don’t.

I didn’t.

It is up to me to finally, after decades, to confront my father without backing down again. I need to approach him with the possibility for forgiveness, but with the confidence and knowledge that I have now.

No one else is going to do it.

Not even my mother, who was robbed of her children. Despite her undying resentment toward him, she does not have the courage, strength, or desire to ever speak to my father again.

Not my sister who still feels very protective of my father, akin to Stockholm syndrome.

Not my stepmother who does not know the truth because she does not want to know it.  She has been enabled to remain obliviously unaware of the past.

But here is the good news about being the one who must hold him accountable.

I get to stand up to him, realize my own courage and speak my own truth, and fully heal my own wound.

I will no longer wonder what he will say if I mention my new-found, albeit fragile, reconnection with my mother. There it will be, my words giving voice to what should never have been taken away.

I get to reclaim my birthright, my authenticity, my power.

I get to free myself.

And forgive.

I have been warned, by a trusted expert and also by loved ones, that it won’t be easy. I know this is true. I’ve been told it will bring about feelings, and pain and memories that I may not even be aware of yet. To say that I am not looking forward to that part is an understatement. I am dreading it.

But I know that our greatest gifts lie right beneath our deepest wounds.

Many never go there, understandably. We can easily spend our whole lives avoiding it, and some do. In fact, there is all kinds of encouragement to “leave the past behind”, and “focus only on now”.

I am calling bullshit on that.

Because  if we do venture there, if we face our biggest hurts, we will be freed up in ways we could not even imagine.

I feel lucky to know this.

This is not just a topic of parent alienation. This is about facing and healing our wounds.

It’s about making our way back to our true selves.

That is the gift of the journey.

What could be greater than that?

 

Reminder: Parent Alienation Support Group in Massachusetts

Thursday, June 2, 2016 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Family Development Associates
40 Speen St., #106
Framingham, MA 01701

I hope to see some of you there! 

essay : seeing my mother again in my twenties

Twenty years have passed since this meet-up (in the following story)with my mother. She was the age that I am at now. Fortunately, we have reconnected again, though there is great distance between us.

I will be telling my story once again at the Moth GrandSLAM in Boston this month.I am so grateful for this opportunity. I hope I can be a powerful voice for  alienated children everywhere, because if there is one word to describe my childhood experience, it is powerless.  Thankfully, that word no longer applies to my life.

http://sisterwivesspeak.com/2015/03/02/a-mother-erased/

 

The Fear of an Alienated Child

Through the process of writing my memoir, as well as agreeing to be interviewed for a documentary on family alienation, the familiar fear surfaces in my dreams at night. In my sleep, I force the words out to my father  I have seen my mother.

In my next dream, I tell my stepmother, with urgency, that the story line she was told (that my mother just “left”), is untrue. I am dreaming that I am in my childhood home, and my stepmother wants to go to my father in the next room to tell him what I’ve said. It is then that I feel the fear I felt as a child. He will be rageful. He will get violent. Someone will get hurt or die. 

As I’ve learned through my research, “parent alienation” is a manifestation of a personality disorder pathology. Some cases, including mine, have a domestic violence variant. Themes of control and emotional and psychological (and sometimes physical) abuse toward the (targeted) spouse have played out in the marriage. When the targeted spouse rejects the abusive spouse, the control escalates. A symptom of the pathology is the abusive spouse’s inability to mentally handle rejection. They will stop at nothing to regain control and their status as the “one in charge, the one that must be admired, and never rejected”.

I believe that parents who alienate their children from the other parent are  bullies, but some are more outwardly aggressive than others.  Sadly, most people do not want to confront the bully, but especially not a rageful or violent one.

Speaking from both personal experience and research, the children have a knowing that the rage will be turned against them if they fight against the alienation. The alienating parent communicates this is many ways, both subtle and overt.

This is the feeling that I remember. This is the feeling that will never quite leave me, no matter my age, my confidence in what I am doing, or the support that I have. 

But in the face of fear, especially an outdated fear, one must keep moving forward. Nightmares may occur out of real feelings, but the nightmares themselves are not real.

In the light of day, I carry on this task of shining a light on “parent alienation”, and telling my story. Not doing so would feel like self betrayal, and that  is real. That would be the real nightmare.

To be able to feel the fear and do it any way, as the saying goes, I believe, is the gift I have been given. I will not squander it.

***

This letter of support, written by Dr. Craig Childress for one of his clients, explains the impossible position the children are put in during the alienation process.  http://drcachildress.org/asp/admin/getFile.asp?RID=115&TID=6&FN=pdf