Family Violence Healing: 3 Keys to Healing Parental Alienation

When children go away to college and get away from “who and what” the controlling family members want them to be, a window opens up. What they discover is their essence. Now here’s the gem...nnThat essence is a composite of their formative years. If you were in their lives during this time, good chance you can slip back in and they can be in yours.nn3 Keys to Healing Parental AlienationnnThere are some key things you will want to do and things you’ll be best avoiding in order to rekindle your relationship with your children if you are an estranged parent.nn1) Focus on what you have, and what you had, with them; not what you don’t have or what you missed. To help you maintain this focus, find points of shared sweet sentiment and build out from here. nn2) Trust that they don’t need to understand all the elements surrounding your absence to feel their love for you and yours for them. It is already there. Always know these so-called “elements” of your story must be digested as they can be assimilated...and not a moment before.nn3) Don’t expect them to give you back what you lost. They can’t. They don’t hold what you lost, as they lost it too.nnIf you are reading this, I assume you are (or know) a battered mother who weathered battling the system to secure justice for yourself and your children. nnOn this note...know it was never about them anyway. Rather, it’s about you and the strength you bring to the table to endure the challenges before you.nnHealing Comes from WithinnnA dear friend reading the above, written as a self-contained article, noted how important and powerful those 3 keys are. And further she pointed out, how helpful those words would have been for me to hear when I first encountered parental alienation.nnI thought to myself, had these words been told to me, I would not have heard them...not deeply and certainly not from the place that the healing I needed could embrace them.nnHealing Is a ProcessnnNo one could have told me those words with the same healing impact that they represent. Those words were the telling of me to me...of my process...of my process of coming to grips with all that I encountered over the last decade.nnMy hope for you is that these words spark your healing process…your mending from family violence and legal domestic abuse.nnHealing is not something done to someone, healing is done from, and within, someone. Honor, support and find ways to facilitate your healing—for yourself and for all those whose lives are touched by you.