There's not much I want to say about myself at the moment. I'm female and 37. I lived with my mother, the target. Male parent was the alienator. Siblings.
I think that'll do for now. I don't want to say too much for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, fear. If my male parent ever found this blog and worked out my identity, he'd be after me in a flash. He'd encase my feet in concrete and chuck me off a bridge. Though I may no longer see him as the tragic hero, he still portrays this front to his own family (though why don't they ever, ever, ever invite him over?!) . I am afraid of him. I have only dreamed about him once that I know of and during that dream I angrily told him to go eff himself. In life, I'm constantly worried he'll turn up where I live. I wouldn't be surprised if he has spied on us already. Sometimes I see men who resemble him and I panic. I feel like I want to run away. My daughter is 15 and I don't want him perving over her. I don't want him anywhere near her.
Secondly, I don't want anything to detract from its purpose. I don't want anyone to go away thinking that my words don't count because I'm somehow not like them or their situation is similar. Parental Alienation is what it is, no matter the gender of the alienator or the target or the children. Gender is irrelevant. Fathers do it. Mothers do it. All sorts of people do it. All sorts of kids get hurt. Simple.
YOUR child will be or is like me if they are in this situation, no matter who you are or what gender you are or where you live or how much you earn or your skin colour or country of origina etcetera, etcetera. The differences between YOU and ME, right here, right now, are meaningless.
I'm speaking for YOUR CHILDREN.
Friday, 5 October 2007
Comments. Questions.
I'm getting panicky about continuing the previous train of thought so I'm going to hold off for a few days. Deborah's lovely comment here sums up the purpose of this blog: cleansing.
If you want to ask me anything, fire away. My email address is on my profile, plus you can leave comments.
I appreciate all the comments so much, as well as the increasing number of visitors this blog is receiving and the referring links which provide half the traffic (I'm considering reciprocating. Leave it with me). As I said at the start, my posts are about catharsis but also about warning potential/current parental alienators off carrying out their attacks on the other parent. I know that someone reading this may splutter indignantly that they have every reason to make their children hate their other parent or "see them for what they are", but believe me, you're hurting your children (and yourself because one day they'll suss you out, I guarantee), not helping them. Deep down you know what you are doing. Please stop.
I have spent much of my life trying to find out what is wrong with me. Turns out it's nothing that a good dose of counselling and catharsis can't heal. I remember sitting at a train station in my country writing in my diary when I was eighteen. I wrote: "Will someone please help me?". I did not know what I meant. It took nineteen years to find out. All through my childhood and adolescence, I knew something was wrong somewhere but I couldn't put my finger on it. The mental signals I received from each of my parents was wrong. I believed my male parent to be the greatest person on Earth - and yet he abandoned me three times, called my mother a slut, my aunt a slag, my grandmother and a second aunt lunatics, and also felt me up. My mother cared for me and tried to be my friend, but smacked me when she lost her temper from frustration and tiredness (and a second husband who cheated on her and admitted to never having been faithful to any woman, and treated her like a doormat).
I thought the problems were all my fault: that I was the screw up. When one parent does their best to care for you, and the other one is acidic and merciless in their attack of that parent, causing you to doubt your own mind, your own memories and experience of that parent, what the hell are you supposed to do? I felt like I was out of my mind sometimes.
But I never was.
A counsellor told me the following: you're not unstable, you were around unstable people.
NOW I know she was right, but I waited thirty years for those words. I thought I was evil and worthless and useless and ugly because of the words/lack of words of my parents. As I said previously, the alienator used every single situation he could find to denigrate my mother. She almost never said a word about him - so I believed him, not her. He said she was wicked, she never said she was not, so therefore my child's mind believed him.
He thought it was hilarious.
If you want to ask me anything, fire away. My email address is on my profile, plus you can leave comments.
I appreciate all the comments so much, as well as the increasing number of visitors this blog is receiving and the referring links which provide half the traffic (I'm considering reciprocating. Leave it with me). As I said at the start, my posts are about catharsis but also about warning potential/current parental alienators off carrying out their attacks on the other parent. I know that someone reading this may splutter indignantly that they have every reason to make their children hate their other parent or "see them for what they are", but believe me, you're hurting your children (and yourself because one day they'll suss you out, I guarantee), not helping them. Deep down you know what you are doing. Please stop.
I have spent much of my life trying to find out what is wrong with me. Turns out it's nothing that a good dose of counselling and catharsis can't heal. I remember sitting at a train station in my country writing in my diary when I was eighteen. I wrote: "Will someone please help me?". I did not know what I meant. It took nineteen years to find out. All through my childhood and adolescence, I knew something was wrong somewhere but I couldn't put my finger on it. The mental signals I received from each of my parents was wrong. I believed my male parent to be the greatest person on Earth - and yet he abandoned me three times, called my mother a slut, my aunt a slag, my grandmother and a second aunt lunatics, and also felt me up. My mother cared for me and tried to be my friend, but smacked me when she lost her temper from frustration and tiredness (and a second husband who cheated on her and admitted to never having been faithful to any woman, and treated her like a doormat).
I thought the problems were all my fault: that I was the screw up. When one parent does their best to care for you, and the other one is acidic and merciless in their attack of that parent, causing you to doubt your own mind, your own memories and experience of that parent, what the hell are you supposed to do? I felt like I was out of my mind sometimes.
But I never was.
A counsellor told me the following: you're not unstable, you were around unstable people.
NOW I know she was right, but I waited thirty years for those words. I thought I was evil and worthless and useless and ugly because of the words/lack of words of my parents. As I said previously, the alienator used every single situation he could find to denigrate my mother. She almost never said a word about him - so I believed him, not her. He said she was wicked, she never said she was not, so therefore my child's mind believed him.
He thought it was hilarious.
Monday, 1 October 2007
Don't get me wrong ...
I lived with my mum and she was NOT perfect. She wasn't a brilliant parent either, but one of the issues I'm trying to understand is why she wasn't a great parent. She could be a real bully, when she wanted. She was also into corporal punishment BIG TIME, although this seemed to lessen with my younger brothers. Perhaps she realised what I realised when I was seven: hitting kids does not punish them or teach them ANYTHING. It just makes them angry and if they get angry enough, they will hate you. End of story.
Mum put a roof over my head, cooked my meals, clothed me, took us on holidays, helped me hugely with my education - but did not hug me.
I'm trying to understand, timid person that she was by nature, how much of the anger she displayed towards me came as a result of what the alienator did. I don't remember EVER having any anger towards her before my parents split up, nor even immediately after they split up. At first, though I was confused by all the changes, I didn't blame anyone. I wasn't angry at anyone.
My relationship with my mother changed when my male parent came back into our lives during the first year after their divorce (there were legitimate reasons for his absence of a few months: we had been living abroad and he needed to sell the house etc). All of a sudden, the floor dropped out from under me.
I trusted her. I loved her. I was quite happy living with her and her parents while she tried to get our lives sorted out. I remember this period of time. It was weird and changing but I took it in my stride. I was with family who loved me. I lived with Grandma! How great is that?! I loved it!
And then he came back to our country and the nastiness began. My memories of that period have emotions and underlying feelings attached to them, and whenever I think of his return to our country and to our lives, I feel uncomfortable and negative and sad. I was sent off for weekends with this man who I hardly knew anymore. I kept telling him my sister's characteristics as if he was a stranger. "She always does that", I'd say. I could barely rememeber him, and yet he'd been gone no more than a year. I feel odd right now, typing about this, because, to be honest, I've rarely analyzed this period of my life before. I think there's some anger there, in me, for her letting us go off with a complete stranger, four hours away in the car, to a town we did not know and the home of an uncle we had no memories of. I feel pain and sadness. A knot in my stomach. We had no control of anything! Shunted off with this guy who, surely, if I loved him or had any good memories of him, I would not have forgotten in the first place?! Just to show how long it was that we'd been away from him, he kept everything in our home and would not let us or our mother have a single thing from it, other than the clothes we had returned to the country wearing/carrying in our suitcases. He would not even let us have our toys - he held them hostage at his home. As such, by the time we saw him again, and by the time our mother had been legally coerced into letting us visit him, I had forgotten about all my toys. I just realised this recently. I have seen photos of myself as a small child with teddy bears that I must have loved - but by the time I was reunited with them, I'd forgotten them. That's so sad. I had no bond with any possessions I had grown up with.
He kept my toys from me to punish our mother, to force her to go back to him. Even things she'd owned all her life - he never gave them back to her. He considered everything from her previous life and their life together his property and kept (still keeps) everything.
Unrelated though this has been on my mind for a while: I spent my whole life trying to be mummy's little girl again, like I was before the alienation started, but always failed because he told me she had never loved me in the first place. Everything I ever did was to gain her approval and make her love me, because I completely believed that she didn't - because he told me that. This is not the end of this subject but I'm feeling a huge, distressing lump in my throat right now I'll stop for today.
Mum put a roof over my head, cooked my meals, clothed me, took us on holidays, helped me hugely with my education - but did not hug me.
I'm trying to understand, timid person that she was by nature, how much of the anger she displayed towards me came as a result of what the alienator did. I don't remember EVER having any anger towards her before my parents split up, nor even immediately after they split up. At first, though I was confused by all the changes, I didn't blame anyone. I wasn't angry at anyone.
My relationship with my mother changed when my male parent came back into our lives during the first year after their divorce (there were legitimate reasons for his absence of a few months: we had been living abroad and he needed to sell the house etc). All of a sudden, the floor dropped out from under me.
I trusted her. I loved her. I was quite happy living with her and her parents while she tried to get our lives sorted out. I remember this period of time. It was weird and changing but I took it in my stride. I was with family who loved me. I lived with Grandma! How great is that?! I loved it!
And then he came back to our country and the nastiness began. My memories of that period have emotions and underlying feelings attached to them, and whenever I think of his return to our country and to our lives, I feel uncomfortable and negative and sad. I was sent off for weekends with this man who I hardly knew anymore. I kept telling him my sister's characteristics as if he was a stranger. "She always does that", I'd say. I could barely rememeber him, and yet he'd been gone no more than a year. I feel odd right now, typing about this, because, to be honest, I've rarely analyzed this period of my life before. I think there's some anger there, in me, for her letting us go off with a complete stranger, four hours away in the car, to a town we did not know and the home of an uncle we had no memories of. I feel pain and sadness. A knot in my stomach. We had no control of anything! Shunted off with this guy who, surely, if I loved him or had any good memories of him, I would not have forgotten in the first place?! Just to show how long it was that we'd been away from him, he kept everything in our home and would not let us or our mother have a single thing from it, other than the clothes we had returned to the country wearing/carrying in our suitcases. He would not even let us have our toys - he held them hostage at his home. As such, by the time we saw him again, and by the time our mother had been legally coerced into letting us visit him, I had forgotten about all my toys. I just realised this recently. I have seen photos of myself as a small child with teddy bears that I must have loved - but by the time I was reunited with them, I'd forgotten them. That's so sad. I had no bond with any possessions I had grown up with.
He kept my toys from me to punish our mother, to force her to go back to him. Even things she'd owned all her life - he never gave them back to her. He considered everything from her previous life and their life together his property and kept (still keeps) everything.
Unrelated though this has been on my mind for a while: I spent my whole life trying to be mummy's little girl again, like I was before the alienation started, but always failed because he told me she had never loved me in the first place. Everything I ever did was to gain her approval and make her love me, because I completely believed that she didn't - because he told me that. This is not the end of this subject but I'm feeling a huge, distressing lump in my throat right now I'll stop for today.
Definitions: which parent is which
The alienator, the male parent, is consistently referred to as either "male parent". He's not my "dad". Never was. Never will be. I've never had a "dad" because no real dad would do what he did. I did not live with this person. My sister and I talked to him on the phone once a week at least and saw him every third weekend, usually.
The other parent, the one to whom the campaign of alienation was targeted, my mother, is "target parent" or "mother" or even "mum". I lived with this parent.
The other parent, the one to whom the campaign of alienation was targeted, my mother, is "target parent" or "mother" or even "mum". I lived with this parent.
Monday, 17 September 2007
Parental Alienators are liars.
He tried his disowning trick on me in March 2005, over two years ago. It backfired because I never went back to him. He just thinks I'm being stubborn. He wrote a letter at Christmas that year (I think it was then, was possibly her birthday two months after Christmas) to my daughter, telling her that the not-speaking was a) not her fault (which is true, of course, but did I not already tell her that? Why does he think that I would tell her anything else? She was 13. She was big enough to know that for herself), and b) that "it won't last long".
What does that mean: "It won't last long"? What that tells me is that he disowned me quite violently (figuratively), deliberately saying the nastiest, cruellest things he could think of, making fun of me, mocking me, tormenting me and taunting me - but didn't mean it? What this latter tells me is that he didn't mean any of it and that it was all a power play. Should I expect anything less from a Parental Alienator?
It felt like a tantrum at the time, because he couldn't get his own way, and I really don't think he meant it. I think he thought he had so much power over me that I'd fall in line and come running - after all, hadn't I always done that up to that point?
But he went behind my back and verbally challenged my daughter. He challenged my parenting. He went behind my back!! How dare he?! I'm not my mother! He also nagged and nagged and nagged me about my religious beliefs. He would never let it go - but then, hadn't I always been the obedient daughter until then?
I guess it was a matter of time before I realised that he is a control freak. The nagging about my religion was a control issue. He felt he had the right to go behind my back and tell my then 13 year old that my beliefs are wrong (incidentally, she laughed about it because, she said, when he told her that his disagreement with our beliefs doesn't make him wrong, she thought, "Well, actually, it does" :>>>). He bullied me about my religion and it made me think. It made me uncomfortable - and then when I wouldn't give in and asserted myself (for the FIRST time EVER), he went ballistic.
Then he lied about me! My uncle later told me that my male parent had actually sat in front of him with tears in his eyes and said that *I* had disowned him! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!
Add this knowledge to the shocking twisted email he sent me and my brain nearly exploded.
I feel now like a big chunk of my life was fake. He RUINED my childhood. Deliberately. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. BY CHOICE. Right now, I'm so effing angry, I have dreams about screaming rage at him.
He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood.
HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother.
I'm so angry. I can't tell you how angry I am. I am furious. So filled with rage that I want to scream and cry.
My mother is dead and he's happy about it. He's happy that he made me hate her while she was alive. He's happy that my relationship with her was ruined because he made me love her more than him - but it's not true anymore and that was never real love because anything I felt for him was based on a lie and HE NEVER LOVED ME EITHER.
He could not love me if he could do that to me.
I feel angry and guilty, still. I want to tell my mother how sorry I am but I can't. Though I know life goes on after death and I know that she is aware of what I'm going through now, and that she's also aware of everything that has happened, I still feel these emotions now.
My childhood was a tragedy because of a parental alienator.
What does that mean: "It won't last long"? What that tells me is that he disowned me quite violently (figuratively), deliberately saying the nastiest, cruellest things he could think of, making fun of me, mocking me, tormenting me and taunting me - but didn't mean it? What this latter tells me is that he didn't mean any of it and that it was all a power play. Should I expect anything less from a Parental Alienator?
It felt like a tantrum at the time, because he couldn't get his own way, and I really don't think he meant it. I think he thought he had so much power over me that I'd fall in line and come running - after all, hadn't I always done that up to that point?
But he went behind my back and verbally challenged my daughter. He challenged my parenting. He went behind my back!! How dare he?! I'm not my mother! He also nagged and nagged and nagged me about my religious beliefs. He would never let it go - but then, hadn't I always been the obedient daughter until then?
I guess it was a matter of time before I realised that he is a control freak. The nagging about my religion was a control issue. He felt he had the right to go behind my back and tell my then 13 year old that my beliefs are wrong (incidentally, she laughed about it because, she said, when he told her that his disagreement with our beliefs doesn't make him wrong, she thought, "Well, actually, it does" :>>>). He bullied me about my religion and it made me think. It made me uncomfortable - and then when I wouldn't give in and asserted myself (for the FIRST time EVER), he went ballistic.
Then he lied about me! My uncle later told me that my male parent had actually sat in front of him with tears in his eyes and said that *I* had disowned him! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!
Add this knowledge to the shocking twisted email he sent me and my brain nearly exploded.
I feel now like a big chunk of my life was fake. He RUINED my childhood. Deliberately. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. BY CHOICE. Right now, I'm so effing angry, I have dreams about screaming rage at him.
He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood. He RUINED my childhood.
HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother. HE DESTROYED my relationship with my mother.
I'm so angry. I can't tell you how angry I am. I am furious. So filled with rage that I want to scream and cry.
My mother is dead and he's happy about it. He's happy that he made me hate her while she was alive. He's happy that my relationship with her was ruined because he made me love her more than him - but it's not true anymore and that was never real love because anything I felt for him was based on a lie and HE NEVER LOVED ME EITHER.
He could not love me if he could do that to me.
I feel angry and guilty, still. I want to tell my mother how sorry I am but I can't. Though I know life goes on after death and I know that she is aware of what I'm going through now, and that she's also aware of everything that has happened, I still feel these emotions now.
My childhood was a tragedy because of a parental alienator.
Saturday, 15 September 2007
The parent that never speaks aids the alienation
My mother never said much about my male parent or his actions. Not to me anyway. It confused me. I often said, even when I was very, very young, that I wished I knew both sides of the story. Without both sides, I only have the alienator's story to believe. I had no alternative and, as a seven, eight, nine year old, did not have the mental capacity to understand that there WAS another side to the story.
I understand her motives: protection of her children and herself. She wanted to keep us out of adult problems as much as possible but also did not want to dwell on a relationship she had fled. Her marriage was over, in her mind.
Unfortunately, by keeping quiet, she unwittingly made matters worse. What I wanted to hear was that she loved me and wanted me, that my male parent was lying. I needed to know this but never heard it. The only time in my whole life that I can remember her telling me that she loved me was literally on her death bed. Maybe she assumed I knew. I don't know.
She did not want to involve us in what was already a difficult and protracted divorce.
If you're in this situation with your children right now, tell them you love them OFTEN. Tell them that your divorce is nothing to do with them and that BOTH parents love them. Don't do what the alienator does: don't tell the kids that the other parent is being mean or that if they really loved their kids, they would be nicer, etcetera. Don't do that! They don't want to hear it! They don't want the details of your marriage or divorce! I had that rammed down my throat when I was far too young to cope with or digest it or understand it. Adult concepts in a child mind mean confusion and disturbance. I did not need to know. What I needed was reassurance that both my parents love me. I never got that. I got little affection from one (naturally reticent) parent and plenty of affection from the other one, but all swamped by assurances that the reason the former didn't hug me was because she didn't love me, and that the latter was the only one who really cared about me.
This confused me even more: at the age of eight I could not understand why he chose to live four hours from us. If she was so terrible a person, why did he abandon us to her?
I understand her motives: protection of her children and herself. She wanted to keep us out of adult problems as much as possible but also did not want to dwell on a relationship she had fled. Her marriage was over, in her mind.
Unfortunately, by keeping quiet, she unwittingly made matters worse. What I wanted to hear was that she loved me and wanted me, that my male parent was lying. I needed to know this but never heard it. The only time in my whole life that I can remember her telling me that she loved me was literally on her death bed. Maybe she assumed I knew. I don't know.
She did not want to involve us in what was already a difficult and protracted divorce.
If you're in this situation with your children right now, tell them you love them OFTEN. Tell them that your divorce is nothing to do with them and that BOTH parents love them. Don't do what the alienator does: don't tell the kids that the other parent is being mean or that if they really loved their kids, they would be nicer, etcetera. Don't do that! They don't want to hear it! They don't want the details of your marriage or divorce! I had that rammed down my throat when I was far too young to cope with or digest it or understand it. Adult concepts in a child mind mean confusion and disturbance. I did not need to know. What I needed was reassurance that both my parents love me. I never got that. I got little affection from one (naturally reticent) parent and plenty of affection from the other one, but all swamped by assurances that the reason the former didn't hug me was because she didn't love me, and that the latter was the only one who really cared about me.
This confused me even more: at the age of eight I could not understand why he chose to live four hours from us. If she was so terrible a person, why did he abandon us to her?
Friday, 14 September 2007
Pick a noun ...
Parental Alienation is:
Brainwashing, mind control, bullying, child abuse, selfish, revenge, childish, unhealthy, cruel, nasty.
The results are:
Pain, loss, grief, tears, hurt, betrayal, mistrust, loss, anger, more loss.
Today I am angry, hurt and bereaved. Actually I am these things every day. Today I am these things but do not want to be. I want them removed from me. I am tired of carrying them. I am angry at that person for doing this to me. I am hopeful and looking forward to the future because I will find release and peace.
I am determined.
Brainwashing, mind control, bullying, child abuse, selfish, revenge, childish, unhealthy, cruel, nasty.
The results are:
Pain, loss, grief, tears, hurt, betrayal, mistrust, loss, anger, more loss.
Today I am angry, hurt and bereaved. Actually I am these things every day. Today I am these things but do not want to be. I want them removed from me. I am tired of carrying them. I am angry at that person for doing this to me. I am hopeful and looking forward to the future because I will find release and peace.
I am determined.
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