IT’S NOT A GENDER ISSUE…

I have learned a lot during my battle for survival through parental alienation.  Firstly, I’ve learned that unless this has happened to you, or to someone you know well or love, you’re just never gonna get it.

Everybody has some sort of family trouble, we’ve all got a perverted uncle tippexed out of the family tree, or an alcoholic cousin locked in the closet, or a random half-sibling that turns up at the door after thirty years that no one knew about.  We’ve come to accept all of those family dramas as pretty much normal.  What I have discovered, however, is when people ask me about my children and the conversation dips its toe into the murky waters of estrangement, alienation and complete loss of contact, eyebrows disappear into hairlines and suspicious minds go all over the place.

Parental alienation is NOT a gender issue!  I hope some of the PA opposing women’s groups hear that!  THIS IS NOT A GENDER ISSUE!  It happens to men and women alike.  I used to say, “It’s not a gender issue, its a hate issue”.  I’ve since changed that to

“It’s not a gender issue, it’s a dick head issue!”

Perhaps not my most eloquent quote, but I stand by it.
That being said, I feel our society needs to catch up.  When we hear of a man having no contact with his children, society quite often jumps to the conclusion that he’s a waster.  How many times have we heard “Sure the child’s better off without him”?  Sometimes maybe, oftentimes, not!  It should not be accepted for a father to be cut out of his children’s lives and this is seen as completely ‘normal’ and acceptable.

On the other hand, when a woman states that her children live with their father and that she has no contact, my personal experience (before explanation that my children went for a visitation and were never returned… Shocked?) is usually along the lines of “what did you do?” as though some heinous crime has been committed against her children to warrant such an ‘abnormal’ separation between the Mother and her child.  Neither is normal!  

Now let’s be clear.  Parental alienation is not withholding a child from a parent who is abusive, neglectful or in any way dangerous.  That’s child protection, not alienation.  Alienation is withholding a child or children from a parent who is good enough, from a parent who has been there for the child, who loves, cares for and protects their child, just because the other parent is bitter.  I think its an important seed worth planting here too, that Parental alienation is ugly and it lies.  Sometimes its perhaps wise to remember that

Sometimes, there is smoke without fire…and I’ll just leave that here for now…

Parental alienation is emotional and psychological abuse of children and coercive control over our little people, because of hostility between their parents.  In my case, there was no real hostility for numerous years, but things change.  I was also, more rarely in cases of alienation, the ‘resident parent’… but we can get into that another day!

I’ve learned something else too… I have to look after myself.  I don’t want to.  I want to lie in bed with my mates Ben and Jerry. I want to eat myself into such a state that I have to call the fire brigade to assist me to the bathroom and I would quite like to die quietly watching a chat show where the guests’ lives are much worse than mine.  I can’t do that.  I have lost a lot over the last year or more, including pieces of who I was before all of this.  I’ll never be the same again, I will not let the rest of my life be taken away by an abusive person as well.  I will make bloody sure that if my children ever wake up from this horrible false reality they’ve been brainwashed into, they will NOT come to reconcile with a Mother who is in a padded white room licking the windows.  I will have tales to tell, achievements and accomplishments, adventures and a lot to make them proud.
Which leads me quite nicely to my bucket list… and what a list it is.  If there’s one thing that keeps me going, it’s knowing that nobody wants to kick a bucket that’s only half full!

Stay tuned…