TELESEMINAR SERIES FOR COUPLES AND PARENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN AND TEENS
TELESEMINARS FOR ESTRANGED PARENTS
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Journalist would like to interview estranged parents
May 9, 2010
Dr joshua Coleman
Hi Everyone,
Feel free to keep posting here but the journalist is no longer seeking
people to interview. That was from the NYT's article that just posted.
Thank you to all who wrote and were interviewed.
Josh
May 8, 2010
Jane
Charlotte,
I feel your pain as well. Six years for me and the only difference is that my daughter is 44. We had a great relationship until she married hubby #2, or just #2. You described this alienation so well and how you felt that others felt about what your daughter had done. I hope that by now you are past that. Of course you have been in this solitary confinement home for much longer that I have, but let me tell you, the older that I get, the more I have discovered that there are no perfect families.
I used to go to the store to get groceries and leave the cart full in some aisle, because I felt unworthy to be out shopping. No more do I feel that way. Since my daughter cut all of her family out of her life, it really says a lot more about her than any of us. You know the old adage "not everyone can be wrong". I wrote all the gory details of my estrangement to Debby, who is a wonderful and insightful person. We are fortunate to read what she says. Please don't take your value from how your daughter treats you. Don't give her that power. You have found some friends right here and we care.
May 8, 2010
Debby
Charlotte,
I could take your words in your post and just insert my name where yours is and my daughters name where your daughter's name is. My only child and daughter is also 29. She has an absolute circus of people around her telling her she is right.
I'm sure with her busy life and all this coaching, she is very successfully convincing herself that she is right and I am wrong and everything she believes is correct.
Without communication, everything will remain frozen. There is no changing of beliefs or progress unless there is meaningful conversation.
I too do not have any contact information, except that which was secretly or accidentally obtained. But what good is the contact information? I have used it in the past, but again, silence. And you are right, the FIRST reaction of most people is to look for the fault within the parent. It is so frustrating. That's why sites where you can find other friendly "lepers" like this one are comforting and helpful. Or are we all part of a giant conspiracy and this is where we come to get our stories straight? Ha. That's what our estranged children would say–a cold answer for every effort, no compassion, no forgiveness, no feelings.
Happy Mother's Day, Charlotte–with special meaning from me to you–a wish coming to you from someone just like you.
May 7, 2010
Charlotte
I've been going through the situation for over 16 years. It started when my daughter was 14 years old. She's now is 29. I haven't seen her in three years. I do not have a phone number to contact her. The only reason I have her address is because I paid for it from a search website. I could have grandchildren, and I fear we will never know each other. And it's a shame, because I have so much love to give. When this started back in the 90s, no one ever heard of parental alienation., People, including my own family, were not very nice nor were they very understanding with regard to the situation. It was automatically assumed that I did something horrible to my daughter. I didn't. This not only affected my relationship with my immediate family but also friends and dating. "what kind of woman could you be that your only daughter doesn't talk to you?" As mother’s day approaches, I find myself…can’t explain it in words. I'm numb. This has been going on for 16 years. It’s a tragedy. Like no other. Enjoy your children. Be grateful for every moment you spend together. I can look god in the face and swear I was an good mother to Melissa. I know I am not alone. There are many out there like me. I often wonder if things would have been different if people listened to my words instead of confusing me with a prejudgment based not on fact but rather their own ignorance regarding parental alienation. It has been a nightmare that I hope to soon wake from. No one has ever told Melissa that what she was doing was wrong. Since no one has ever told her what she is doing is wrong, in her mind set she believes that there is nothing wrong with her actions.
No one has ever stuck up for me to her. Ever. Silence is the same as agreeing with her actions.
So the nightmare continues, and as mother’s day approaches……since I've gone through so many different stages this year I'm just numb.
May 7, 2010
marian
My husband and I adopted a 5yr old girl 13yrs ago. We were there for her EVERY day, nurturing and loving her through many joys and struggles. We thought we had done everything humanly possible to make this child feel loved and part of our family (4 boys by birth, and her adopted sister 2yrs younger) but now at 18yrs old, she claims she never belonged here and has left to live with her boyfriend and his mother and siblings. She has a history of lying and manipulation and is using these "skills" to trash our family and get people to help her out. The only contact we have had is a call from her asking for money "we owe her". We have told her we love her and are "here" but cannot give her any money. At this point we are playing the waiting game and are trying to heal from this heartbreaking situation. The hardest part is going on with the rest of the kids/family as if everything will be okay, but there is a part of our group missing. Some days are good and others are unbearable. thanks for your book
May 6, 2010
Evelyn
I believe the more you try to contact them…the more they pull away. Why?…because they enjoy seeing you in pain. They enjoy twisting and turning the knife paying you back for every little thing they perceive you did 'wrong' to them.
Every time I have made contact, it's been pain, pain and more pain. It doesn't feel good to call your own child and get cussed out, so, I just decided that I felt better to leave it alone. I miss my grandson very much, but, sadly, I can't do it anymore.
April 30, 2010
Joan Bilinski
Dear Dr. Coleman
I would like to comtribute to this interview. After years of a great relationship with daughter she came to me with a list of my failings as a parent. For four years I have apolized, written loving notes and called her.
At first she would sent a card on Christmas and my birthday. That has stopped. I would like to know how other people handle the hurt.
April 29, 2010
Debby
Dr. Coleman,
I would like to contribute to any article that would help expose this epidemic.
I have been completely and utterly estranged from my one and only child for 7 years. I sometimes think I have gone nuts and I am only dreaming this horrible thing.
Thanks.
April 13, 2010
Sheryl
I am interested in being interviewed by the journalist who is doing an article on parental alienation. For me, it is still very fresh, but all of the symptoms are typical, I'm sure. I'm reading every book that I can on the subject, just to maintain some sense of self-worth and sanity, while at the same time being majorly broken-hearted. I am a single mom, with a grown daughter (with a family – who has not posed a problem), but my two boys 17 (still at home) and my 20 year old son (who I am trying to stop enabling before I spend thousands of more dollars) is no longer living at home, some due to his choice, but most recently due to my asking him to remove his personal belongings. Now (for over a month) he's totally disowned me, and I have feeling that the nightmare is just beginning. How is it that someone who we bear from our own bodies has such an adversion to us, who have only spent our time, effort, money, tears, etc. on them, just to be slapped in face? The sad part is that even though I've told him that if he didn't remove his belongings by a certain date that I would have them removed (sell, give away, etc.), but I am such a sentimental fool, I haven't been able to do it yet. This is yet another demonstration of me saying one thing, but my actions showing something different – - the semi-cause to my delimma in the first place…I sent my 20 year old away to a boarding school for troubled teens when he was 16 years old. It cost me $30,000 which I didn't have, so I am paying for a Sallie Mae loan for another 7 years…At first he was angry, manipulative, etc., but after a couple of months, he wrote home: "thank you mom for sending me here; you saved my life. Fast forward, three years…now he accuses me of trying to "get rid of him" every since then. Then my 17 year old has followed down that same non-working path (drugs, gang-related/hip hop behavior/idolization, etc.) but I couldn't afford to send him to the boarding school (not that it really helped that much anyway), so he went the "juvie" route instead.
To say the least, I've got stories to tell. I've tried the tough love, the positive reinforcement approach, trying to get them invovled in outside interest, trying to find a positive male role model to get them into "guy" stuff, all to no avail.
I'm tired, I'm sad, I'm mad; it's the same story that I see over and over again in these forums.
Now that I've cut off his cell phone, he no longer lives under my roof, because I won't allow his lifestyle here, etc. we have absolutely no contact – he even de-friended my on Facebook… What I can relate to the most, however, is a line in my most recent read: "When Parents Hurt" on page 230: It's worse than having a child die, not knowing where they are or how they're doing. I never stop worrying about him…" So, how/when do I go about mourning? This is crazy making for sure…
April 5, 2010
Sara
I would like to participate in any interview about estrangement. thank you
April 5, 2010
Sara
April 4, 2010
Jane
April 2, 2010
SHEELA PEACE
February 7, 2010
Trubluhiiq
I have lost my daughter not to drugs and alcohol but to affluence and a decadent lifestyle I couldn't provide.
I still do not understand what I did to deserve this but be a good mother and get her into a very elite school where I used to substitute.
She connected with her friends' mothers and somehow made me into the most horrible abusive mother…something I wasn't.
This little girl was beating me up and threatening me and turned the whole situation around that the last words out of her guardian ad lidem was that I couldn't provide for her the way the foster parents want to and my daughter deserved a better life than I could provide. I gave up.
I have been out of her life since she was 15 and this family sent their daughter and my daughter to live in NYC for a month and I agreed. It was an opportunity to go to Columbia and study Art History which was my field . They wouldn't let me have contact with her. I was shut out of her life and made out to be crazy which I did feel I had become.
I would love to share my experience that happened with CYF agency ( I was denied visitation for 5 months with no court order), the court system ( I am not stupid but they never let me understand what was going on.) and the elite school that sided with the kid and her friends mother viciously attacked me as the mother and violating school policy or releasing my daughter without my permission.
If she was suitable enough to go to Columbia and Duke to study college level courses at 15 and 16, I did something right but no one respect me because of all the lies that my daughter told.
Her father was an abusive pathological liar who forged prescriptions because of his addition. Now they are best friends after he didn't talk to her for 14 years.
I was always the one to take care of her until she hooked up with these wealthy girls and their families and she aborted me from her life.
I cannot bear to go on some days. I feel as if now I am only warehoused at home waiting to die and she has the a golden life.
I know the truth but no one will even listen to me.
I gave up but at 18 years old, I feel I don't want her to never speak to me again and have done all I can to reach out to her.
I wasn't even allowed to come to her 15th birthday party the the families gave her without inviting me or telling me to the day of the party. This doctor was giving my daughter sleeping meds and anti-depressants and basically kept her at her house to take care of her youngest son because the husband left the family for another woman and family. When the doctor basically had a breakdown, she identified me as an abusive mother to my daughter and started to campaign against me to have my daughter live with her. Even the case workers told me that there were a group of mother against me trying to take my daughter. WHY???
I had no representation but the court appointed attorney who did nothing …absolutely nothing …not telling me I had to be in court 2 times which made me look negligent.
They have had my daughter for 3 years, got her braces, sent her on 4 international trips, bought her a car and I think they hang over her head that if she had contact with me she will lose all she has.
I don't blame her. She was basically kidnapped (I couldn't find her some days) and indoctrinated to hate her mother.
Every time I try to make contact I get upset and it only makes me look like the crazy mother….not the caring loving mother that got her into an elite school and wanted the best for her.
I cannot deal with the loss and the embarrassment but still I try every day to forgive her….but no one will listen or help me.
I don't know why I try anymore.
Wendy COle
610-462-4415
February 6, 2010
Dr joshua Coleman
Hi everyone,
I was contacted by a journalist at a national paper who wants to interview parents who have been estranged from their child or children. She said that she wouldn't have to use your name if you prefer that she not. If you're interested, please send me an email through the Contact form at the top of the website.
Thank you.
Joshua