How do you grieve something the world doesn't recognize? For alienated and estranged parents, the loss is real — but the support, the rituals, and the understanding are missing. Here's what disenfranchised grief actually does to you, and why naming it matters.
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The Question Every Alienated Parent Dreads
"How many kids do you have?"
It sounds like the simplest question in the world. But if you're an alienated or estranged parent, you know that in the space between that question and your answer, a dozen decisions fire off at once:
- Do I say how many?
- Do I explain why they don't live with me?
- How much do I share?
- Will they believe me?
- Will they think I'm a bad parent?
- Will I start wondering if that's true?
All of that — in the time it takes someone to smile and wait for your reply.
That question is where Episode 207 of [Beyond the High Road podcast — INTERNAL LINK to podcast/website] begins, and it opens the door to a conversation about a kind of grief that most people have never heard of: disenfranchised grief.
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What Is Disenfranchised Grief?
The term was coined by Dr. Kenneth Doka, who defined it simply: grief becomes disenfranchised when the loss isn't openly acknowledged, socially supported, or publicly mourned. There's no funeral. No bereavement leave. No casserole. No agreed-upon understanding that something devastating has happened.
For alienated parents, this fits painfully well. Your child is still alive. There may even be some contact. But the relationship has been altered — sometimes through manipulation, sometimes through estrangement — and the loss is nearly impossible for outsiders to categorize unless they've lived it.
Here's the critical distinction: disenfranchisement describes the social response to your grief, not the validity of your loss. Your grief is real. It's the world's reaction that's broken.
I first taught on this back in Episode 35 — Disenfranchised Grief. Since then, four new studies have added to Doka's original framework, giving us evidence that perceived legitimacy varies depending on whether a loss conforms to social expectations. Translation: people judge grief they don't understand.
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Why Parental Alienation Causes Disenfranchised Grief
There's no death. No obituary. No funeral. No culturally sanctioned ritual that says "something terrible happened to this family."
Instead, alienated and estranged parents encounter questions:
- "What happened?"
- "Why doesn't your child speak to you?"
- "There must be more to the story."
The social response shifts from "I'm so sorry something terrible happened to you" to "I need you to explain why this happened to you." And that difference — between empathy and interrogation — changes everything. It's the difference between being held and being put on trial.
I share a story in the episode about a neighbor who would come over after a few glasses of wine and demand answers: "Help me understand why you're here and your daughter's there." I'd stammer and try to compress years of a complex situation into a five-minute explanation. It was impossible. And when you're already in a long-term stress response, your prefrontal cortex — the part of you that could handle that gracefully — isn't even online.
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The Hidden Losses of Parental Alienation: You're Not Just Grieving One Thing
If you're an alienated parent, you're not grieving a single loss. You're grieving layers:
- The relationship with your child
- Your parenting role and daily access
- Your identity as a parent
- The family structure — even if you didn't miss your ex, the loss of the intact family unit is its own grief
- Ordinary routines — dinners, bedtimes, the front-door walk
- Milestones you've already missed and ones still ahead
- Your imagined future — what you thought parenthood and your life would look like
- Community — friendships and social circles built around being a parent
- Reputation — the version of you that existed before
- Financial security — from splitting a two-income home to paying child support
- Extended relationships with family and in-laws
- Time — the years already lost that you can never get back
I talk more about navigating the social fallout of these losses in Episode 126: What to Say When They Ask About Your Kids
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Ambiguous Loss: Grief Without Closure
There's a second framework that helps describe what alienated parents experience: ambiguous loss, a concept developed by Dr. Pauline Boss.
Disenfranchised grief describes what happens around your grief — the social response. Ambiguous loss describes the nature of the loss itself. Your child is still alive and psychologically significant to you, but your access, your role, your presence in their life is missing or altered.
The uncertainty of ambiguous loss is what makes it so agonizing. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe when they turn 18. Maybe when they move out. Maybe that text meant something. The goalposts keep moving, and you keep searching for closure that requires someone else's participation.
But here's the truth I want you to hold onto: the grief itself isn't unresolved because you're unwilling to let it go. The loss itself remains unresolved. That's not your failure. That's the nature of this kind of loss.
I go deeper into ambiguous loss in the Happiness Set Point episode.
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How Social Judgment Wounds Alienated Parents (The Second Wound)
If the loss itself is the first wound, the social response is the second.
People on the outside minimize. They avoid. They question. They judge. They offer clichés. They blame. Some of them aren't malicious — they just don't have a map for alienation or estrangement.
But here's what's really underneath it: alienation disrupts people's belief systems about how families work. Good parents have relationships with their children. Kids don't reject parents without a reason. "I would know if my child were being manipulated."
I know, because I used to be that person. Before I understood what was happening in my own life, I judged a friend who was bartending while her kids lived in another state. I thought something must be wrong with her. I was already in the middle of my own custody battle and didn't even know it — I was protecting my own belief system because the alternative was too terrifying.
There's also an expiration date on sympathy. Research on widowhood shows that a grieving person's timeline and the surrounding world's timeline aren't the same. After a year or two, people are ready for you to "get over it." They minimize. They say things like "They'll come around when they're 18" or "Somebody should teach them some manners."
For more on how holidays amplify this, check out my episode Six Reasons Why Holidays Suck.
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Why Alienated Parents Withdraw: Self-Protection or Self-Imprisonment?
When you've been judged enough times, you start to anticipate it. You don't even need the outside world to show up anymore — you pre-render the verdict yourself.
"They're not gonna understand me. They're gonna think I caused it. They're gonna think I'm crazy."
So you hide. You avoid the grocery store. You stop answering the phone. You don't bring it up. The jury doesn't even need to assemble anymore because you're doing the work ahead of time.
In earlier episodes, I called this "self-inflicted disenfranchisement." I want to correct that. It usually begins as learned protection — a natural response to trauma and social consequences. But if we're not conscious about it, protection can become confinement. I call it Tiny Town: your world becomes increasingly organized around avoiding anything that could disturb the fragile safety you're trying to build.
You desperately want external validation. You want someone to understand. And when reaching out gets the door slammed in your face, you stop telling your story and start presenting your case. Your grief starts to feel like something that requires a favorable verdict from everyone you encounter.
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When Suffering Becomes Proof You're a Good Parent: Alienation & Identity
This is the part that's hardest to hear.
Somewhere along the way, suffering can become evidence. Not of what was done to you — but of who you are. Of your love. Of your identity as a parent.
I talk about this in Episode 81: Mistaking a Painful Narrative for True Connection. I used my suffering like a tether — the way an astronaut is tethered to their ship. If I let go of the pain, I'd float away into the void. I'd lose my last connection to my child. Suffering was the only string I had left.
So letting go of the painful story felt unsafe. It felt like disloyalty. Like if I stopped suffering, the world would think I didn't love her enough. That I'd moved on from my own child.
The unintended meaning: If I heal, it proves the loss didn't matter.
That's a lie. But when you're in activation — when your prefrontal cortex is offline and you're running on emotional brain and body memory — logic doesn't stand a chance.
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What's Coming in Part 2: Healing Beyond Validation
Everything in Part 1 — the naming, the framing, the validation that what you're experiencing is real — that's the foundation.
But it's only the foundation.
In Part 2, we go beyond validation into what it actually looks like to enfranchise your own grief — not by tuning out the world, but by getting so grounded in your own view of yourself that other people's judgments lose their grip. When that happens, something remarkable opens up: the space for real conversation, for education, and ultimately for the social enfranchisement that's been missing all along.
Part 2 drops next week. Don't miss it. Subscribe wherever you watch or listen!
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Key Takeaways
1. Disenfranchised grief describes the social response, not the validity of your loss. Your grief is real even when the world doesn't see it.
2. You're not grieving one thing. Alienation creates layered losses — identity, role, routines, milestones, reputation, time.
3. Ambiguous loss means there's no clean ending. That's the nature of the loss, not a personal failure.
4. Social judgment is a second wound. People's discomfort with your story is about their belief systems, not your truth.
5. Self-protection can become self-imprisonment. Temporary scaffolding is useful. Permanent isolation is not.
6. Suffering is not proof of love. Letting go of the painful story doesn't mean letting go of your child.
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Listen to the full episode: A Loss That No One Sees — Disenfranchised Grief for Alienated Parents (Part 1)
Questions, comments, or episode topic requests? Email me at shelby@beyondthehighroad.com
Find me on TikTok and Instagram for bite-sized clips and tips
This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 — "Healing Beyond Validation" — is coming next week.
Sources [1] Hidden in Plain Sight: A Scoping Review of Professional Grief ... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12174799/ [2] The stigmatization of prolonged grief disorder and ... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38613518/ [3] Relational and Institutional Disenfranchisement in Suicide ... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42359751/ [4] Qualitatively Examining Disenfranchised Grief in Young ... https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15325024.2024.2324273
Episode Transcript
A Loss That No One Sees: Disenfranchised Grief for Alienated Parents
"How Many Kids Do You Have?" The Question Every Alienated Parent Dreads
How many kids do you have? Such a simple question, isn't it? Unless of course you're an alienated or estranged parent
Because now,
in the space between that question that was posed and your answer, you may have to make roughly 12 different decisions, do I say I have a daughter?
Do I say how old she is?
What if they ask where she lives?
Do I tell them that I haven't seen her? Do I explain why? How much do I explain?
Are they gonna believe me?
Or are they just gonna think that there's more to the story that I'm not telling them?
Are they gonna think that I'm not a good mom? I'm not a good parent?
And maybe the question underneath all of those questions if they think that, if they think I'm not a good parent
Will some part of me start wondering if that's
true?
And all of that can happen in the amount of time it takes for somebody to ask what is that six-word question, right? How many kids do you have?
And that is exactly what I wanna start with today. So before we do, you are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 207.
Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Milford, a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show is my love letter to you.
Stay tuned.
What Is Disenfranchised Grief? Understanding Your Parental Alienation Grief
Okay, guys. So, years ago,
I did an episode on this topic, on disenfranchised grief. In fact, it was back way early on, episode 35. And so this week, when preparing for this today, um, I went back and listened to that, parts of that episode anyway, and then also a couple episodes with related topics that I'm actually going to put together into today's episode.
I did notice, though, when I looked back at those two episodes, that a couple things about it. Number one, they were a little cringey for me because it was really early on in my podcasting days, right? I was just, uh, like a brand-new baby podcaster, if you will. And so, uh, my editing wasn't great, and my-- I had found my...
Anyway, it, it was a little cringey. And also, like, my organizational skills and stuff like that were not where maybe I would want them to be, where they are today, but that grows over time, you know? So, it's all okay. But the other thing that I realized is that I've spent kind of the last four years orbiting around this topic of, that I addressed back then and I'm addressing again today, of disenfranchised grief.
And I visited other areas, taught on the accompanying, partnering topics, but I did them all separately, right? And so today, I wanna combine them, and put them back, like, sort of underneath the grief umbrella, if you will, um, or the umbrella of disenfranchised grief, So . today is not necessarily going to be about giving you those definitions because we already have them. We visited those. I wanna open up the conversation as far as what does living inside of disenfranchised grief actually do to the way that you relate to the loss,
the way that you relate to yourself and also then other people, and eventually to your own voice, your own narrative, okay, moving forward. So that's really w- what it is. We're just gonna-- It's gonna be more dialed into your experience being an, an alienated or estranged parent, okay? So very quickly, I'm gonna talk about-- give you the, a basic summary of what disenfranchised grief is, just in case. the guy who originally, created the classic framework around it is Kenneth Doka, D-O-K-A. And it could be Doka. I don't know how to pronounce it. But either way, Kenneth Doka, Doka, is the one that, originated this term, and I'm paraphrasing his definition of it, grief becomes disenfranchised when the loss isn't openly acknowledged, socially supported, or sanctioned, or publicly mourned. There's like no real support, established support or protocol around this kind of grief. The important thing to clarify about disenfranchised grief for us is that your grief isn't less legitimate because it's disenfranchised.
Disenfranchisement actually describes the social response that we receive to the grief, not the validity or the intensity of the loss. And I think we all know that, but I, I think it's important to also point it out too. So, I think I recorded that in 2023. Since then, I've been wanting to revisit it because I knew that there were new studies out.
So since 2023 up until this year actually, there have been four other studies that I found applicable to our situations and to disenfranchised grief as a whole, okay? Current research, and I'm not gonna go into all of that, the findings there, but I will link those studies below for you too. Current research gives us evidence that people don't respond obviously identic- identically to all grief, That perceived legitimacy, this is the important part for us, can vary according to the characteristics of the loss and whether grief conforms to social expectations. I'm just gonna leave it at that. and I'm gonna move on to
Why Parental Alienation Causes Disenfranchised Grief
why parental alienation estrangement actually fits so darn well into this category of disenfranch- disenfranchisement of our grief obviously, as we all know, this is like P- PA 101, is that our children are still alive, They may-- There may even still be some contact between you guys, right? And the-- Whether it's a lot or a little, maybe it's the quality of the contact you're grieving, It's not the same as it ever used to be because there's, manipulation happening on the other side. Maybe their eyes now, they see you as, being an outsider, And so that you're grieving, um, which makes the loss very difficult for outsiders, anybody outside, to categorize unless they understand it, of course, right? Of course, there's no death, there's no funeral, there's no obituary, no bere- bereavement leave, No agreed-upon date that where everybody understands something profound actually happened to this parent and to this child.
Something really heartbreaking, tragic has happened here. Instead, alienated parents and also estranged parents often encounter, " what happened?" " Why doesn't your child speak to you?"
there must be more to this story
that we don't know about", So instead of
hearing or feeling " something terrible happened to your family or something terrible happened to you", the social response can feel more like, " I need you to explain what's going on here." Or "I need to w-- you to explain why this happened to you". I had a neighbor, and I've probably used this, um, example, uh, a long time ago.
I had a neighbor, who would have, like, one too many glasses of wine, and then she would come over, stumble over maybe, I don't know. But she would d- start demanding answers from me. " But I don't understand why. You need to explain this. Help me understand," is how she would say that to me. "Help me understand why you're here and your daughter's there."
And with a furrow in her brow. And back then I was in a long-term stress response, right? I had been in activation for probably my whole life, but really since the alienation had taken hold, taken hold. So, um, maybe like four years at that point.
And I didn't-- I thought that I owed her an explanation. Like, I didn't really believe that with my higher thinking, but of course, being in stress response like that, feeling activated, higher thinking isn't really operating correctly. And so I would stammer and stutter and try to come up with answers, but the answers really never came to me.
So I just, I would dance around my words, talk in circles, trying to explain something, trying to fit h- however long, how many, since she was two years old, no, a year old, up until she was 14 years old, all into one small
five-minute conversation, you know, 10-minute conversation. It was, like, impossible. It doesn't matter w- what state of mind I'm in, even today, that would be almost impossible to fit all the little nuanced, um, scenarios and situations that had happened. How do you fit that all, compress that, condense it all down into paragraph so that somebody understands?
so the difference between something terrible happened to you, I'm so sorry, and I need you to explain why this happened to you, that difference 100% matters, as you guys probably well know. I ha- put out a holiday episode think it was called "Six Reasons Why Holidays Suck" or something like that.
It was, it was last year, um, 2025, the end of 2025 or the mid... I, I'll link it below, but it already captured basically the absence of rituals, protocols, cards, casseroles, culturally sanctioned mourning, all of that. I, I talked about this, throughout that whole episode, extensively.
Okay? So you can always go back to that. This w- that would be a great pairing for today, even though it's not, like, holiday period right now as I'm, like, when this is being published. the concepts are still valid and, Accurate. You know? Okay. So you guys, you know, remember, I don't know if you were, if, if you've been listening, you're a repeat listener, then you know that last week I told you and the week before, I been having tech problems with my recordings. Well, guess what? It happened again this, today. I am so tired, so that's why I'm like probably like a little bit stuttering and looking for words because I recorded a l- it was a long...
The first go of this was a really long episode. So now I'm probably gonna make it shorter, but the same thing, similar thing happened with my camera and the sound. I won't even go into it, but anyway, if I'm stumbling over my words, you know why. Okay. So
The Hidden Losses of Parental Alienation: You're Not Just Grieving One Thing
As you know As you live, we-- you and I both know that we're not just grieving one thing, we may grieve not only the relationship but the access, the, loss of access, Our parenting roles, like the actual role We lose our identity. We, are grieving the loss of family structure, The family structure. When you may not actually miss your ex, that doesn't really matter. We don't even realize even if you were the one that left the relationship, the family structure is a whole 'nother... That reality hitting is unexpected for a lot of people, Also, you're grieving the loss of ordinary routines, like your everyday ordinary routines. The kids coming home at a certain time, walking through the front door, or making dinners in a certain way. Maybe now you're making dinners for just one instead of four or whatever it is. You're grieving the loss of milestones, missing out on certain ones and the past ones that you've, you've missed out on already.
You may be grieving the loss of your imagined future, what you thought your life was gonna turn out like, what you thought parenthood would be like, what you thought your next year or your vacations, all of that. You grieve the loss of specific community, right? All of your other friends that were parents and everything that you did socially with your community as a result of that, Maybe you're grieving the loss of your reputation, the one that you had before. Now you may, may be slightly different, more colorful. Funny, not funny. I know that, um, it definitely did something for my reputation, um, or so I think anyway. Yeah, I'm sure of it in certain, in certain circles, right? But today I can laugh about it because, uh, I don't care as much, but I know when you're acute, when this is acute, that it's not a laughing matter, so just know that if that's you right now and I'm making jokes, that I just think that it's...
We gotta... In something so tragic as alienation or estrangement, I feel like humor can be really healing. So, I'm not taking this situation lightly if that's you right now, so maybe you're grieving the loss of your reputation. Maybe you're grieving the loss of your financial security Not only because you split and you used to have a two-income home or they made more money or whatever it is, but also maybe now you're shelling out money for child support, for this, for that, for whatever.
It depends on how old, uh, your kiddos are and were, right? Whenever you guys split. Um, maybe you're grieving the loss of extended relationships. And of course, time, the time that you've lost already, the time that you will lose. Time is the one non-ref- right?
We can't get it back. Reconciliation, though, can create something extraordinary for the future up there, and it cannot return the years that you've lost already And this episode wouldn't be me if I didn't add there yes, you can grieve the loss, and you can also simultaneously truly believe and look for evidence to support that you can still gain things too.
Like, it can be both, doesn't have to be black or white.
Ambiguous Loss in Parental Alienation: Grief Without Closure
So I'm gonna go straight now. We're gonna talk about ambiguous loss. I'm just gonna do an overview for those of you who didn't hear those other episodes, okay? So I already taught the hell out of this one in the happiness set point episode that I did put out last fall too, okay?
So if you haven't listened to that one, it's a longer listen, but it might be worth it for you if you wanna know more about ambiguous loss. The simple distinction I wanna make here for it is that, so disenfranchised grief describes what happens around the grief, right? like in the circles or your circles around you, right?
And ambiguous loss describes something about the nature of the loss itself, Of course, as I was just kinda describing that your children remain alive, and psychologically significant to you, while maybe access, presence, your relationship, your active, interactions, right, and/or your role is missing or altered, Any one of those things can be true. It doesn't have to mean that you d- like in order to be grieving, it doesn't mean that you have to have all of those presence. It could be that like maybe you still have access, but your children are, fighting you tooth and nail. They're resisting you. They don't wanna call you Mom.
Maybe they're calling you-- Or Dad. Maybe they're calling you by first name. Maybe there's somebody else in the picture on the other side that's, seemingly trying to, like, doesn't have any boundaries and is trying to take over that role, right? And so you can have just one of these things be present and of course still experience a significant amount of grief. All right? So there's no minimizing here happening, at least not in this community and not here with me.
So the uncertainty of ambiguous loss, like the kind of loss that we experience around this, matters quite a bit for us because we think in our minds there's so many unanswered questions, we think maybe tomorrow something will change, maybe when they turn 18, maybe when they move out of the house, maybe after college Maybe that subtle smile they flashed at me or the text that they respond to, maybe that actually means something Maybe this Christmas, you know, all of these like what-ifs are flying through your mind always. Like you wanna hold on to hope and then that gets crushed and then you wanna hold on to something else and that's why so many of us, so many alienated parents and estranged parents, I'm just gonna say alienated and you can identify with how you want, that way I'm not having to go back and forth between, from here moving forward.
But so many of us are looking for closure. "Oh my gosh, I need to have closure," because you're constantly like moving or they, you feel like they are moving the goalpost, right? Maybe this, maybe that, maybe it's gonna happen when they turn 16 and they have more freedom and they're allowed to drive. Maybe it's 18.
It's always you're just trying to hold out ho- hope and hold out hope and so, it's always external, right? You're waiting on them because they're the ones that like we're willing, right? They're the ones that are unwilling. So if they could just supply us answers, we could have something concrete, then we could feel okay, settle down, feel safe. But because it's always up in the air, we decide forget it, it-- that goalposts are always moving, so we need closure.
And we need them to be a part of that. But it's actually not the case, it's not true. We can talk about that later. But it creates this cyclical nature to this kind of grief, So I think what's important to point out here about ambiguous loss is that the grief itself isn't necessarily unresolved because you're unwilling to let it go, right? The loss itself remains unresolved. It's, It has nothing to do with your, capabilities or your willingness.
How Social Judgment Wounds Alienated Parents (The Second Wound)
We've established now that there's what happened with your child, And then there also is what happens when you bring that experience of what happened with your child into relationship with other people, right? People on the outside, they minimize, they may avoid, they may question, they may judge, they may advise, they may blame, they may become visibly uncomfortable, right?
Offer you up cliches, especially like around holiday time, um, and it's like your family, sometimes the, like, extended family that's gonna offer you a bunch of pointless advice, They may trash the other parent trying to show you solidarity, loyalty, Or simply, th- they may just have no fucking clue what to say to you, I'm sure we've all experienced that, depending on how long you've been, in this situation. Some of these people aren't malicious, they also don't have a map to alienation or estrangement either
And as many of us know, painfully know firsthand, alienation may threaten the very belief systems many people, many people rely on.
People think that they need to believe, keep believing that "good parents have relationships with their children"
" Kids don't reject their parents without a reason, without a good one, That just doesn't happen. It must be something that they've done". also another one is, and I've heard this a lot, is, "I would know if my child were being manipulated. I would know if my child was being brainwashed.
I would've stopped that. I would've done something about it. I would do anything to protect my child because that's just the kind of parent I am. I don't know what's going on with them." Right? It's like this place of judgment because they... It's, uh, it's naive I was guilty of this myself as far as, and I've shared this, it's been a while though, where I remember being really judgmental of a new friend of mine back in the day when I found out she had kids. She bartended at this bar we used to go to, and she-- we became really friendly until I found out that she had two boys that lived in a different state, and I didn't understand it.
I was like, "How can they live halfway across the country and she's here, she's bartending? What's going on?" And in my mind, I remember exactly where I was. I was sitting, we were, m-m-me and another friend watching our kids play in the playscape, at this restaurant, and I was like, "Something's must be wrong with her.
Why, why wouldn't she have her kids? Why wouldn't she have her boys?" she had to have done something. And now I can look back on that and be like, "Oh, Shelby," you know? Like, what was I thinking? But it's a natural response, and at the time when I was saying that, what's so interesting is I had already been separated from my ex and it was already very volatile, very rocky situation.
We were going through a custody battle already, right? And the alienation strategies had started, but I wasn't aware of what was going on. I was-- I, I just knew shit was really scary and weird for me. And so I didn't know back then that I was actually so much protecting my belief systems, right? Like that good parents have relationships with their kids.
That's how it's supposed to be, right? And that kids don't reject parents without a, a fucking amazing reason for it. A-a 100%. I wanted to hold onto those beliefs because I didn't want anything else to be possible, especially for what was ahead for me. Of course, I didn't know that back then. I guarantee there must have been some part of me that k new that that could have been a possibility.
But anyway, it is for, it's not for now. But the whole point of this section, what I'm wanting to articulate to you guys is our situations of alienation or estrangement can disrupt their model of how families work, how parenthood works, and that makes people very uncomfortable, Just like it did with me.
You know, I could kick myself for how I w- was back then, how I was judging my friend who now, now I understand she was being alienated. She had a, a degree of alienation going on. Um, but I didn't understand it back then, . And so I, I see both sides where I used to...
Before I remembered that I was doing this, I used to get so mad at other people that would judge like this. But it's, it has nothing to do... Well, it comes off really mean when they're judging, but really truly it's always a reflection of how their
thinking and believing about their own lives and how, how they can-- A lot of people don't have a place, a box to put us in, in order to feel safe. So it must be our fault. It's easier to go to blame so, there's a recent w-widowhood study that offers the concept that grief can obviously outlast sympathy efforts, So, the grieving person's timeline, our timeline, and the surrounding world's timeline obviously aren't necessarily the same, but we don't think about that when we're in it. So, for instance, like around a holiday, maybe for the first year or two, your family and friends tiptoed around you or accommodated well.
When I say tiptoed around, maybe they tiptoed around, but I really mean that they like thought out all of the scenarios, and they were really considerate, thinking about y-your feelings ahead of time. And this is just one example of it, there's lots of different examples of this, But maybe after the first one or two years, you might notice that there seems to be an expiration date
on your grief for them. After so long, they're ready for you to get over it, so they'll, they'll minimize your experience or give you some shitty advice, right?
Like, "Oh, they'll come around when they're 18."
Or they'll figure it out someday, or worse, somebody should teach them some manners or whatever. Like usually that last one, somebody should teach them some manners is because somebody extended an invite. Or sent them a gift, and y- they didn't hear back from your kiddo, right?
And so they're upset, holding a resentment because of the disconnect, and then they take that out on you, Well, they should teach them some manners. That's rude, right? This has happened definitely with me, and I'm sure with for a lot of you.
What happens there is if you have a bad experience with family or if you have a, one, a bad experience with some onlooker, right?
L-like my neighbor who was demanding answers, and they're judging you,
eventually nobody has to invalidate you because you begin to anticipate it. There's like a progression of internal dialogue that happens. Like m-maybe if you're gonna go to some function or maybe just...
I used to avoid going to the grocery store, right? I didn't even wanna go because I didn't wanna run into all the people that would ask me questions. But because this is the dialogue that was going on in my head, " They're not gonna understand me. Nobody's gonna understand me," They're gonna think I caused it."
Kinda like I was talking about in the cold open, They're gonna think I'm crazy. Oh my gosh." I mean, that's exactly what I thought. I was like, "They're gonna think I'm absolutely crazy." And I remember thinking this in the house that I sold before I sold it actually, when this was all going down. I'm like, "They are gonna think that anything that I say to try to explain the craziness of this, it sounds like Twilight Zone, like Jerry Springer freaking Lifetime original movie.
How in the heck could I even try to explain this to somebody?" I think it was, another Girl Scout troop leader. And me trying to explain why I was there but my kiddo wasn't, uh, or vice versa, I forget what was going on at the time.
I didn't know how to even address the thing. I'm like, "They're gonna think I'm crazy," right? They're gonna wonder what kind of mother doesn't see her kid or what kind of father doesn't see their kiddo. And then it turns into, " I just don't even feel like explaining it anymore." And so what happens is maybe you don't go to whatever the function is or the, to the store even, grocery store, you know you're gonna run into people.
So you hide out, and you don't tell people anything. You don't answer your phone or the door or the questions. You don't bring it up. You start to avoid, now that whole, after that whole progression, the jury doesn't even need to assemble anymore. The outside world doesn't even need to be present anymore because you've pre-rendered the verdict and are doing the work ahead of time to avoid.
There is some newer research on anticipated judgment and how that turns to concealment and withdrawal. And again, I will link that below for you in the description if you wanna go look at that too, right? But I think that that study revolves around, like if a death to suicide or something like that, and the grieving, um, family and friends and what have you, where people will just stop talking about it completely and then just withdraw from s- society or from all the people that knew the deceased, right?
it's the same thing here with us Obviously, but it's different circumstances, but it's the same experience for us.
Why Alienated Parents Withdraw: Self-Protection or Self-Imprisonment?
Also, I wanna say that the past version of me who was visiting disenfranchised grief, though I shared with you a lot of stories where I was experiencing disenfranchised grief I believe that I called anticipation of it and so we withdraw self-inflicted disenfranchisement, which I want to add to because I-- my opinion, my thoughts, and beliefs on this have definitely morphed and softened, so it isn't necessarily that you're causing your own isolation.
This is the correction I wanna make. It usually begins as learned protection due to what we've gone through, due to the trauma. So your own retreat back into maybe the hole of isolation is because you're trying to protect yourself, of course, right? Like in your mind and body, talking about what has happened has social consequences, right?
That 100% makes sense. 100%. But protection, if we're not conscious about it, can eventually become confinement, jail time, basically, internally,
And then you end up in what I'm calling Tiny Town, which it's basically where your world becomes increasingly organized around avoiding anything capable of disturbing the fragile beliefs and the safe world that you're trying to actually establish. But it's just barely starting to establish.
It's like you know what you want, you know how you wanna be to yourself, with yourself, and to others. Like, you wanna have your own back. You wanna feel okay out in the world and just speak what's on your mind. but at, in early on, what can happen and it's the way the humans are made, and then also how trauma works inside the body, is we
desperately want external validation and, acceptance for somebody to understand, which makes int- so much sense, right? We're going through so much, yet we feel so isolated. And when we do reach out, that reaching out oftentimes gets-- like the door gets slammed in our face, the emotional door.
Just adding insult to injury, this is what turns into us trying to get that disenfranchised grief enfranchised. We start yearning for our case to be heard and validated, accepted.
Our truth to be accepted as the truth, you know? So how-- The episode that I talk about this in is episode 126, and I-- like I said, I briefly went and listened to all these related episodes this week while preparing for this episode. I'm not gonna go over everything, but I will say that in-- Sorry, I should tell you the, the topic of this one is, um, what to say when they ask about your kids and when they wanna commiserate, as I forget how I, I...
It'll be down, linked down below. But somebody will ask you an innocent question, and you all of a sudden go into stress response, right? And stress response turns into oversharing. Oversharing turns into then overexplaining, like going, doubling down, right? And then leaving and thinking, "Fuck, why did I say all that?"
And sometimes that will turn into tripling down, where you send another message or an email or whatever explaining the explanation or the over-explanation, right? Where you just cannot stop because all it is underneath all of that anyway, is your desperate plea, my desperate plea back in the day, to please understand Everything that I'm going through right now, what my child is going through Please believe me Please do not think that I'm a bad parent or that I chose this, right? of course then, please understand why this hurts so much for me. That's really what's underneath all of that. All of these desperate, "I just need validation." That's it. Just please hear what I'm saying
But because maybe that wasn't received so well one, two, three, 10 times earlier on, you stop merely telling your story or providing updates, right, to people, and you start presenting your case. Now, it didn't have to be-- Let me go back on that. It doesn't have to be that it was, wasn't received well. You could've stayed quiet all the way up.
But because your own judgments on yourself, you know how, like I said I judged my friend Renee? Oh, I didn't give you her name. It doesn't matter. Um, for, at the time I didn't know she was going through alienation and what that even meant, but I judged that and because I knew... I was really, it was a judgment on if that were to happen to me.
You know, it's always a- actually about ourselves. people maybe didn't even receive you wrongly or, misinterpret what was going on, but because you already are judging yourself so harshly, you end up creating a reality that everybody will judge you, and so you just stop presenting your story, and instead you just start presenting your case, 'cause you're already on the defensive because you've been judging yourself so harshly.
And there's nothing, of course, it makes sense why you would because in it... Anyway, you get me. I don't need to go into over-explaining all that. Um, so your grief starts feeling
Like something that is actually requires a favorable verdict, That there is a judge and a jury out there everywhere you go. You get out of your car to go into the grocery store, the corner store, or the gas station, wherever, and immediately you're on defense because you feel so much judgment coming at you, even if it's really mostly in your brain.
I'm not saying it isn't all in your brain, just saying. It doesn't matter, Because their judgment means very little in the big scheme of things when you know that you're already judging yourself so harshly. So pay attention, just a side note, pay attention to the tone that you take with yourself on the daily, 'cause that is really going to affect your experience of the world.
Okay, so
All of what I just said in summary their agreement their acknowledgement of your truth ends up becoming the price of connection, So more precisely, let me say that better, that their agreement can start to feel like proof that connection with this person, whoever it is in front of you, or in general even, is safe.
Like you need that as evidence in order to prove that you can continue to bond and continue to try to connect. Does that make sense? So back in episode 126, the what to say when they ask about your kids, the commiserate one, I talked about how I'd get these calls from friends who had information, criticism to share about the other side, meaning my ex and the stepmom, right?
Uh, certain friends would call me up here and there. It's when I was living up in the house on the hill, and I was the hermit on the house on the hill, Um, every so often sporadically I'd get these calls from a handful of different friends. And one of them would always call and say something like, " I saw your ex today at the football field.
He looked like a blown-up tick." Which I always thought was funny, but besides the point right now. Or, "I saw the stepmom, this time she was at the pool
And the lifeguard had to come up to her and tell her to put her phone down and keep her eyes on the kids. They had to tell her twice, Which of course was super activating for me because, oh my gosh, my four-year-old's at the pool with this stepmom who is not actually watching her not be able to swim, you know?
So that was really ugh for me. So of course I'm like standing up at attention when I'm hearing stuff like this, and then I get all activated and whatever. And there was really not much that I could do about it at the time, even though I tried, you know? So there was that. But there were other things that they would just call and report to tell me, "Oh, I saw so and so," or, "She said this or that," whatever, which kept me invested in a story of drama that I really didn't wanna be invested in.
Although at the time, here's my point here, I used that evidence to support me, to show that they were on my side, right? So like for-- or from others, sometimes from acquaintances, from college friends that maybe knew me and my ex both, where they wanted me, kinda like I was saying earlier, they wanted me to give them the whole story, like, "Tell me what happened.
How did this even happen to you?" Where they weren't necessarily being rude, like, "Explain to me what the hell went on, because why, what could be a rational explanation for all this?" It was more like, "Tell me how this went down. What did he do to you?" And they wanted to get the gossip, right? The tea on everything that he did.
But it's like impossible, as I already said, to get that all, fit that all into a, even a two-hour conversation, right? Without me going into complete stress response, right? So I hated those conversations. I hated picking up the phone for those conversations, which is why actually I went into real hiding and stopped picking up the phone for a long time, truly.
Um, but then also I loved them and craved them when I wasn't picking up the phone for that time. Like it was always kinda nice because underneath of their outrage, y'all, was this idea like from them that I see it too. Like I see, I see what's going on. I understand. I'm on your team, Shelby, is what I took from those interactions, Which can be like fucking oxygen when you've spent so long feeling completely unseen, you know?
But at the same time, those conversations also left me feeling activated, explaining, over-explaining, defending, anxious, emotionally hungover, all of the above, and I'm sure many other things, experiences from those conversations. It was awful because anytime they would ask me a question, I had to go back and then relive everything from the situation I was trying to explain to them, which sucked for me because I hadn't really processed it through.
And processing traumatic experience, the best way to do that is not on the phone with somebody that wants to hear the goss. You know? I think what's important right now is that there's a, a nuance that I wanna acknowledge, wanting validate- validation, y'all, is human, This is how we're hardwired. Wanting somebody to understand you, contrary to what they might be saying about whatever you're doing, wanting somebody to understand you is not pathology. It's not even dysfunction it makes so much sense that you would crave that, right? The issue though, is when their understanding becomes necessary for you to remain anchored in your own understanding.
You hear me?
When Suffering Becomes Proof You're a Good Parent: Alienation & Identity
So think of it as two trials that you have going on in your mind simultaneously, okay?
Trial one is this idea that I need to prove that what happened was and is real. And I need them to understand it.
Trial two Is I also need to prove that I am sufficiently devastated by it. because otherwise maybe they'll think I don't care
Maybe if I'm too healed, they'll think that I moved on from my child, Maybe they'll think I wasn't a good mom or a good dad
And if that's true, if they believe that I wasn't a good mom or dad, maybe I will begin to, like I was hinting at in the cold open, maybe I will begin to think or have to acknowledge, come face to face with the threat that maybe I wasn't a good parent at all times. Like that you'll discover what everybody else seems to believe, , just because you have maybe made mistakes in your parenting doesn't mean that you're a bad parent and that you are a mistake as a parent, you know? It just means that you've made mistakes like every other fucking parent on this earth has and so, and then also in episode 81, the, mistaking a painful narrative I explicitly identified pain becoming a qualifier for parenthood, right? I talked about using, like, the painful narrative almost like a tether to my kiddo, to, to Scarlett, right? I felt like that if I stopped suffering, that I stopped raking myself over the coals or holding onto that painful story, that it would feel disloyal.
It was evidence of me being disloyal to her and to my, relationship to my own parenting, if that makes sense. But it also-- If I vacated the story of suffering, then I would also be vacating my role as parent. Like, because that was the last string holding me to her,
suffering was the only thing left. You know what I'm saying? Like, I picture it like an astronaut. You know, like, you see those movies where, um... Or maybe actual footage of when an astronaut is working outside of their spaceship? I don't know what they call it.
You know, the vessel, the thing, the rocket, whatever. When they're working outside of that, they have that tether that holds them in the vicinity of home base, if you will, up in space. And if that tether were to be cut, somehow severed, then all of a sudden the astronaut would just float out into the dark abyss, into nowhere, into a black hole, whatever.
That's kind of how I felt like, and that's how I pictured my pain to my daughter. It was this long, very fragile string holding me to her. It was the only l- last little bit I had left, which was a fucking lie, okay? 100% lie, but that's what it felt like to me. So letting s- go of that story of suffering, felt so unsafe to me.
in an episode 126, I spoke about my fear that refusing to commiserate with others, Like, when people call me up and tell me all the goss, whatever was going on with my ex and whoever, it might make others question my loyalty, or it might make them question how deeply I had been affected.
Like, I needed them to know and it, for it to stay fresh in their minds that I was still suffering because of what was done to me and what was being done to my daughter So that nobody would forget that I'm actually a mom. Oh, she's still a mom. She just, you know Shelby's story. Sounds like a charity, but that's how it felt like for me, that I needed to keep that alive, because without it, then my role, who was I?
, put together, those two narratives, equal suffering has become evidence, right? Of my identity, my role, my all the things, my loves, my everything. It was the only thing I had to hold onto. Which gives us, y'all, and gives our healing this unintended meaning, if I let go of this painful story, then it's telling the world that I didn't love her enough. Or for you, that you don't, you don't love your kids enough, And that definitely does not have to be true, and I know that you know that when we're talking it out like this or when I'm talking it out to you.
But it's one thing when you're in the situation and you're in activation and your prefrontal cortex and all of your critical thinking and your decision-making and all your reasoning and all that stuff is up here. But when you're in activation, this is numbed, shut down, so you're only working with your emotional brain, your fear-based brain, and what your body memory has for you, that's always gonna steer us to confusion, overwhelm, over-explaining. "Ooh, everybody hates me," right? I'm gonna be alone forever." Okay, so I basically did an overview of all of the episodes that I've talked about, mm, anything leading to disenfranchised grief, for the most part, summarized it.
but listen, we are not done with this conversation. Not even close
Everything that we've covered today, the naming of our grief
The validation that what you're feeling and what you're experiencing is real and it matters, that's the foundation But it's only the foundation
Next week in part two, we're gonna go beyond validation
And into what it actually looks like to enfranchise your own grief
Not by tuning out the world, but by getting so grounded in your own view of yourself That other people's judgments lose their grip completely
And when that happens, something remarkable opens up
Space for real conversation, education even
And ultimately for the social enfranchisement that's been missing for us all along
So if today resonated with you, then you don't wanna miss what's coming up next week, I think we're gonna be calling it "Healing Beyond Validation," something like that. Okay? So you guys have a lovely week, and I will see you next week. Take care.