There's a strange thing that can happen when the people around you don't understand the grief you're experiencing after alienation.
You can know exactly what you've lost — agonizingly so — and still spend an enormous amount of energy trying to ensure that nobody questions it. You explain. You defend. You avoid certain people, certain conversations. You protect yourself from anything that might make you question what you've worked so hard to finally believe.
And for a while, that protection may be exactly the prescription you need.
But what happens when the very things you built to protect yourself — those boundaries, those avoidances, that careful curation of who you talk to and what you share — start making your world smaller?
What happens when protecting your healing becomes its own form of captivity?
The Evolution of Understanding Healing After Alienation
If you've been listening to Beyond the High Road for a while, you may have noticed that my understanding of healing has evolved. Not drastically, but enough that I can look back at earlier episodes with both compassion and new clarity.
Back when I first started teaching about alienation and grief, I needed absolutism. I needed things to be black and white — not because the teaching was wrong, but because I needed the clarity to avoid backsliding in my own healing. I needed boundaries, railings, bumpers. And I feared that if I introduced too much nuance too soon, it would be used as another argument for rumination and suffering.
That teaching wasn't wrong. It was an extremely useful tool at that specific stage of development — mine and maybe yours too. But today, that evolution has made room for a lot more nuance, and that's exactly where we're going.
Baby Beliefs: Why New Healing Wobbles (And That's Not Failure)
Think of a new belief — like "I know what happened to me" or "I am a loving parent" — the way you'd think of a baby learning to stand.
A baby pulls themselves up on a coffee table. They wobble. They flop. They try again. They wobble a little longer. They flop again. Nobody in the history of ever has concluded that walking just doesn't work for them. Nobody crawls into adulthood because standing was too hard one afternoon.
Everybody understands that learning to walk requires wobbling.
It's the same thing with beliefs. Early in healing from alienation, your belief that you know your own story, that you're a good parent, that your grief is real — those are baby beliefs. They wobble when someone questions you. They flop when someone gives you that look. Not because you don't believe them, but because they haven't fully integrated yet.
At this stage, environmental protection makes sense. Being selective about who you surround yourself with, what conversations you have, what triggers you expose yourself to — that's scaffolding. It's the padding you need right now. You wouldn't keep Oreos on every shelf if you were trying to change your eating habits. Your baby belief doesn't need to be escorted into the mosh pit on day three of standing.
But the scaffolding isn't your destination. Nobody leaves scaffolding up on a building after the building is built. And the same is true for you.
When Avoiding Triggers Starts Shrinking Your Life
Here's where it gets dangerous. If your long-term premise becomes, "I'm okay provided that nothing outside of me activates the old thing" — then you've just given the outside world enormous power. The power that's yours to have.
By padding your whole world for too long, you keep eliminating people, places, things, conversations, memories, photographs, questions, holidays, topics — until your life keeps getting smaller and smaller in service of protecting your "healing." Your safety, if you will.
And eventually, protecting your healing can become its own form of captivity. It's like a jail sentence.
Going back to the baby walking analogy: the goal isn't to become exceptionally skilled at avoiding floors. The goal is learning to walk.
Grief Is Allowed to Knock You Over (And That's Not Failure)
A painful Tuesday or Sunday or birthday does not invalidate the work you've put into your healing. If pain resurfaces, it's okay. It doesn't negate everything you've done.
We process through as much as is available to us at the time. Then some time goes by — sometimes even years — and suddenly, more becomes available to you. Not because you didn't process it right the first time, but because your body finally feels safe enough to process what was left.
Crying over an old picture doesn't mean you've backslid. Wanting someone to believe you doesn't mean you've failed at self-validation. Over-explaining in one interaction doesn't return you to square one. A milestone can knock the wind out of you sometimes.
Emotions are emotions. They're not good or bad. They just are. And when you stop being the commentator and judger of your own grief — when you stop saying "I should be over this by now" — that takes off a whole layer of suffering.
The measure isn't whether you ever fall down again. It's whether you increasingly know how to get yourself back up.
Grief can just be grief. It doesn't need to be a prover of your love. And it doesn't need to be hurried out.
When You Disenfranchise Your Own Grief After Alienation
Eventually, what can happen is this: we do to ourselves exactly what the outside world did.
We anticipate other people's reactions and gag ourselves in the moment. We decide not to participate in conversations, not to go to events, not to share our story. But worse — we can also become our own worst critics on the inside.
"Why am I still sad? I should be further along than this. I know better already."
"Why am I still looping on this? I've done this work already."
Your healing journey shouldn't require you to take over what the world was doing to you before. You don't need to disenfranchise your own grief just because you learned how to manage it.
The key distinction: allowing pain to be present is not the same as building a home inside your pain and suffering. You can let pain exist without moving in and getting cozy.
The 3 Stages of Healing Disenfranchised Grief
I see this as a developmental process — three stages from feeling unsupported in your disenfranchisement to stepping into your own enfranchisement.
Stage 1: "Please believe me." This is the baby belief stage. External reaction has enormous leverage. You're craving validation, needing permission from others. Selective sharing and environmental protection are appropriate here. You're learning to have your own back.
Stage 2: "You don't believe me. Damn it. But I still believe me." This is the wobbly walker. You can see it on people's faces when they don't understand. But instead of collapsing, you're practicing tolerating silence. Practicing not over-explaining. Practicing allowing people to misunderstand you. And practicing getting back up after you fall.
Stage 3: "You don't understand, and that's really okay." This is the sturdy belief. It's not defensive. It's not "I don't care what anybody thinks" — because that can actually be organized around what everybody thinks. It's simply that their reaction doesn't determine your relationship with your own experience anymore.
I love being understood. I love being validated. But I don't require being understood in order to understand myself.
This is where the magic happens. When you're no longer monitoring the other person's face in search of their verdict, you can actually listen. You can hear. You can say, "Oh, that's what you don't understand. Okay, now I see the disconnect. Do you want to understand? Can I help you understand?"
This is where grief becomes larger than the individual. This is how socially disenfranchised experiences gradually become more speakable, more approachable, more palatable — and how we eventually get support from others as a whole.
You Don't Owe Anyone Your Story After Alienation
Three things I want you to remember:
1. Nobody owes anybody advocacy. Not you, not me, not anyone. If you decide to approach conversations not in defense but for the bigger goal of educating and opening minds — fantastic. But nobody owes that to anyone. Don't further victimize yourself by thinking people need to learn to understand you.
2. Healing doesn't obligate you to speak. Just because you're healing doesn't mean you now have to go speak for the cause. You don't have to reap the benefits of post-traumatic growth if you don't want to. It's there if you want it. It's okay if you don't.
3. You never owe anyone your story. You don't owe anyone an explanation for why alienation happened, why your child isn't with you, why you're grieving. Healing doesn't mean you owe anybody anything specific. If you want to say you don't have kids in front of people you've just met, say that. If they're 9 and you say they're off in college, fine.
Your safety comes first — before whatever your definition of authenticity is. That's your permission slip if you need one.
When Sharing Your Grief Story Becomes a Choice Instead of a Plea
Once the world's reaction no longer threatens your relationship with yourself, sharing becomes a choice instead of a plea.
The developmental progression looks like this:
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Please believe me
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I can survive your disbelief
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I don't require your agreement or validation
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I'm curious as to why you see it differently
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Maybe I can help you understand something you've never experienced
And at the end of all of that: you become free enough to participate in changing the conversation without needing to control its outcome.
It's not becoming impervious. It's not eliminating grief. It's not controlling everyone's opinion. It's not building a perfectly grief-safe environment forever.
It's freedom. It's speaking without defending. It's educating without convincing. It's sharing without monitoring whether it landed correctly. It's contributing without controlling the outcome.
What Enfranchising Your Own Grief Actually Looks Like
Enfranchising your own grief after alienation is not:
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Everybody finally understands you
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You no longer care what anyone thinks
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You never hurt anymore
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You only share with grief-literate people
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You've successfully avoided every trigger
Instead, it is:
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Your grief is real even when someone doesn't understand it — and that's okay
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Someone else's discomfort does not require you to become uncomfortable too
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You can choose protection when you need it without turning it into permanent confinement
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You can wobble without deciding you've failed
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You can hurt without making pain prove your love or devotion
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You can heal without making healing mean the loss mattered less
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You don't have to stay miserable and suffering to keep your love visible
The Gentle Tachykinin Warning: What Perceived Isolation Does to Your Brain
When I exiled myself to the "Hermit on the Hill" for almost four years, I created far more isolation and suffering for myself than I needed to. What I didn't know then is that there's a neuropeptide called tachykinin (TAC2) that your brain releases when you've been in isolation — or perceived isolation — for more than three days.
The terrible thing about tachykinin is that it compounds your feelings of loneliness and isolation. It causes you to feel more alone, more angry, more agitated. It can make you feel like the world is out to get you, seeing danger everywhere.
But here's the key: it's about perceived isolation. You could be alone for a year and if you don't feel cast aside, your brain doesn't produce it. The second you do feel that loneliness — after three days — the peptide compounds it.
I overcame it before I ever knew what tachykinin was, and you can too. It's a matter of being intentional about your work and creating safe spaces outside of your protected space. Step by step. Inch by step. Like Reese's Pieces leading E.T. out of the cornfield.
Don't pad your life. It's going to start to feel very small and very boring, and it will backfire on you.
You Can Grieve Alienation AND Love the Life You're Building
This is where it all lands. You can hold both:
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I can grieve what happened and love the life I'm building
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I can hope for reconciliation and stop postponing my life until it happens
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I can acknowledge years I'll never get back and remain curious about the years that haven't happened yet
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I can miss my child desperately and experience joy without betraying them
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I can want to be understood and survive being misunderstood
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I can protect a fragile belief and eventually let it learn to walk out into the world
Controlling your environment might create familiarity, but it doesn't necessarily create safety. And it definitely doesn't create the new experiences that bring growth and joy.
I can tell my story and stop presenting my case.
Ultimately: I don't have to earn the right to grieve, and I don't have to earn the right to live. All of those are already infinite. They're present. They're here right now.
If you're feeling unsupported today, if you feel like the world around you doesn't understand you — I hear you. You can schedule a clarity call here or reach out to me at shelby@beyondthehighroad.com. I love hearing from you.
This is Beyond the High Road, Episode 208 — Disenfranchised Grief 2.0, Part 2. I'm 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, this show is my love letter to you.