How Stories Reach Alienated Kids When Discussions Can't
If you're a parent navigating parental alienation or family estrangement, you already know the hardest part isn't just the distance. It's watching your child hold onto a story about you that isn't true — and feeling powerless to change it.
But what if the very thing that could crack that story open isn't another carefully worded text message or a well-reasoned explanation? What if it's a story — someone else's story — that quietly plants the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there's more to what happened than they were told?
That's what this episode of [Beyond the High Road podcast — link] is all about.
The Outer Banks Moment That (Surprisingly) Started It All
My daughter introduced me to the show Outer Banks years ago, back when I was still meeting her at parks with a supervisor. I started watching it because I wanted to connect with her over something she loved. Five seasons later, I'm still watching.
In season five, the character Sarah Cameron finally comes face-to-face with her estranged mother — a mother she believed had simply chosen to walk away. Turns out, the full story was far more complicated. She'd been pushed out, threatened, kept away by people and circumstances Sarah knew nothing about.
As I watched that scene, I couldn't look away. Because somewhere out there, an alienated child could be watching this exact storyline — and for the first time, considering a possibility they were never ready to consider about their own parent.
Why Stories Get Through When Explanations Don't
When something is tied to your identity, your loyalty, your childhood, considering another interpretation feels threatening. That's true for our children, and honestly, it's true for us too.
But storytelling works differently. The nervous system gets to explore the emotional architecture without having to admit, "This might have something to do with me." Stories let kids rehearse loss, betrayal, forgiveness, and reconnection through characters before they ever encounter those things in their own lives.
A story can reach a place that an argument will never be invited to.
The Six Easter Eggs That Stories Leave for Kids of High-Conflict Divorces
After watching that episode, I jotted down six things this storyline allows to coexist — things that apply to any alienated child, not just fictional ones:
1. Absence does not necessarily mean a lack of love. And on the flip side, your child's absence from your life doesn't mean they don't love you either.
2. The explanation a child receives may not contain the entire story. Seeing that play out in someone else's world — even a fictional one — can restructure how they think about parent-child relationships.
3. New information doesn't automatically produce relief. Sometimes it feels destabilizing. Sometimes anger comes first — not because they don't love you, but because their entire belief system has to reorganize.
4. Reunion doesn't erase grief, distrust, or confusion. A child may need to move through something that resembles grief before they can feel safe enough for reconnection.
5. Reconnection doesn't have to mean instant intimacy. About 80% of my coaching clients have reconnected with their children during or after our time together — and nearly all of them discovered that reconnection brings a whole new set of skills to learn. [Coaching program link — space]
6. "I'm hurt" and "maybe I don't know everything" can both be true. Alienation creates forced binaries. Stories let characters hold contradictions first, and our children get to witness them.
The Easter Egg Never Changed — The Person Does
Here's the part that's easy to miss: The Easter egg never changed. It's the person who encounters it that changes.
At 15, questioning a family narrative might feel like a threat to your entire sense of belonging. At 22, you've lived outside the family system for a while. At 30, maybe you've become a parent yourself. Maybe you've discovered that someone you trusted was capable of lying to you.
The same idea you desperately tried to communicate five years ago might be completely dismissed back then — yet today, some storyline on Netflix containing essentially the same message gets through. Not because Netflix explains it better, but because they're not the same person anymore. And because the pressure is off — it's a story, not an argument.
Don't Point at the Easter Egg
This is the lesson in restraint that we as alienated parents have to learn: let them find them when they are ready.
When you point at the Easter egg, it stops being an invitation and becomes evidence for the prosecution — your defense argument. Two people can encounter the exact same story. One sees nothing. The other thinks, "Wait a second — could that be my situation too?" The difference isn't the story. It's the readiness.
Your job is still to reach out, to stay connected when you can. But trying to orchestrate the moment of realization? That's what I call "fucking with fate." If they get the answers before they're ready, you've wasted the opportunity — and readdressing it later feels redundant and weird.
Active Hope vs. Passive Hope
Here's where this all comes together for us as parents. There's a difference between:
- Passive hope: Believing something will change in your world to make you feel better. Waiting for signs. Manufacturing meaning. This is what prolonged my suffering for years.
- Active hope: Accepting that all outcomes remain possible without making your life dependent on one. Leaving the door unlocked without spending your whole life staring at it.
Possibility is expansive. Waiting is not.
Leave room for their story to change. But don't stop writing yours.
What Easter Eggs Are Already in Your Life?
Easter eggs aren't just for our kids. They're for us too. It could be:
- Staying interested in something your child loves — your own quiet connection
- [Previous episode on Sandra from Kentucky — link space]
- Finding examples of other people not just surviving, but thriving after what they once believed would destroy them (read Shawn's story).
- Keeping the private inner relationship alive in a way that honors your enduring love
- Building a life of meaning, identity, and purpose that sits next to your motherhood
I spent years believing I was going to end up destroyed by this. I was wrong. And if you're in that place right now, I need you to know — there's a path forward that doesn't require your child to come home first.
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Watch the full episode: Beyond the High Road Episode 205
If you're tired of waiting for life to start again and want a roadmap to get unstuck, click here for more info.
And here, if you want to skip the landing page and go straight to scheduling your free clarity call
Episode Transcript
When Your Alienated Child Starts Questioning the Story: The Easter Eggs of Reconnection
So a daughter grows up believing that her mom left her Not that circumstances pulled them apart. Not that there may be more to the story
But instead that her mom made the choice to leave and apparently she never looked back
Years later,
the daughter finds out that the story that she's been carrying may not be the full picture
That her mother didn't simply just walk away
She'd been pushed out, threatened
She was kept away by people and by circumstances that her daughter knew nothing about
And when they finally come face to face, the daughter, of course, doesn't immediately fall into her mother's arms and be like, "Oh my gosh, now I see." No. She's angry and she's hurt Because she doesn't know what to believe
Part of her wants answers, right? And the other part of her is so fiercely attached to the story that she's always believed and the reality that she's been living for years
And as I was watching this all play out
A thought occurred to me that somewhere there could be an estranged or alienated child watching this exact story
Maybe even one that would completely reject those possibilities if they were presented in the context of their own parent
But this isn't their parent
And sometimes, y'all, we can consider a possibility that exists in someone else's world long before we can consider it for our own
So you are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 206,
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.
Okay, y'all. So that daughter is Sarah Cameron from the show Outer Banks. And if you've never watched Outer Banks, I'm not totally sure that I wanna recommend that you do. My daughter, Scarlett, um Introduced me to the show probably five years ago, six years ago, whenever the first season was.
Um, back when I was going to the parks with, meeting her at the park with the supervisor, she loved it, and because I was always, and I've been talking about this a lot lately, I was always interested in what she was interested in I started to watch it sort of alongside her, if you will.
Separate homes, maybe not in the same home, in the same room, the same home, but yeah, with her, because it gave me a way to connect to her. But I will say, y'all, that the show itself is objectively... Well, maybe not objectively. I guess it depends on who you talk to, but it's a complete shit show. It is like a 20-car pileup of young adult, teen, young adult melodrama.
Okay? It's like if a prime primetime soap opera, you know, or a telenovela, something like that, and the movie Goonies had a baby. It's a lot of drama and treasure hunting. But somewhere along the way, y'all, I got invested in these kids, And their r- absolutely ridiculous lives. So of course, here we are, five, six years later, and I am still watching Outer Banks.
And recently, the story that I just mentioned in the cold open, that happened, In season five. Actually, episodes five, season five,
five years ago, that's when it started. It's all fives. Um,
I have no idea whether Scarlett still watches the show.
I have no idea. She may not, okay? But it occurred to me that if she does, she just witnessed or encountered a story about a daughter who had spent years believing one thing about her absent parent, only to discover that there was an entirely different reality that she'd been given access to, Mmm, talking about Sarah Cameron.
And here's what struck me, I didn't have to tell my daughter about it, I didn't have to send her any article. I didn't have to message her on TikTok trying to explain parental alienation, right? I didn't have to make some carefully constructed argument either about why a child might understand, misunderstand an absent parent's behavior, The story just simply exists in her world
And so again, maybe she saw it, maybe she didn't
Maybe she saw it and thought absolutely nothing about it
Or maybe some teeny tiny part of her registered a possibility that she wasn't otherwise ready for or even conscious enough to connect to with her own life. I don't actually know, and that is the point of w- where we're going today
Because I think that there are these little Easter eggs planted, scattered throughout our lives, in our stories, in our experiences, in our relationships, in our conversations, all of it that quietly introduce the possibilities without-- we weren't e-ever ready to consider or believe beforehand, It's not proof It's not signs from the universe that your child is secret, secretly figuring things out either, And it's definitely not something that I'm offering that you guys go hunting for and looking to assign meaning to
Because you all know exactly, if you've been listening for a while, you know exactly how I feel about building a life that revolves around waiting for somebody else to change, waiting for somebody else to see, Instead, what I'm talking about here, y'all, is the little very necessary micro steps that happen between distance and reconnection It's the exposure to possibility
Maybe it's a story that makes room, somebody's story, that makes room for a question
an experience that creates maybe a tiny little contradiction
A shared moment maybe with somebody that allows a person to think, "Huh Maybe there could be a further explanation, a different explanation than the one I have had
And the beauty around it is then that nobody is standing around beside them demanding that they come to a conclusion to that question
Because sometimes I believe that that curiosity becomes possible precisely because nobody is standing around demanding where it has to lead, you know?
So today I wanna talk about those little Easter eggs of reconnection
I wanna talk about one, why stories in particular can sometimes reach places that arguments can't, okay? Two, why you probably shouldn't point at the Easter egg when you see one, and three, why I think that there's enormous value in leaving room for somebody else's story to change without you putting your whole life on hold, wringing your hands, waiting for it to happen.
Okay? So
Y'all, I'm stopping and starting this video because yesterday... I've had-- There's been, like, a tech goblin in my world for the last three weeks or so. I swear. I remember a couple weeks ago, I told you that I had to re-record because the sound was completely muted. Well, my camera is at it again, amongst a lot of other stuff that I won't talk about, just random calendar, calendar, n- uh, links just completely going dead and what have you.
But yesterday, I recorded the whole video, this video, for tod- for now, for the episode, and, I noticed that it froze up right at the ending, right around forty-four minutes of me recording, and I couldn't get it to stop. And now the file is sitting there, but it's not readable at all. So, here I am recording again.
Anyway, um, just letting you know l- my backstory, the challenges for today. But I do truly believe that always, if I do ever have to record twice, the second one is actually... Even though there's some frustration in it, the second one usually ends up better sometimes I forget what I've already said, but it is what it is.
So, here we are. Okay.
Why Stories Can Get Through When Explanation Can't
Let's talk about first the idea of why stories actually can get through when explanations, uh, specifically our explanations to them, usually do not.
Okay? So
when something is tied directly to my mother, my father, my childhood, my loyalty, my identity, considering another interpretation can feel enormously threatening.
For a kid especially, for an adult child of alienation, if alienation started before their critical thinking started to take hold and before they could regulate their emotions, it can still feel entirely threatening. And for us as adults, it can, for anybody, it can feel enormously threatening to have to question your whole belief system, and we have talked about this a lot before, right?
But here's the beauty of the story that I shared with you above, and I'm going to sort of base the beginning of this episode on, is that Sarah Cameron, the girl from Outer Banks, she's safe, especially for our children, You can feel compassion for her mother, anybody could, And also be furious that she-- that Sarah wasn't given the whole story, You can understand Sarah's anger, but you can also sim-simultaneously at the same time think she deserves answers, Sarah deserves answers, and understand why she doesn't immediately trust the answers she's given, right? It all makes sense.
So with storytelling, the great thing is, is that the nervous system gets to explore the emotional architecture, if you will, without having to admit, "Oh, this might have something to do with me."
And stories have always done this for humans We rehearse loss, betrayal, courage, forgiveness, identity, love, danger, transformation through characters way before we encounter or even understand those things for ourselves
A story can reach a place that an argument will never be invited to
We're welcome at, So I am not saying that every estrangement, alienation, has this exact storyline, Real families, obviously we, all of our s- different situations are super complex, right? And every situation has its own facts, its own nuances, and facets,
but the emotional pattern, right? Where one parent's absence ends up becoming proof that they are unloving or that they're uncaring is painfully familiar for us as alienated parents and for f- our families as a whole. You know?
Marker
So I'm gonna... I wrote down, so let me just tell you, let me give you some back, a little bit of backstory. So I told you already that my daughter introduced me to the show because she was in love with John B. back in the first and second season, right? And so I immediately went to go home and watch it 'cause I was, it was like, oh, goody.
It was like a kid on Christmas for me because I got to love something or experience something that she loved, right? The, the show. And so I remember every, not every second of it, but I remember very clearly what I was doing when I was living in Texas and I started watching this. So it must've been like six years ago.
Um, and anyway, fast forward, how, five, six years, whatever it's been, and here I am every year actually, whenever Netflix pops up Outer Banks, I never actually expect it, and I'm always like, "Oh, here we go again," you know? And it's like almost like a love hate. It's like I know I'm getting ready to watch a train wreck,
but at the same time, it's a way for me to connect with her, uh, emotionally. You know? It's my own Easter egg with her. And so, um, this just a couple weeks ago, it popped up on Netflix again, and I... episode five I was actually over at a friend's house. I was watching her place, right? And I was doing my nails or something, and this part of the storyline where Sarah actually comes into contact with her mom, and Sarah believed...
Now, I know that this is all fiction, but it all has an, a meaning and a point at the end, so stick with me. the topic of Sarah, whenever she was in season one through season, basically the beginning of season five, the topic of Sarah and Sarah's mom was never actually addressed. It had been, like, an open we knew that her mom wasn't around, but we didn't know why. And so then Sarah, you see Sarah talking with somebody saying that, "I don't really know why she left.
I guess she just wasn't ready to be a mom." And it was something that she accepted into her life. That's how she lived. That w- was what was handed to her by her father, who was abusive, um, in many ways, and you saw that before, but now he's dead because hello, telenovela type show. But anyway, so now he's dead, and it's safe for her to go and actually visit Mom.
She was doing it becau- for a different reason, and we won't go into that right now. But when that scene showed up of them reconnecting, it hadn't even occurred to me that there might be alienation going on, that this show might be visiting an alienation situation, an abuse situation. But when the scene came up where, about Mom and the whole explanation, I, like, was looking down, not kind of paying attention, and I, uh, I must have been mouth gaping open, glued to the TV for the rest of the episode because to me, I was just so happy that this was being addressed in a teen, young adult sort of show, number one, for obvious reasons, right?
For not only for my daughter because I think chances are, if she was watching it back then, she's probably still watching it today, even if she's in college, it's been later. Chances are good. Who knows, you know? Um, but also for all of our, the other children out there, this is a way for our children to, to digest what might be going on with them before they even make that connection.
It sort of normalizes the situation for them. Not normalizes alienation, but normalizes it, creates a safe space because other people have experienced it, you know? Just like how all of us have, uh, oftentimes ... It just right now reminded me of, call back to whatever episode that was, and I was talking about my friend Sandra from Kentucky, who used to watch the Travel Channel, and she really believed that she went to those places.
But it was all through an experience that she was having, and she put herself in that situation. It's the same kind of thing here, you know? So anyway, back to where I was. Um, when I was watching the episode five and glued to the TV, I immediately pulled out my phone, my notes section, and started jotting down some ideas that this storyline allows to coexist, right?
And I also immediately, of course, came up with this idea about the Easter eggs of reconnection. So I wanna share with you right now the, um... I don't know why my s- screen always does that. Like, a, a few minutes in to my recording, it will flash and do that weird color change.
Easter Eggs That Outer Banks Left for Kids of High-Conflict Divorces
Anyway, so I'm gonna give you now the six ideas that I jotted down that I believe that this episode offers.
Okay? So one is obviously that absence does not necessarily mean a lack of love, right? It doesn't, obviously. And I think I was talking about this yesterday in my first effort... sometimes, and I won't speak for everybody here, I will speak for myself. For me, absence, although I fought it tooth and nail for the beginning, I mean, for probably the first, um, f- four years, really, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13...
Yeah, about four years I fought it tooth and nail. It was really painful for me. And of course, I was going back to court, and I sold my house, and I did all these things. Clearly, I was fighting for her, but I fought also the situation. I fought... I was re- in v- a lot of resistance to it. And now I have a different way of looking at that.
If you're new listener, then, um, you may not fully, um, know that part yet, but it's in previous episodes. I'm not gonna fully visit it today. But I, I believe that you can actually fight for without resistance is the whole, um, summary probably of what I teach.
Anyway, after I decided, I started to manage my mind, I realized that the absence that was occurring, like I think-- that when something huge happens or even something little, that there are many different interpretations and there are many different benefits that all the people involved, and maybe even the people afterwards that it filters out to, can gain from whatever happened, right?
Whatever circumstance that took place, right? so I don't think that there's one reason that, that we're all alienated or that each of us are alienated. It's, it's never because you, you were a bad parent or I was a bad parent or anything like that. Obviously, there's abuse happening. And also, like that can be true that there's abuse happening and it could be bad if we wanna label bad and good.
But then also for me, I know that the distance, I can look back now and see that distance was an, a, tool for me a portal for me to be able to Work on me basically, but also I didn't know I was doing it, but I was looking to Scarlett to define me, I was looking to Scarlett to give me help me to feel worthy, to feel, like a good parent, right?
And so, though it's a very common thing, right? Many, many parents that aren't alienated, all-- many parents do this, especially, moms. If the-- whoever the stay-at-home parent is, actually, let me just say it like that, this, this can happen with. my point is that for me, the absence, the distance caused me, like one of the benefits that came out of it, is it caused me to really build my own self-worth up.
My, you know, and to create a life of meaning that sat next to and still sits next to my motherhood and my relationship with my daughter, even though right now it's from afar, you know? And I didn't have that before that. I thought that I did, but I did not. I can look back and see very clearly.
And so what I'm saying here is that the absence, though it may be awful, I know for y'all it doesn't, the absence does not mean a lack of love. But sometimes we don't actually consider that absence on their part doesn't mean a lack of love, especially if the absence occurred in their late teen year or their e- even mid-teen years and into adulthood, right?
Many parents will be like, "Yeah, but they don't call, they don't text, they don't whatever. They don't love me." Well, it doesn't always have to be the case. In fact, most of the time it's not the case, you know? So just hold that. That's one of the lessons that I think that this show permits, right? And if I'm gonna be talking about...
Now let me go back, because I'm gonna be talking about us a little later, so I'm gonna go back to what I think that this permits for,
kids. Hopefully, I'll stay there, because most, my normal way is to gear everything towards us as parents, but we'll see. So number two the explanation a child receives may not of course, contain the entire story. And for our children to see that play out in somebody else's story, even if fictional, is amazing. It restructures the way that they think about relationships in general, but especially parent-child relationships, right? Explanations don't have to contain the entire story, and because depending on when they were alienated, the alienation tactics, uh, strategies began, their critical thinking skills may be altered or stunted, you know?
And yesterday when I was recording, I went into an whole explanation about what you can do about that, but I think I'm gonna actually leave that alone because it really deserves its own episode.
So I'm just gonna move on to point three, which is a longer point. Um, it actually bleeds into f-four, five and six.
So new information, point three is that new information doesn't automatically produce relief, And this is for them, But also for us. Here I go right back to it, but it doesn't matter. Sometimes new information feels, of course, destabilizing, right?
Sometimes it feels like betrayal. Sometimes the anger comes first, Not because they're incapable of love, whoever it is that's getting the new information
And not because reconnection itself is wrong for whoever it is, But because the person's nervous system
has to reorganize around a reality that they were actually never prepared to hold
So what I'm saying here is that a child who's been given a story about a parent may not be ready to release it just simply because new facts emerge
Their identity, their safety, their loyalty, their, their memory, And the relationship to the alienating environment itself
may all be tied into that story that they're holding onto
So when the truth begins to surface, right? They may move through something that resembles grief, something that remem- uh, resembles shock, defensive anger, confusion, loyalty conflict, of course
and or emotional shutdown. And we can understand that, And that happens all before they can even begin to feel any sort of tenderness
So like in the show, Sarah's reunion comes after years of believing that abandonment meant a lack of love
The story's premise is a bit heightened, a bit um, sensationalized, right? The, the full story's premise, but the emotional mechanism that's happening is super recognizable for us, That alienation can turn absence into a character indictment
Like they left because they didn't care
Even though the fuller story is obviously much more complicated
So basically through a nervous system lens, reconnection is much less about the finally getting some sort of truth, right? And more like coming out of a survival response. Truly, when someone has been under, our kids have been under long-term emotional pressure, conflicting narratives, fear, manipulation, m- loyalty binds, w- whatever it is, which we-- many of us can understand if we were also in that relationship, right?
With the alienating parent. Um, their system may end up organizing around certainty, which we've talked about, uh, lots, you know. Certainty obviously can feel much safer than ambiguity
Even when that certainty is painful or so- or false and then any sort of reconnection or idea of reconnection, w- like for them watching a story is safe, but the idea in their own life when they're not ready, um, can introduce ambiguity again. Like, "What if I was wrong? What if I miss them?"
What does this all mean about the people that I trusted?
What if loving this parent hurts somebody else?
Well, what if I open this door and end up getting hurt and getting left again? Which is one that usually isn't recognized or definitely not spoken, What if I want them but I'm still angry is another one that I wrote down here, and I think that that one really sums a lot of it up because for our children, they are so used to black and white, yeah?
So what I'm saying here is that this all means that in the lessons that our children might be learning in this story and in many others that are out there, this is not an uncommon, story in real families' lives, right? It's just, to me, this is the first time I've seen it addressed so blatantly. So, um, yeah.
I mean, for c- for, uh, in a young adult show, yeah, I think so. Sorry, I, I, I interrupted myself, but anger in early reconnection doesn't always mean their anger towards you, doesn't always mean that it's rejection, that they're rejecting you.
It's just that their anger is a protective response, right? It could be like their grief wearing a suit of armor
Like it's their nervous system like being like there's way too much information way too fast, So anger is definitely not always the opposite of connection
Sometimes anger surfaces, actually is able to surface when the connection has finally become sort of emotionally or becoming emotionally possible to feel the loss that they've actually experienced. I hope that makes sense. You know how in a, in a stress response, many times you can't just jump out of a stress response.
Sometimes you have to walk your way back up or down the ladder. You know what I'm saying? So and a, and child may need to walk backwards through the stages that, that they were never allowed to feel or have in real time whenever they were grieving, right? The confusion, denial, anger, grief, curiosity, and eventually they could feel-- start to feel connection again.
But they weren't allowed to feel any of that over there, right? The photos were come, came down. The, the, there was a silence when they spoke about us and all those sort of things. So they adjusted to that and having to reintroduce all of a sudden like boom, reconnection, it's can feel really destabilizing like I mentioned a little while ago,
Why Reunion Mean Intimacy or Erase Grief
All right, so now the last three points are Maybe a summary or they're somewhat revisiting what I just kind of walked through because I jumped ahead of myself. number four I've got here is reunion doesn't erase grief, distrust, or confusion. a child is gonna have to experience that grief oftentimes before they can feel safe enough to actually feel safe enough for the reconnection.
That was... You know what I'm saying. And of course, That would mean that like, uh, my point five is that reconnection doesn't have to mean instant intimacy. So, so many parents I know are like, "Yeah, we've reconnected, but where's the rest?" Oh my gosh, I'm thinking of somebody right now who's like, "We should be further along than this. Why are we not further along than this?
Why won't they return my phone calls immediately?" Even though they have been established and reconnected, because so many of my clients, you guys, I'd say about 80% of my clients have, uh, were either reconnected while we were in our six-month time together or they've reconnected some time afterwards. I never ever sell that as part of the packaging because it's not about that.
It's really about the parent and your, regulation and your responses and your experience, right? And that once you raise your frequency and process through all of what I just was talking about, then you're finally sort of ready and able to attract that, right? And me, myself, I have not reconnected with my child.
You know, there's been brief little blurbs, right? But that hasn't happened yet, and that is okay because I fully know, fully know that she's not feeling safe enough, and I know exactly why. And it's not for today, but, uh, there are circumstances in her life that are gonna cause her to f- cause this, us to feel unsafe.
I get that. And like I said, I will not rush it. I'm not expectant sitting there waiting and tapping my foot for her to come back. But anyway, the instant intimacy, this is a common misconception with many parents, and they may know it in the, like, in their, the forefront of their mind or, like, up in their higher thinking that, yeah, of course it's gonna take some time because that's just common sense.
But when you're actually in it is a whole 'nother thing, and all of a sudden... Like, I've had so many of those, that 80% message me back and say, "Hey, can you do a program for parents that have already reconnected?" Because there's such a need for that because it's a whole new bag of chips, a whole new bag of skills, conversational skills, and, uh, your own, um, self-regulation skills and, and what have you.
You know? So Yeah, there's that. It's just that it doesn't mean int- instant intimacy, and the timeline, I guess what I'm saying, even though this is really about Easter eggs, I just wanna say that it can look so, so different for each and every individual child and also parent. Okay. Um, so the other lesson that this Easter egg of this episode taught is that I'm hurt and maybe I don't know everything can both be true, right?
And that is great for our children to know because alienation, of course, tends to create these binaries, right? These forced binaries. Like, if Dad loves me, then what does that mean about Mom? If Mom lied about this, the-- what else wasn't true that she said? Can I still trust her? Or, you know, it's, you change these, interchange the Mom and Dad thing here.
But if I miss him, am I betraying her? If I miss her, am I, am I betraying him, If I question my story Does that mean I have to, to question my entire childhood? Do I-- does that mean that my entire childhood was based on lies, that my childhood then was a lie? That's-- it feels very threatening for children, you know, or adult children, for anybody really.
The great thing about f-fiction is these characters in those stories, they get to hold the contradictions first, and our children get to witness them, and those are their Easter eggs, right?
Hey, everyone. I'm just taking a teeny little break from today's episode because I want to address something that I know many of you are experiencing right now
When you're stuck in the thick of either alienation or estrangement, it is incredibly easy to feel like your life is on permanent pause
Like you cannot breathe Let alone rebuild until the situation fixes itself, But I wanna share a quick reminder of what is actually possible
One of our community members came to me completely frozen by the grief of this journey together we worked on helping him step out of survival mode, cultivate real meaning
and reinvent his own life from the ground up
and while that was the work, not trying to force a particular outcome His story continued to change
And he is now part of the 80% of clients that I talk about in this episode who have successfully reconnected with his children
So if you are tired of waiting for life to start again And you want a roadmap to get unstuck?
I wanna invite you to read their full story, his family's full story And to see exactly the steps that we together used
So if you're interested, then click on the link in the episode description to check it out. And that's it. We can go back to the episode now
The Power of Allowing Our Kids to Discover, Not Be Explained To
There's another, um... There was a preview of something that I saw recently, and I always see stuff like this, like little things, and it doesn't always have to do with like the actual reconnection.
But I see little Easter eggs all the time, possible potential Easter eggs that could be dropped in my daughter's pathway, right? Somewhere in her environment. And um, one of them, you guys, is a preview I just saw for a movie that's not out yet called Forgotten Island. You know, it's a, animated movie, And I don't know, I couldn't... I watched the longer preview, like I went and looked for it, the three-minute preview of it. I can't tell whether it's geared towards little kids. It kinda seems like teenagers or, or, or college age almost. I, I'm not entirely sure, or maybe it's everybody. But, um, if you haven't seen that preview, maybe you go and watch it.
But there are some very strong parallels between that preview, like that movie, I guess, and our situations of alienation. Forgotten Island, I'm sure you can imagine what might happen there, right? I mean, the storyline is different, um, but the ideas about forgetting parts of your story, parts of your life are all the same, from what it seems anyway.
So the, this is another thing, like if you still have contact with your kids. And I'm gonna talk about there's a connecting- thought to this that or a, caveat, I guess, to this in a second, but that if you still, have visits with your kiddos, and if it's appropriate, again, I'm not sure what the age who they're marketing this to and what the rating is, but it might be a great movie to take them to go see because it's the movie saying it, not you.
So long as Now I'm getting ready to talk about it. So long as you're not pointing out or making the movie the lesson of why you went, questioning them afterwards about what they learned from the movie, okay? Because remember like When you ever, if you celebrate Easter, at least you did Easter egg hunts as a kid or with your kids really, and if you didn't, you can just imagine this.
But like remember when you, set all the Easter eggs out maybe in your yard or you took them somewhere to go do the Easter egg hunt? So many parents, and I know I did this and I know my parents did, my mom did this for me, would, especially as toddlers, would go and point out where the Easter eggs are so as to, like avoid the, your toddler's or your child's frustration, right? You wanted to, you don't wanna see them in pain and getting frustrated because all the other kids had the Easter eggs. You just like set them out where they could see them, or you hinted at where those Easter eggs were, right?
Well, this is not what I'm suggesting here. You want now these Easter eggs that are planted all throughout their life,
through, through their days and through their- whatever,
let them find them when they are ready. This is, this is the lesson in restraint that we as parents, as alienated parents, estranged parents, whatever, must learn, I think
Because when you let them find it, then it remains an invitation instead of becoming, like, evidence for the prosecution, Like, your defense argument
Because you guys, an Easter egg itself doesn't actually-- If it's wherever it's planted in your kiddo's life, and that may just keep getting planted as they go on, right? It's not the thing that causes insight, and this is really important to know, to consider, to remember, right? Two people can encounter the exact same story, and one sees nothing, and then the other one thinks, "Oh my gosh, wait a second."
Was that-- Could that be my situation, too?" So it really just depends. The change is , what happens when they're ready to go see pick up that Easter egg is the development they develop over time, their life experience, their safety, their identity, their perspective, Which requires, sometimes requires distance, absence even So like at 15, questioning a family narrative might feel like it's threatening your entire sense of belonging if this is you and your kiddo situation, at 22, and m- I'm gonna also say something after this, but at 22, you've lived outside of the family system for a while, right?
Like after college and stuff. So like you're ex- experiencing, you're out from underneath their thumb most often anyway. Um, at 30, maybe you've loved somebody who misunderstood you, Or the opposite. Maybe you've become a parent. Maybe you've discovered, that somebody you trusted, super trusted for a long time was actually capable of lying to you, you know?
Maybe you had an experience, of being like absolutely certain about somebody's motives, about some- why somebody's present or doing whatever they're doing, and later discovered that you were wrong, you know? And I don't mean to make that like all dun, dun, dun, but it's not-- my point here is The Easter egg never changed.
The Easter egg stayed the same. It's the person that encounters the Easter egg is what changes. It's the perspective, Because we tend to focus on finding the right message, I speak with parents all day long that are like, "I just need to say it right. How do, what should I say in my text? What should I say when I speak to them?" It's like the perfect way to, present whatever it is that you're offering to your child at that time, if you're still in connection, or maybe even if you're not, if you still have access to their phone number and stuff like that, and you can text them.
Um, we wanna find the perfect gift, the perfect place to go to lunch if you're meeting, all of that. It feels like you have to set everything up, set the stage perfectly in order for them to receive whatever it is that you're offering. But sometimes the message
is never really or was never the missing ingredient
what's in the message never has any missing ingredients. Maybe the message is perfect, but instead, readiness on their part is. That's what's needed. Just like I was talking about with me with my daughter, a little bit ago
And that can fully explain why the same idea that maybe that you tried, desperately tried to communicate to them five years ago might be completely dismissed back then
Yet today, some dramatic Netflix storyline
Containing almost exactly or essentially the same ideas gets through to them years later. Could get through to them years later, you know? Not because Netflix explains it better or whatever, some show or some book or some movie explains it better if they're friends, it's because they're not the same person that they were when you tried to explain it, and also, they're-- the-- like I was explaining in the beginning, the pressure is off of them because it's, it's shown, it's deli- it's the delivery, it's the package, not the message.
The package it arrives in, the wrapping, if you will. Because it's... One can be, threatening, and the other can feel like a possibility, you know, a distant possibility in somebody other, else's life, especially somebody that we respect, especially as kids, Um, I just had another thought while I was thinking about this, that, like, Sarah Cameron is this gorgeous, uh, teen, and so because if you're looking up to...
Many kids probably do look up to the Sarah Cameron, right? And they all have really, good ethics, morals, ethics, you know? And so they've positioned these kids in a way that speaks to them and influences them in a good way, And a lot of shows are doing that more and more these days.
And so having them up on that, fictional pedestal, if you will, is innocent and actually can be really, really helpful for us, for our families in general, like for you and your parent-child relationship, because now they can easily accept it from somebody else that they respect, like adore and what have you.
I know I'm explaining the obvious here, but in this situation or this context, I think it's, helpful to consider.
Life's Unexpected Little Easter Eggs (Reconnection Possibilities)
What I wanna touch on right now, you guys, is that Easter eggs don't have to be limited to stories at all or to, like, fiction at all. Sometimes life itself is the Easter egg, an Easter egg for them could be watching a friend's divorced parents successfully actually coexist, And we know that that happens. Divorces and, um, co-parenting situations are a dime a dozen these days, right? So they can one day-- maybe it seems normal that other parents have it that way, and then also in a weird way normal that they have it in the way that they do, but at one point maybe some interaction between these cooperative two co-parents will affect them in a different way, you know?
You just never know. It could be becoming a parent, And suddenly understanding something about parental love that wasn't accessible, at 16 or at whatever age, It could be you guys, and I've seen this happen, hearing somebody describe estrangement or alienation and unexpectedly by the child, them identifying with the parent rather than the child in the situation.
I've seen that happen because there's some commonality between the parent and the child, even if there's this huge age gap, you know, a hobby or a, the personality trait or whatever it is. And all of a sudden now child identifies with this alienated or estranged parent more than they identify with their friend, or the person they respect, So it could be discovering, of course, old photos, a memory resurfacing, of course, from that old photo. It could be hearing a song, sensory stuff, you know, songs, hearing, smelling something, somebody asking an innocent question, especially if that's somebody that's asking the question or saying something, unknowingly saying something is like a school counselor perhaps, or a therapist,
they, maybe they don't know the full picture of kiddo's, situation yet, your kiddo's situation yet, but they say something that hits them in a way, they're very direct about how parents should be or something like that, and they don't realize that the, that your child has gone through what they have, you know?
It can be lots of things. Um, a movie, a book, , their own heartbreak, . Um, even discovering that they themselves have, like I was saying earlier, have misunderstood somebody else that they love, right? Or somebody's been mis- somebody's misunderstood them, So, um
Easter Eggs Aren't Only For Our Kids
as I've been kind of...
I hinted at earlier and I've been kind of, uh, addressing throughout that obviously that Easter eggs are not only for our children, And i- it's important for us to remember because So many of us are like sitting around staring through binoculars, theoretical binoculars, waiting for signs.
So some of the Easter eggs that are left in
our lives could be something as simple as, you know, I was talking with you guys, I don't know, I shared it, it in one of the m- more recent episodes, mm, the last couple months anyway, um, about my daughter and her friend from when they were infants and toddlers.
My friend's son, who those kids, those... The two of them are six days apart, and though we spent four, five, six days a week together sometimes when they were infants and when they were up until two or three, four years old, right? A- When they were school age, kindergarten and on, actually preschool on, they had moved further out, so they went to different schools.
They were, like, th- 30 minutes away. And so, though they knew of each other just through high schools, you know, and football games and stuff like that, they really never ever conversed except for every so often on TikTok, right? And then recently, he sent his mom a picture of him and Scarlett. And I-- for me, that was an Easter egg.
It was like, oh my gosh, look, she's now, connected to a family that I know speaks highly of me, that has my back. And her son, has roots with me, and still good memories about me, So that's one of them. Also, even just my continued connection to Outer Banks is arguably another one of these for me, right? Like, I get to sit and watch a show and connect with my daughter emotionally, feel close to her emotionally while I'm watching this. And I know that each one of you has something like this that causes you, you may watch, uh, quote, quote-unquote, "alongside of them," or you stay interested in something that they stay interested in or they were interested in, you know?
And that causes a closeness, a connection for you. There were also just little reminders that existed outside of the situation of alienation, Reminders of who your child actually is and was underneath all of this chapter. The goofy, silly, fun, playful side of them,
so there's those kinds of, Easter eggs, right? The ones that cause connection between us, between me and Scarlett, and between you and your children, right? And then there are other Easter eggs that I believe that are left in front of us, around us, when we're ready to see them, that expand the possibility of you, me, us being okay whether or not reconnection happens on the timeline that you so desperately, we so desperately desire.
kind of like I just was referring to is keeping the private inner relationship alive, not in a way that replaces obviously, a, physical connection, But instead in a way that honors your enduring love and devotion. Also Easter eggs left that show you evidence that your own life can still contain connection, meaning, joy, purpose, love, all of those things too, all of the good stuff. Identity, right? Expanding your identity, all of that. Looking for, um, finding evidence for that are for sure like those big Easter eggs for y'all, and they were for me.
And ex- of course, one of the bigger ones for us as alienated parents is finding examples of other people Surviving things, whether it's alienation or not, surviving things, and not only surviving, but thriving after what they once believed would destroy them.
I know for me, I thought there's no way a person, like in the beginning, for the first, I don't know how many years, I mean, and a lot during it, 'cause alienation before it all blew up and she ended up leaving, it started when she was an infant. So I was enduring like the, uh, strategies for nine full years before it ever like actually took hold, right?
And during that whole time, and then maybe the four years afterwards, I really truly thought that how could a parent going through what I am, especially when I thought that I was the only one experiencing it, how could they ever feel anything but victimized? How could they ever have a life after what just happened?
You know, especially after it happened and she was gone. I'm like, "What are, what are the odds for me?" I really truly believed that I was gonna be laying in a gutter somewhere. I did. I mean, it's dark, but it's true. 100% true. And so when I found examples of, at that time, I did not find anybody that had survived and thrived after alienation.
That wasn't a thing. I did find like books that doctors wrote about alienation or like... Yeah. Oh, there was one book that I found. it was a lady up in Canada that wrote it, It was like a more of like a, journal almost about everything that happened and all the, the judges that did her wrong and all the things, right?
So that was one lady, and she seemed like her life seemed pretty good, you know, but I, I... She had another kid and all the things. But other than that, I really didn't find anything that anybody ... So I had to find it in other people, and that is fine too. Like, for some of you, yeah, probably it was this podcast, some of you longtime listeners or maybe just even new listeners.
Maybe it was seeing that it's possible to survive after this. Maybe it's somebody, some other alienated parent. Whatever it is, you being open to finding those examples of other people thriving through something that seemed unsurvivable, those are-- that's an amazing, Easter egg of hope, you know. And I don't love that word hope, and I'm gonna actually talk about that right now, conveniently enough.
Cultivating Active Hope vs Passive To Rewrite Your Path Forward
Let me just give you some reminders here that what everything that I've talked about today is not to offer you that, oh my gosh, like the idea, maybe it's not Outer Banks, but like it's not for me, "Oh my gosh, she watches Outer Banks too.
This is a sign." It's not about you finding the signs, the cosmic, oh, this is... It's all gonna work out. And I'm not saying that that's bad, but if you're-- I don't want you to manufacture meaning where there is none, you know? mean, you gonna make the meaning, and we are meaning makers. That's the whole point of this episode, right?
Is that storytelling and, um, making meaning is what causes us to, enables us to process and then, of course, thrive afterwards. Yeah? That's the whole point. But assigning meaning in a way that brings you to passive hope is what I don't wanna offer you today, I'm not asking that you interpret everything in your world as evidence that your child is coming back tomorrow, Because that only is going to prolong your suffering, and that's what I did for a really long time. I was telling myself all these freaking... I was p- in pipe dreams, one after another, after another, after another. Because I was trying to keep myself going, right? Like, if I don't hold on to hope, then I'm gonna fall apart.
But actually, what holding onto that passive hope did, like something is gonna change in my world to make me feel better, save me, well, that's, that's what caused me to fall apart, So active hope says something much closer to, " I accept that the outcomes, whatever the outcomes are, remain possible without making my life dependent on one."
You can leave the door unlocked without spending your entire life standing in front of the foyer staring at the door, the idea is possibility is expansive, waiting is not. And also, like, leave room for the story, their story to shift, But don't stop writing your own while you wait
the last couple things I'll say in summary I don't know whether Scarlett watched that episode. I'm not sure. I don't know whether it meant anything if she did and when she does. You know? I don't know. I'm not gonna bank on any fictional storyline ever intersecting with her understanding of her own life.
I'm not gonna bank on that, and I don't need it to
Because the point is not trying to predict what will reconnect somebody, Because that leads us to meddling and wanting to, to ask the questions and teach the lessons and s- get, send the right message, The point instead is understanding that we as meaning makers
are continually encountering stories and experiences that challenge what we once believed to be absolute
So sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes the questions disappear. And sometimes years later, life hands someone, our, namely our children or ourselves, enough safety, experience, distance even, that the old question that was once posed becomes, like, newly of use, useful, Something like what if absence isn't always abandonment, What if there was something that I didn't know? Kids are gonna wanna search for answers to questions that they didn't really get the satisfying answers for, What if the story that I carried isn't the only one that's actually available to me? What if there's more? And maybe reconnection doesn't always begin when somebody actually comes home In fact, y'all, more often than not, it begins much, much earlier
with these Easter eggs that provide them the safety that cause them to
address the question, That they finally feel sta- stable enough to, find the answer for.
So basically what I'm saying, you guys, is leave room for the Easter eggs in their life and in your own
Leave room for the stories to change, but don't spend your whole life hunting for them or trying to set the e-eggs out in front of them, mm, like some clean straight line, waiting for them to come right to your doorstep, you know? Let them do this. Like, I used to think about this as like fucking with fate, you know?
If I tried to me-meddle in somebody else's life, then it was like, yeah, it was, it was fucking with fate. And if they were to get those answers, like kinda like I visited before, sometimes it's just too early, and so then you've wasted that effort or that, conversation on something that they weren't ready for, and readdressing it then would feel redundant and weird.
Let them. I'm not saying that you don't actively reach out to them, because you absolutely do. But it's another thing to try to point out the Easter eggs they're clearly the ones that are meant to find them, So your job is still to just keep becoming the person that you wanna be if that door opens, you guys
and the person that you deserve to be even if it doesn't, if that door doesn't open
Living a life that is deserving of you no matter what. Okay? So leave room for their story to change. Just don't stop writing yours, All right, y'all. I love you all. I will see you next week
Thanks so much for listening today. If you like what you're hearing and you'd like to hear more, please make sure to click subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. Also, for bite-sized clips and tips, be sure to find me on TikTok or Instagram. See you next week.