An Open Letter to an Alienated Child

Even though we have had no contact with my husband’s children for many years, it was heartbreaking to hear the news that one of them was in jail.  We don’t know any details, other than what we saw on the news and read in the newspapers.  This is one of my husband’s children who, after being alienated from her father herself, decided to continue that behavior and in turn kept her children from her father ….. their grandfather.

She is an adult, but she is also an innocent victim of child abuse — as discussed in our previous post.  So what does a parent do?  Forgive and forget?  We’ve been down that road on more than one occasion and only ended up not being allowed to see my husband’s grandchildren … time, after time, after time.  Cut her out of our lives completely?  That’s difficult to do when you see that she obviously needs help.

We have no way of contacting her since she is in jail, but thought we would put this open letter on our blog, in the event she does read it at some point …..

Dear C,

I read in the newspaper that you said “I have learned my lesson and from this day forward, I know to make the correct decisions in my life.”

I would love nothing more than for that to be true.

I don’t know what led up to your being in jail.  Obviously, you made some poor decisions.

Did you also make a poor decision when you decided to keep your children from your father?  Would your children be better off right now if your Dad was in their lives?  Your attorney said you’re a great mother.  Would a great mother worry more about the anger she was feeling than what was best for her children?  Is it better for your children to grow up knowing they are loved and cherished by their grandfather, than thinking he doesn’t care about them?  Because, C, he does love them and would do anything for them, if you let him.

I don’t know about your relationship with your Dad.  He’s been kept from his grandchildren for almost 7 years now and is understandably pretty angry about that.  But I do know that he deeply loves M and C (he doesn’t even know your youngest) and would do anything for them, no matter how angry he might be at you.

Maybe it’s time to start making some better decisions?  Beginning with trying to heal your relationship with your Dad?  I don’t know what his reaction would be.  It might take a lot of time and a lot of effort to erase the past 7 years, but someone has to start somewhere.

He can keep his feelings about you separate from his feelings about his grandchildren, in order to help them.  Can you do the same in order to help your children?

You know how to get in touch with us.

C

The Innocence of a Child …. Generation after Generation after Generation ….

For those of you following our blog from it’s inception, you’ll remember that our Alienating Parent was herself abused by a parent.  She was sexually abused by her father.  She did, for a time, seek counseling and take medication for the resulting trauma from that abuse.  Unfortunately, once she felt “okay” she left the counseling and medication behind.  It wasn’t long after that that she began the crusade of alienating her children from their father and his parents.

So, our feelings toward her behavior run the gamut from anger (at the parental alienation), to pity (from what she endured at the hands of her own father), to exasperation (that the behavior has continued for over 30 years).

She was an innocent child who suffered through a horrendous childhood.

There were two children brought into this world as a result of her marriage to my husband.  Those are, likewise, innocent children.  Innocent children who were emotionally abused by their mother, in her quest to alienate them from their father.  It is well documented that children suffer when one parent tries to alienate them from the other, which is exactly what happened in our case.  The children do not have a close relationship with the targeted parent, they feel the need to “protect” the alienating parent, and oftentimes grow up to exhibit many symptoms of child abuse.

My husband has not spoken to or had any contact with his adult children for several years.

We now have three victims of child abuse in our particular situation:  a mother, who was abused as a child, who then went on to abuse her own two children.

On to the next generation:  one of my husband’s children is currently in jail.  She has three children, from three different relationships.  So we now have three more innocent children, harmed because of their mother’s actions.  That mother was a victim of child abuse, at the hands of her alienating mother.

We wish there were something we could do to help those innocent children, but their mother made the decision many years ago to take them out of our lives.  She was successfully alienated from her own father, and in turn, alienated her children from their grandfather ….. just like her mother tried to do so many years ago with her former in-laws.

Ours is a story of three generations of innocent children being harmed by a parent.

When will the cycle end?

Before blogs …… there were diaries! :-)

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that my husband and I have been married 30 years. His divorce and the subsequent parental alienation took place in the late 70s, throughout the 80s and well in to the 90s. All of this, of course, was before blogs came to be. It didn’t stop me from writing about what was happening, however, and I kept a diary of interactions with our alienating parent.

I was browsing through the diary recently and it reminded me of the many documented instances of parental alienation that have taken place over the years, at the hands of our alienating parent.

Her children are grown now, she’s a grandmother, but that still doesn’t stop the behavior. Here’s an entry from July, 2002:

“Well, XXXXXX (one of the grown children) called yesterday afternoon to let me know that they wouldn’t be going to PA after all. The reason she gave for them not making the trip was because XXXXXX’s (our alienating parent’s) car insurance had been canceled and she has to pay about $150 to get it reinstated — and she doesn’t have the money and doesn’t want to be driving that far without auto insurance. This reminded me of the story XXXXXX (the grown child) told me a month or so ago: their phone was turned off for non-payment and XXXXXX (the grown child) had to take $150 from her child support and pay the phone bill to get it turned back on!”

This was during a period of time when the grown child, who had a one year old child herself, was living with her mother — and felt the need to use her child support to pay her mother’s bills.

Remember one of our earlier posts:
https://ltepas.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/oftentimes-the-children-dont-even-realize-the-alienation-is-taking-place/

“A sixth manifestation of PAS is reflexive support for the alienating parent ….” Here you have a grown child, who is clearly a victim of PAS, using money she receives — which is supposed to be used to support her own infant child — and she’s using it instead to support the alienating parent! An alienating parent who had a full-time job, btw.