AparnA

The fractured pot.

PARENTAL ALIENATION:
is not only an ex-partner bad mouthing a parent or a parent denying the other parent contact with a child.
Although these are parental alienating behaviours (PABs), they are not parental alienation in their entirety.
Parental alienation is the systematic destruction of a child's loving relationship with a parent using coercively controlling behaviours to damage and sever the relationship. Other family members can also be alienated, especially grandparents.
The alienating parent creates a false narrative by telling the child falsehoods and distorting the child's memories of the alienated parent's behaviour. The child is treated as a best friend, then put in the decision making seat, allowed to refuse contact with the parent on the basis of a trivial or perceived problem.

We forget what it is to have a child's perspective of the world. In parental alienation, we have to keep returning to the child’s experience, even when their words and behaviour are breaking our hearts.

What is often called ‘splitting’ is the child’s way of surviving an unbearable loyalty conflict. They cannot easily hold two conflicting realities at once, so the mind simplifies: one parent becomes good, the other bad; one safe, the other dangerous; one victim, the other villain...

Truth. Stay strong my Warriors 💙

Also join our PAPA USA support Group to help manage through Alienation ❤️‍🔥💪❤️‍🔥
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I debated for a long time about whether to post this.

Not because I’m ashamed of it.
Not because I’m looking for sympathy.

But because this is a part of parental alienation people rarely talk about.
What happens next…

The part that exists even when things get better.

Many years ago, I used to dream about the day my child would come back into my life.

I thought if I could just hold on long enough, everything would somehow go back to normal.

What happens when your child returns as an older teen or adult…
and you realize someone else got the years that were supposed to be yours through manipulation.

Someone else got the bedtime routines.
The school stories.
The scraped knees.
The “Mom, watch this.”
The ordinary moments that build attachment over a lifetime.

And now we have a relationship.

A real one.

A great one, even.

I am beyond grateful to have her love.

But there’s a quiet grief that lives underneath it.

Because my child doesn’t know me in the instinctive way children are meant to know their parent.
Not because they chose that — but because they were raised without me during the years their brain was learning who “Mom” was supposed to feel like. She was 2, and had barely formed memories of me…

People think reunification fixes everything.

They think once your child comes back, the pain disappears.

What they don’t understand is that parental alienation changes attachment itself.

When a child spends years bonding with a replacement figure while being emotionally separated from their actual parent, the relationship in adulthood can feel emotionally unfamiliar — even when love is present.

That’s the part people don’t see:

You can be deeply loved by your child…
and still grieve the parent-child bond that was stolen from both of you.

I missed 12 years.

And no matter how good things are now, there will always be moments I mourn the version of us that should have existed naturally.

Not because we failed.

But because we were never given the chance.

If you’ve lived this reality, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Reunification is beautiful.

But it doesn’t erase the years that were taken, or the bond that was stolen.
💙 The Erased Parent