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Parental Alienation - The Relationship Phoenix · UK Column Radio

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Good afternoon to the UK Column audience wherever you are
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: in the world. Today is a special day. We have
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of special days in the UK Column, but
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: today I'm delighted to have a lady called Debbie Richards
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: join me. And I met Debbie a couple of weeks
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: ago at a very special event where I'd been asked
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: if I would speak to some ladies. Now the subject
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: was parental alienation, but I wasn't fully aware of that
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: at the time.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: I was.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I believed that we were going to be talking to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: ladies that had lost children, principally through social services. And
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: what happened on that very very interesting day was I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: was able to learn more about a particular problem around
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: families and children and relationships and social services. But Debbie
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: was one of the ladies present who was there in
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: order really to help the ladies. So Debbie, welcome to
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: the UK Column studio and you've brought some really wonderful weather.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: You can come again, because it's absolutely glorious here in Primouth.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Now coming to the studio. We actually had quite a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: chat and that was very good because there was a
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: lot of background stuff that you've never discussed with me before.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: But I'd like to start off with that day in
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: reading when we were there with the twenty four moms
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: and those ladies all lost children. There was a lot
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of very powerful emotion in the room, and also there
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: were ladies there that that was the first time they'd
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: ever been with the group, and emotions were running high.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: And in the first hour, Gemma from the UK column
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and myself sat outside while you were tempted to calm
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: things down and help the ladies. So my first question
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to is you're in a role here trying to help
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: these ladies. How did you get into that role, that
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: support role?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Well, interestingly, I am an alienated parent. I started divorce
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: proceedings in December two thousand and five and very quickly
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: found myself being very isolated from my daughter, literally almost
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: within twenty four hours of asking for the divorce. And
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: I had hoped that he would be I'd like to
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: say grown up, but that wasn't what happened. It suddenly
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: became like an all out war. There were other people involved,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: and I was becoming more and more isolated and not
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: really understanding what was going on, seeing the levels of
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: abuse being ramped up, and I left chose to leave
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: because he'd become an alcoholic, and he wasn't dealing with
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the alcoholism. And after eighteen years, I was really struggling
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: with how that was doing. I had I had been
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: making my very best effort to get to my daughter's
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: sixteenth birthday. In my head, I had grown up as
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: a child of a broken family, and I didn't want
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: that for my daughter at all costs. I didn't want
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: that for my daughter, and I stayed, and so many
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: times I wanted to walk out the door, but I didn't.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I stayed. I made the best of it. I did
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: what I could, keep it all on an even keel.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: But when you're dealing with somebody who is not prepared
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: to deal with their own grief and their own emotions,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: that's actually really hard to do. So alcohol was his self,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: but it became much worse, and within twenty four hours
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I had my daughter telling me she wanted to live
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: with daddy, which was such a shock. I wasn't expecting that.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I thought we'd be grown up. I thought we'd share
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: those things between us and work out how we were
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: going to do it. I was very naive, very naive,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: you know, I was forty two years old. Thinking, Okay,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I've got time to start again and get
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: myself on an even keel. And it didn't happen like that, But.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: You were expecting that, Okay, the relationship had failed, but
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: you were still going to have contact with children, exactly that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: I thought we were going to have a good relationship
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: about how we looked after our daughter. And you know,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: I trusted because I wanted to trust.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: And it's even now that makes me really sad that
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: I was so vulnerable. I didn't see what was happening,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and I didn't understand the nuances of grief at that time.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: You know, we were all brought up with grief as death.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: We weren't brought up with grief being loss of relationship,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: disconnection from children, loss of home, loss of security, loss
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: of marriage, you know, all of these different entities that
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: were losses. And I was being told when I moved
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: to Newbury, I was being told by a GP in
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: Newbury that I was an Eurotic divorce and to go
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: away and take my pills. Actually, unbeknownst to both of us,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: I was extremely ill and that was driving my emotion.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: So my physical body was driving the very heightened reef
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: that I was experiencing, and as time went on, I
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: learned a bit here and a bit there through different things,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: but counseling kept me stuck, kept me on this hamster wheel,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: and it actually eventually pushed me into complex PTSD, and
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I was very very unwell, whilst at the same time
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: caring for my mum in law who had Alzheimer's, caring
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: for my own mother was very very ill, and grieving
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: my father who died of breast cancer. So I was
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: in a really poor state because in the background all
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: of that, I was still living with this post divorce
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: abuse and it was becoming more and more ramped up
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: until in twenty fifteen, my daughter actually slandered me to
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: expel me publicly from her wedding just after my oldest.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Grandchild without any explanation.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: There was no explanation, and it wasn't actually until I
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: discovered that my mother had fronto temple dementia and she'd
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: had it then that I realized that that might have
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: been the trigger, because she she had just had the baby,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: and we organized the day where I was going. She
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: was living in Tame at the time. I was going
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: to drive from Barkshire to go to Oxfordshire to pick
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: her up to take her to visit Gran in Gloucester.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Now I was going to do the driving so that
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: she could concentrate on looking after herself and the baby.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: And the day before I was told you're not wanted,
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: we don't want you there. I'll go on my own.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Because I had no idea about my mother's front a
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: temple to mention. Nobody did, and I can only imagine
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: that my mother stood up for me. I can only
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: imagine that my mother stood up for me. She was
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: in her later years. She became very, very vocal about
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the treatment she'd seen me lived through, and it pained
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: her greatly. At the front of temporal dementia made her
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: more aggressive, and that had been seen on her scan
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: when she had her stroke in twenty twelve, but they
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: hadn't told the GP, so for eight years she went
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: without any support, right and of course none of us knew,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: but this anger that was coming out in her, of
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: course I can only imagine that she stood up for
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: her daughter, and my daughter didn't like it, so instead
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: of having a conversation with me about it, I was
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: literally cut off. And within a few days of that
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: was this slander and I was so shocked. I was
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: running a different business. Then I walked to the front door,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: my phone went absolutely nuts picking up the house WiFi,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: and by the time I got indoors, I had over
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty messages on my phone from all
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: kinds of you know, areas through social media, with everybody
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: wondering if I was okay, because I obviously hadn't seen
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: this while I've been working during the day, so.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: How would they become aware?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: It was all over Facebook? Oh, I see, it was
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: done on Facebook. It was done very purposefully. And when
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I sat in the evening, as I got in the
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: door and I was looking at these messages, you were okay,
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: You're okay. I just has happened.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: So this is essentially a character assassination.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: It was a huge character assassination, and.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: To destroy you absolutely amongst not only friends, but acquaintances
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: and anything you knew you.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And it was done very very swiftly and
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: very very publicly. And at that time we had limited contact,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: so she knew that I didn't look at things like
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: that during the day except to do with business. I
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: did not look at Facebook during the day. I looked
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: at it in the evening, so she knew it was
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: going to be a little while before I saw it.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: And the really strange thing is I had noticed odd
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: things being said on Facebook, and it's such a powerful
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: place to caused people damage, you know. I had noticed
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: odd things being written on Facebook that seemed so cryptic.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: And I kept saying to my partner, Simon, you know
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: something's brewing, but I don't know what. And in his naivete,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: he said to me more than once, or don't be daft.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: She's just being Emma, she's just being a daughter, she's
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: just having her kicknacks. But I had this real unease
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: in the pit of my stomach, and I knew something
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: was brewing. And when I looked at that, I just
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: sat with my jaw on the floor. And then I
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: got a pencil and paper and I wrote down the
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: thirty names of the people who I didn't know that
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: were all being absolutely vile about me, really vile about me.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: And I wrote all their names down, and then one
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: by one I blocked them all and they're still on
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: my block list now, you know, is it right?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: You haven't had contact with your daughter since then?
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: No, I was.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I had paid for various things for the wedding, but
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: being expelled from the wedding was interesting. I found out
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: later that she had a whole group of the male
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: members of mainly his family on a bit of a
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: wall path ready, just in case I turned up at
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: the hotel. She'd continued to extend the invitation to my
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: partner and to my youngest brother.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's divisive.
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: Is very divisive.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: You know. My partner just said, no, sorry, if you're
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: not going to welcome your mother, then I'm not going
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: to be there. I'm not going to come and celebrate
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: your day when you can't even be respectful to.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Your mother when this is happening. Are you, well, you've
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: got a partner, but are you still on your own
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: nor have you started to make contact with with other
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: women at that stage.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: At that point? Actually, So that was twenty fifteen, and
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: in I would say in twenty worse saying I joined
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Facebook into your thousand and seven, I spoke occasionally about
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: what I was experiencing over the time, and in two
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: thousand and eight I wrote something And it was just
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: after I sort of settled in with Simon, and I
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: wrote something, and about half a dozen other people went
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: me to and then I sat there a little bit and.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Thought, oh help, and this is that you write that,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: ada knowwhere you've been alienated from your family.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: We at that point, I was writing about the rocky
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: road of trying to have a relationship with somebody when
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: you didn't understand the behaviors of the other people that
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: were there, the ones who were supposed to be caring
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: for her emotionally and mentally and physically, when her mental
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and emotional state was so hungry from no because this
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: was not a child that was angry growing up.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: So you the impression I get is your you can't
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: define it properly in your own mind. You were searching
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: francewers as to what's actually happened. And then when you
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: post comment about this, other other women start to getting.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Caught and men as well, right, you know, and people
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: that I had connected with on Facebook through various different
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: communities started all say me too. And as time went on,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: that became bigger and bigger. And then I met another mother,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: come grandmother, who was being expelled from her family for
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: whatever her misdemeanor was. And at the same time, we
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: had both been exploring all the groups that were popping
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: up on Facebook, and there were at the time there
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a few UK groups. In fact, at the time I
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: don't think there were any UK groups that I had found.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Just tell us the dates roughly when.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: So that would have been twenty twelve, okay, twenty twelve,
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: twenty eleven, twenty twelve. But what there was were large groups,
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: and I mean large groups, four and five thousand strong
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: of US and mainly US groups. And the anger and
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: the vitriol and the pain was just overwhelming.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And could those group did those groups have a name
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: for what they believed they were experiencing.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: In the US, they use the term estranged rather than alienation,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: but in the UK the term alienation is used, and
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: there is a distinct difference between alienation and estrangement, but
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a lot of people in the US still whose the
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: word estranged. So alienation is when an adult has the
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: care of the child that uses language that deters the
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: child from feeling safe to speak for themselves, so they
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: shut down. They stop saying that they love mummy or daddy,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: They stop saying that they want to spend time with
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: mummy or daddy, because they soon learn that every time
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: they express that they do love that person and they
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: want to be with that person. There's that clash of
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: some kind, there's a behavior of some kind, whatever it is.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: And I've heard of so many different types of journeys
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: that people have had. And then estrangement, essentially is when
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: the older teenage or early adult child has to come
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: away from the family because they cannot cope with whatever
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: the dynamic of the family is. So their own safety
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: is moving away from that a very distinct difference. Because
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: they are older, they are able to make a more
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: conscious decision about what they're doing. But young children don't
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: have that ability, right up to mid teens, they don't
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: have that ability.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Right now, you you just dropped it in very quickly,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: just now. But but you said, this is not just women, No,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: it's not so men. Men describing these events happening to
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: them as well.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: All the time, all the time. And you know, I
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I'd been working with a lovely chap some years before
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: all this kicked off for me, and he lived apart
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: from his young daughter, who he absolutely adored. He was
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: the loveliest person. He was wonderful when he had her
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: with him, and he ended up living in his car because.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: You know, as a result of as a result of it, because.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: The cost of I was costing him to do what
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: he needed to do to try and have a relationship,
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: but also because he'd been living with his mother and
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: his mother died, so then he lost his home as well,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: and he ended up living in a car.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: And I knew.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: I knew at that point that something bigger was going on,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: but I didn't understand what it was because he wasn't
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the only father I knew that had lived in their car, right,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: you know. And when I was forced out of my home,
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I said for surf for three weeks, and I was
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: fully envisioning that I may have to live in my
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: car because I was wondering how on earth I was
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: going to find myself somewhere to live.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So you were painting a very clear picture of the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: stress and the anxiety around this. You discover groups in America,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: but there's none here. Well, you said there was a couple.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: There were a couple.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: Were they not really?
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: Were they organized or were they loose groups? They were
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: loose groups. They were loose groups. There was a lot
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: of anger, a lot of vitriol, a lot of it's
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: somebody else's fault, and the word narcissistic and narcissism and
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: narcissists kept popping up, but not as much as it
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: is now used, you know, And I really railed away
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: from that because that's a clinical diagnosis, but people are
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: using the term very loosely without truly understanding what it is.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: It is a personality disorder, but we are all born
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: with all the traits of personality disorders. It's how we
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: process the experiences we've had that then push our behaviors
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: to become whatever way, you know, whatever label we're going
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to fall into. And I really hate it. I don't
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: like those labels. They're so dismissive because they shut down
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: what's actually going on. That there is a lot of
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: grief going on and people aren't seeing the grief. They're
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: seeing what's happened to them is someone else's fault.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Well, it's a really key It's a really key statement,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: isn't it, Because you've moved across, You've gently moved across
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: there to a key fact of your work now, which
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: is how do you help people heal. I haven't told
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: the audience yet, but you are the relationship phoenix, and
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you are there to deal with grief and transition and healing.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Now you've been on quite a journey yourself, which you've
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: been kind enough to share with the audience. So when
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: was it that you're I can imagine that there was
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: two things going on. There was almost curiosity as you
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: discover more and more groups, and then you are dealing
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: you having more interaction with other women, maybe some men.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: What was the point at which you felt that you
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: needed to go on a journey to Was it to
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: help yourself heal first that journey or did you start
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to say, well, actually I know and I understand some
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: things that these people don't and I can help them.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Well, it's really interesting you asked that. So at the
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: back end of twenty fourteen, in the October of twenty fourteen,
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: this other mother and I. She said she wanted to
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: set up a group in the UK online. Would I
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: be an admin.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: In the group? And I said, yes, that's absolutely fine.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: I'd really like to do that because I think that
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: would really help us both. You know, we started with
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: three people on day one. By day seven we had
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: one and a half thousand people, and a great deal
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: of them were American, Canadian, Australia, New Zealand and a
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: few English people and it just grew and grew and grew.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: So from twenty fourteen right through to twenty nineteen, I
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: helped in that group. I supported that group. I supported
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: a lot of people in that group. I created some
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: incredible friendships that I still have now with people all
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: over the world. Which is the greatest gift that's come
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: from this.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: For me is the connection a journey where you meet
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: people that resonates with me, because in some ways I've
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: gone on quite a journey over twenty years. And if
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you look back, you say, yeah, the fact you met
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: such wonderful people, often in adverse circumstances with people under
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of pressure, but you meet somebody and you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: think that was a real pleasure to know them.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And the thing about the group was it wasn't just
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: a place to moan and groan. It was actually a
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: place to be real. You know, I really anybody got
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: any ideas of what I can do with this place
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: in my garden. The lovely Helen in Australia, and I
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: just saw something in it and gave my opinion and
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: it was something that really helped her to differently. And
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: one of the things that somebody said to me more
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: than once was you're very good at seeing both sides.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: You're very good at bringing balance. But I could see
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: that because I was the child of divorce parents, and
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: I had a tough time as a kid growing up
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: because it wasn't just divorce. It was the fact that
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: there were two different religions and neither of them were
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: standard religions, so I was stuck between these two different
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: religions as well, and being brought up in a religion
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: that made me do a Bible study, made me learn
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: about the Bible, which was wonderful. I learned a lot
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: and that it gave me a different way of looking
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: at faith, at other people's faith. But also then my
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: father telling me, at seven years old, because his religion
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: was completely opposite to mine, you shouldn't know.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: That you're a girl.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: So at seven I was completely confused because I've been
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: learning everything that I've been learning, and I was so
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: proud of that you are at seven, you know. And
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: then I've got this person who I looked up to,
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: even though he was not in my life regularly and
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: was very disjointed, down he shut me down in an instant,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: and I didn't know whether I was coming or going.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: So there were those beliefs that came into my life
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: that I wasn't good enough for things that you know,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: that my knowledge wasn't good enough, that me learning wasn't
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: good enough.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: OK, just push a little point that helping people who've
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: been through bad experiences, and a lot of them can
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: be in a bad place. They are whatever it is, anxious, depressed,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: or we could put some other labels to deal with
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: people like that. Is itself a heavy emotional load. So
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you've gone through all the things that you've gone through,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: and then you are starting to give people who've also
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: been through the mail to support them. How did you
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: deal with that emotional load on yourself.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: It's so interesting, isn't it? Because I didn't realize at
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: that point. I didn't actually realize until I did my
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: grief training in twenty nineteen that I've been practically doing
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: it since childhood. I didn't realize that that was a
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: big learning curve. But I also realized that I was
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: able to retain good memories, so I could remember conversations
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: and strings of conversations different people's things. But I was
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: able to just let it go. And I don't know
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: how I was able to do that. It was just
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: something I was able to do. So I wasn't carrying
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: everybody else's baggage because I had enough on my own.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I had the post of ace abuse, the
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: sick parents, the business I was running, my own health issues,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: and there was a lot going on, so I was
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't have capacity to hold on to everything that
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: was theirs as well, and that actually was in my
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: benefit because it allowed me to be more more focused
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: on them when I needed to be, And that few
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: years with the support group actually really helped me to
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: hone that skill.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Were you getting some formal counseling training.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I wasn't.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: No, So I'm actually not a formal counselor. I chose
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: not to do counseling because of my own journey and
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: how difficult that had been and how dismissed i'd been
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: by the GPS, because actually, most of the times they
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: dismissed me, I had serious health issues going on and
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: it was the health issues that were making everything worse.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: So in twenty eighteen I became or twenty seventeen I
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: became no. Even more than that, Actually sixteen I went
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: to visit Jane Jackson in Bristol arist Grandparents, which was
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: the group that I had found online.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Can we just we just explain that a little bit,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: because you've talked about alienation affecting men and women, but
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: also affects grandparents.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: Oh does it? Does?
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: It affects every member of the family basically. So in
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, I became a grandparent for the first time.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: It was the year my daughter slanted me and just
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: literally just shut the door on our relationship with no
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: conversation at all. I tried, I tried and tried to
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: beat that door down and then can we please have
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: a conversation? And there was nothing. It was you know,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: the term now is crickets. It literally was. It was
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: crickets and it was very tough. He had a stroke
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: my ex two weeks after her wedding. I had been
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: told by his cousin, who is one of my closest friends.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: I sent a message to say, I'm really sorry. Can
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: I do something to support you? Can I do something
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: to help? And I was told it was my fault,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: and I wasn't wanted, and I was thinking, how is
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: it my fault? It's been ten years since we've been apart,
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: you know, how is it my fault, but anyway, that's
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: a whole other that's a whole other journey, and so
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: there's been no real relationship. And I just thought, I'm
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: struggling now as a grandparent because this is a whole
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: new nuance of emotion and I'm really struggling with this,
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: and nobody's understanding. The GP's not interested. The counseling had
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: pushed me into PTSD, into complex PTSD, and I was
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: a mess, and I just thought, Okay, I've got to
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: find out if there's any other support, and I found
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Bristol Grandparents at the same time I found hind And Grandparents.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: So Bristol Grandparents is run by Jane Jackson and hand
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and Grandparents are set up by Lorraine Bushell. Both of
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: them have been given gongs, you know, for their services
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: to grandparents, and they're very well deserved because it is
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: not an easy journey supporting grandparents, and a lot of
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: them much older than me. I'm sixty one this year,
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: so who have a completely different mindset because they're a
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: different generation, so their beliefs around family are very different.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It's amazing how tenure age gap can make a difference
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: in your beliefs because of the way we were brought up.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: You know, a lot of those people were war babies,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: so they were still scrabbling with the losses that had
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: happened in the war to their families.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: So there was that impact as well.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And so do they do they sit you down to
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: help you or do you sort of learn through.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: With something they start.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: To know mainly their their support groups, mainly their places
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: to come together to you know, in those days more
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: so they were places to come together and to be
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: able to share your story with others that understood you, right,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: you know, rather than telling you you're going a bit loopy,
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: you're imagining it. You know, they're there when they grow up,
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: when they get married, when they do this, it will
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: all change. Which are all the things we've been told
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: or you know, the other the other nugget that we're
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: all told is where you must have done something wrong.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Well, that's that's a very common one across all of
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the cases where moms and dads have lost children. Somebody somewhere,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: at some stage, will you know, suck in some breath
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and say, well, there must be something there.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And it is. And it's really funny.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Actually, I call it the Jamaican because it was part
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: of what I grew up in the culture, and reading
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: was the very all the different cultures. But one of
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the things the Jamaican girls did was before they said
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: something really unpleasant to you, you know, So I call
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: it the Jamaican breath, and it, yeah, that was it
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: was you just sort of you'd be like the rabbit
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: in the headlights. You'd sit there anything. I'm telling the truth,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: and everybody is telling me I'm a liar, but I'm
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: the one who's lived this.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: You go through this and you learn these experiences. What
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: stage then does your help I'm not going to use
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: the word counseling, but your help to mums, dads and grandma,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: grandparents who've gone through What stage does are you starting
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: to work fully as a so?
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: So in twenty nineteen, yeah, well, twenty fifteen, I had
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: a car accident. Waited for the payout. In twenty nineteen
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: it came, so I paid to go and do grief training.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: I thought, I'm going to use this money for something
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: really powerful for me. And I had met somebody through
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: business networking who was talking about this grief training and
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: everything she was saying just made absolute sense, and I
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: was listening to what she was saying. I was reading
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the back of the book that they talked from, and
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: it was like somebody lined up all the dots and
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: it made sense to me for the first time in
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: a very long time. It was layers and layers and
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: layers of grief, every single little experience where there was detachment,
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: where there was abandonment, where there was this push away.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: It was all grief and understanding that allowed me to
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: make such a difference in my world. Then, So I
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: went off to do the training because I'd said.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: To that, sorry, so that your training, but that helps
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: you one and pick your situation. Well, you know, that's
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: in a better place to help other people.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That first two and a half days we had to
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: do the process at speed. What we would take other
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: people through over eight weeks we did in two and
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: a half days, so you can imagine it was full on.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: But within twenty four hours I was already changing my mindset.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I was already thinking about the understanding of forgiveness and
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: apologies and actually being able to express and acknowledge my
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: feelings in a really powerful way.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Instead of having it in a way.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and instead of being done down by everyone around
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: me who was uncomfortable with my emotion and so we'll
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: just shut you up instead, which is what I experienced constantly,
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: And the grief training made a massive difference. So I
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: came away from the group that I was admining in
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: and I started putting the feelers out to help people
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: with grief. So initially my thought to do that was
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: at that time, I had been running a grandparents support
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: group for a year. I was becoming more and more
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: involved in learning about grandparents that were also disconnected from
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: their grandchildren. I spent fair bit of time going around
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: the different groups. So I went as far as Worcester
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: to a group in Worcester. I went to the group
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: in Hendon several times and I've become quite close to
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: several people there. I went to Bristol a few times.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: Is I believe there's still a group in Oxfordshire. Funnily enough,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: in the town that my ex husband was born in
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: and I lived in when we were first married. That
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: the irony of that did not escape me, you know,
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: that was most bizarre. So I was going out and
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: visiting all these other groups to learn more about the
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: grandparents and to learn more about my place as a grandparent.
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: You know, I was quite young compared to most of them.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: And the more I was learning, the more I was
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: understanding the levels of grief. And I was trying to
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: explain that to people, but they weren't getting it because
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: they just weren't ready to hear it because somebody else
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: had done them a harm and they couldn't get past
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: that they might have had a part to play in
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: that arm And actually we all have a part to
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: play in it. It's just how we learn to understand
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: what that part is. Because nobody's going to just turn
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: the door, shut it and lock it without there being
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: something that you've said or done that's upset them. But
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: if you don't know what that is, then you're in
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: this place and not.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Knowing how to change it. So the problem no.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: So for me, I took the view that I have
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: to do this work for myself, and that's exactly what
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: I did. I did the archetypeal dog with a bone,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: and I literally I sat down and I did the
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: process time and time and time again, you know, and
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I really immersed myself in it. And doing that allowed
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: me to deal with all the different relationships, the one
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: with my daughter. I had to postpone for quite a
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: long time because every time I got to do it,
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: there was an emotional block and I couldn't do it.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And then when I did do it, it was actually
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: the eve of her birthday and I slept absolutely soundly
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: for the first time in many, many years. And that
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: was huge. And that's actually where my emblem for my
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: business came.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: From in saying that to me, what are you describing
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: release from being locked into?
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's not just the words, it's the visceral emotion.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: You know, when I physically saw my daughter, I would
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: shake in sight, and I would use every ounce of
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: energy not to shake outside. The tears were literally brimming
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: in my eyes all the time, and it was the
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: emotion that I used to hold on and hold on.
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: And then the minute she'd gone in that house and
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: I got in the car and we got round the corner,
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: I could not have driven home from where she was
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: in Oxfordshire to Berkshire. I couldn't do it. My partner
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: had to come with me because the release of emotion
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: when she wasn't visible to me anymore was like somebody
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: was literally opening a volcano up. It just came out
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: every emotion, the tears, the sobbing, the gasping for breath,
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: the holding my chest because it hurts so much, you know,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: and physically rocking in the seat in the car because
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what to do with myself. And it
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: was an hour's drive from there back to Newbury and
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: I cried for the whole hour. Yeah, you know that,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: the visceral physical emotion was overwhelming.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: What comes into my mind, Debbie, as you tell that
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: story is coming back to the to the Friday event,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: because in the morning, when in quite a small room,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: twenty four ladies in quite a small room, a lot
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: of emotions. Then at particular points when some of the
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: women were speaking themselves, some of the women could not
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: cope with that, and they broke down and started crying,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: and some of them wanted to go out of the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: room or were encouraged to go out of the room
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: where it could be quiet. So I sat there and
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: I witnessed that from outside, because initially I was outside
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the room and the door would open. And then later
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: when I was inside the room, and I saw the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: reaction of some of those women too, other women simply
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: standing up and telling their story, and that was too
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: much for them. And at the end of the day,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: after the meeting had finished, I sat out in the
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: in the foyer area of the hotel. There were three
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of us and we had a we had a glass
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: of wine together, and while we were there, one.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: Of the.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Well he's one of the hotel staff who'd been behind
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: the reception desk, said very nicely, what were you doing
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: to the women in that room? And we answered, what
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: do you mean? And he said, well, because this morning
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the door kept opening and another woman who was crying
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and very distressed came out. Now we're smiling out this
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: because there is a little bit of black humor about it. Yes, huge,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: but it was very interesting, and we didn't we didn't
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: actually give him any detail, but I think one of
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the ladies I was with said, well, we're trying to
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: help help them, Yes, But that was for me and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Gemma as well. You know, we were there in that
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: room and we saw what was happening to those ladies,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: and of course at a particular point you stood up
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and said, let's do some exercises to try and calm
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: some of that emotion down. So I presume that what
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: you did in that room was part of your training.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, what I did was actually I created an anchoring
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: process for them to find a happy emotion, find you know,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: a place where they could learn to love themselves again,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: but to give them a little taster of how they
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: could do something thing for themselves relatively easily. So I
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: brought them all a small rose cors crystal which was
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: in a heart shape, and I got them to hold
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: that in their hand and just send the love to
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: that hand. And then I got them to create that
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: ball of energy and pull it into them and to
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: feel it within their body. Because had somebody had done
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: that with me all those years ago, I would have
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: been able to cope with that car journey in a
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: much better way because I would have had a tool
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: of some kind that would have allowed me to calm
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: and sender myself.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: And it did. It did calm the room to a
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: large extent. As we moved on and things were discussed,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: other emotions came to the surface, but it was clear
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: that that did make a difference. Or we allowed to
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: say at this stage. Of course, that charity, and you
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: can tell me a lot more, but that that charity
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: specifically works to help women who have gone through this
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: type of alienation, and they are they are at the bottom.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: They are at the bottom of the pit.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: In any respects. Yes, you know. I met.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: The lovely roslind at the European Alienation Practitioners event that
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: was held by Karen and Nick woodall who are very
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: well known for their work within the law courts with
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: children and reconciliation of children with parents and parental alienation.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: And at that time I've been reading Karen's work avidly.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: She writes the most amazing blog, and I had learned
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: so much from her about the dynamics of it, about
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: the psychology of it, and the behaviors of different people
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: within the parameters of what goes on, So the parents,
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: their parents, their siblings, et cetera, et cetera, and the
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: ones that are being alienated. So at that point, this
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: ticket was free because it was the first time this
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: event was being held. That was twenty eighteen, and I
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: went to it and I sat there in tears for
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: the whole weekend with my friend who had come from
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: another group that I'm in. We'd met there and she
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: and I literally we filled a little notebook. We both
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: had a notebook and we filled it with notes The
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: whole event was around people who were practitioners in field,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: from America, from Canada, from Europe, from London, from all
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: over there, you know, all over the world.
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: And there were.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Legal people, solicitors, and it was presise over by the
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: then leading judge of the UK for the Family Courts
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: who was retiring, so you know, there were a lot
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: of There was a lot of good solid structured evidence,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: good solid structured language, and good solid structured education. And
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: I literally sat there feeling like somebody was pulling a
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: string of flags out of my chest with all the
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: different words I'd been experiencing and never been able to
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: fully acknowledge.
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Literally they were on.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: That stage saying all the things that I've been experiencing,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: but they were talking about it from the family Courts
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: point of view, and I really was rabbit in the
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: headlights again, a massive learning curve. And that's where I
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: met Rosland and I was I was a mess. I
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: was whipping all over the place and I don't know
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: how many tissues I went through. I had a big
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: bag beside me and yeah, it was horrible. And she
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: introduced me to the charity and because I was care
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: at the time, and I didn't have finances for myself.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't have an income for myself because although I
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: was running my business, I didn't have an income from
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: my business because I was growing it. She gifted me
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: a place, and that gift suddenly opened my world up
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: to being in a room full of just mothers. And
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: although at that point I was in many, many groups,
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: and I had met a lot of men through this process,
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: and it's heartbreaking, the stuff I've heard, it's heartbreaking, but
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: this was another level, and it was where I suddenly
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: realized that women are being expelled from their children's lives
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: for no good reason. Then the man needs his standing.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: A lot of the women had wealthy husbands, and a
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: great deal of them were Spanish, Portuguese, French, you know.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: So they were trophy wives, if you like, until the
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: marriage was no good to the man anymore, and then
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: they were on the heap. And so I was beginning
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: then to really look deeper and understand more about the
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: nuances of what was going on. When I first became
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: alienated and I threw all these people that I connected to,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I was beginning to learn the figures. So when I
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: first became alienated, the figure of women being alienated from
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: their children was being quoted at seventeen percent of the
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: population as opposed to the men. So you think that's
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: quite a tiny figure.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: By the time I got into it, and it had
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: come to twenty nineteen, and I had delved deeper and
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: deeper and deeper, what I was learning was that figure
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: was near. There are thirty four thirty five percent. Huge,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: it's huge.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Just qualify that thirty five percent of.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Women being expelled from their children's lives. And since then,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: since twenty nineteen.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Just pin this down, Debbie. So out of the total
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: statistic about people being alienated, thirty five percent of women.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I was just thinking it feels bigger than that.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: I know more women if we were to sit down
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: and really do a study on this, I know more
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: women than thirty five percent.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Right, forgive me for just pusing that. I just want
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: to be so, how many how many mothers are we
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: talking about that you think are alienated? Do you estimate them?
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: I estimate it's probably be nearer forty five nearly fifty percent.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: I would say that it's actually fifty to fifty. And
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: the reason I say it is because there are lots
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: and lots of us that didn't get to go through
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: the courts. There are lots and lots of us that
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: are just figures flying in the wind.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, when you give a percentage, what is that percentage of?
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Well, when you say one hundred percent, you know that's
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: the round figure, isn't it. So we're always quoted and
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: you see it a lot in a lot of the groups.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of men that have had really
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: horrific experiences and in their mind they're the only ones
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: that are experiencing it, and women are not experiencing alienation.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: You don't know what you're talking about, right, But actually
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: they're not listening to us because we do know what
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: we're talking about, and we have masses of empathy for
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: the men because of our own experiences.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: So therefore, out of the total number of alien eight
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: alienation cases, you're saying thirty five percent women, But actually
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: you think it's much higher than that.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: I think it's much higher than that because of the
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: fact that so many of us don't go through the
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: court process, because our children are in their mid lateeens
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: when we're going through our divorces. So then this is
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: when these behaviors are ramping up, and there's nobody there
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: to protect our relationship with our children, because in the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: court's eyes, they're deemed to be too old and able
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: to speak for themselves, which is complete munkom because the
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex has been talked about as not being fully
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: formed for many years when you're twenty five, twenty six,
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: But in recent years, scientific knowledge has actually told us,
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I think it was a couple of years ago, that
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: it's actually near a thirteen thirty one. So how on
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: earth can a fourteen fifteen year old make a really
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: conscious decision about how they want to move forward, which
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: is where the term alienation sits beautifully, because that's when
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: they are at their most malleable.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, and this whole thing stems around the manipulation of
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: future people and children. Yes, you go to that event
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: and you've got a judge there, and now you've gone
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: from just looking at problems to do with alienation parentally alienation,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: You're now seeing a whole raft of other problems around
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: how parental alienation relates and interacts with the court system,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: how social services get involved, cash caask comes in. So
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to put myself in your shoes but that
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: meeting suddenly takes you from looking at one specific area
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: to saying, wow, actually there's a whole raft of things happening.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's much bigger, and it really open my eyes.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: That forty eight hours was a huge step forward. And
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: of course that was the year before i'd done the
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: grief training, So at that point I did a brain
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: and trauma training to try and understand about not just
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: the trauma I had been experiencing, but how I could
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: help the grandparents that i'd set.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: Up the group for.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: But also at that point I had become involved with
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: the Hand and Grandparents' Group more with the lobbying that
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: Lorraine was doing in Parliament, and I fully supported her
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: in that because at that point I felt we needed
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: to have our voices heard. You know, there was a
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: great sway of older people who were dealing with this
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: destructive grief that they just didn't understand. A great deal
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: of them who'd had relationships with their grandchildren. They'd been
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: the caregivers, other pair were working. They'd been holiday givers,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: you know, they'd been the gift givers. They'd been that
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: special person in those children's lives, and all of a
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: sudden they were literally cut off, you know, and no
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: real explanation as to why.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: And this of course a key thing. Four mums and
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: dads when this happened, they would have initially been in
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: the place you were in. Who can I talk to
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: about this because some people you go to to talk
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: to about it would dismiss you. No smoke without fire
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: and all the other things they say. The groups are
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: expanding in UK, You've got involved with some particular ones
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: that you think are doing good work. Who else was
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: paying attention? The judges paying attention apparently.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Well, and this is interesting. So his terminology was that
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: family judges are not educated properly, they're not educated enough,
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: and to be quite frank, they're still not educated enough.
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: I'm still hearing real horror stories about how judges are
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: literally guiding CAFCASS and social services to behave in ways
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: that are not expected because it suits the judge narrative,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: and that's really destructive.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: That's a pretty interesting statement that a senior judge describes
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: fellow judges in the family family law division as being uneducated.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he said there was not enough education they needed
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: to do.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: He said uneducated. We might say ignorant.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Well, exactly that, you know, they and there are a
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: few gems. I've heard some extraordinary stories of amazing, amazing
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: judges who have seen through the journey that these parents
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: are going through and have seen through the stories that
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: have been made up about them and the tactics that
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: have been used against them. But they are so few
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: and far between. They are a literal diamonds in a
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: coal mine, yes, you know, a sprinkle of diamonds and
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: a very dark coal mine.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Something which I have seen for myself and I've heard
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: from parents in dealing with child protection cases is that
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: they get a good judge and that judge starts to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: do the right thing, and the next thing is they
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: turn up in court and there's a completely different judge, yes,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: who then does what they regard as malicious things. And
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: that judge then has the power to say, well, I'm
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: going to keep this case myself. Yes, And every time
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: that they go into court they are faced with this
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: one individual who And.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Of course the other side of that is that the
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: judge has the power to instruct or destruct the social worker. Yes,
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: so a social worker that is actually doing their job
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: and is standing up for the mother and standing up
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: for the child and saying there is parental alienation suddenly
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: is off the case. Yes, And so then you end
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: up with this cycle of another social worker and another
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: social worker, and so the whole story becomes more and
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: more disjointed, and the mother becomes more and more disjointed
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: because she is literally, as I found myself doing so
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: many times, telling her story.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Again and again and again.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: And it becomes it bera, it's training, it's it's literally
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: like somebody is pulling your heart out of your chest
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: every single time you speak.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: This is this is very interesting because we're now into
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the area the family courts, which is which is a
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: key part of the stories that come to me because.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: Some dads.
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: I'm going to try and boost the number of dads
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: because I know they're out there, but pncess a massive
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: number dealing with mums who have lost children through the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: family courts, and they describe to me a template is
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: how things are done. So so false allegations are made
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: against them. Experts who are brought in, who make damning judgments.
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: Psychological report where that psychologist has never met the mother
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: is a common one.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: And they never met the father.
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: Indeed, and at the end of the day, a mother
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: often then trying to finance what she's doing herself, but
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: very quickly they've run out of money. And then and
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: then the legal firms are operating on.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: Legal which is almost non existent. So unless you have
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: a false allegation that's talking about there was some kind
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: of abuse or violence, then you can't get legal aid.
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: You know, it's it's a real circus.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: And we have a local authority that can use its
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: own legal teams to help prosecute that case. So in
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: many of the cases, the mum or the dad is
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: face with their own local taxes being used to fund
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: the legal teams that are operating.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: Exactly because you've not just got pre parents, you then
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: end up with the children having their guardian, yes, and
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: they have their own solicitor and they're acting for them
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: separately to the parents, so that they're in the thrall
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: of the parent that's doing the alienating.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, but we can't say that the business of They
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: say that the court is there to protect the child.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: It's a secret court in order to protect the child.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Everything is about protecting the child. But actually what the
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: process does, to my mind, is starts to alienate the child.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Well completely, yeah, because it's not just the process, it's
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: the time. You know, if if a four allegations made,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: that's six months immediately that you lose any contact with
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: your child. But that can be extended and extended, extended.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: And then COVID came along and caused absolute chaos through
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: the court system, you know, so they had to scrabble
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: around and get themselves back on their feet sharpish. But
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: that also extended and extended and extended, so it left
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: children in a very vulnerable place where they were there
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: with that person in their ear.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: They're they're there, They're there now.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: I hear it from my clients. He's told them that
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: I'm making him sell the house. He's told them that
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not paying maintenance and that's why they can't do
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: this there after school stuff. He's told them, I'm not
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: paying xxx. So he can't afford to buy them their treats,
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: they can't afford to go on the school trips, they
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: can't afford to have the clothes they want because she's
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: not paying. Wow, that's the same story that the been
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: hearing for years and years and years. You know, their
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: children have been hearing the same thing. Your father's not
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: paying your father's not doing and they have been physically
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: shown the court documents. Now that is not protecting the children. No,
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: In fact, it goes against the rules of the court.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: It goes against everything the judges, the social workers, caff
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: casts all tell them. But those children are still seeing
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: the court documents.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: This is something that was fascinating and absolutely educational for
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: me in the meeting, because, as I said at the beginning,
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I hadn't previously, I hadn't encountered parental alienation in this detail.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: If I was aware of something, it wasn't for me
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: a very big thing. For me. It was always children
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: being taken away under pretty vicious circumstances and abuse. And
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden for me, you described the
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: meeting you went into. You took me into that meeting,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and I and from these mothers as to what's happened
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: when I put this picture together. I've been into court
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: quite a few times with families, I will say, in
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: the days when you could actually get in as a
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: McKenzie friend, I am told more and more the courts
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: won't allow you actually, or if they do, if they
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: do allow you in as a McKenzie friend, they won't
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: let you speak, but I've actually been able to be
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: in court as a McKenzie friend and speak, so I
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: have experience in court. I think i've reasonable manner of
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the experience dealing with parents. I've seen the evidence. I've
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: seen be careful what I say here, paperwork that they
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: may choose to show me, and to me, it is
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: impossible the idea that this system is in the rotten state.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: It is simply because of incompetence. I cannot believe this.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: It's because it follows a template.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: Yes it does.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: It's deliberate.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's deliberate. The whole thing is deliberate. And if
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: it's deliberate, what does that mean, Well, it means it's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: a lovely way for them to all get wealthy on
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: the backs of people that they're destroying emotionally, and families
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: that they're destroying emotionally, and children that they're destroying emotionally,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: who are going to be carrying that grief into their
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: adult lives. And they are the teachers of our future,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: the doctors of our future, the police, the ambulance, the
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: fire brigade, that the scientists, you know, they're the adults
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: of our future. And they are all carrying grief.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: That is not being.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: People will understand that, but they're all carrying huge amounts
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: of grief baggage that is destroying their emotional health. And
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: it's not mental health, it's emotional health. And that emotional
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: health is then having an impact on their physical health.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: They're you know, their weight, weight.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: Most people don't realize that weight is an emotional problem.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: It's not an eating problem. The eating problem comes because
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: you need to soothe the grief. It comes because you
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: start to care less and less for yourself, so you're
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: not exercising as much, so you're not burning off what
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: you're eating. But it comes down to the mindset. It
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: comes down to the baggage that's in here and the
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: baggage that is physically held in the body. You know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: lots of what I've learned along the way, feminine cancers,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: breast cancer, womb cancers. They're linked to family disorder. Diabetes
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: is linked to family disorder. Fibromyalgia is to emotional distress
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: and trauma in childhood. I had fibromyalgia disabling me at
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: one point, and I had to walk around with two
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: walk sticks walking sticks because I was so overwhelmed with
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: fiber and myalgia that didn't come out until I had
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: the very severe surgery in two thousand and seven, and
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: it was peaked by the distress and the stress that
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: I was experiencing in the early days of the divorce.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: This makes huge, solute sense to me. Eye problems, foot problems,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: back problems, heart problems. I've lost three great friends in
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: the US who all had broken heart syndrome, and it
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: is a thing. Broken heart syndrome is extreme stress and
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: distress of the emotional variety that is not being tempered
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: because there is no way to deal with it. And
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: that's massive. So that you know, you have we have
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: a het. And around the heart there are two areas
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: of tissue that are known as the hot strings. And
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: you heard that phrase, you know, their heart strings pulling
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: the heart strings, you know. And you often see with
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: an elderly couple who've been together all their lives that
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: they'll die in a very short space of time because
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: they are broken hearted. That's what's going on. Those two
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: strings of tissue physically break because the body can't repair
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: constantly because it's under the stress and distress. So you're
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: losing your sleeps. So your body clock that has this
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: little set pattern of repair can't repair, so then it
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: stops repairing and that part of the body suffers fibromyalgiamy,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: stomach issues. I've lost counter the amount of women I
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: know who are going through this, who have IBS, and
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: it's not just a little something. It's chronic because they're
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: being fed a pack of nonsense by the GPS, because
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: the GPS don't want to delve into the emotional stuff
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: because they haven't got the knowledge right.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: So thank you because you've now taken us round. Because
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: we start this, we started this discussion on parental alienation.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: We've now got to the point that the scale of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: it in this country, stick to this country. We know
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: it's overseas, but the scale of it is so big
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: that we are damaging the population. Were certainly we're certainly
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: damaging the future population. Yes, And you've also said, and
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I absolutely agree with you, that if we look at
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: what is happening through the child protection and court system,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: this can't be accidental. What's happening. So where we come
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: to we've come to this really very serious point where
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: we are saying that actually families in this country are
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: being attacked.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, the very Fabrica family.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Some of them destroyed to some family, some moms and dads,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: excuse me, don't make it through this, they process.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: No, it's quite horrific.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: And you know, we are being attacked by a system
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: which is destroying relationships in the.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: And it's not just destroying the first relationship the parent
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: and the child. It's actually damaging the whole dynamic of
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: the family, you know, because we also have all these
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: beautiful families where there are same sex couples and because
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: they have children sometimes slightly outside of the normal because
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: they have eggs donated or you know them donated or
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: whatever it is is, they take ownership of the child
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: and then the other ones left with the other child,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: So the siblings get torn about as well. And I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: have many friends in that position as well, many connections
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: that I've met over the years in that position. So
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: they're not only destroying a parental relationship and a grandparent relationship,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: they're destroying sibling relationships, and they're destroying cousin relationships. That
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: it's a massive dynamic. When I sat down and worked
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: out for my daughter in the very early days, just
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: how many people she became directly disconnected from by being
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: disconnected from me. That worked out to thirteen people that
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: were important in her life her you know, me, my brothers,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: her uncles, her cousins, her grandparents, her great grandmother, you know,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: and all of the other people in the circle, people
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: that she'd known since she was a baby, that was
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: suddenly not in her life anymore because she literally pulled
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: the drawbridge down and cut off half of who she was.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: So if you put a child in that emotional place
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: where they literally have to shut down half of who
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: they are, they stop functioning because half of who they
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: are has been put into a book.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: And many, I'll say from my side, dealing with the
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: more social service orientated cases, that's absolutely what mums are saying.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: They witnessed the child shut down until the child is different.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: My daughter turned overnight. It was shocking, you know, my
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: daughter and I always thought we had an incredibly close relationship,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: but a lot of my friends were, oh, she's my friend,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: she's my friend. And I felt it was really important
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: to actually be the mother, you know, especially when my
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: own mother had done her darndis, but she'd had a
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: tough journey being a mum and I had felt that loss,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: and I didn't want my daughter to feel that loss.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: So I had tried to keep that boundary of mother daughter,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: But I soon realized in those early months that every
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: other adult that was on her side, on the ex
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: husband's side of the table, were determined to destroy that relationship,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: you know. And it started within twenty four hours of
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: me asking for the divorce. Because we had a really
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: happy relationship. We did a lot of things together. You know.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: He liked to go off and do his fishing, so
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: I would take her to do things on my own.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: We would do things together. He never wanted to come
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: down to my brother in Painton to have holidays, so
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: she and I would go on our own to Uncle
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: Andy's house and spend a week at the seaside with
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: Uncle Andy and his wife, and we'd have a wonderful time,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: And it was.
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: I did my best to keep her connected to her
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: grandparents because I didn't have that in my life. I
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: only had half my family. And then literally overnight she
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: became the only way I could describe it was she
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: became viprous.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I want to move on from here, but can I
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: just say on this that I'm not trained in psychology,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: and perhaps I understand a bit through life. But it
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: does seem to me that children are being manipulated when
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: they come into contact and might be the one parent,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: but very soon there's a team of people around that parent,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: and that psychological manipulation increases in intensifies, and it is
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: unbelievably malicious there is It's so cold, calculating and destructive
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: that I still wonder where it comes from. You see,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the same techniques used a cross cases.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: You.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: You know, I can be talking to a moment I
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: might say something is exactly what happened to me. So
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: it is almost like we have a system. We're saying
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: that it's intent is to destroy families, but it's using
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: techniques that I found myself saying, well, asking myself, do
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: they go in a classroom and learn this?
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it makes you wonder, doesn't And I don't I
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: have to add to that because as a child growing
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: up in a single parent family my mother, the support
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: she had was a group called Gingerbread Yes, And you know,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: she had a couple of very long term friendships that
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 2: came from that, very very beautiful ladies who both had
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: terrible times.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: You know, with what was going on, and she became.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: More and more political in her voice in a way
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: that I didn't understand because I was a child. I
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: just didn't understand. But one of the things my mother
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: said constantly, and this is from the early early seventies.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: You know, we were taken away from my father because
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: of what was happening in nineteen sixty nine, so there
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: weren't you know, we were taken away in the March,
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: and the Chiswit Women's Refuge didn't start until the November,
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: so you know, there was nowhere to go.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: I just throw this in and even you answer, as
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: you feel comfortable, are you allowed to mention who your
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: family was connected with.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: I'm careful about it, but I didn't find out until
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: my mother was dying that my father worked for the
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Great Wins. So my mother was absolutely terrified. The police
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: were always knocking at the door, and that was that
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: was the buckle point for my mother leaving my father.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: You know, there were four of us. We were born
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: in four different homes because we were constantly moving. She
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: had a miscarriage between the first two boys, so she
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: had me one miscarriage and then two others. She was terrified.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: She had a terrible, terrible time as each one of
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: us was born. He took the family allowance book, he
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: took control of the money. He lived on stakes.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: We didn't.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: We lived on scraps. I didn't understand why my mother
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: hated cooking when I was a child, and as soon
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: as I was able to cook, she gave it to me.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: It was my job, you know, it was my job.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: Trust you know, as soon as she was able to
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: give that job away, she did because she hated cooking.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: And it's because she'd been forced to try and feed
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: four toddlers and babies with the rubbish, you know, and
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: she just didn't. She did not feel capable enough to
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Debbie, you are here in front of the camera with me,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: and I am absolutely delighted that you, I'm going to say,
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: had the courage to come down to the studio to
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: do this. We're just about, I think, at a point
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: where we should bring this one to a close. But
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: something I want to ask you is, you're here in
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: front of the camera for men and women, mums and
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: dads who are out there who know that they're in
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: this kind of alienation process or are beginning to suspect
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: they are. What would your message be to families who
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: are coming to realize that they're in this trap. What
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: would you what would you say to encouraging words?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: My own journey actually has taught me that looking within
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: and learning who I am is the most powerful tool,
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: because it has given me my voice, it's given me clarity,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: it's taken away the physical emotions that were oh, it
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: was like being put in a ringer. So as I
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: started to deal with my emotions, as I started to
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: deal with all the different levels of things I was
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 2: experiencing and acknowledging them, and I was learning who I
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: was underneath, you know, and what had made me stay
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: in that abusive relationship, and how I'd dealt badly in
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: some situations with what I'd been living with because I
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: didn't know any different, you know, that big turnaround of
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: acknowledging and then learning how to forgive. And it's people go, oh, forgiveness,
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: but no, it's actually how we forgive ourselves for staying
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: in those positions. How we forgive ourselves for not understanding
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: that our own things were holding us there. So we're
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: carrying baggage that isn't ours. And when we can forgive
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: and apologize to ourselves for that, we can let go
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: of it, and it's it's like the sun coming out, right,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: And can I add the bit to that? And when
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: you're letting go when the sun comes out, actually you've
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: reached a much better position to fight your case because
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: you become more aware of your emotions, you become more controlled,
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: you become able to speak without crying. For me, that
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: was a biggie for a very long time. You know,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 2: I would literally I'd sit here and the tears will
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: be pulling down and I'd say, I'm sorry, I can't
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: help the waterfall. That was my constant phrase, I can't
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: help the waterfall. But all of a sudden, one day
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: the waterfall stopped, and I suddenly realized that if I
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: kept on doing this inner work and looking after me,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: it brings me to my why, which is I have grandchildren.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know how many. Now I know I had
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: two granddaughters. I don't know if they are anymore. I
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: do know that I'm all over the internet because I've
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: built my social media up all this time. They're going
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: to find me one day, if they might knock on
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: the door. What's the point in me being that broken,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: damaged person. I need to be that healthy, balanced vibrant person,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: so that I can help them to process what they're
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: going to learn, because I'm not going to sit theres
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: say it's all your mother's fault, because it isn't her fault.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: She was a child. It's actually the adults that involved
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: themselves in that and damaged her, and she doesn't understand
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: how much she was co worce and manipulated. But I
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: want them to know that they can still have a
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: relationship with her, and that they can do it healthily
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: and understand the grief they're going to be experiencing at
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: the disconnection we've experienced. Yes, and that's a big wife
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: for me, and it's actually it should be the wife
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: for all of us. That we fix our own things
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: to bring us into a space of clarity and emotional
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: strength where we can support our children and our grandchildren
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: to have better reconnection later on down the line. It's
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: not going to happen for everyone. I can't wave a
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: magic wand and say come and do your work with
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: me because I'll make it all better, because that's not
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: what it's about. It's about finding us within all this grief.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was very clear on that very special Friday.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: So this is a really good point to end on
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: people who are out there looking in at us. I
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: know that you are very keen to help people come
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: forward and to not only heal, but start to be
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: active and make a difference. I'm going to say, and
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: you know why I'm come to say this, I am
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: very very keen for more and more people to come
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: forward because they're the evidence that there's a problem. That's
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: one thing, and the other thing is that when enough
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: people come forward, we can solve the problem. So I
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: am absolutely hoping that this interview will be another one
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: where people are going to see it and think, yes,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: I need to do something that would be wonderful.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: Wron't it It would be It would be absolutely amazing,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: you know, for me if I can help another person
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: to not have the absolute gut wrenching journey I've had
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: for the length of time I added, you know it was,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: it was a very long time. Some of these people
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: are only just starting on this journey. And you know,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: there's an old phrase you need to get your act together,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: and the act is actually caring for yourself. You know,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: you're not doing your children a disservice, You're not doing
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: your grandchildren a disservice. You're actually doing them the greatest
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: service by sorting out your own emotional stuff, because the
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: more you sort that out, the more clear you can
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: become in the outcome you actually want.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: And that's helping other people as well, and strength exactly
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: that B. Thank you very much, indeed, it's been a pleasure.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah,