Parental Alienation - The Relationship Phoenix

Good afternoon to the UK column audience. Wherever you are in the world, today is a special day. We have a lot of special days in the UK column, but today I'm delighted to have a lady called Debbie Richards join me. And I met Debbie a couple of weeks ago at a very special event where I'd been asked if I would speak to some ladies. Now, the subject was parental alienation, but I wasn't fully

aware of that at the time. I was I, I believed that we were going to be talking to ladies that had lost children, principally through social services. And what happened on that very, very interesting day was I was able to learn more about a particular problem around families and children and relationships and social services. But Debbie was one of the ladies present who was there in order really to help the ladies. So Debbie, welcome to the UK Columns Studio.

And you've brought some really wonderful weather. You can, you can come again because it's absolutely glorious here in Plymouth. Now coming to the studio, we actually had quite a chat and that that was very good because there was a lot of background stuff that you've never discussed with me before. But I'd like to start off with that, that day in reading when we were there with the 24 mums and those ladies all lost children, there was a lot of very powerful emotion in the room.

And, and also there were ladies there that that was the first time they'd ever been with the group and emotions were running high. And in the first hour, Gemma from the UK column and myself sat outside while you were tempted to calm things down and, and help the ladies. So my first question to you is you're in a role here trying to help these ladies. How did you get into that role, that support role? Well, interestingly, I am an

alienated parent. I started divorce proceedings in December 2005 and very quickly found myself being very isolated from my daughter, literally almost within 24 hours of asking for the divorce. And I had hoped that he would be, I'd like to say grown up, but that wasn't what happened. It, it suddenly became like an all out war.

There were the people involved and I was becoming more and more isolated and not really understanding what was going on, seeing the levels of abuse being ramped up and and I left, chose to leave because he'd become an alcoholic and he wasn't dealing with the alcoholism. And after 18 years, I was really struggling with how that was doing. I had. I had been making my very best effort to get to my daughter's 16th birthday.

In my head, I had grown up as a child of a broken family and I didn't want that for my daughter at all costs. I didn't want that for my daughter and I stayed and so many times I wanted to walk out the door, but I didn't I stayed. I made the best of it. I did what I could to keep it all on an even keel. But when you're dealing with somebody who is not prepared to deal with their own grief and their own emotions, that's actually really hard to do.

So alcohol was his self. But it became much worse and within 24 hours I had my daughter telling me she wanted to live with Daddy, which was such a shock. I wasn't expecting that. I thought we'd be grown up. I thought we'd share those things between US and work out how we were going to do it. I was very naive, very naive. You know, I was 42 years old thinking, OK, you know, I've got time to start again and get myself on an even keel, and it

didn't happen like that. But you were expecting that, OK, the relationship had failed, but but you were still going to have contact with children and. Exactly that I thought we were going to have a good relationship about how we looked after our daughter. And, you know, I trusted because I wanted to trust, you know, and it's even now that that makes me really sad that I was so vulnerable. I didn't see what was happening and I didn't understand the

nuances of grief at that time. You know, we were all brought up with grief as death. We weren't brought up with grief being loss of relationship, disconnection from children, loss of home, loss of security, loss of marriage, you know, all of these different entities that were losses. And I was being told when I moved to Newbury, I was being told by AGP in Newbury that I was a neurotic divorcee and to

go away and take my pills. Actually, unbeknownst to both of us, I was extremely ill and that was driving my emotion. So my physical body was driving the the very heightened reef that I was experiencing. And as time went on, I, I learned a bit here and a bit there through different things. Counselling kept me stuck, kept me on this hamster wheel.

And it actually eventually pushed me into complex PTSD and I was very, very unwell, whilst at the same time caring for my mum in law who had Alzheimer's, caring for my own mother who was very, very ill. And grieving my father who died of breast cancer. So I was, I was in a really poor state because in the background to all of that, I was still living with this post divorce abuse.

And it was becoming more and more ramped up until in 2015, my daughter actually slandered me to expel me publicly from her wedding. Without without any explanation. There was no explanation and it wasn't actually until I discovered that my mother had frontal temporal dementia and she'd had it then that I realised that that might have been the trigger because she she had just had the baby and we organised the day where I was going.

She was living in Tame at the time, so I was going to drive from Berkshire to go to Oxfordshire to pick her up, to take her to visit Gran in Gloucester. Now I was going to do the driving so that she could concentrate on looking after herself and the baby. And the day before I was told you're you're not wanted, we don't want you there. I'll go on my own. Of course, I had no idea about my mother's front attempt to mention. Nobody did and I can only imagine that my mother stood up for me.

I can only imagine that my mother stood up for me. She was. In her later years she became very, very vocal about the treatment she'd seen me live through and it pained her greatly. But the frontier temporal dementia made her more aggressive and that had been seen on her scan when she had her stroke in 2012. But they hadn't told the GP. So for eight years she went without any support and of

course none of us knew. But this anger that was coming out in her, of course, I can only imagine that she stood up for her daughter and my daughter didn't like it. So instead of having a conversation with me about it, I was literally cut off. And within a few days of that was this slander. And I was so shocked. I was running a different business then.

I walked the front door, my phone went absolutely nuts picking up the house Wi-Fi, and by the time I got indoors I had over 150 messages on my phone from all kinds of, you know, areas through social media with everybody wondering if I was OK because I obviously hadn't seen this while I've been working during the day. So. So how had they become aware? It was all over Facebook. Oh, I see. Right. It was done on Facebook. It was done very purposefully.

And when I sat in the evening, as I got in the door and I was looking at these messages. You OK? You OK? I I just what the Hell's happened? So this is this is essentially a character assassination. It was a huge character assassination. Targeted against you and put it out over Facebook to to destroy you? Absolutely. Not only friends, but acquaintances and anybody who knew you, yes. Absolutely. And it, it, it was done very, very swiftly and very, very publicly.

And at that time we had limited contact. So she knew that I didn't look at things like that during the day except to do with business. I did not look at Facebook during the day. I only looked at it in the evening. So she knew it was going to be a little while before I saw it. And the really strange thing is I had noticed odd things being said on Facebook. And it's such a powerful place to do 'cause people damage, you

know. I had noticed odd things being written on Facebook that seemed so cryptic. And I kept saying to my partner Simon, you know, something's brewing, but I don't know what. And in his naivety, he said to me more than once, or don't be daft, she's just being Emma, she's just being a daughter, she's just having her kickbacks. But I had this real unease in the pit of my stomach and I knew something was brewing. And when when I looked at that, I just sat with my jaw on the floor.

And then I got a pencil and paper and I wrote down the 30 names of the people who I didn't know that were all being absolutely vile about me, really vile about me. And I wrote all their names down. And then one by one I blocked them all and they're still on my block list now. Is it right you you haven't had contact with your daughter since then? No, I was. I had paid for various things for the wedding, but being expelled from the wedding was

interesting. I found out later that she had a a whole group of the male members of mainly his family on a bit of a wall path ready just in case I turned up at the hotel. She'd continued to extend the invitation to my partner and to my youngest brother. Yeah. So that that's divisive isn't? It very divisive, you know, and my partner just said, no, sorry if if you're not going to welcome your mother, then I'm

not going to be there. I'm not going to come and celebrate your day when you can't even be respectful to your mother. Debbie, when, when this is happening, are are you, well, you've got you've got a partner, but are you still on on your own or have you started to make contact with with other women at that? Stage at that point actually. So that was 2015 and in I would say in 20 well say I, I joined Facebook in 2007.

I spoke occasionally about what I was experiencing over the time and in 2008 I wrote something and it was just after I sort of settled in with Simon and I wrote something and about half a dozen of the people went me too. And then I sat there a little bit and thought, oh. Help and and this is that you write that out of nowhere you've been alienated from your family.

Well, at that point, I was writing about the rocky road of trying to have a relationship with somebody when you didn't understand the behaviours of the other people that were there, the ones who were supposed to be caring for her emotionally and mentally and and physically. When her mental and emotional

state was so angry from nowhere. Because this was not a child that was angry growing up. So you impression I get is your you can't define it properly in your own mind so you will searching for answers as to what's actually happened and then when you post comment about this other other women start to get in contact. With and men as well, right, you know, and people that I had connected with on Facebook through various different communities started to all say

me too. And as time went on that became bigger and bigger. And then I met another mother come grandmother who was being expelled from her family for whatever her misdemeanour was. And at the same time we had both been exploring all the groups that were popping up on Facebook and there were at the time very few UK groups. In fact, at the time I don't think there were any UK groups that I had found. Just tell us the dates roughly

when. So that would have been 2012, OK, 2012, 2011, 2012. But what there was were large groups, and I mean large groups, 4 and 5000 strong of US and mainly US groups. And the anger and the vitriol and the pain was just overwhelming. And could could those group, did those groups have a name for for for what they believed they were experiencing or?

In the US they use the term estranged rather than alienation, but in the UK the term alienation is used and there is a distinct difference between alienation and estrangement. But a lot of people in the US still use the word estranged. So alienation is when an adult has the care of the child but uses language that deters the child from feeling safe to speak for themselves. So they shut down. They stop saying that they love

mummy or daddy. They stop saying that they want to spend time with mummy or daddy because they soon learn that every time they express that they do love that person and they want to be with that person, there's a problem. There's there's that clash of some kind, there's a behaviour of some kind, whatever it is. And I've heard of so many different types of of journeys that people have had.

And then estrangement essentially is when the older teenage or early adult child has to come away from the family because they cannot cope with whatever the dynamic of the family is. So their own safety is moving away from that. So it's a very distinct difference. Because they are older, they are able to make a more conscious decision about what they're doing. But young children don't have that ability. Right up to mid teens they don't

have that ability. Right, you, you just dropped it in very quickly just now, but you but you said this is not just women. No. It's not so men men describing these events happening to them as well. All the time, all the time. And I, you know, I, I'd been working with a lovely chap some years before all this kicked off for me. And he lived apart from his young daughter, who he absolutely adored, he was the loveliest person. He was wonderful when he had her with him.

And he ended up living in his car because, you know. As a result. Of as a result of it, because the cost it was costing him to, to do what he needed to do to try and have a relationship, but also because he'd been living with his mother and his mother died. So then he lost his home as well.

And he ended up living in a car. And I knew, I knew at that point that something bigger was going on, but I didn't understand what it was because he wasn't the only father I knew that had lived in their car, you know, and, and when I was forced out of my home, I served for surf for three weeks. And I was fully envisioning that I may have to live in my car because I was wondering how on earth I was going to find myself

somewhere to live. So you are painting a very clear picture of the of the stress and the anxiety around this. You just, you discover groups in America, but there's none here. Well, you said there was a couple. There were a few people. At that point, were they? No. Not really, because. Were they all organised or were they loose groups? They were loose groups. They were loose groups. There was a lot of anger, a lot of vitriol, a lot of it's

somebody else's fault. And, and the word narcissistic and narcissism and narcissist kept popping up, but not as much as it is now used, you know, and I really railed away from that because that's a clinical diagnosis, but people are using the term very loosely without truly understanding what it is. It is a personality disorder, but we are all born with all the

traits of personality disorders. It's how we process the experiences we've had that then push our behaviours to become whatever way, you know, whatever label we're going to fall into. And, and I really hate it. I don't like those labels. They're so dismissive because they shut down what's actually going on that there is a lot of grief going on and people aren't seeing the grief. They're seeing. What's happened to them is someone else's fault.

Right, Well, this is a really key, that's a really key statement, isn't it? Because you've, you've moved across, you've gently moved across there to a key factor for your work now, which is how do you help people heal? I haven't told thee audience yet, but you are the relationship Phoenix and you are there to deal with grief and transition and healing. Now you've been on quite a journey yourself through which you've been kind enough to share

with the audience. So when when was it that you're? I can imagine that there was two things going on. There was almost curiosity as you discover more and more groups and then you are dealing, you're having more interaction with other women, maybe some men. What was the point at which you felt that you needed to go on a journey to? Was it to help yourself heal first, that journey? Or did you start to say, well, actually I know and I understand some things that these people

don't and I can help them? Well, it's really interesting you asked that. So at the back end of 2014 and the October of 2014, this other mother and I, she said she wanted to set up a group in the UK online. Would I be an admin in the group? And I said yes, that's absolutely fine. I'd really like to do that because I think that would

really help us both. You know, we started with three people on day one, and by day seven we had 1 1/2 thousand people and a great deal of them were American, Canadian, Australia, New Zealand, and a few English people. And it just grew and grew and grew. So from 2014 right through to 2019, I helped in that group. I supported that group. I supported a lot of people in

that group. I created some incredible friendships that I still have now with people all over the world, which is is the greatest gift that's come from this for me is the connection. A journey where you meet people. I, I can, that resonates with me because in some ways I've gone on quite a journey over 20 years.

And if you look back, you say, yeah, the fact you met such wonderful people, often in adverse circumstances where people under a lot of pressure, but you meet somebody and and you think that was a real pleasure to meet them. Yeah, and the thing about the group was it wasn't just a place to to moan and groan, it was actually a place to be real, you know? And I really, and anybody got any ideas of what I could do with this place in my garden,

the lovely Helen in Australia? And I just saw something in it and gave my opinion. And it was something that really helped her to focus differently. And one of the things that somebody said to me more than once was you're very good at seeing both sides. You're very good at bringing

balance. But I could see that because I was the child of divorced parents and I had a tough time as a kid growing up because it wasn't just divorce, it was the fact that there were two different religions and neither of them were standard religions. So I was stuck between these two different religions as well. And being brought up in a religion that made me do a Bible study, made me learn about the Bible, which was, it was wonderful.

I learnt a lot and that it gave me a different way of looking at faith, other people's faith. But also then my father telling me at 7 years old, because his religion was completely opposite to mine. You shouldn't know that you're a girl. So at seven, I was completely confused because I'd been learning everything that I'd been learning and I was so proud of that.

You are at 7, you know. And then I've got this person who I looked up to, even though he was not in my life regularly and was very disjointed in my he, he shut me down in an instant and I didn't know whether I was coming or going. So there were those beliefs that came into my life that I wasn't good enough for things that you know, that my knowledge wasn't good enough, that me learning wasn't good enough.

OK, David, just push, push a little point that helping people who who've been through bad experiences and a lot of them can be in a bad place. They are whatever it is, anxious, depressed, or we could put some other labels. But to deal with people like that is itself a heavy emotional load. So you've gone through all the things that you've gone through and then you are starting to give people who've also been through the mail tip to support them. How did you deal with that

emotional load on yourself? It's so interesting, isn't it, Because I didn't realise at that point. I didn't actually realise until I did my grief training in 2019 that I've been practically doing it since childhood. I didn't realise that that was a big learning curve, but I also realised that I was able to retain good memories so I could. I could remember conversations and strings of conversations, different people's things, but I was able to just let it go.

And I don't know how I was able to do that. It was just something I was able to do. So I wasn't carrying everybody else's baggage because I had enough of my own. You know, I had the post divorce abuse, the sick parents, the business I was running my own health issues and, and there was a lot going on. So I was, I didn't have the capacity to hold on to everything that was theirs as well.

And that actually was in my benefit because it allowed me to be more more focused on them when I needed to be. And that few years with the support group actually really helped me to hone that skill. Right. Were were you getting some formal counselling training? So no, I wasn't, no. So I'm actually not a formal

counsellor. I chose not to do counselling because of my own journey and how difficult that had been and how dismissed I'd been by the GPS because actually most of the times they dismissed me, I had serious health issues going on and it was the health issues that were making everything worse. So in 2018 I became, well, 2017 I became, and no even more than that actually, 2016 I went to visit Jane Jackson in Bristol, Bristol Grandparents, which was the group that I had found online.

Can we just we just explain that a little bit because you've talked about alienation affecting men and women, but it also effects grandparents. Oh does it? Does it affects every member of the family, basically. So in 2015 I became a grandparent for the first time. It was the year my daughter slandered me and just literally just shut the door on our relationship with no conversation at all. I tried, I tried to try to to beat that door down and then can we please have a conversation

and there was nothing. It was, you know, the term now is crickets. It literally was it was crickets and it was very tough. He had a stroke. My ex, two weeks after her her wedding, I had been told by his cousin who is one of my closest friends. I sent a message to say I'm really sorry. Can I do something to support you? Can I do something to help? And I was told it was my fault and I wasn't wanted. And I was thinking, how is it my fault? It's been 10 years since we've

been apart. You know, how is it my fault? But anyway, that's a whole other, that's a whole other journey. And so there's been no real relationship. And I just thought I'm struggling now as a grandparent because this is a whole new nuance of emotion and I'm really struggling with this and nobody's understanding. The GPS, not interested. The counselling had pushed me into PTSD, into complex PTSD and I was a mess. And I just thought, OK, I've got to find out if there's any other sport.

And I found Bristol Grandparents at the same time I found Hen and grandparents. So Bristol Grandparents is run by Jane Jackson and Henry Grandparents was set up by Lorraine Bushel. Both of them have been given gongs, you know, for their services to grandparents and they're very well disturbed. Deserved because it is not an easy journey supporting grandparents and a lot of them much older than me. I'm, I'm 61 this year. So who have a completely different mindset because

they're a different generation. So their their beliefs around family are very different. You know, it's amazing how 10 year age gap can make a difference in your beliefs because of the way we were brought up, you know, and a lot of those people were war babies. So they were still scrambling with the losses that had happened in the war to their families. So there was that impact as well and. So do do they, do they sit you down to help you or do you sort of learn through SO?

They're meeting. Groups with them? Yeah, they start to. No, they're, they're mainly, they're, they're support groups mainly they're places to come together to, you know, in those days more so they were places to come together and to be able to Share your story with others that understood you. You know, rather than telling you you're going a bit loopy, you're imagining it.

You know, they're there when they grow up, when they get married, when they do their Sitlaw change, which are all the things we've been told. Or, you know, the other the other nugget that we're all told is, well, you must have done something wrong. Well, that's, that's a very common one across all of the cases where mums and dads have lost children. Somebody somewhere at some stage will, you know, suck in some breath and say, well, there must

be something there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and it is and and and it's really funny, actually, I I call it the Jamaican because it was part of what I grew up in the culture in reading was the very all the different cultures. But one of the things the the Jamaican girls did was before they said something really unpleasant to you, you know, So I call it the Jamaican breath. And it, yeah, that was, it was you'd just sort of, you'd be like the rabbit in the

headlights. You'd, you'd sit there and they think I'm telling the truth. And everybody's telling me I'm a liar. But I'm the one who's lived this. You you go through this and you learn these experiences. What at what stage then does your help, I'm not going to use the word counselling but your help to mums, dads and grandma, grandparents who've gone through

what? What stage does are you starting to work fully as a. So in 2019 I yeah, and, and, and well, 2015 I had a car accident waiting for the payout. In 2019 it came. So I paid to go and do grief training. I thought, I'm going to use, use this money for something really powerful for me. And I had met somebody through business networking who was talking about this grief training and everything she was saying just made absolute sense. And I, you know, I was listening

to what she was saying. I was reading the back of the book that they they taught from and it was like somebody lined up all the dots and it made sense to me for the first time in a very long time. It was layers and layers and layers of grief. Every single little experience where there was detachment, where there was abandonment, where there was this push away. It was all grief and understanding that allowed me to make such a difference in my

world then. So I went off to do the training because I'd said to. Them so sorry so that that your training but that helps you unpick your situation. Well, you know, that's you. In a better place to help other. People that first 2 1/2 days we had to do the process at speed what we would take other people through over 8 weeks we did in 2 1/2 days. So you can imagine it was full on. But within 24 hours, I was

already changing my mindset. I was already thinking about the understanding of forgiveness and apologies and actually being able to express and acknowledge my feelings in a really powerful way. Instead of having it. All yeah, and instead of being dumbed down by everyone around me who was uncomfortable with my emotion and so we'll just shut you up instead, which is what I experienced constantly. And the grief training made a massive difference.

So I came away from the group that I was admining in and I started putting the feelers out to help people with grief. So initially my thought to do that was at that time I had been running a grandparents support group for a year. I was becoming more and more involved in learning about grandparents that were also disconnected from their

grandchildren. I spent fair bit of time going around the different groups so I went as far as Worcester to a group in Worcester. I went to the group in Hendon several times and have become quite close to several people there. I went to Bristol a few times. There is AI believe there's still a group in Oxfordshire, funnily enough, in the town that my ex husband was born in and I lived in when we were first married, that the irony of that did not escape me. You know, that that was most

bizarre. So I, I was going out and visiting all these other groups to learn more about the grandparents and to learn more about my place as a grandparent. You know, I was quite young compared to most of them. And the more I was learning, the more I was understanding the levels of grief and it. And I was trying to explain that to people, but they weren't getting it because they just weren't ready to hear it because somebody else had done them a harm and they couldn't get past that.

They might have had a part to play in that arm. And actually we all have a part to play in it. It's just how we learn to understand what that part is. Because nobody's going to just turn you turn the door, shut it and lock it without there being something that you've said or done that's upset them. But if you don't know what that is, then you're in this place of not knowing how to change it. Can't solve the. Problem no. So for me, I took the view that I have to do this work for

myself. And that's exactly what I did. I, I did the archetypal dog with a bone and I literally, I sat down and I did the process time and time and time again, you know, and I, I really immersed myself in it. And doing that allowed me to deal with all the different relationships. The one with my daughter, I had to postpone for quite a long time because I, every time I got to do it, there was an emotional block and I couldn't do it.

And then when I did do it, it was actually the eve of her birthday and I slept absolutely soundly for the first time in many, many years. And that was huge. And that's actually where my my emblem for my business came from in a dream. Saying that to me, what? What are you describing release from being locked into? Yeah, and, and it's not just the words, it's the visceral

emotion. You know, when I physically saw my daughter, I would shake inside and I would use every ounce of energy not to shake outside. The tears were literally brimming in my eyes all the time and it was the emotion that I used hold on and hold on. And then the minute she'd gone in that house and I'd got in the car and we got round the corner, I could not have driven home from where she was in Oxfordshire to Berkshire.

I couldn't do it. My partner had to come with me because the release of emotion when she wasn't visible to me anymore was like somebody was literally opening a volcano up. It just came out every emotion, the tears, the, the sobbing, the gasping for breath, the holding my chest because it hurts so much, you know, and, and physically rocking in the seat in the car because I didn't know what to do with myself.

And it, it was an hour's drive from there back to Newbury, and I cried for the whole hour, you know, But the visceral, physical emotion was overwhelming. Now what, what comes into my mind, Debbie, is as you you tell that story is coming back to the, to the Friday event. Because in the morning when in quite a small room, 24 ladies in quite a small room, a lot of

emotions there. And at particular points when some of the women were speaking themselves, some of the women could not cope with that and they broke down and started crying. And some of them wanted to go out of the room or were encouraged to go out of the room

where, where it could be quiet. So I sat there and I, I witnessed that from outside because initially I was outside the room and the door would open and, and then later when I was inside the room and I saw the reaction of some of those women, 2 other women simply standing up and telling their story and that, and that was too much for them. And at the end of the day, after the meeting had finished, I, I sat out in the, in the foyer area of the hotel.

There were three of us and we had a, we had a glass of wine together. And while we were there, one of the, I would, well, he's one of the hotel staff who'd been behind the reception desk said very nicely, what, what were you doing to the women in that room? And we, we answered, what do you mean? And he said, well, because this morning the door kept opening and another woman who was crying

and very distressed came out. Now we're smiling about this because there is a little bit of black humour about this, but it was very interesting. And we didn't, we didn't actually give him any detail. But I think one of the ladies I was with said, well, we're trying to help, help them. But that was for me and, and Gemma as well. You know, we, we were there in that room and we saw what what

was happening to those ladies. And of course, at a particular point, you stood up and said, let's do some exercises to try and calm some of that emotion down. So I presume that what you did in that room was part of your training. What I did was actually I, I created an anchoring process for them to find a happy emotion, find, you know, a place where they could learn to love themselves again, but to give them a little taster of how they could do something for themselves relatively easily.

So I brought them all a small rose quartz crystal which was in a heart shape, and I got them to hold that in the hand and just. Send the love to that hand. And then I got them to create that bowl of energy and pull it into them and to feel it within their body. Because had somebody done that with me all those years ago, I would have been able to cope with that car journey in a much better way because I would have had a tool of some kind that would have allowed me to calm

and centre myself. And, and it did, it did calm the room to a large extent. As we moved on and things were discussed, other, other emotions came to the to the surface, but it was clear that that did make a make a difference. Are we allowed to say at this stage, of course, that charity, and you can tell me a lot more, but that that charity specifically works to help women who have gone through this type of alienation and they are, they are at the bottom. They are at the bottom of the pit.

In many respects, yes. You know, I, I met the lovely Rosland at the European Alienation Practitioners event that was held by Karen and Nick Woodall, who are very well known for their work within the, within the law courts with children and reconciliation of children with parents and her aunt alienation. And at that time I'd been reading Karen's, Karen's work avidly.

She writes the most amazing blog and I had learnt so much from her about the dynamics of it, about the psychology of it and the behaviours of different people within the parameters of what goes on. So the parents, their parents, their siblings, etcetera, etcetera and the ones that are being alienated. So at that point, I, I, this ticket was free because it was the first time this event was

being held. That was 2018. And I went to it and I sat there in tears for the whole weekend with my friend who had come from another group that I'm in. We'd met there. And she and I, literally, we filled a little notebook. We both had a notebook and we filled it with notes. The whole event was around people who were practitioners in the field, from America, from Canada, from Europe, from London, from all over the way, you know, all over the world. And there were legal people,

solicitors. And it was presided over by the then leading judge of the UK for the family courts who was retiring. So, you know, there were a lot of there was a lot of good solid structured evidence, good solid structured language and good solid structured education. And I literally sat there feeling like somebody was pulling a string of flags out of my chest with all the different words I'd been experiencing and never been able to fully acknowledge. Literally.

Somebody else is bringing. They were on that stage saying all the things that I've been experiencing, but they were talking about it from the family courts point of view and I, I really was rabbit in the headlights again, a massive learning curve. And that's where I met Rosalind. And I was, I was a mess. I was weeping all over the place. And I don't know how many tissues I went through. I had a big bag beside me. And yeah, it was horrible. And she introduced me to the

charity. And because I was care at the time and, and my, I didn't have finances for myself. I didn't have an income for myself because although I was running my business, I didn't have an income for my business because I was growing it. She gifted me a place and that gift suddenly opened my world up to being in a room full of just mothers. And although at that point I was in many, many groups and I had met a lot of men through this

process and it's heartbreaking. The stuff I've heard, it's heartbreaking. But this was another level and it was where I suddenly realised that women are being expelled from their children's lives for no good reason and the man needs his standing. A lot of the the women had wealthy husbands. A great deal of them were Spanish, Portuguese, French, you know, So they were trophy wives, if you like, until the marriage was no good to the man anymore

and then they were on the heap. And so I was beginning then to really look deeper and understand more about the nuances of what was going on when I first became alienated. And I through all these people that I connected to, I was beginning to learn the figures. So when I first became alienated, the figure of women being alienated from their children was being quoted at 17% of the population as opposed to the men. So you think that's quite a tiny figure? OK.

By the time I'd got into it and it to come to 2019 and I had delved deeper and deeper and deeper, what I was learning was that figure was nearer 3435%. Huge. It's huge. Just qualify that 35% of. Women being expelled from their children's lives and since then since 2019. Just pin pin this down, Debbie. So out of the total statistic about people being alienated, 35% are women. Yeah. And I was just thinking it feels bigger than that.

I know more women. If we were to sit down and really do a study on this, I know more women than 35%. Right. Forgive me for just putting it. I just want to be no, that's fine. So how many, how many mothers are we talking about that you think are alienated? Do you estimate that are alienated? I, I estimate it's probably nearer 45, nearly 50%. I would say that it's actually 5050 and the reason I say it is because there are lots and lots of us that didn't get to go through the courts.

There are lots and lots of us that are just figures flying in the wind. OK. Like when you give a percentage, what is that percentage of? Well, when you say 100%, you know, that's the round figure, isn't it? So we're always quoted, and you see it a lot in a lot of the groups. There are a lot of men that have had really horrific experiences, and in their mind, they're the only ones that are experiencing it. And women, women are not experiencing alienation. You don't know what you're

talking about, right? But actually, they're not listening to us because we do know what we're talking about. And we have masses of empathy for the men because of our own experiences. Right. So we're we're so therefore out of the total number of alien aids alienation cases, you're saying 35% women, but actually

you think it's much higher than. That I think it's much higher than that because of the fact that so many of us don't go through the court process because our children are in their mid late teens when we're going through our divorces. Yeah. So then this is when these behaviours are ramping up and there's nobody there to protect our relationship with our children because in the court's eyes they're deemed to be too old and able to speak for

themselves. Which is complete buncombe because the prefrontal cortex has been talked about as not being fully formed for many years when you're 2526. But in recent years scientific knowledge has actually told us, I think it was a couple of years ago, that it's actually nearer 30 and 31. So how on earth can a 1415 year old make a really conscious decision about how they want to

move forward? Well. Which is where the term alienation sits beautifully, because that's when they are at their most malleable. Yes, and and this whole whole thing stems around the manipulation of future people and children. Yes, you, you go to that event and you've got to judge there. And, and now you've gone from just looking at problems to do with alienation, parental alienation.

You're now seeing a whole raft of other problems around how parental alienation relates and interacts with the court system, how social services get involved. Kafkaas comes in. So I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, but that meeting suddenly takes you from looking at one specific area to saying, wow, actually there's a whole things happening. Yeah, it's much bigger. And it really opened my eyes that 48 hours was was a huge

step forward. And of course that was the year before I'd done the grief training. So at that point, I did a brain and trauma training to try and understand about not just the trauma I had been experiencing, but how I could help the grandparents that I'd set up the group for. But also at that point, I had become involved with the hand and grandparents group more, with the lobbying that Lorraine was doing in parliament.

And I fully supported her in that because at that point, I felt we needed to have our voices heard. You know, there was a great swathe of older people who were dealing with this destructive grief that they just didn't understand. A great deal of them who'd had relationships with their grandchildren. They'd been the caregivers, all the parents were working. They'd been the holiday givers, You know, they'd been the gift givers. They'd been that special person

in those children's lives. And all of a sudden they were literally cut off, you know, and and no real explanation as to why. And, and this of course a key, key thing not for mums and dads when, when this happened, they would have initially been in the place you were in. Who can I talk to about this? Because some people you go to, to talk to about it would dismiss you. No smoke without fire and all the all the other things they say. The groups are expanding in UK.

You've got involved with some particular ones that you think are doing good work. Who else was paying attention? The judge is paying attention, apparently. And this is interesting. So his terminology was that family judges are not educated properly. They're not educated enough. And to be quite frank, they're

still not educated enough. I'm still hearing real horror stories about how judges are are are literally guiding Kafkaas and social services to behave in ways that are not expected because it suits the judge narrative and that's really destructive. Right, that's a pretty interesting statement that a senior judge describes fellow judges in the Family Family Law division as being uneducated. Yeah, he said. There was not enough education there needed. He said uneducated, we might say

ignorant. Well, exactly that, you know, they, they, and there are, there are a few gems. I've heard some extraordinary stories of amazing, amazing judges who have seen through the journey that these parents are going through and have seen through the stories that have been made up about them and the the tactics that have been used against them. But they are so few and far between. They are literal diamonds in a coal mine. You know, a sprinkle of diamonds

and a very dark coal mine. So something which I've have seen for myself and I've heard from from parents in in dealing with child protection cases is that they get a good judge and that judge starts to do the right thing. And the next thing is they turn up in court and there's a completely different judge who then does what they regard as malicious things. And that judge then has the power to say, well, I'm going to keep this case to myself.

And every time that they go into court, they are faced with this one individual who. And of course the other side of that is that the judge has the power to instruct or or or destruct the social worker. Yes. So a social worker that is actually doing their job and is standing up for the mother and standing up for the child and saying there is parental alienation suddenly is off the case. Yes. So then you end up with the cycle of another social worker

and another social worker. And so the whole story becomes more and more disjointed and the mother becomes more and more disjointed because she is literally, as I found myself doing so many times, telling her story again and again and again. And it becomes. It becomes it's draining. I'll tell you, Draining. It's it's literally like somebody is pulling your heart out of your chest every single

time you speak. This is this is very interesting because we're now into the area of the family court, which is which is a key part of the stories that come to me because some some dads I'm going to try and boost the number of dads because I know they're out there, but principally dealing with mums who who have lost children through the family courts and they describe to me a template in how things are done. So so false allegations are made against them.

Experts who are brought in who make damning judgements Psychological report without psychologist has never met the mother Yes is a is a common one Yes and. Then never met the father. Indeed, and and at the end of the day, a mother often then trying to finance what she's doing herself, but very quickly they've run out of money and then and then the legal firms are operating on what do they or what do you think? Legal Aid. Legal Aid. Which is is is almost non

existent. So unless you have a false allegation that's talking about there was some kind of abuse or violence, then you can't get legal aid. You know, it's, it's, it's a real circus. And, and we have a local authority that can use it's own legal teams to help prosecute that case. So in many, in many of the cases, the mum or the dad is faced with their own local taxes being used to fund the legal

teams that are operating. Exactly, because you've not just got the parents, you then end up with the children having their guardian. Yes, yeah. And they have their own solicitor, Yeah, and they're acting for them separately to the parents. So that. But they're in the thrall of the parent that's doing the alienating. Yes, but we can say that the the the business of they say that the court is there to protect the child. It's a secret court in order to protect the child.

Everything is about protecting the child, but actually what the process does to my mind is is starts to alienate the child. Oh, completely. Yeah. Because there's not just the process, it's the time. You know, if if a false allegation's made, that's six months immediately that you lose any contact with your child. But that can be extended and extended and extended as it is.

And then COVID came along and caused absolute chaos through the court system, you know, so they had to scramble around and get themselves back on their feet sharpish. But that also extended and extended and extended. So it left children in a very vulnerable place where they were there with that person in their ear. They're there. They're there. Now I hear it from my clients. He's told them that I'm making

him sell the house. He's told them that I'm not paying maintenance and that's why they can't do this their after school stuff. He's told them I'm not paying XXX so he can't afford to buy them their treats. They can't afford to go on the school trips. They can't afford to have the clothes they want because she's not paying. Wow. That's the same story that the men have been hearing for years and years and years. You know, their children have

been hearing the same thing. Your father's not paying, your father's not doing. And they have been physically shown the court documents. Now, that is not protecting the children. In fact, it goes against the rules of the court. It goes against everything the judges, the social workers, Kafkas all tell them. But those children are still seeing the court documents.

This is something that was, was fascinating and absolutely educational for me in the meeting because as I said at the beginning, I hadn't previously, I hadn't encountered parental alienation in this detail. If I was aware of something, it it, it wasn't for me, a very big thing for me. It was always children being taken away under pretty vicious circumstances and abuse. And then all of a sudden for me, you described the meeting you went into.

You took me into that meeting and, and I learned from these mothers as to what's happened when I put this picture together. I, I've been into court quite a few times with families in, I will say in the days when you could actually get in as a Mackenzie friend, I am told more and more the courts won't allow you actually or, or if they do, if they do allow you in as a Mackenzie friend, they won't let you speak. But I've actually been able to be in court as a Mackenzie friend and speak.

So I have experience in court. I've think I've reasonable amount of experience dealing with parents. I've seen the evidence. I've seen be careful what I say here paperwork that they may choose to show me. And to me it is impossible. The idea that this system is in the rotten state, it is simply because of incompetence. I cannot believe this. It is. It's orchestrated. It follows a template. Yes, it does. It's deliberate. Yes, it's deliberate. The whole thing is deliberate.

And if it's deliberate, Debbie, what does that mean? Well, it means it's a lovely way for them to all get wealthy on the backs of people that they're destroying emotionally and families that they're destroying emotionally and children that they're destroying emotionally who are going to be carrying that grief into their adult lives.

And they are the teachers of our future, the doctors of our future, the police, the ambulance, the fire brigade, the the scientists, you know, they're the adults of our future and they are all carrying grief that is not being legalised. Baggage because a lot of people will will understand. That, but they're all carrying huge amounts of grief baggage that is destroying their emotional health. And it's not mental health, it's emotional health.

And that emotional health is then having an impact on their physical health, their, you know, their, their weight, weight. Most people don't realise that weight is an emotional problem. It's not a, an eating problem. The eating problem comes because you need to soothe the grief. It comes because you start to care less and less for yourself. So you're not exercising as much, so you're not burning off what you're eating. But it comes down to the

mindset. It comes down to the baggage that's in here and the baggage that is physically held in the body. You know, lots of what I've learned along the way, feminine cancers, breast cancer, womb cancers, they're linked to family disorder. Diabetes is linked to family disorder. Fibromyalgia is linked to emotional distress and trauma in

childhood. I had fibromyalgia disabling me at one point and I had to walk around with two walk sticks, walking sticks because I was so overwhelmed with fibromyalgia. That didn't come out until I had the very severe surgery in 2007, and it was picked by the distress and the stress that I was experiencing in the early days of the divorce. Yeah, this, this, this makes absolute sense to me. Eye problems, foot problems, back problems, heart problems.

I've lost 3 great friends in the US who all had broken heart syndrome and it is a thing. Broken heart syndrome is extreme stress and distress of the emotional variety that is not being tempered because there is no way to deal with it and that's massive. So don't you know you have? We have a heart and around the heart there are two areas of tissue that are known as the heart strings.

And you heard that phrase, you know, well, they're heartstrings pulling the heartstrings, you know, and you often see with an elderly couple who've been together all their lives that they'll die in a very short space of time because they are broken hearted. That's what's going on. Those two strings of of tissue physically break because the body can't repair constantly because it's under the stress and distress. So you're losing your sleep.

So your body clock that has this little set pattern of repair can't repair. So then it stops repairing and that part of the body suffers fibromyalgia. ME stomach issues. I've lost count of the amount of women I know who are going through this who have IBS. And it's not just a little something, it's chronic because they're being fed a pack of nonsense by the GPS because the GPS don't want to delve into the emotional stuff because they haven't got the knowledge. Right.

So thank you because you've now you've now taken us round because we start this, we started this discussion on parental alienation. We've now got to the point that that the scale of it in this country was stick to this country. We know it's overseas, but the scale of it is so big that we are damaging the population. We're certainly, we're certainly damaging the future population.

And you've also said, and I absolutely agree with you that if we look at what is happening through the child protection and court system, this can't be accidental to what's happening. So where, where have we come to? We've come to this very, very serious point where we are saying that actually families in this country are being attacked, yes. Yes, the very fabric of family. Some of them destroyed because some family, some mums and dads, excuse me, don't make it through

this this process. No, it's it's quite horrific. And you? Know we are being attacked by a system which is destroying relationships in in. The, and it's, it's not just destroying the first relationship, the parent and the child, it's actually damaging

the whole dynamic of the family. You know, because we also have all these beautiful families where there are same sex couples and because they have children sometimes slightly outside of the normal, because they have eggs donated or you know, sperm donated or whatever it is, they take ownership of the child and then the other one's left with the other child. So the siblings get torn apart as well.

And I have many friends in that position as well, many connections that I've met over the years in that position. So they're not only destroying A parental relationship and a grandparent relationship, they're destroying sibling relationships and they're destroying cousin relationships.

That's a massive dynamic. When I sat down and worked out for my daughter in the very early days just how many people she became directly disconnected from by being disconnected from me, that worked out to 13 people that were important in her life.

You know me, my brothers, her uncles, her cousins, her grandparents, her great grandmother, you know, and all of the other people in the circle, people that she'd known since she was a baby that was suddenly not in her life anymore because she literally pulled the drawbridge down and cut off half

of who she was. So if you put a a child in that emotional place where they literally have to shut down half of who they are, they stop functioning because half of who they are has been put into a. Box and many from I'll say from my side dealing with the the more social service orientated cases. That's absolutely what mums are saying. They witnessed the child shut down and until the child is different. My daughter turned overnight. It was shocking.

You know, my, my daughter and I, I always thought we had an incredibly close relationship, but I, a, a lot of my friends were, oh, she's my friend, she's my friend. And I felt it was really important to actually be the mother, you know, especially when my own mother had done her dandis. But she'd had a tough journey being a mum and I had felt that loss and I didn't want my daughter to feel that loss. So I had tried to keep that

boundary of mother daughter. But I soon realised in those early months that every other adult that was on her side, on the ex husband side of the table were determined to destroy that relationship. You know, and it started within 24 hours of me asking for the divorce because we, we had a really happy relationship. We did a lot of things together. You know, he liked to go off and do his fishing. So I would take her to do things on my own.

We would do things together. He never wanted to come down to my brother in Paignton to have holidays. So she and I would go on our own to Uncle Andy's house and spend a week at the seaside with Uncle Andy and his wife and we'd have a wonderful time, you know. And it was, it was. I did my best to keep her connected to her grandparents because I didn't have that in my life. I only had half my family. So, and then literally overnight she became, the only way I could describe it was she became

viperous. I, I, I want to move on from here, but can I just say on this that I'm not trained in psychology, Perhaps I understand a bit through life, but it does seem to me that children are being manipulated when they come into contact and might be the one parent, but very soon there's a team of people around that parent and that that psychological manipulation increases, it intensifies and it

is unbelievably malicious. There is, it's so cold and calculating and destructive that I still wonder where it comes from. You, you see the same techniques used across cases. You, you know, I can be talking to a moment. I might say something. That's exactly what happened to me. So it is almost like we have a system, we're saying that it's intent is to destroy families, but it's using techniques that I found myself saying or asking myself, do do they go in a

classroom and learn this? Well, it makes you wonder. Doesn't it? You know, and I, I don't know.

And I have to add to that because as a child, growing up in a single parent family, my mother, the support she had was a group called Gingerbread. And you know, she she had a couple of very long term friendships that came from that very, very beautiful ladies who who both had terrible times, you know, with what was going on. And she became more and more political in her voice in a way that I didn't understand because I was a child. I just didn't understand.

But one of the things my mother said constantly, and this is from the early, early 70s, you know, we, we, we were taken away from my father because of what was happening in 1969. So the when you know that we were taken away in the March and the the the Chiswick Women's Refuge didn't start until the November, so you know there was nowhere to go. I'll just throw this in and you won't. As you feel comfortable, are you allowed to mention who your

family was connected with? I'm careful about it, but I, I didn't find out until my mother was dying that my father worked for the Cray twins. So my mother was absolutely terrified. The police were always knocking at the door. And that was the, that was the, the buckle point for my mother leaving my father. You know, we, there were four of us. We were born in four different homes because we were constantly moving. She had a miscarriage between

the first two boys. So she had me one miscarriage and then two others. She was terrified. She had a terrible, terrible time. As each one of us was born. He took the family allowance book, He took control of the money. He lived on steaks. We didn't. We lived on scraps. I didn't understand why my mother hated cooking when I was a child. And as soon as I was able to cook, she gave it to me. It was my job, you know? It was my job, you know.

As soon as she was able to to to give that job away, she did because she hated cooking and it's because she'd been forced to try and feed 4 toddlers and babies. With the. With the rubbish, the scraps, you know. And she just didn't. She did not feel capable enough to do that. Debbie, you, you are here in front of the camera with me and and I am absolutely delighted that you, I'm going to say, had the courage to come come down to the studio to do this.

We're just about, I think, at a point where we should bring this one to a close. But something I want to ask you is, is you're here in front of the camera for men and women, mums and dads who are out there who know that they're in this kind of alienation process or are beginning to suspect they are. What would your message be to families who are coming to realise that they're in this trap? What would what would your what would you say? Some encouraging words.

My own journey actually has taught me that looking within and learning who I am is the most powerful tool because it has given me my voice, it's given me clarity. It's taken away the physical emotions that were, oh, it was like being put in a ringer, you know.

So as I started to deal with my emotions, as I started to deal with all the different levels of things I was experiencing and acknowledging them, and I was learning who I was underneath, you know, and what had made me stay in that abusive relationship and how I'd felt badly in some situations with what I'd been living with because I didn't know any different, you know, that big turn around of acknowledging and then learning how to forgive. And it's, it's people go, oh,

forgiveness. But no, it's actually how we forgive ourselves for staying in those positions, how we forgive ourselves for not understanding that our own things were holding us there. So we're carrying baggage that isn't ours. And when we can forgive and apologise to ourselves for that, we can let go of it. And it's it's like the sun coming.

Out right and can I add the bit to that and when when you're letting go and the sun comes out actually you've reached a much better position to fight your case so. This is you become more aware of your emotions, you become more controlled. You'd become able to speak without crying. For me, that was a biggie for a very long time. You know, I would literally, I'd sit here and the tears would be falling to and I'd say, I'm, I'm sorry, I can't help the waterfall.

That was my constant phrase. I can't help the waterfall. But all of a sudden one day the waterfall stopped. And I suddenly realised that if I kept on doing this inner work and looking after me, it brings me to my why, which is I have grandchildren. I don't know how many now I I know I had two granddaughters. I don't know if there are any more. I do know that I'm all over the Internet because I've built my social media up all this time. They're going to find me one day.

They might knock on the door. What's the point in me being that broken, damaged person? I need to be that healthy, balanced, vibrant person so that I can help them to process what they're going to learn. Because I'm not going to sit there and say it's all your mother's fault because it isn't her fault. She was a child. It's actually the adults that involved themselves in that and damaged her and she doesn't understand how much she was

coerced and manipulated. But I want them to know that they can still have a relationship with her and that they can do it healthily and understand the grief they're going to be experiencing at the disconnection we've experienced. And that's, that's a big why for me.

And it's actually, it should be the why for all of us that we fix our own things to bring us into a space of clarity and emotional strength where we can support our children and our grandchildren to have better reconnection later on down the line. It's not going to happen for everyone. I can't wave a magic wand and say come and do your work with me because I'll make it all better because that's not what it's about. It's about finding us within all this grief.

Yeah. And and that that was very clear on that very special Friday. So this is a really good point to end on. People who are out there looking in at us, I know that you are very keen to help people come forward and to not only heal, but start to be active and make a difference. I'm going to say, and you'll know why I've come to say this, I am very, very keen for more and more people to come forward because they're the evidence that there's a problem. That's one thing.

And the other thing is that when enough people come forward, we can solve the problem. So I I am absolutely hoping that this interview will be another one where people are going to see it and think, yes, I need to do something. That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? It would be, it would be absolutely amazing, you know, for me, if I can help another person to not have the absolute gut wrenching journey I've had for the length of time I had it, you know, it was, it was a very long time.

Some of these people are only just starting on this journey. And you know, there's an, there's an old phrase you need to get your act together. And the ACT is actually caring for yourself. You know, you're not doing your your children a disservice. You're not doing your grandchildren A disservice. You're actually doing them the greatest service by sorting out your own emotional stuff. Because the more we sort that out, the more clear you can become in the outcome you actually want.

And and that's. And hopefully helping other people as well, because that's the strength. Yeah, exactly that. Debbie, thank you very much indeed. It's been a pleasure. Thank you.