When the Moon is in the seventh house,
and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Then peace will
guide the planets,
and love will steer the stars.
–The Fifth Dimension (1969)
2016 is the year that parental alienation (as we know it) will end. It’s only January and already, the traditional framework of parental alienation is disappearing and a new era is emerging. Almost everyday I find another piece to the puzzle that brings us one step closer to ending this nightmare. We are light years away from that dark place were there was no hope that people or systems would ever understand and care enough to change.
Up until now, it’s probably a good thing that we didn’t know how complex and damaging the problem is. If we had, most of us might have given up in the face of such comprehensive adversity. What we were unaware of is that many other people have been also been working on aspects of our problem under different names. It is now becoming clear that any one domain couldn’t possibly have discovered the multifaceted aspects of parental alienation. And indeed what we call parental alienation is just one aspect of a bigger problem. This is why we have struggled trying to explain or get others to understand our crisis. This is also why individual approaches to resolving the issue have failed.
The attachment-based model of parental alienation1 is the only model that identifies the multifaceted interaction of the clinical psychological definition of parental alienation, but even that does not account for the impact of the longstanding social injustices of custody allocations, parenting and gender role biases that have as much or maybe more of an impact on the problem. Make no mistake about it, parental alienation is a huge, huge problem, possibly our county’s number 1 public health problem and the solution is just as big, but not insurmountable.
There is nothing that is insurmountable for targeted parents because we have the one thing we need to overcome this worldwide assault on our children, our families and our country. We have the GOLD bullet; the most valuable possession in the world. It’s called attachment.
Attachment is the most powerful force on earth.
Attachment is the enduring emotional bond between a healthy parent and his or her children and it is our superpower. It exists with no boundaries in time or space. Nothing can destroy it. Nothing can stop it. It is how David beat Goliath. It is how we can be immersed in intolerable pain, but not be debilitated by it. It is how we endure being stripped of our personal and civil rights and still step forward. Attachment is how targeted parents can work full time jobs, plus put in 20-30+ hours a week preparing for court, mediation, and still fight for the good of the order. In addition, targeted parents spend every moment thinking, working, praying, sharing, and caring for our children, whether we have contact or not. We are either crazy, or invincible and know that I’m not crazy.