My daughter’s birthday was last month. She’s now 23 years old. The other day in the mail I received the birthday card that I’d sent to her in care of her grandparents (since I don’t know her address) marked ‘return to sender’ written in her mother’s handwriting. Ouch. Very Ouch.
Why her mother thinks it’s her place to do this I’ll never know. One thing is for sure, anyone who would do this to their own child is a very sick individual.
When paying my insurance bill online the other night I checked my profile to make sure the information they had was current. It listed all my family members and there I found my daughter’s name with a new last name. She was now married.
I knew it was coming, just not when. Still, it stings. No one on our side of the family was invited . . . not even her brother. It’s beyond me how this happens.
I asked my son if he knew anything about it and he said, “No. I don’t know why she and mom have to be that way.”
One of the many things you can do on Google is to create an ‘alert’ (google.com > more > even more > alerts). This feature allows you to enter a word or phrase or a name and then have Google notify you when someone searches for that. It’s a handy way of keeping track of a developing news story, a favorite sports team, or in my case, trying to keep in contact with a daughter I’ve lost through Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS).
This is a sculpture I did of my now ex-wife Kim in my first year of grad school. We had married and then moved to St. Louis in August and by December she was pregnant.
This is a scan of a photo from an old newspaper article about me so it doesn’t do it justice but it does give you an idea.
I thought it would be a pretty memorable piece to hang on to. It may not mean much to anyone but family, but that was okay as that’s who I was making it for.
For those of you who’ve read my posts you know how central the estrangement from my daughter has been to my depression. I can’t think of anything that’s been so painful for so long. When I think I have a handle on it, I’ll read something, hear a song on the radio, someone will ask about her or something else will happen that makes me think of her and the void I have in my heart.
Parental Alienation Syndrome is a controversial diagnosis but after living through my estrangement and coming across PAS on the internet and reading the signs and symptoms, I can tell you it’s absolutely real. It’s one of the worst and most insidious forms of child abuse.
