32. Is There More To Life Than This?

you are listening to the Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number 32. stay tuned well hello you guys I it is Monday afternoon and I was on my way out to jump rope and then I thought oh crud I want to record an episode today because I also towards the end of the week you mamas out there I have a little surpriseee for you not towards the end of the week all the way at the end of the week I'm sure you are aware that Sunday is Mother's Day this is Mother's week so yeah I have a little surprise at the end of the week for you and so I thought I'd better get this one out recorded and edited now or else um this mama is going to be hating her life editing a bunch at once

I think I'm ruining that surprise for you huh now today we're going to be talking about oh and also just so you know I am going to be doing Facebook lives every day this week in light of the fact that it's Mother's Day right for Mother's Day week just offering a little bit of extra support they're gonna be quick ones I'm just gonna come on and off I did one today however I don't know I think my brain was still in Sunday it was it was interesting I'm gonna persevere and I'm gonna go back in something happens with me like the second that I know it's live and I'm actually recording and I'm not talking to a person when I'm live I don't know what happens in my brain I do know what

happens I keep thinking like don't up and of course I do what we're focusing on is what we create right and so yeah today was a little bit of a hot mess but that's okay I'll get better at them I'm just I'm not experienced in the Live Events I did a few of them a while ago and then I didn't do them because of this very reason and so um now I'm going back in so I think I'm just going to learn to be be okay with the practice of getting better so right now I don't know what happens it's like everything that was in my brain when I hit the go live button just goes I forget words I forget my how to formulate sentences I don't know what happens it's entertaining but yes I will be live

every day and I don't have a specific time like tomorrow I've got a noon client so it'll probably happen after that so it's gonna be all over the board but also I am starting that private Facebook group for y'all for anybody that wants to join and want some extra support it's all private and you have to answer questions to get in so that I can vet you guys and make sure that all y'all are actual alienated parents I made it back in December but I never did anything with it like I am this solo member of this group because I never did anything with it but what I want to do with it now is my idea for it is to have a solution focused Community where we'll do support groups and it's just going to

be a free resource for you to get on and my hope for this group is that when you go there you'll leave there with the same amount or more energy than when you came in this will be energy giving that you guys will be able to pull Solutions tools ideas support from the page as opposed to feeling dragged into the page okay now moving along we are going to be talking about the different stages that you might be going through in your grief with your situation of alienation I am pretty certain that I have parents with brand new situations where alienation has come into your lives right and then I think also there are some listeners that have had alienation happening for I

mean there kids maybe in their 20s or 30s an alienation happened years ago however the effects are still going strong yes maybe you're still alienated do you now adult child is not speaking to you and maybe you're not even seeing the grandchildren so I get we have both ends of the spectrum there and then of course we have in between there's everything sprinkled in between there is no Rhyme or Reason to actual stages of grief okay so what I'm getting ready to say you'll understand in a minute but the way that you process and you move through grief is is unique to you there's no right way to do it for so long many of us felt that oh it needs to be first it's denial then it's anger

then it's bargaining then it's however the order was whatever the case may be with you your grief is going to happen you will think that everything is good and you've gotten through it all and it's all behind me and then all of a sudden something will pop up right in front of you and you'll be like oh hello grief how are you today and then something will trigger it again and then it'll go away for a little while and something will pop up again okay this is just how Greece is right it's sort of it's not even cyclical but I will say that in the beginning it's when we're feeling the acute grief the acute effects this is when it's brand new and you maybe you just recently went to court maybe you

were blindsided by this alienation maybe um this has been like a slow burn and has finally come up to your kids not being in the house or they have recently been rejecting you when the initial whatever happens for you the initial circumstance where you are now making it mean oh no I could possibly lose them quote unquote lose them there was a pattern that your brain expected your your brain expected to do pickups on Wednesday Thursday Friday right School pickups happened every other weekend happened that's how it was whatever your schedule was your brain expected that to stay status quo and when all of a sudden you're not doing school pickups or you're not receiving the phone calls

like you once did you're not receiving the return text of them telling you that they love you but instead maybe either you don't get a response from them or the response is not a lovely beautiful I love you or even a neutral response maybe it's an ugly response now it's become a new pattern when the circumstances begin to change and they sort of seem to be staying at that change your brain has to re-learn this change it's just like when you move houses and you know how like when you've lived somewhere for so long when you're driving if let's say you're driving your kids to school you can sort of do it on autopilot if you go to work every day you go to the same place every day you

could do it there have been times where I have done it and I will get somewhere and I'm like how the hell did I even get here when you moved to a new location and you have a new route to drive then you don't have autopilot anymore your brain has to learn the new habit the new thing when the living arrangements the custody order changed whatever pattern you had with your children has changed your brain takes a while to catch up to that the old pattern the old expectations were like encoded in your brain and so when your kid is not sitting at the dinner table on Tuesday when you walk in for from work and the house is empty your brain does a freak out like oh something is terribly

wrong and it's this shock it's this disbelief it is even though you knew these were the new terms if you will this was the new situation it still feels not real and so that is the acute grief phase one for today's talk okay in this phase you may not be very functional you may be like I guess compare it to like when I was in Texas like the crazy artist phased when I was living up in the hill compare this phase to like that so if you're showering things are good right in this stage of Grace you are likely retracted from Social Circles and maybe even possibly family you are very much in opposition fighting the current circumstance chances and wanting them to change back

to how it was you need to get back to the regular custody situation it needs to happen now all of this is very wrong you are very very actively in argument in a war with that and then the next phase would be what I can consider like Purgatory where you're in between like you're functional you are going to work you are getting things done you are able to function in a social environment however you might not feel like you can connect with the people that you're speaking with like let's say if you go to like a you know a social Gathering you may just be giving people what you think they want to hear as far as like how are you oh yeah I'm great you may even FIB a little bit so that they don't

feel uncomfortable because you think if you answered honestly if it would make things uncomfortable and either they would judge you or they would just feel uncomfortable because it's a heavy subject right so the connection isn't there you don't feel like you can really be yourself around many people and you feel like you're kind of going through the motions of life like things are getting done you might be paying the bills you might not but you are working towards it you are functional in your life you're not in denial like in the phase one you were in denial about what was happening and no this can't be this is wrong somebody made a mistake and it needs to be switched that's in phase one

phase two you are acknowledging all right this is but here I am um when I'm talking about all of this when I'm referring to your grief here and these phases put your custody case aside that's separate okay we're not talking about the case and what you're pursuing what you're not this is about you as a person and how you are functioning in your everyday of life okay so you are getting done but you feel like life doesn't have any meaning or it has very little meaning you may feel like you get what you get I'm never really going to be happy again but I'm fine I'm like living life you know this is the hand I got dealt and I will never truly be happy again but I'll

manage you know if you have moved on you may have gotten a new partner and that's fine you know but you just don't have like a Love or there's not a lot of desire and you're not seeing the little joys in life so you're just sort of going through the motions that's why I call this like the prurgatory because you also might feel like it's too late to start over you're already such and such age and you think well what is there out there for me now like how could I even just start over and if I do start over what am I saying about my relationship with my child I've talked about that in previous episodes like the guilt that might come along with starting your life over you feel like

that you have no place to do that because if you do that you wouldn't be a good mom or dad that this would be like inappropriate celebration you know basically life is mundane right it's just sort of Getting By and you've accepted that this is what your fate is forever and you may hope that one day your kids get back to you but honestly at this point you're just exhausted and you just want to pay the bills and get through the next day so that's the Purgatory the second phase and there is a third phase that you may or may not ever get to okay and this is the boiling point like the point where enough is enough you want there to be more in life you can't take

living in this Purgatory the mundane the you get what you get you're not willing to accept that this is it for life something inside is telling you that there's more it might be all right for you to at least poke around and window shop and see what might be out there and some of you might not it might not be like no there has to be more you may be at that point where you're just like Curious like you're on the fence you've got one foot over here and one foot not sure whether you can step over to the other side but you're like what if there's more than what I'm doing doing over here by settling what if I could have happiness what if I could create an amazing life if you have that wonder

that question that hope in you then I think it's something worth investigating if you have that voice wondering could it possibly be could I have more could I find happiness still even in the midst of alienation if that question is there it's usually like a little whisper the little could it be if that's there listen to it listen to it there's a reason it's there okay you always hear people say at the end of life the one thing that people never ever say is oh man I wish I would have lived more I wish I would have been less Brave nobody says those things right and if you hear a little voice inside you talking and wondering like could it be I think it's so important to

investigate that for yourself could it be let's see let's check it out I don't know if there's a downside to that to just checking around just just poking around and seeing you could say yeah well the downside is is I have spent how long in misery in so much pain I've been crying for years and you don't want to do it anymore you don't want to have to think about doing any more healing any more processing any more of any of that stuff because first off it sounds like so much work it sounds miserable and you don't know if the payoff is worth it and also you think by going into the unfamiliar and putting your heart on the line you know becoming vulnerable in any way

you're not sure if that's worth it because you might just get slapped in the face again you might get knocked down and you're not sure if you can take that like mentally emotionally I don't know if I could even do it again I can't risk it because I could just what I might not be able to make it through you ever hear people to say that they'll be like oh man I don't know how they're doing it I could never get through it of course you could of course you could given the circumstance of course you could get through it so if you've ever said that to yourself like oh I don't I couldn't handle the rejection I couldn't handle the Heartbreak I don't want to put myself through that again that's

just me being smart I'm not gonna risk my emotional mental health that way so I'll just stay here in this ho-hum place for all of eternity until my life is through I just want to lovingly nudge you urge you to question the validity of that line of thinking right of that belief that you couldn't handle the healing because who knows what if it's not worth it on the other end when we find happiness when we find joy Renee Brown talks about this a lot her study is about vulnerability and it's it is so true it's when we find happiness and joy we don't find that without having to be vulnerable in order to get anything worthwhile if you ask me anyway you must first become vulnerable in some

way shape or form the more vulnerable you allow yourself to be the possibility for payoff is that much greater so that's one two is that healing yourself healing and moving forward and not just accepting the ho-hum of settling for this is the rest of my life now healing and creating a new life for yourself isn't the painstaking draining process that you might think it is when we do the work to heal ourselves really all that is is staying open to being vulnerable staying open to questioning our current beliefs and our current thoughts and deciding that we want to believe new things that help us to move us forward so if you're at that breaking point or like that on the fence point where you are

like maybe possibly there's more for me right maybe possibly I could create something new while holding space for my child and the grief that I have I can still create something new and better this is the concept of post-traumatic growth post-traumatic growth the idea behind it that suffering distress trauma can potentially cause you to grow in one or more areas of your life has been around for thousands of years okay so that's all that post-traumatic growth is there are studies that were done in more recent psychology that proved those that have suffered some sort of trauma 89 of survivors report at least one area of dramatic growth following the traumatic

event one of the guy's name was tadeshi I forget the other guy's name but anyway there were five major areas that you can experience this growth and so one of them is relating to others one of them is new possibilities spiritual change appreciation for life and personal growth personal strengths okay and so basically you develop a new understanding a new energy about you because whatever the traumatic event that has happened I mean this happens with people that have had very serious car accidents and have lost somebody in the accident and they survived you know it could happen with anything really could happen with something like parental alienation where we have this

Awakening afterwards it's like oh my gosh we've sort of renewed our our faith in ourselves and how strong we are and how much we can endure and therefore it motivates us to look in the other areas of our life maybe some of us not all of us but some of us realize that we weren't appreciating life and the way that we really want to appreciate it some of us then also because of the accusations that were flying in our situation of alienation we realized that we maybe weren't living life the way that we wanted to that's which is my case I wasn't living life in the way that I today they want to live it and I chose to grow in many areas as a result right I knew that I could be doing more

and living better I wasn't applying myself I wasn't living consciously the lowest of low that I got I sort of think of it like you know when um people go into the service mind you I apologize if I offend I have never been in the service myself I sort of think of it like when a Cadet is in boot camp and they get torn down right they tear them down physically mentally emotionally to build them back up again and I kind of think about my situation in that way now my ex is not doing the building back up of me I am doing the building back up of me and I'm making myself bigger and better and all of the things than I was before because we have two choices when goes down in our lives we can

either just this sucks this is my life now and kick dirt and just survive five or we can be like all right this is this is a great opportunity I've got a clean slate right now what do I want to do with it and that second attitude that second perspective I just don't see a downside to it I don't see how it could hurt you it could hurt anybody by seeing it as a clean slate a clean canvas for you to paint your biggest and best Masterpiece yet not that how you were living or doing or whatever before was wrong or bad or warranted the situation of alienation this is another if I change how I am and if I rebuild myself better than I was then I'm somehow admitting that my life before warranted

being rejected and that is not the case at all it's not about them it is not about them it's like if your house gets torn down in a hurricane and if you go and rebuild it better insurance comes around and it's you've got the same amount of money either way you've got to go build it back how it was or build it better same amount of money you're gonna rebuild it better we're meant to evolve I think that it is possible for us to still be feeling grief and evolving at the same time we it doesn't have to stunt us it doesn't have to keep us stagnant it doesn't have to be something that we lug around for the rest of our lives like a ball and chain we don't have to be Shackled we can experience

the grief and experience longing and missing our children and at the same time build a phenomenal life it's possible and so if you have that hope and you feel like it maybe just maybe it's possible that this could be true for you then I just want to encourage you to dig around to listen to that voice and to try new things and see what works for you you're you you need all the support that you can get that all of us do and so I think it's so very important to listen to the little voice that tells you that there might be more for you if you if you have questions and you do want to invest in yourself and in your life moving forward don't let the naysayer voice inside of you tell you no

don't let it make you back down don't let that Voice win okay there's a reason that you're hearing that voice there's a reason you're feeling the glimmer of hope if you are considering the idea that there's more out there for you that life does not have to be this ho-hum world that you've just acquiesced into this is I must Karma I must have been a terrible person in my past life and now I'm stuck with this you're not stuck with it you're only stuck with it if you want to be stuck with it you can do anything you put your mind to okay and I'm here to support and encourage you the whole way through if you think oh that's just not for me they can do it but I can't oh Shelby can do a podcast

but I can't so and so can Thrive but that's because their situation is different than mine I just want to tell you that that's not true that I am no different than you that everybody out there is no different than you when it comes to the ability to create a new life for yourself you can do it so healing looks like this when you are in active healing you're focusing on what you can control and then of course Discerning what it is that you can't control and a lot of times what you think that you can't control you actually can and vice versa of course I'm going to tell you that it would be so helpful for you to learn how to apply everything that I share with you guys in

this podcast and all of the episodes it would be so helpful for you if you're wanting more and you're wanting to live a better life than you currently are and you think that it might be out there for you I just want to encourage you to to listen to that voice and also in the monthly membership program you can take all of these tools that I give you via the podcast we can apply them to your specific situations and have more personalized Direction steps for you to take in order to move you from where you are into where you want to go or into starting to discover where it is you want to go so you may not know what exactly your future looks like you may not have the dream clear at this moment

but that's what the healing process is there for you just know that you want more there might be more out there for you and you want to find out that's what the healing process is there's like no downside to that this is something that will always pay off even on your legacy so knowing what to place your focus on what you can control right and then as far as the processing of emotions I don't want to have to deal with all that really truly it's just a learning the skill of how to allow emotions to flow through you to flow through you and move on they come in waves so this is nothing that you have to sit and so time consuming no it's not but if you really truly want it you're going to

want to take the steps here's the thing either way you're going to feel some discomfort you can stay in the Purgatory that I was talking about right or you can be on the fence and wanting to take the leap right and start investigating if there is more for your life it's just different discomfort either way one you feel there's no hope and you feel like this is it and it's it's a a let down discomfort things are just always gonna be the same this is my life now it's slightly jaded and the discomfort when you are investigating more the boiling point is the bubbly discomfort what's next on this side of the fence there is more excitement there's more possibility

yeah there's a little bit of a fear of getting rejected and hurt and judged and whatever but on this side you're in the driver's seat and you feel more in control you feel alert and curious It's ever changing on this side of the fence on that side it stays the same both discomfort one side just feels it's moving so things aren't always the same in fact they're never the same which is so great because we are as humans we're supposed to be constantly evolving each one of us has our own Evolution to go through and so yeah if you have any curiosity about the side of the fence come join the program it's so good if you have been wanting to get out of your stuck in-ness maybe you want to just see if

it's possible that you could have more that you could do more that you could be more maybe you just want to like just stick your toe in you can do that you can come for one month and you can leave but I just want to let you know that it is entirely possible for you to to have more alienation does not have to write your story for you it doesn't have to be the end you can continue the story there are so many more chapters to go in your book this is like the second act you get in the driver's seat and you be the one causing the change if you want all right guys listen have a wonderful week and maybe I'll see you on Mother's Day take care thanks so much for listening today guys

I'm honored that you chose to share your time with me if you like what you've been hearing and you want more come join me in the new monthly membership where we take the concepts that you hear about here and using a logical framework you learn to apply them to your specific situations upgrading your thoughts and your life even while experiencing the grief of alienation for more information go to beyondthehighroad.com see you soon foreign