9. Alienated Parent's Bill of Rights

you are listening to Beyond The High Road podcast with Shelby Milford episode number nine welcome to Beyond The High Road a podcast dedicated to Healing your heart and life following the grace of alienation I'm your host Shelby Milford a twice certified life coach specializing in post-traumatic growth I'm also a Target parent who felt like my identity in this world left me on the very same day that my sweet child did after hitting my emotional bottom I devoted the next six years to research and personal growth using proven Concepts based heavily in neuroscience and psychology I developed my own playbook for reintegrating with life and reframing my role as my daughter's

mother in the midst of living apart from her I went from feeling agonized helpless and directionless to feeling energized confident and most importantly at peace today I get to help other parents like you to do the same if you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal then this show is my love letter to you stay tuned hello everybody it is Saturday when I'm recording here first if you haven't click the follow button please do so and also I would love love love if you would rate and review the show even if it's just a one word review that I it's fine the more reviews and ratings that we get the easier it is for parents like you and I to find us and I just want to say

thank you guys for those who have been tuning in each week for your patience with my bouncing around on release days I just haven't decided which day is going to be I've been wanting to be mindful in selecting which day of the week new episodes drop so that I stay consistent in the long run so I've been toying around with recording on different days of the week and seeing how much time that gives me for editing because at this point I haven't started hiring out for editing although I think that that is not far off because sometimes it can be time consuming especially if it is a longer episode like today's so anyway I just wanted to thank you for your patience and for

tuning in even though it's been sporadic so I appreciate that from all of you guys the podcast is just starting to pick up some traction y'all I am so excited well you know obviously I would love for there to not ever be a reason to to have this podcast right that would be ideal but until then I think this is the next best thing yeah so anyway the next and final announcement is of course the holiday support group free support group for you guys so we've landed on Tuesdays so we're saying Thursdays before we landed on Tuesdays at 8pm Eastern Standard Time starting this next week okay so that is let me look here it is the sixth the sixth of December of 2022. just so make sure that for anybody

that's listening in the future the 6th of December 2022 8 P.M Eastern Standard Time just know that if you do want to attend or you're not sure you just kind of want to put the dealers out and go maybe attend one and be Incognito and be completely Anonymous you it's I'm holding them on Zoom you do not have to turn your camera on you can add in any name that you want once you register with me because I have to like not register but I need to be able to send you email you the the link and make sure that you are verify you basically so we don't have any alienating parents anyway but we can talk about that just message through either Instagram or also email that will be in the show notes or leave

me a voice message wherever you're listening to this and I will give you the details for all of that stuff okay so there you have it that's the best way I know to do it now after next week I believe that what I'll be doing as opposed to just doing it straight through Zoom is I'll be doing it through private Facebook group okay and then that will that you know help me to vet whoever is joining in so that we know that everybody that is in the group is in fact experiencing alienation okay all right so that said today I'm excited because we are talking about something that I'd heard from another Greece coach actually a fellow coach of mine her name is Krista and she she does the widowed

mom podcast and she talked about this years ago and whenever I heard it I was like oh my gosh we as alienated parents need this so I believe that she originally got it from the Grievers and the mourners Bill of Rights which those two are essentially identical in nature and I think there's like 10 items on that list and rights and then you know that we've got the children's Bill of Rights many of you if you are anything like me have mixed feelings about even hearing those words children's Bill of Rights because I know for me it didn't seem to be very enforceable so the term itself was just frustrating to me because I felt like to an alienated parent sometimes I think that though the

Bill of Rights can just be like a flap in the face because it is rarely followed however what I have come up with is the alienated parents Bill of Rights and I haven't seen this anywhere over the years I'm actually surprised about it I even did a Google search yesterday and didn't find anything and so I've got 20 here 20 rights individual items also just know that this is a longer episode but these rights start kind of basic and this gets juicier and juicier as it goes on I'm not just saying that it's true like there are some really good ones towards the end so you're not going to want to miss any of of it I hate that when people say that like on YouTube videos and stuff but

really truly you're not going to want to miss like middle and and sections of this because I really think that a lot of bees might provide a source of relief for you you know and also I think I think I might have mentioned this in the the meat of the episode is that sometimes I'm going to be like overly specific and you may think well of course I can do that but sometimes we need somebody to give us permission right until we are accustomed to giving ourselves permission okay so it's like a loving nudge to say go ahead you know so here we go enjoy so I'm gonna go through our Bill of Rights this applies to anybody that's experiencing alienation even if you are an adult child that

experienced alienation I think that this this also goes for you number one you have the right to experience your alienation situation in any grief you have as a result of of it in your own unique way okay there is no proper timeline grief is not linear it's not even zigzag your healing process through it it sort of you can feel like you're going straight and you're making progress and then you can all of a sudden Circle back around and feel something that you thought you process so patience is key here but you have the right to feel it any way you want nobody else's rules matter I'm probably going to be dating myself here but back in the days when Oprah was a talk show right

when she posted her own show like the Phil Donahue day is even grief do you remember like the five stages of grief back then this was like what we thought how we were supposed to feel everything that this was like the rule to grief and if you didn't hit the stages all in a specific order you were like doing it wrong right or you were not progressing through the stages in the right way or however but what we've come to find out is those five stages of griefs weren't even written for bereavement or in of course in a situation for like alienation where ours is a different kind of grief altogether these five stages of grief were written by a physician going through a residency just

made up from her case studies these were like it was anecdotal and she was talking about her specific cases where these were patients who were terminal they were diagnosed with a disease that was going to eventually cause them to die and so I just had to kill a flyo mid podcast the timing on that holy cow couldn't have gotten any better okay so this was not meant to be followed as rigidly as I think we did for the next 10 or 20 years in fact the five stages rarely happen in that order right and I forget even what the order is now yeah so denial anger bargaining depression acceptance okay so yeah again that was only meant for those who were just given their terminal diagnosis had nothing to

do with experiencing grief due to leansing a loved one my point is there are no rules you will jump in and out different phases at different times how long it's supposed to take a lot of times I'll talk to parents who say well gosh but it's been so long you think I would be over this by now and that there is no grieving something especially like losing a child even if emotionally like they could be still around but they're not present in your own life this kind of grief can last there is no time frame to be feeling any of that number two you have the right of an alienated parent to talk about your grief without feeling stifled I think it's really important

for us to talk about it this is the only way that I found to process was to can talk and talk and talk until I was blowing the face and as a side note the only thing that kept me from not talking was my shame when I felt uh shameful embarrassed not worthy that's when I would hold back and I didn't want to talk I also would not talk when I didn't want to burden another person right because it's a heavy subject y'all as we know but here's what I also know and I think it's really important as most of us dare I say all of us as alienated parents have at some point even if you currently consider yourself to be recovered in the area at some point have had codependent Tendencies and so

oftentimes we don't want to burden somebody else or we don't feel like it's something that we can talk about we feel because of the shame or it goes into like the disenfranchised grief that I talked about in one episode I forgot when we think that it's not it's unsupported and we don't yeah we don't feel worthy but whoever you're speaking with hopefully their their own grown ass adults and they can take care of themselves like you don't have to take care of what their thoughts or feelings are around you talking and processing through what is going on with you so talk about it talk about it until you can't talk anymore and then talk some more so number two you have the right to

talk about your grief number three is you have a right as an alienated parent to feel a spectrum of emotions in fact I think that the bigger the sadness the bigger the the grief the more potential for bigger joy and the more vibrant emotions the thing I think about it's like a like a pendulum right or like a like a spectrum so if you are only experiencing a little bit of pain that I honestly in my eyes the way that I see it is that you can really only feel this two of the same degree on the other side of it right so for the Spectrum and we've got in in the middle is indifferent and if you feel just a little bit of sadness on the other side of the spectrum you can only feel you

know just a little bit of joy you don't know it because that's all you've ever felt so to you it's you know sadness or Joy but the more intense the emotion on either side of the pendulum it swings just as intense on the other side I don't think I'm describing it as well as I'd like to but that's okay the best way to see this is I believe somebody that's gone through reflect hours the way I I like to think about it is that one of the gifts that we've gotten from that is that we have so much more complex Vivid Dynamic like substantial more meaningful more powerful more layered textured like kinds of emotions they start to sort of interweave with each other there's just

more substance to to who are experienced in our own lives right each one of us that's the potential anyway in my eyes is that if when you're willing and in this case we weren't necessarily the ones choosing this but when you're willing to feel the full the array of quote unquote bad emotions then what comes with that is the full other side of the intense good emotions right and so there's just so much more complexity and meaning behind our experience and in fact now that I say that the concept of post-traumatic growth actually supports exactly what I'm just saying here so if you haven't yet looked that up or even heard about what post-traumatic growth is that's actually what I specialize in

but maybe Google that so that you can get an idea about that and I'll do an episode on that I had another time too so anyway so you have as an alienated parent you have the right to feel a spectrum of emotions number four is an alienated parent you have the right to re-evaluate your approach to your self-care at any given moment what worked before may not work now or vice versa so no matter what you were doing before the alienation began how you took care of yourself my bet is is most of that much of that will not work to this day and there's nothing wrong with that you have the right to try whatever it takes in order to get you back to a place of emotional health okay and that

is your prerogative okay nobody else can tell you what is the right kind of self-care for you okay number five similar to number four you was nearly needed parent you have the right to change your mind okay this one covers the broad spectrum of choices that you have we often forget that we have every right to change our mind to stand for one thing and then if we decide not to to change our mind and do something different it makes me feel I think for me anyway partially I felt that way because my last marriage was to not to my daughter's father but to another narcissist and he would often narcissist will often project what they're doing as you know project their behaviors onto

you right and so I was often called a hypocrite by him and so I think I was super sensitive to doing this exact thing of changing my mind I didn't think that I had the right to change my mind on my viewpoint on much of the aspects of my life because I thought if I was doing that then I was being hypocrite I knew like in my in my higher brain that it wasn't the case or didn't need to be the case but I was still the emotional part of me and the part that was still not healed objected to this a lot I felt like I needed to what what Integrity meant is that whoever I said before if I said it in public I needed to stick to that no matter what what that meant for me was a lot of suffering like

unnecessary suffering I was sticking to things that were like ideas that were either Antiquated or faulty erroneous beliefs or ways of thinking sometimes it has nothing to do with the right or wrong thing to think sometimes it's just you just want to change your mind and you have every every right to do so no matter what anybody else says okay number six you as an alienated parent have the right to re-evaluate your boundaries right and I will do an episode on this what a boundary is and what it isn't but a boundary is is there to protect you right and so a boundary isn't to control what somebody else does she a real problem with this when I was trying to control the my last husband

the one that I was just talking about I had a real problem with this because I was like how can I enforce it he'll never do what I want him to do that's not the point of a boundary the boundary is there to keep you safe okay so you have the right to reevaluate your boundaries at any time number seven you as an alienated parent have the right to experience random grease bombs I call them grief bombs this might also be from Krista I'm not sure on now that I think about it so I kind of touched on this above in one of the first ones up there but you have the right to experience any kind of emotional freak out that happens to come up when you out of nowhere I could be making my bed and all of a

sudden I will smell something or think of as somebody will say a word and it reminds me it still happens very this happens often actually and it reminds me of something my daughter did or what she said or something weeded together or something I made her for school or whatever it was I have I have those you know still and it's been you know six years really since the last major thing happened and I still I still experience those grief bombs it's just today I I'm okay with them I've learned to to sort of Welcome them actually but that's for again for another episode so but you have every right and there's nothing wrong with you if you are experiencing bursts of emotion at any given time

sometimes we judge ourselves and we're like Oh I thought that I'd already dealt with this I've processed this already or gosh right now like you know I'm in public or whatever it is sometimes feelings there's nothing to explain sometimes they just come up and that's okay you're human so just remind yourself be easy with yourself when you're experiencing the emotion and during the burst of emotion I like to just talk to myself and say like in a loving like I would talk to my four-year-old daughter when she was four like what's up honey why are you feeling sad or what's coming up for you here that loving voice really really calms me down in the moment so okay you have the

right to experience random grief bombs breathe grenades okay all right eight you have the right as an alienated parent to celebrate rituals birthdays if your child or children's fart face come up and you want to celebrate them even though they're not there do it Mother's Day Father's Day if you want to celebrate it anyway I mean if anybody deserves an amazing Mother's Day or Father's Day it's an alienated parent for sake right the kind of loves that we show and we experience as a result of this is like many parents will never know okay so it is your right to treat yourself to do something nice to love yourself actively on a day like Mother's or Father's Day okay Christmas

same thing in the same way it should also your right not to to celebrate it's too painful that's okay you don't have to there's no rules about that either there's nothing wrong with you if you decide that you just don't want to celebrate you're not it doesn't make you a dark person or uh unfeeling person or anything right it doesn't Define you maybe who knows it could be that you don't want to celebrate this year or next year you might just like I said you we have the right to change our minds so you have the right to celebrate rituals any special day that you guys shared it doesn't have to just be holidays first day of school last day of school all that stuff nine you have the right to

embrace your spirituality or spirituality in general you also have a right to not embrace it okay so if you're upset if you're mad many many parents you know alienated parents are experiencing anger especially if it's new many alienated parents I've talked to say they've lost their fate I get it I understand everybody's walk is different there is nothing wrong with you there's nothing bad about you right just be patient with yourself okay so however that goes for you is right for what you're for where you're at at this moment and it could change if you wanted to it does not have to okay so number 10 is you have the right amaliated parent to search for meaning why and especially

with grease like this it's so important for us to especially what I found with shame based things and I'm not saying that this alienation is is based off of Shame I'm saying that this is a source of Shame so because of that if we're looking at post-traumatic growth we often we need to our brain will look to find the meaning in order to cope and to get closure our own sense and closure with it and for me I know that I the only way maybe not the only way but the best way I sound to feel like I had a purpose was to use this as my purpose right to help others right not every alienated parent has that goal or that desire and that is okay too some alienated parents never want to talk

about it like they don't want to have to deal with it anymore they want to move on and do other things and that is totally okay all of it is right it doesn't mean anything more or less or different about you it just means that that's not what you want to do for me it was the way that I could make sense with it I needed to understand as much as I could I needed to be angry for a while and then I needed to turn it around and help others like me like I said varies you know Case by case okay now number 11 is you have the right to treasure your memories what I mean here is you have the right to make shrines if you want to in your kids names right you can keep

their room I've went through stages here where there so when my daughter first went to her dad's I I would not change her room I wouldn't change a thing about it and then when I sold my house to pay for more attorneys I I moved into the new house and made a new room for her even though she wasn't there she wasn't living with me I still put everything in her room and I decorated it and I put it put actually a move twice and did that both times that sounds actually pretty I liked it the whole like nesting thing where I just set everything back up exactly how it was in her room when it was hers and then I shut the door on both I never went in those rooms because

it was too painful if I think about that now it actually seems a little insane right that I wanted to set the room up to be exactly so but then I closed the door and it was very painful to walk in those rooms like I didn't go in I I've heard heard of parents that will go back into the room and they like it because it feels comfortable and it feels like a sense of comfort to them to sit in their room and sometimes they'll go in there and you know have a cry or whatever but I couldn't go in there I couldn't go into the rooms so I I set them up and then I just I close them off you know I don't know if I've ever actually said that in this way out loud so I don't

know I'd actually now I'm interested in that I have to look at the my thinking behind that whenever I was doing it like what I was trying to solve for there right subconsciously but anyway so I went that route for years in fact it was until moving this last time when I purchased my home it was renting and so here I did not do that and what I did here was that for the first nine months or so I put all of the photos Family Photos up in the attic and didn't not even of anybody except two pictures that were on my fridge they still are to this day right but I didn't put anything out so I went the opposite direction I decided I didn't want to put anything on the walls with personal stuff like that

pictures none of them so I just had other two of artifacts and whatever now I've since gone up to the attic and pulled out my favorites right and those are displayed like where I'm looking at them right now pictures of her and I and and what have you but when I first moved down here I think because I moved away from her I think there was a bit of The Grieving there still of moving away from the general area of her even though I wasn't seeing her while I was there I wanted to but just not very often anyway anyway I feel like I'm really talking today but yeah so there is no right way to do that if you want to make the shrines like I was saying do it whatever

works for you right so let's see next is here we go 12. you as an alienated parent have the right to move forward this goes along the same lines and heal at your own pace again I keep saying this over and over but there are no rules on your progress there are no rules to any of this I think I needed to be specific here in this Bill of Rights because we the way that our brain thinks pretty hard on ourselves right no you can't do this you can't do that you can't do well you shouldn't do that no people are going to think this blah blah blah blah blah so judgmental of ourselves so I think it's really super important to be very detailed and specific when it comes to the things

that we can and can't do and that's why this is here for you but like truly this whole list and I'm not done really just means you can do whatever the you want and you're entitled to do it okay and that includes this number 12 which is to move forward and heal at your own pace either is okay if you sorry my I just heard noises outside and I'm like is my pick okay what just happened that was some weird noises oh no it's the kids next door okay so you'll have the right to to move forward if you want to with life with your life okay to heal at your own pace sometimes that also means that you take it super slow that's okay whatever slow means you know anything

ghost you do it you don't have to tackle all of it you don't need to heal right away if you want to put it on hold you've got other things that you want to you feel like will help you to cope right now do that if you're you know professionally if you want to put this on the back burner do it do what makes sense to you okay you it's this is your life it's super important that you remind yourself of that when you're tempted to take others judgments or rules seriously like that you're supposed to take those to heart you're not you call the shots here okay now I know some of you might be scratching your head because you're like well Shelby don't you like preach the

opposite of not healing aren't you here to show us how to heal don't you want us to heal and yeah I absolutely do but your healing is on your time the tools that I offer you are what have worked for me and what seems to work for my clients but you are the expert in your life and I'll say this over and over throughout this episode right you are the expert in your own life and so the tools that I offer you don't always have to take them if there's areas where you want your life to be better you feel like it could improve I offer solutions for that I offer support so that you can it doesn't mean that all of these things need to apply to you or that you're on

the wrong track if you don't want to do any of these things just want to make that clear all right these go a lot of these go hand in hand here number 13 with alienated parent have the right to find happiness to find Joy okay this one is a lot of us moms I've noticed it more with moms and with dads but that does not mean dads don't experience it many let's just say parents in general have felt guilty for finding happiness following alienation or that it's too soon yeah I shouldn't be happy right now I should be grieving I should be this I should be angry I should be sad I should be devastated that's not the case in fact I've lost my brother so a lot of people close to me have passed away in

my adult life right my brother passed away you know he was only just a couple few years older than me he passed away seven or so years ago and in intense moments of grief just following this Unexpected death of his I went through I don't know how many different emotions but happiness was one of them Joy being with other loved ones during his the funeral the weekend of his funeral I experienced a lot of Joy I still have some of the best memories of my life from that weekend okay so it's the same with alienation right as far as the emotions and finding happiness and finding Joy all of that you have every right to find happiness and there's nothing wrong with you if you're feeling

pockets and of joy and happiness what at the same time feeling grief that's another thing like you it is possible for you to feel both of those things at once people use certain people I hear still to this day I'll even see coaches posting you can't feel true things at the same time it's even I know it's they talk about that physically like your brain can't feel two areas of pain at the same time or something like that when it comes to emotions you absolutely can you can be feeling grief and at the same time feeling Joy it is possible entirely possible and I'll tell you another thing is the the probability of people like us people that have experienced intense grief the likelihood

of that we are the ones that are going to feel the more complex emotions like this is very high we are capable we have opened ourselves up to that maybe it wasn't your choice wasn't like you're hey I want to experience alienation but the fact is is that it happened right and so you then are now privy to this whole other library of emotions or intensities of emotion okay I feel flighty today when I'm talking hopefully this all makes sense okay so 13 was you want the your right to happiness 14 in the same way as 12 and 13 you have the right as an alienated parent to rebuild your life in any way you see fit okay you have the right to rebuild your family you have the right to rebuild

your career you had the right to rebuild your relationships all of it all of it if that means that you want to go and and foster a child or children or if you want to adopt child or children you'll have the right to do that if you want to also if you don't want to do that if maybe a partner is saying I I would like to you know adopt how about adopting you have the right to reject that option too absolutely not I will not do that okay you'll it's completely up to you and there's nothing wrong with you or wanting or not wanting to do that okay you have the right to rebuild all of your life and you know what else you have the right to rebuild it better than

it ever was that is freedom is that the building is already going to come crashing down and it has right if the building has already come crashing down and you're having to rebuild you may as well rebuild it in the way the exact way that you want you deserve that I mean everybody deserves that and we are entitled to do that right we just don't always take it and chances are before all of this happened you didn't you weren't in a place where you knew that that was an option for you and then that wasn't being selfish or you know whatever now having experienced the grief that you have bad and likely going through a lot of self reflection and rebuilding your insides emotionally you

also have the right the prerogative to rebuild your life bigger and better than it was before even in the grief okay so it's not like you're you're moving on from your child or any less loyal to your child and not looking back I'm not saying that no matter what they may be led to believe you rebuilding your life bigger and better than it was as you want it is only can only be good for everybody because now you're modeling what it's like to be a strong loving parent to to Value yourself in your life so no matter how your child responds to it doesn't matter for me I spent like four or five years staying in like mourning grieving it like reserving my life preserving reserving a space and

trying to stay in the same place in almost every way so that I was like making room for her or keeping holding her place but what I realized after many times of hitting my head up against a wall for four years is that this thinking was absurd of course my daughter had the place in my life no matter what that mic just goes without saying and I communicate that to my daughter you know always but I also know that she knows that right from deep down because as alienated parents you know you've heard that's that saying that we are the chosen parents and not the rejected parents chosen us to alienate because they're aware that we're the ones that are always going to be there

for them right no matter what happens we love them unconditionally so I realized that thinking like this was fear-based I wasn't in fact really doing anybody any good from that space it was not a fruitful place to be in fact it was for me it was there it was unhealthy and what I was modeling to my child was that I was not resilient that I was not strong and that I was not I was not able to to survive I guess in the end what I think the best thing to ask yourself is how do you want to show up for your life what do you want that to look like truly like zoom out so you're looking at everything some from the bigger picture birthday View and what how do you want to see yourself do you want to be

rebuilding and if so what parts of your life do you want to I don't think that we should ever do things because we want a specific reaction from anybody and that includes our children because I think that that just sets us up to be disappointed but I do often consider what do I want to model to my child's how do I want to show up in this world as a mother and then I go from there right so I think that that's that's the way that's my is barometer the right word there that is my measurement and rebuilding for me is a necessity for many reasons realistically it had to happen like I stayed so stagnant I did not earn any money I was barely making it barely just barely eating by like I

had it was not practical anymore for me to sit in style and say so I started out of necessity and then I realized you know as I was going that I really did I do want a life I wanted to make something out of it anyway now I'm just getting off on tangent but point I'm trying to make is by rebuilding your life now that everything has been the rung pulled out from under you you couldn't start now fresh and new and you may as well put things build your foundation the exact way that you want it this is a beautiful opportunity for you to really we create something something amazing something that you never thought was possible for yourself again this is what the concept

post-traumatic growth is based on because of the the intense amount of grief that you've felt you're able then now to use that group to intensify the way that you rebuild your life okay the amount of the potential for growth is that much larger that much higher so that was number 14. number 15 you have the right as an alienated parent to discontinue communication and let go of your child or let go of your child if you feel like it ends what's best this one is like I slowed down a little bit here because this is uh this is one that I I see a lot on you know the message boards and on in the Facebook groups and stuff is that many many of you have wondered if this is what you need to do

in order for you to move on or for there's a you know a number of different reasons that people have have contemplated this one but I want you to know no matter what your choice is you you have the right number one to consider this I actually think that it would be it's so helpful for everybody to consider all of these options but to consider this option so that you can make an educated decision about what you really want to do so that no stone is left unturned you absolutely have the right to discontinue communication even though every expert all of the experts say not to do that those experts are not you in your situation in your life and they don't have your kids okay or your

child so I just want to let you remind you that you are the expert in your own life and so you 100 have the right to decide what you would like to do if it is the most loving thing for you to do for for your healing process if you feel like it's the right thing or the most loving thing to do for your child all of this right this is your right okay again on the other side of the coin you also have the right to not discontinue communication to hold Doc and you have the right to decide to what extent what your boundaries will be there no matter what your kiddo or what your ex says no matter whether they say that they don't want to see you or they don't want you

to send cards you still have the right to do that if you're not court ordered not to right but you still have the right to send the cards to call it's on their side it's their decision to not receive them not pick up the phone right that's whatever they do and you're not responsible for that thank God because then all you have to do is make the decision that's best for you or the most loving decision you think is and then you just sort of Let It Go like you're letting the butterfly go you just let it go and see what happens number 16 you have the right to make any choice you feel as fast any choice that you feel is going to be like this is what I was saying about the the most loving choice

for all involved is how I usually award it to my clients if you're looking at the whole situation you don't really know what to do because there's all these different aspects of it I usually say you know what Sometimes the best thing to do is there are a bunch of choices here just do the most loving thing involved for everybody like if you could just be like okay well this may not be good for this person this may not be good what is the most loving thing in the big picture right so by the way let me just put that you define what love means to you okay number 17 you have the right to change your current relationships the status of your current relationships there may be people that

you have kept in touch with because of your child or children this usually applies to like X in-laws or parents of your child's friends and you sort of stayed in connection with them because you feel like it's the right thing to do or you feel like they'll judge you if you don't and all of those things if it's doesn't feel good to you to be in connection with these people continue these relationships or a relationship don't it's okay you you're the boss of that you do not have to continue relationships that don't feel good to you today you know they have that what is that you know people come into your life for a reason this season blah blah blah blah same here what was good for

you then may not be good for you now in fact is that the probability of that is really high things are different and they're going to be always changing and so and that's the thing is that what also goes for all of this is that for every one of these is that we are as humans we're meant to evolve right we're meant to evolve and so when we don't allow ourselves these all of these choices each and every one of these we hold ourselves captive we sort of incarcerate ourselves so this the evolution and the constant giving permission to yourself allowing yourself to make changes when you you need them this is so important for your growths you will feel so much lighter knowing

that nothing is set in stone that you make the calls whenever you see fit there's nobody policing well there's nobody that is authorized to police you other than you you know what's best for you okay so you have the right to change your current relationships change how often you see people whether you see them all of the anything there okay number eight T you have the right to say no to anybody at any time anywhere for any reason you don't have to get an excuse you can just say no you can give an emphatic no it's you so please okay and at the same side of that or the other side of the coin you have the right to say yes to whatever you want whenever you want for whatever reason

you want okay no matter what it is and it could be just because you feel like saying yes that's okay it doesn't have to apply to to your whatever standards you you say you have if you think saying yes is the right idea for this say yes if nothing else you will learn right there's never a bad decision so long as you you're open to the experience of learning right okay 19. you have the right to advocate for your child at any time no matter what the decree says you absolutely 100 percent have the right to advocate for your child to to act in the best interest to publicly speak for on behalf to be your child's parent right there may be certain parameters put in place due to the alienating parents

efforts I'm not talking about going over and you know taking your child when you're when you're not court ordered to do so I'm not telling you to do anything illegal here although that is I'm saying that you have the right to advocate for them you have the right to be their knowing their children Twitter but their number one support and sometimes support means that you go against what they say that they want at this moment you have the right to show up in court you have the right to do what you think is best at any given time okay all right okay and at the same side of that point number 28 the last one is you have the right to advocate for yourself stand up

for yourself have your own back you have the right to do that every right to do that if you're not going to take care of you then nobody is going to it has to start with you you have the right to to to all of it anything you have a responsibility and a right to do what's right for you or to do what's good for you but that's another one that I know for me I always felt guilty to to do what was right for me because I thought that that would be considered selfish right that's what the narcissist will try to have you believe have us believe but that is not the case you need to act for you you have to be your own Advocate first and foremost just like the life-saving devices on an airplane if

you're not advocating for yourself there is no you to advocate for your child so okay that's all I have for you that was a lot of talking actually but hopefully this will help though in the future when you're not sure of what to do refer back to this just remember but nothing that you do is wrong where you're at right now is perfect nothing that you do is off timing or too slow or too fast or any of it you're doing perfectly okay that's what I tell myself when I'm in a funky place like hey love you're doing perfectly you are doing you are exactly on trapped you were where you're supposed to be and it goes for y'all too all right y'all I love you and I will

talk to you next week take care I have a good one for you next week too okay so take care thanks so much for listening today guys I am so elated that you've chosen to share your time with me you can find me on Instagram at beyondthehigh Road coaching you can also visit my website if you liked what you heard today and you would like to hear more please click subscribe so that you can be notified of new episodes and thanks again y'all you are already in my heart till next time