“…the hero journey involves giving up where you are, going into the realm of adventure, coming to some kind of symbolically rendered realization, and then returning to the field of normal life.” ~Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss

I am writing this mostly to the clinicians and researchers who study post-separation and divorce child psychological abuse, but also to the adult children who found their way back to a parent on their own, and to the targeted parents still standing in that doorway, faithful. I feel all three are so needed here.

I am only a Maine mom with lived experience, not a professional. I draw on insights from several leading experts working in this space. Their work gave me language for things I felt long before I had words for them. This post grew out of an appreciation for it.

A map for uncharted territory: A question for the clinicians

So much has been written, with real care, about what happened to a child, and what it did to the parent who was cut off, including the coercive control and domestic violence so many targeted parents lived through alongside it.

What I can’t seem to find is a map, something detailed and sequenced for what happens next. Not general encouragement, but an actual guide a competent therapist could follow with a family, built specifically for the moment an adult child comes home on their own, just two people with a certain kind of history between them.

Some experts offer great wisdom for this moment: meet the adult child where they are, and allow them to find their own voice. I wholly believe in this, too. I can see how important this is and how powerfully healing it would be for a child. But a stance is not quite a plan, and so I’m left wondering what a plan would look like in your expert hands, in your office, with real families in front of you. If one exists, I would be grateful to know where it is. If it doesn’t yet, will you consider building it? I don’t feel there is anyone better suited for the task. As a targeted parent, faithful to reconnecting with my now adult daughter one day, I want to avoid stepping on landmines.

Questions for the adult children who found their way home

If you lived through this and found your way back to your targeted parent, I think you hold some of the most important knowledge on this subject.

You know what it actually felt like when your parent met you; hopefully it was gentle and grounded, whether that helped or felt like something was still being avoided. You know whether silence about the past helped you find your voice again or left something unspoken that needed saying. You know what made you feel safe enough to stay, and what the smaller things were that almost made you leave again.

If you’re willing to share some of that, I feel it would be a genuine gift, not just to your own parent, but to every family still standing in that doorway. What worked? What didn’t? What do you wish someone had told your parent beforehand, or told you?

Questions for the targeted parents

To the targeted parents reading this, including those still waiting: I know you’ve often had to carry your own healing quietly, in individual therapy, and perhaps with support from others who understand. I don’t think that should be the whole of it. You deserve professional guidance built for this moment, too, not just encouragement to be patient, but real support for your own grief while trying to be present and steady for your child.

This is true for me too. I hold faith that my own adult daughter will return, and I am using this time to do my own healing work, to find steadier emotional footing, so that when that day comes, I can meet her from a settled place rather than a raw one. But I want more than my own readiness. I want to know if something is already in place for us to work through together, rather than two people doing their best on their own and with no real guide. Faith and the need for clinical guidance don’t pull against each other. I think the faith is part of why the guidance matters so much.

And if you’re a targeted parent whose adult alienated child has already come home and stayed, I am asking you similar questions. What helped? What would you take back? What did you learn about being patient without disappearing, or honest without pushing your child away again?

One trauma, carried differently

There is much said about the trauma of this lived experience. The adult alienated child and the targeted parent were harmed by the same perpetrator through the same campaign of abuse. I have questions about this in relation to therapy for the adult alienated child and targeted parent, holding faith that my own daughter will return on her own and when she is ready. I’m already in my own healing journey, and I trust that at some point she will be on hers. That said, if reunification happens, should it happen together as well? If they’re carrying a shared trauma rather than two separate ones, meaning one was harmed from the inside, and the other was harmed from the outside? I wonder what a treatment system for this would look like? Would a treatment approach that holds this as one wound (a family wound), felt in two different bodies, look meaningfully different from one that treats it as two separate injuries that happen to intersect? I’m wondering, and hopeful that the experts in this space have some guidance in place that targeted parents and adult alienated children can use.

Putting it together, and gently

I keep thinking that the missing piece here might not be built by any one of these three groups alone. The clinicians have the training and the frameworks. The reintegrated adult alienated children have the lived truth of what actually helps and what feels safe for them. The targeted parents have a sense of what they most need to hold onto while they wait and do their own healing work.

I would love for this to be met with sincere openness and kind exchange, though I don’t need any of it to reach me personally for it to matter. I hope it reaches its people in whatever form best fits them: scholarly papers, publications, practice, and training for clinicians; a blog, social media, a video, or a workshop for adult alienated children and targeted parents who have something to offer toward a pathway to family reintegration and recovery. However it travels, I hope it reaches the families who so desperately need it.

With heartfelt care,

A Maine mom

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A small note: this reflects my own understanding, as a mother, through my exploration of this topic. I am a Maine mom with lived experience, not a clinical or legal professional.