“The complacency of those entrusted to protect children is not a neutral failure. In the absence of action, complacency becomes complicity.”
If you found this page, you may already know what a certain type of post-separation and divorce harm feels like, or you may be trying to understand what is happening in the relationship with the child you love. This website was created to bring more awareness of the experience into Maine’s consciousness: to name what it is, to map where it intersects with Maine state laws designed to protect families, to demand enforcement of existing laws, to offer this site as a form of advocacy, and to speak honestly about its costs, most importantly, the long-term costs for Maine’s children. This content is written anonymously, out of respect for the privacy of a mother and child. It is offered in solidarity with every Maine family living through it.
I am a mother in Maine, a survivor of domestic violence, which was perpetrated right in front of my child, and of a particular kind of harm that sometimes happens post-separation and divorce. What I believe I lived with and still live with is what happens when a child is systematically turned against a parent – mother or father – who did nothing to deserve that loss. The harm to both the child and the targeted parent is real, documented, and lasting. I cannot reach my own daughter the way a mother should. The grief of this loss does not have an off switch. I sometimes use the term “parental alienation” on this website because it’s one a family likely knows best and is searching for, not because I agree with it, or the professional field agrees on it; professionals who find this likely already know the debate about it.
Yet, sadly, I’ve learned that I am not alone. There are many targeted parents in Maine, mothers and fathers, living in the same deep grief of ambiguous loss, and suffering in the silence of it. There are children and adult child survivors carrying wounds they should never have to carry, absent the support they so desperately need, and lacking the insight and language to give their experience a name, and thus, seek out the appropriate help. Some of these children are now adults and are moving through their lives completely unaware, unhealed, and internally shaped by the fictitious narratives constructed by one of the two most important people in their lives, and should be safe with. This harm follows them into their own families, should they have them one day. As I understand from the works of experts, adult children who experienced a certain type of child psychological abuse post-separation and divorce, commonly called “parental alienation,” report lasting damage to their mental health, capacity for trust, self-sufficiency, self-identity, and intimate relationships.
This is why I write.
The single most important post on this website is, and I encourage you to read it first: “The Mask and The Journey“.
“I have a firm belief in this now, not only in terms of my own experience, but in knowing the experiences of other people. When you follow your bliss, and by bliss I mean the deep sense of being in it, and doing what the push is out of your own existence — it may not be fun, but it’s your bliss, and there’s bliss behind pain too.”
Joseph Cambpell
What you’ll find here
My daughter and I have spent years in this space, and I write about it from my lived experience and perspective, as well as from my understanding of the papers and publications by experts in this field. I write about my thoughts on what I witnessed within Maine’s legal, educational, medical, and mental health landscapes.
“When professionals look away, when family courts bargain or miss it, when school staff and medical professionals miss the signs, or fail to report, complacency does not excuse them. Silence in the face of a suffering child is its own form of complicity.”
I write about my lived experience, my understanding of this particular harm as described by experts working in this space, and how family courts allow some children to express “meaningful preference” in custody matters when this type of harm is reportedly happening. While this has not specifically happened to me, I’ve become aware of it happening with other Maine parents. Some parents have shared that children as young as nine were allowed to make a “meaningful preference,” without acknowledging that a child whose reality has been deliberately distorted by coercive control methods is incapable of making free and meaningful choices. A professional working in child protection or family courts would never permit a child who is being physically abused to remain in the care of a perpetrator, not for another day. Their response is swift. Why is it that a child whose mind is being violently assaulted is left to stay?
This type of family harm is everywhere, and it doesn’t discriminate. All of Maine’s children depend on adults around them to protect them.
I share what the aftermath may look like for targeted parents and their children, who now struggle with living the experience. Like my daughter, the children’s experience doesn’t end in childhood; it is a core experience of a broken attachment and bonding, and psychological splitting that follows them well into adulthood, especially when left unaddressed, according to the experts in this field. When professionals tell parents to “give it time,” or “they’ll come back around,” it enables and empowers abuse perpetrators to continue their abuse. It doesn’t protect the child. It doesn’t protect the targeted parent.
What I believe my daughter and I experience seems to fit clinical and legal terms. It appears to be recognized in two of the most authoritative diagnostic frameworks: the DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association’s handbook for diagnosing mental health conditions) and the ICD-11 (the World Health Organization’s global standard for classifying disease and harm). Both recognize the behavioral patterns of emotional and psychological abuse and coercive control that occur when a child is weaponized against one parent by their other parent. It is identifiable in the Duluth Domestic Violence Power and Control Wheel. The recognition matters. It moves the abuse and power imbalance situation out of “he said/she said,” “resist-refuse,” “parent-child conflict,” and “high conflict co-parenting” and into documented, measurable harm, where, if recognized and diagnosed correctly, it immediately eliminates the risk of applying the wrong labels.
I also realized that I had to take a journey inward. I had to make an honest self-assessment, do some healing work, and learn about some very important things, like healthy self-boundaries.
“Complacency says ‘it’s not my problem.’ Complicity is what complacency becomes when a child pays the price.”
What you won’t find here
I’m not a professional. I am simply a mother with lived experience. I will not name my daughter, myself, or my family. Their privacy and mine are things I absolutely protect, especially as we are still in it. This story is not mine alone. This space holds my truth without exposure or unintended harm.
If you recognize yourself here
Whether you are the targeted parent or the child caught in the middle, I hope something here helps you navigate this tough space. I am a targeted mother sharing my lived experience. I am not a professional working in this space. If you need support, please seek out an experienced legal or mental health professional who hopefully has a high level of competency in trauma, trauma bonding, child attachment and bonding issues, family systems, and domestic violence.
Do Better, Maine. Maine laws need to be enforced to protect children and families. Maine needs mandated reporter training in this area, especially within the school systems where our children spend most of their waking day.
Every day that Maine fails families like mine and allows this vicious harm to go unaddressed and untreated is another day an abuser is emboldened, another day they are granted Maine’s unspoken permission to keep abusing the children and families Maine laws claim to protect.
With heartfelt care,
A Maine mom.
✉︎ alienatedmaine@gmail.com
I’m using generative AI to help me compile and write about relevant information from Maine state laws and scholarship by leading U.S. experts in this harm space, recognizing patterns, and writing content that is easy to understand and approachable for any audience.
Alienated Maine 