The Power of a Song

My sister texted me one evening to say she was watching a tribute to country singer Kenny Rogers on television and singing along. Her husband was surprised she knew all the words. I wasn’t surprised at all.

I immediately thought of his song  Ruby, Don't Take Your Love to Town and began texting her some of the lyrics.  Written by Mel Tillis, I was just three years old when the song was released by Kenny Rogers in 1969.  I later absorbed it through my grandmother’s record playing.

No one was playing Raffi for us in those days, and so by eight years old I was belting out Kenny’s words about “Ruby” and how she shouldn’t take her love to town. There was something dark and vaguely familiar in the song and I felt it in my little girl bones. The body doesn’t lie, not even to kids. Especially not to kids.

Now that my sister made me think of it again, it played in my head for days. It’s a song that still moves me.

Kenny Rogers is singing about being a war veteran with debilitating injuries.

“It wasn't me that started
That old crazy Asian war
But I was proud to go
And do my patriotic chore”

Even sadder than sending young men- boys, really – off to their deaths or lifelong trauma, is that society somehow convinced them to feel proud to do it.

A paralyzed war veteran on death’s doorstep, he is pleading for his wife to stay home with him when he knows she is headed out to find a lover.

Of course, I hadn’t analyzed any of this as a kid.

Except that on some level, I’d known that my mother had taken her love to town. Or more specifically, to Fort Devens, the U.S. Army post that was half an hour from our home.  In fact, it was the very year that this song was recorded by Kenny Rogers.

Some thoughts the song elicits: Ruby, you heartless, selfish tramp. Hasn’t he suffered enough? You are breaking your already broken man! Get a hold of yourself, girl.

Until the next words, the ones I’d forgotten all about, the ones I’d sang as a child as if they were, I don’t know, normal?

 “And if I could move, I'd get my gun
And put her in the ground”

Yikes, Kenny. Did the war do this to Ruby’s man, this impulse to kill? Or was Ruby a victim of DV before he ever got sent off to Vietnam? Was Ruby finally hotfooting it out of there because now he couldn’t chase after her with his fists? Or his gun.

Who is the real offender here?

My mother’s lover went to Vietnam. As did her brother. My father was in college and thus deferred, spared the horrors of war.  And he never attempted putting my mother in the ground. But she didn’t see her children again.

The last night she lived with us was the night my sister and I stood at the door with her, wearing our winter coats. My father demanded to know where we were going. Then my sister and I were sent to bed, and by the next morning we were motherless, daughters of a castaway. The war at home would leave me grieving silently.

No matter how much time goes by, how much processing and forgiveness I’ve done, or how much gratitude I have for my life now, my heart will remain vulnerable to a song, a memory, something that pulls me back to this time.

It’s not bitterness or even sadness anymore. I think it’s just acknowledgment of the scar, a somatic memory. It’s truth.

For many, it was a convenient time because few people talked about things like violence, grief, loss, or abuse.  How many generations hold untold stories, unquestioned narratives? How many offensives, atrocities, are buried beneath all the distractions of life, wounds untreated?

The convenience of silence always catches up. The body tells the truth. The heart knows the story.

And that is why I’ve never forgotten the words to “Ruby”.

 It is why I chose to write my book  YOU-KNOW-WHO: AN ALIENATED DAUGHTER'S MEMOIR. 

Dana can be found at https://danalaquidara.com/

Why Child Survivors of Parental Alienation are Speaking Out

Is it just me, or does it seem like child survivors of parental alienation are coming out of the woodworks and increasing in numbers?  Even so, there are still individuals and groups who deny the existence of parental alienation, and call it pseudoscience. The more the reality of parental alienation is denied, the louder the survivors speak, and the survivors grow in numbers.

I was an alienated child in the 90s and early 2000s before social media was on the scene, and before we “Googled” everything under the sun. As a child, I had no way of knowing the dynamics of my family were so incredibly toxic. It was just the only “normal” I knew. I knew I didn’t like the constant fighting between my parents, and I felt such a duty to comfort my mom who relied on me for emotional support for as long as I can remember. For me, this is how parental alienation began.  When my parents would fight, my seven year old eyes saw an angry, frustrated dad and an angry mom who would sob for hours after each fight. I wasn’t old enough to understand the topics they fought over. I sided with the one that was crying, believing she’s the one who was victimized, and he was the one that was wrong. Even if she hit him, and she often did. In fact, when violence ensued, it was often her who threw the first slap or threw the first object. But that’s not the story she would tell. She’d leave out  some details, like what the fight was originally about, the names she called him, how she chased him up and down the hallway, threw objects and screamed in his face. I didn’t realize until I was much older (an adult, married with my own children)  that the topics they fought over were huge topics…like deceit and infidelity, and my dad’s anger and frustration made sense. But as a child, and especially as a teenager, I began to hate my dad. I knew my mom was emotionally unstable, but I thought it was because of him. She did, in fact, blame everything on him- even things that had nothing to do with him. I started to think that way too… everything that I hated about myself I thought was because of him. 

If you thought their marriage was tumultuous, their divorce and custody battle were even worse. While parental alienating tactics may have been subconscious during their marriage, they were very much intentional during their custody battle. Before it began, I had already chosen a side, but my siblings hadn’t. My younger siblings loved both of my parents. My heart hurts to think of them so little, so innocent, just wanting to love and be loved by both of them.  While “in the best interest of the children” is sprinkled throughout court documents, and I’m sure was said dozens of times during court hearings, it was completely forsaken. My mom, who quickly remarried after the divorce, was unwilling to co-parent with my dad. In her mind, she wasn’t leaving us fatherless. She had found a replacement, and it was out with the old and in with the new. She wanted him out of the picture completely. She would interrogate my siblings when they’d come home from visits with my dad until she got a little morsel she could twist to accuse him of abuse or neglect. We were, in fact, abused children. And you could say my siblings and I displayed signs of abuse. The intense abuse we were experiencing was psychological and emotional, and sometimes physical. And it wasn’t occurring with my dad during his visitation times. It was occurring with her, the one who had primary custody. Even so, she was sure to make our schools, our church, other family members and family friends know that my dad was a terrible, dangerous person who should not be trusted.  

Can you see how and why we, as alienated children, had nowhere to go and no one to turn to who would tell us anything other than the narrative they were told?

What I lived through was too much for a seven year old. I was not equipped to be the emotional support for someone who was supposed to be taking care of me.

It was too much for me at twelve years old to be a mother figure to my siblings while my parents fought, and while my mom didn’t have the capacity to take care of us. The stress of it all led to anorexia as I often felt too sick to my stomach to eat.

It was too much for me as a teenager struggling with my self esteem and self worth, leading me to look for love in the wrong places.

It was too much for me on my wedding day, not having my dad walk me down the aisle, and not even be present for the biggest day of my life. I didn’t wear much makeup on my wedding day, because I couldn’t bear to look at my dark brown eyes that resemble my dad’s without wanting to burst into tears.

It was too much for me as a new mom, to watch my husband hold our newborn daughter with pure love in his eyes, and remember there was a picture of my dad holding me with the same look in his eyes. I can’t imagine my husband ever not loving our children. I wondered, how could my dad just stop loving me? How does that happen?

The stories of so many child survivors of parental alienation share so many commonalities. We can tell you of the deep sorrow, the maddening confusion, the profound grief we couldn’t comprehend and the displaced anger and resentment we felt toward our targeted parent. NONE of the survivors I’ve ever met would say what happened to them was insignificant, had little to no impact, and it’s just fine. Quite the opposite. The pain of parental alienation is a life sentence. It’s a reality we wake up to each morning.

So why are child survivors of parental alienation speaking out?

“I’m speaking out because oftentimes parental alienation is generational and linked to toxic family belief systems that continue to be passed down and passively accepted by the majority as normal and none of this is normal! 

It often takes the scapegoat, the black sheep, the one who questions everything to discover and expose PA is going on, meanwhile the majority of family members often keep their heads in the sand. 

When we know better we do better… It's time to get in the know and help prevent it from affecting future generations. No child should be covertly coerced to hate either parent, that only brings self hatred to that child as they associate much of who they are from who they came from. It’s time to raise whole humans and stop the division.” 

-Jennifer Hayward, child survivor of Parental Alienation

“I am speaking out with the intention that it helps someone else discover their own truth and act on that truth.”

-Dana Laquidara  https://danalaquidara.com

“I know there are millions of other alienated children out there being held mentally hostage, and deserve to live in reality, and deserve to have a relationship with both parents.”

-Madi, Founder of The Anti-Alienation Project

“I speak out because of two reasons. One, I think it’s the right thing to do…. The other reason is I can do at least some kind of good for other alienated parents or grandparents and siblings.”

-Andrew Folkler  andrewfolkler.com/parental-alienation

“I speak out because I think it is important to talk about this form of abuse that is more common than people realize. I want to be what I wish I had when I found out or when I was younger.”

-Bri, member of The Anti-Alienation Project Team

“I speak out because I feel like the first step to making social change is making awareness, talking about it openly, even just speaking for ourselves to have a voice.”

-Jaclyn, member of The Anti-Alienation Project Team

“The reason I do this work is because I do not want any other children in the world to go through what we went through. I see it all day at work, I research it and read about it. It’s absolutely true, and it’s rife!”

-Alyse Price-Tobler, PhD, sempi.net

Each of the quotes above are from adult child survivors of parental alienation. Some were alienated from their fathers, and some from their mothers. Some were moved long distances away from their parent without that parent’s permission, and without the parent having any recourse and no due process.  Some survivors were alienated from a parent while living under the same roof with parents who were still married. The details of our stories may be different, but the heartache of a severed relationship with a targeted parent, and the broken trust and feelings of betrayal from the alienating parent  is shared among survivors.  That is why we speak out!