In an excellent editorial in the Baltimore Post Examiner, David Shubert writes that “Parental alienation leaves a hurricane of pain.” While it’s a bit ironic that his editorial was published just one day before Hurricane Harvey hit, devastating Texas, perhaps it’s also very apt – as we watch the scenes of countless families flooded out of their homes, as devastating is the flood of emotions when one is pushed out of their family, and away from their children, by parental alienation.
Some fathers (it’s usually – although, granted, not always – fathers who are on the receiving end of parental alienation) end up completely crippled by this – crushed – some even taking their own lives as a result.
Shubert, however, has managed to do something both constructive and instructive with his experience. In his book, Parental Alienation is Abuse, turns his own experience with parental alienation into an object lesson for those before him.
As he writes in his Baltimore Post editorial, “Parental alienation is one of the cruelest forms of mental and emotional abuse that anyone can ever experience in their lifetime.”
Shubert goes on to point out that “It robs a loving parent of all that is sacred to them, their children, their mental and emotional well-being and on occasion their very lives. They suffer great loss as they struggle to regain some sense of normalcy during their battle to be reunited with their children.”
And of those children he points out “But what about the children? How does this effect their lives? Do they not matter in all of this? Of course they do. They are most important and deserve without hesitation all the love, support and protection from both parents. They are a bi-product (sic) of who we are and the love we have inside us. They must always be made to feel they are deserving of all the positive things we can give them.”
Towards the end of his essay he projects that “there must be a way that we can turn this form of abuse around and end it. For myself, I choose to promote awareness to the harmful effects caused by one person, their enablers and the very system itself – who is meant to uphold our rights as parents and our children. In doing so, it is my hope that I can provide others the ammo to make change a reality.”
And he is doing a good job of promoting that awareness, both with his excellent editorial (you can read the full editorial here), and with his book, which you can see on Amazon here.
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