Sunday, November 6, 2011

The New Norm

While having lunch at a restaurant yesterday with my running buddy John, he asked me how my business trip was to Dallas. I told him it went fine, except that I'd had a lifetime moment that was truly startling to me.

"You know my three sons haven't communicated with me for years," I said. "In the office late one night preparing for a hearing the next day, a co-worker asked if I had any kids and I just said, 'No.'"

John knows of my heartache for the last decade due to the estrangement that came out of my divorce, when my three precious then-adolescent boys had their malleable young wills overborne by a willing cadre of "professionals" headed by their Mother and they were turned against me. It's called Parental Alienation Syndrome, or PAS, and it's thriving in the West.

"Yep," I went on, "I just said 'Nope, I don't have any children.'" Telling me that I was finally truly healing, John extended his knuckles across the table for a fist bump.

1 comment:

A Plain Observer said...

I don't know if I would call that healing, Peter. You have three children. Three "precious...boys" I you refer to them here. Not letting the past dictate your present is healing, but the past remains intact, it can not be changed.
We can not change history, and we can appreciate it regardless of its outcome