Christmas Eve is the hardest time of the year for so many families, the day when children and lost loved ones are close in our hearts and minds and missing grows stronger and suffering deepens.
The light of love for families all over the world is what carries us through these dark days. In each one of us who does this work, in each parent who suffers and transmogrifies that suffering to help others, in every person who understands the pain which is caused by the loss of a child still living, there is a strong beam of light transmitting love. That strong beam is what brings children home, however long it takes. The determination in their parent, to keep tending the fires which keep the beam strong is what children rely upon.
Children in situations where a parent is unhappy, angry, distorted in their thinking and unwell, will cleave to that parent as a survival instinct. It is an inborn drive, it is all that they can do. Their rejection of you is not personal, it is not done to hurt you, it is done to survive the stormy seas they are sailing on in their rickety little boats. Children held captive by a parent’s mind can do nothing else but chart those seas as best they can. In doing so they seek your light, seeing it keeps them going, even if they cannot reach you yet.
To keep tending that light you need strength and to have strength you need to rest and recuperate in order to keep going. Tonight, when the pain may feel too great, lay down your burden and rest. Put it down. Know that if you are going to keep going in 2018, you need to give something to yourself. Everyone needs to rest sometimes, give yourself permission to do so. If you cannot be with the ones you love, love the ones you can be with and even if there is no-one right by your side, know that there is a strong and loving community of families right here with you.
Tonight as I light the candles and tend the beam of my lighthouse, I will be sending out love around the world to all who suffer. To those with whom we have worked this year, those who we could help and those we were unable to reach yet. I will be resting and recovering strength ahead of the coming year so that we can keep doing what we do on on an even wider scale.
Because only when the lighthouses of love beam strongly right around the world, will the shadows of parental alienation be banished and the hearts of children be rightfully restored to the lives of their loved ones.
With love and light to all who tend the beam.
Karen
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
Your understanding and complete insight of what is happening on every level appears to know no bounds.
In the same way we try to be lighthouses for our babies you provide so much light for us as parents.
Thank you for your post this morning and thank you for being there always with your guidance, courage and unwavering support for all of us in this most horrific and heart wrenching situation.
Merry Christmas and again thank you.
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Love to you David keep shiny bright you are a strong beam of light and hope x
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Lovely Karen i am completly in tairs for your commend i am the aunt of my neace whose bene held from me. For so Many years And Reading your post means that there is wrealy somebody Who understands this pain And i Will not give up on her not ever so God bless you for who you are Xx Annemiek who loves her niece like her kid
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Love to you Annemiek keep shining bright into the dark x
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I have always tried to look at it as we hurt the people that we love the most. I have certainly been hurt the most and know that my children love me the most. They feel the most comfortable with me and are not afraid to do this to me. They know that I love them more than anything in this world and no matter what. I will shine my lighthouse beam and shine and shine and shine. My love is so strong that it will guide them to me even though it has been ten years. Thank you for the words of comfort!!!
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Love to you lohope you are a strong beam in the darkness keep shining bright x
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Reblogged this on Madison Elizabeth Baylis.
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Thank you xxx
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Thank you for being a Lighthouse Karen.
A honour to know you and call you a friend.
Merry Christmas to all the luminous and sorrowful souls held fast by the shadow of Alienation. May strength love light fire patience courage persistance, determination and the universe and all that is divine and holy be by your side for today and eternity.
Do as Noel Gallagher would do…
Do your dance, do your dance..
Do your thang to the beat of the bang..
They may have us pinned in shadow, they can’t stop us dancing, they can’t stop us lighting up the sky, they can’t stop us singing, they can’t stop us being lighthouses, they can’t stop us reaching out…
We’ll sing and dance beyond the clouds of the present sorrow and pain, we’ll sing the bridges, we’ll dance the paths, we’ll light up the sky, rising like fireflys at first, together becoming the stars sun and moon soon after.
Be ee ee the light.
See ee ee the light
Free ee ee the light
Dance off the chains and dance in the shadows, wherever you are…..
Dance dance wherever you maybe… we are the Lords of the dance said…..the lighthouse.
Don’t drift into rocks, sail the beams to calm seas, you’re the captain, captain.. follow my lead onto your feet, do your own thang on the beat of the bang…
This organ player needs shooting on the bbc…. for gods sake man, my ears man, choir great though lovely angelic voices. I’m guessing the organist is trying to be Melkor or at least provide a contrast so the angel choir sounds even more beautiful and bright. I take it all back, the man on the organ is a genius. The angel choir doesn’t need the contrast for them to shine I’m sure though. I guess it’s all about atmosphere.
How can they just stand there, they should be dancing and shaking off the shadows with tunes and lyrics like this.
Merry Christmas.
Love and Light are with you.
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Love you to Carl, you are a light maker with a heart of gold x
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Thankyou, sending love to you and Nick and family
Kevin
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Sorry to go slightly off topic, but does anyone know if it’s possible to get an urgent enforcement for breach of court ordered time this week? After boxing day.
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As midnight of xmas eve approached, I found myself drawn to this blog after being absent for a little while, a space I so identify with at that/this time of year…..a place I, instinctively, knew I’d find comfort in my moment of loneliness. That, specific, loneliness where I feel no one else understands unless they’ve been there themselves, and then, I feel, they can only truly understand if they’ve ‘walked in my very own shoes’. I recently heard someone refer to this emotional dilemma as searching for something to fill ‘that hole in my soul’ and, for me, it articulated so much of my 17-year PA journey.
As always, the turkey was prepared just before midnight and slowly cooked overnight right up until a couple of hours before xmas dinner. Xmas morning breakfast, the unwrapping of presents sat under the tree, cooking of the supporting cast (of food) to the big bird, having dinner with family and/or friends and post-meal TV/entertainment was all enjoyed to the backdrop of the ‘elephant in room’ but enjoyed nevertheless.
Throughout, the children are always in my thoughts and the door open to my heart – it’s my way of ‘living with’ my PA reality, an unwanted reality forced upon me many moons ago. My attempt at living as normal and enjoyable a life as possible and, thereby, being kind to myself…..after all, if I can’t love myself how can I love those adult children (in the way they need to be loved) should the opportunity arise to do so.
It’s Boxing Day and, today, I feel positively serene and at peace with ‘my lot’, something I once thought wasn’t possible without (my version of) PA resolution.
If just one person can identify with any part my journey, to date, that will be a very small repayment of the debt I owe for the help I’ve received from this forum over recent years – call it a need to give away what I’ve been given to keep what I have
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