The Systemic Alienation of Parents
why are we compromising humanity’s most vital connection?
The world over knows the tale of a small German town called Hamelin. Why is that? Well, when any story involves parents losing their children, humanity stops and takes notice. Every parent fears this. Those who have endured it know the horror. And so we immortalised such stories — to keep them close, as a talisman, as a warning to other families. When people mess with the children we get cranky about it. We turn weird. Of course we do, we are talking about primal stuff.
I thought the actual story underlying the tale quite interesting, disturbing, and somewhat timely. Rats and revenge did not happen in this story of a piper leading children away. What did happen?
On June 26, 1284, 130 children disappeared without a trace from the town of Hamelin, Germany. The children followed a flutist wearing multi coloured clothing out of town into the mountainside and neither their parents nor the townsfolk ever saw them again. Midsummer Festival happens on June 26, it’s a day when a pipers leads villagers to the Koppen mountains for a fire ceremony to celebrate the summer solstice. During that period of history, pipers would lead migrations of people to populate new lands in Eastern Europe.
Could the children have followed the recruiter on the migration trail instead of the piper leading villagers to the Midsummer ceremony?1 The parents would have seen their children and thought oh how nice they’re going to the festival and not realised they were being led to a far away land. The children would have though oh cool we’re going to the festival. Neither realising the rupture about to take place. The loss of 130 children profoundly affected the town, and traces of the loss exist today. Our children have been missing 100 years, reads a note in the Town Hall records dated June 26, 1384.
So, what about the rats and the revenge story? Never happened. Sure, lots of rats around. Nah, no one led them out of town by playing a flute for them. The rats did not appear in the story until 275 years after the kids went missing. No rats, no revenge. No deliberate theft of children to punish a greedy town. A man dressed in a colourful costume simply showed up one day and played the flute and led the children away forever.
Doesn’t it chill you? How easy it is to lose them? How do we keep them safe and under our guidance whilst honouring their individuality? With great difficulty apparently, given teachers like Myia Malakoff, who posted a photograph on social media of her kindergarten class watching a drag show, without parental consent. Yes, a kindergarten teacher posted photos of her class without parental consent on Instagram to stick it to the conservative parents.
In many schools, educators have quietly adopted a policy of Don’t Tell The Parents Their Kid Decided To Be The Opposite Sex. SOGI combined with laws such as Washington State passed which allows the state to refuse to reunite runaway children with parents who refuse to consent to transition points us to a cult of body modification + distorted self perception alienating children from their parents and then subjecting them to experimental hormone therapy and genital mutilation.
I have met parents whose child was transitioned by school guidance counsellors unbeknownst to them until sometime down the road the kid announced they were the opposite sex and everyone involved in the child’s care gaslights the parents by accusing them of being bigots blah blah. I have seen the video of the dad being dragged away when he was upset his daughter was assaulted in the school toilet by a boy who used identity to gain access to the girl’s toilets. I have seen so many videos of concerned parents at school board meetings, pleading to a wall of apathy. I have seen the clip of the psychologist leading parents to claim suicidal ideation of their kid in order to get the hormone scripts for their kid right away.
I have seen Biden say with a straight face that sex changes for children is the soul of America. I have seen Rachel Levine lie to Americans and tell them they can chemically castrate their kids it’s cool and safe and reversible. Okay, we’re ignoring the long known horrors of Lupron, I guess? As we see the stories trickle out—Jamie Reed and the Gender Clinics, detransitioners and desisters—we also see no plans to pull back or relent. WPATH, that Other Holy See with a Catechism we are calling Standards of Care, has decided it’s okay for children to identify as eunuchs. Yes genital mutilation has become an identity now and you are a bigot if you disagree. Somehow progressive liberals need this needs to happen because gay and lesbian people can get married and adopt kids and have jobs.
Welcome to the new space. We exist for parents. We have a mission to uphold the parent-child connection through public education and research and through outreach and support. A space exists already for parents to talk about what’s going on for their kids and we don’t intend to duplicate that, only compliment it. This space exists for parents to talk about what’s happening for them, in relation to their kids. Parenting really involves connecting with and controlling the self first + foremost. An effective parent knows herself or himself, knows the limit + plays within it. So we will use this space to educate you about the neurophysiology of the parent-child connection, theories of parental alienation trauma, and strategies employed. And we will work toward establishing a support system for parents. I am filing the society paperwork and hope to have an announcement very soon about how you can support our outreach and research. And I want to know how we can support you best — you.
I’m launching Missing From Me as a tribute to my mother, who died May 11, 2022 and who suffered the complete alienation of her youngest daughters aged 5 and 9 in 1966, just 2 years before I was born. Mum was not reunited with her daughters until 1979, I was 11 years old and my entire early childhood held my mother in a kind of suspension from her deep grief and longing for her daughters. It was my tremendous blessing to be a lifeline for my mother — I cradled her as she cradled me. As I was growing inside her, mum was grieving, chemicals were surging through her system and those chemicals formed me. So, I am fundamentally connected to a mother’s yearning for my sisters.
It’s a kind of awful hell to live without your children. The cruelty and jealousy of two people and the cruel apathy of many more and the surreal way an entire community normalised a horror never left me and today as the progressive hatred + authoritarianism becomes a large + looming threat to families, I recognise the signs of trauma I saw in my mum so many years ago. You aren’t alone. Others feel this way too. We are here. Hang on. Reach out. There’s hope and healing. My mother’s life is a testament to that. The last years of her life she spent cared for with love and devotion by the very daughters taken from her many years ago.
Believe.
Linda Carroll, The Pied Piper Was Real: 130 Children Disappeared and Never Came Back, June 2021