The Third Option: Why Stopping the Chase Is Not the Same as Giving Up

This is the option you might not be able to see yet.

There is a conversation happening among targeted parents that I think we need to interrupt. It’s something like: either you keep fighting for contact or you give up and walk away. Those are always presented as the only two doors in the room.

And I understand why. We stood in that room for years, staring at those two doors while feeling desperate because neither one felt like the right choice. One led to humiliation; the other led to self-betrayal.

But there is a third door. Only you cannot see it yet.

And do you know why you cannot see it?

Because the third door does not open from the outside. It opens from within. And it only becomes visible when you have done the work on yourself that nobody tells you about when this nightmare (parental alienation) begins.

Let me explain…

For a long time, we were obsessed with the wrong things. Obsessed with contact, with responses, with the proof that my stepdaughters still loved us. And somewhere underneath all that, we were obsessed with the alienator. With what they were doing, posting, saying. With how unfair it was. With the hope that one day they would get what was coming for them. It was always there; the hunger for justice, the fantasy that karma would arrive to do its work and we would finally be there to witness it.

We had to let that go. Completely.

Of course that feeling was justified, but that obsession was keeping us tethered to the very person that was trying to destroy our family. And as long as we were tethered to them, we could not be fully present for the children.

But let me tell you: the alienator means nothing to you now.

I don’t mean this in a bitter, angry way. But your healing depends also on you becoming indifferent to them. You aren’t here to watch them fall; neither to force karma to work or to be proven right.

You are here to be a parent.

And if you are still watching the alienator, still tracking their moves, still hoping for their downfall, you are not yet ready for the third door.

Maybe you haven’t thought about it yet, but your ‘revenge’ comes with your child’s awakening. An experience that will be excruciating for them. One day, they will see what was done. The confusion will clear and they will feel the weight of the years that were stolen. And when that time comes, you want your child to be strong and mature enough to be able to survive this revelation. Because to them, this isn’t a victory. It’s a tragedy. If we are waiting for that day to be happy and satisfied, we are waiting for our children to experience profound pain that will change their life forever.

Let life deal with the alienator. That is not your job. Your job is your child.

So, how can you find and open the third door?

You begin to believe that you are still a parent. You believe that no campaign of erasure can undo the fact that you brought your child into this world or helped raise them.

You are their parent! Reclaim that role that is yours!

You need to believe that you are a good parent. That you still love deeply and that you can still show up in the ways that matter.

If you behave like you are not their parent anymore, if you act like a stranger begging for entry, your child will not trust you and neither allow you in.

When you know who you are, they can feel it. When you carry yourself in the dignity of a parent who has nothing to prove and everything to give, that energy travels. It bypasses the alienator entirely, and it reaches something deeper.

Perseverance is becoming so steady in your role that your child cannot help but feel the truth of it. It’s less about doing, and more about feeling.

Shift your definition of success. You cannot control their reactions, but you can control your energy.

Success becomes: Did I hold them in my heart today without destroying myself?

Success becomes: Did I live my life in a way that they would be proud to come home to?

Success becomes: I’m sending this birthday gift with no expectation. I’m speaking their name with love, not grief. I live my life fully because my child deserves a parent who is happy and whole.

You don’t have to forgive the alienator (I don’t think I ever will), you just have to release them completely. Remove them from your attention.

This option — the third door — cannot become visible to a parent who is still bleeding from the wound of rejection. Not until they do some healing first. So take as long as you need. We took years to become the people we are today. Years of perseverance, of deep conversations with ourselves, of facing their loss over and over again until we accepted it and then let it go.

Once you’ve reclaimed your identity as a parent and detached from the alienator’s narrative, you become unstoppable. You become a steady force, a gravitational pull that will attract your child back.

So here is my question for you, dear parent: have you done the work on yourself? Have you stopped looking at the alienator? Have you remembered who you are?

When you walk through the third door, you will find that you never stopped being their parent. You just forgot for a while.

When you remember, your child remembers.

Thank you for reading,

Sienna