You apologized again today for something that wasn't yours to carry. Then you spent the drive home wondering if you're the problem. You're not. You never were.

You're the one who's the most competent person in every room and still feels hollow inside the achievement. You've done the therapy, read the books, set the boundaries, and you still wake up at 3 AM asking if you're the crazy one. You've been called too sensitive, too much, not grateful enough, for so long that you started to believe it. You keep drafting the text and never sending it.

This show is for you.

I'm Dorcy Pruter. I was a cut-off kid, alienated from my dad at five, completely no contact by twelve. I grew up reading the room so closely I lost track of where the room ended and where I began. If that's familiar, we're going to get along.

I've done this work for over 20 years. I'm a certified coach, a formerly alienated child, an estranged adult child, and the creator of the High Road to Reunification Program, the number one court-ordered family reunification program in the country. But you'll keep listening because I made the shift you're trying to make, from the woman who was always healing to the woman who actually got free. I'm not standing on the shore telling you it's possible. I swam the ocean.

Here, we talk about the mother who's still alive and still the first voice you hear in your head. The guilt that shows up whether you go no contact or not. Why you can understand the whole pattern and still not outthink your own nervous system at 3 AM. And how you get your own voice back after you gave it away without meaning to.

Every episode is built around one decision, the kind you lose sleep over. We name it, find the pattern underneath it, and end with something you can actually do, not one more thing to understand.

You are not the crazy one. You never were. And you don't have to do the rest of it alone.

New episodes every week. Send me your situation, the link is in the show notes. We read every one.@dorcyprutertv

Welcome to Family Dropouts.

If you've ever ghosted your family,

blocked a parent,

or sat through one more

holiday pretending everything was fine,

this is your show.

I'm Dorsey Pruder, lineage breaker,

reunification coach,

and someone who's been both

scapegoated and sovereign.

I know what it means to leave,

and I know what it takes to

come back to yourself.

And I'm Maddie from the

Anti-Alienation Project.

I'm not a therapist and I am

not here to diagnose you.

I'm someone who walked away

from my family system and

found a new way to love

them without losing myself again.

We made this show for people like us,

the ones caught in the in-between.

Some fully estranged, some fully restored.

No nonsense, just real.

here we name the truth

behind estrangement cutoffs

messy reunions and

everything the therapists

the courts and the culture

get wrong no shame no blame

and no sugar coating just

raw conversations and the

kind of healing insights

you will not hear in a

therapist's office because

we've lived it if you've ever asked

Am I the problem?

Is it too late?

Or how do I stop missing

them and protect myself?

You belong here.

So hit subscribe and share

this with another family dropout.

This is the show that we

wish we had when we were

trying to untangle

ourselves from the family spell.

This is the Family Dropouts Podcast,

and you're not alone anymore.