How I Created the Navigating
Parental Alienation Road Map

If you are here, there is a good chance you are living through something you never imagined possible: the loss of your relationship with your child, not because you stopped loving them, but because something—or someone—has come between you.

I know this terrain intimately.

My name is Jacqueline Rourke. I am a journalist and the founder of Navigating Parental Alienation. I am also a parent who lived through years of severe parental alienation and, over time, rebuilt the relationships with my children. This work is not theoretical for me; It is personal, hard-earned, and deeply grounded in lived experience.

Here is my story.

Jacqueline Rourke

Parental Alienation expert, journalist and former alienated parent

Before alienation hijacked my life, I spent decades as a broadcast journalist, earning a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in reporting. My professional training taught me how to ask difficult questions, separate fact from fiction, and remain steady in emotionally charged situations. Those skills became essential when my own family life began to unravel.

Like many parents, I initially believed that if I just explained myself better, cooperated more, or endured quietly, things would improve. They did not. What I eventually came to understand—through research, counselling, and trial and error—is that parental alienation is not a parenting failure. It is a psychological and relational crisis that requires clarity, support, and a fundamentally different response than most parents take.

Navigating Parental Alienation exists because targeted parents are often overwhelmed, isolated, and shamed at the very moment they most need informed guidance. My goal is to provide alienated parents with what I could not find when I needed it: clarity, support, and insight into what works and what doesn’t in a situation of parental alienation.

NO ONE can guarantee reunification. There are too many variables that are not under our control. What I offer is something both realistic and essential to reconnection: a path toward stabilization, strength, and psychological clarity.

When parents learn to regulate their nervous systems, understand the dynamics at play, and stop internalizing blame, they are better able to respond—rather than react—to what really is an impossible situation. From that grounded place, healthier outcomes become possible.

Because I lived through alienation, I support parents through education (online courses and podcast), mentoring (1:1 and in groups), and live programs (virtual and in person) designed to help alienated parents regain their footing and their sense of self, and prepare them to reconnect with their children.

Because I am a seasoned professional journalist, I speak publicly to community groups, politicians, legal and mental health professionals, and to the media to raise awareness about parental alienation, parental abduction risk, and the longterm impact on children and parents when these dynamics go unrecognized.

You did not cause this.  And you do not have to navigate this alone.

I LIVED ALIENATION SO I UNDERSTAND YOUR PAIN

I knew that I could only offer guidance to other targeted parents if I was absolutely certain that what I had to share was solid advice, backed not only by my lived experience, but also by peer-reviewed research by credible investigators in the field of parental alienation and other related fields. After years of trial and error, trial and success, research, reading and interviewing experts, I have put together the very best practices that can help a targeted parent get through the alienation journey to reach the other side, where they can reconnect with their children.

As someone who has actually lived Parental Alienation, I truly understand the depth of pain we feel as targeted parents.

This is the road map I was looking for back in 2004, when no road map existed. And I want to share it with you now, because alienation is much too hard to go through alone. I do not want you to suffer like I did, for as long as I did.

I CAME TO MY OWN RESCUE - AND YOU CAN TOO!


Introducing My First Course, the Road Map for Targeted Parents

Course #1

for Parents

NAVIGATING
PARENTAL ALIENATION

Course #2

for Parents

NAVIGATING THE
TRAUMA OF ALIENATION

Course #3

for Parents

NAVIGATING RECONNECTING

WITH YOUR CHILD

For interview requests, expert commentary, or for parents seeking guidance, contact Jacqueline Rourke.