Loss is easier to bear
when it is understood as a permanent condition.
~ FM
Things to ponder …
- Is loss a permanent condition?
- Does thinking in this way really make loss easier to bear?
Loss
Why don’t you call: What stops people from re-connecting?
It’s an interesting dilemma. Here we are in a time of great communication technology; we have house phones, answering machines, cell phones, text messages, computers, email, fax, we can Skype, we can MSN, we can even Twitter. With all the options open to us, why is it so damn hard to reconnect?
“The phone works both ways“, says one woman. Some people refuse to be the first to break an impasse, even when estrangement is incredibly hurtful. For some people initiating contact after a significant period of silence feels like admission of guilt. People can become very invested in a position and feel unable to move forward, even when the consequence of holding their position is uncomfortable or downright painful. They may be able to admit to themselves that holding on to blame or fear of being blamed is not worth the loss of a family member, yet be unable to pick up the phone. “I know I have some responsibility for what went on, but she started it.” Other people remain attached to their anger or hurt for things which have happened. “I can never have a relationship with my mother until she gets honest and apologizes for how she hurt me and my sister. That will never happen.”
Other people may feel afraid of possible rejection. “It’s only been in the last year or so that I stopped being so mad, and feel sad. If Carol had called me a year ago I’d have said something rude and hung up on her. I guess I think she might do that to me if I contact her.” Or this man, “I sent my brother a letter, just a few sentences saying I’m here if he wants to talk. I got the letter back marked no one here by that name. It was his writing.” Reconnecting is a risk. We may already be feeling vulnerable, hurt, numb and to reach out and find the door is still firmly shut can feel like more than we are able to take on. Ambivalence can be another great barrier to reconnection. “I think maybe its best to just get on with it. I don’t know if it [reconnection] would be a good idea.”
“I don’t know what I would say, ” says one young woman who has not had a relationship with her sister for two years. Some people feel that if they reconnect with an estranged family member, that everything that ever went wrong will have to be dredged up, discussed and somehow fixed. For some people this may be true, but for others who do reconnect all that was required was an acknowledgment that they miss the absent family member and would like to open the possibility for connection. “I emailed my sister and said I missed having a sister. She emailed me back the next day saying, she missed having a sister too. About a month went by until we actually had a conversation. I didn’t push it. For awhile it was enough to know she missed me too.“Connection can unfold in many different ways, as unique as the people themselves.
Not all attempts at reconnection have happy endings but we will never know if our story might take a turn for the better if we don’t at least make an effort. I’m not advocating reconnection attempts in every instance of estrangement but if you are someone who wonders ‘what if’, it may be a lot more useful to know if there is a possibility to move forward or not. A reconnection attempt can act as a ‘reality check’. We often tell ourselves all sorts of stories about what is wrong with our relationships, what the other person thinks and feels, what they may or may not do if we connect. We may have all sorts of ideas about how we’ll feel or what we might say or do. We don’t know what we might feel if we made the effort to connect. We imagine we may feel relief, we may feel joy, we may feel ambivalent, or we may feel a clarity of intention that we do not wish to maintain relationship with this person.
There is only one for sure thing. The only way we’ll really know any of this is to pick up the phone or write that email or letter.
Things to ponder …
- If the person you are estranged from suddenly called or wrote to you in an effort to reconnect, how do you think you might feel?
- What feelings or thoughts come up for you when you think about making the effort to reconnect?
- If you feel resistance about making a reconnection attempt, what is the ’story’ you are telling yourself?
- Do you think you could manage to deal with rejection if that is the way your efforts to reconnect turned out?
- Is there any room for you to consider reconnection? Why don’t you call?
‘Sin Eaters’ & Family Estrangement
The term sin-eater refers to a person who, through ritual means, would take on by means of food and drink the sins of a deceased person, thus absolving his or her soul and allowing that person to rest in peace.
~Wikipedia
Sometimes it can be really useful to consider a subject in a more creative, less analytical way so I am going to repost this here. It’s and old post from my personal blog, WrongSide. Originally, I was drawn to the idea of ’sin eating’ via some reading I had been doing, and referencing, from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves. She suggests that the carrion birds who eat the remains of the predator [Bluebeard, pp 36-40] are ‘as sin eaters’ — that is, they metaphorically consume the negative aspects of the psyche, facilitating cleansing and release.
It’s a startling idea – with strong overtones of the scapegoat archetype I was posting about earlier. The notion that someone or something, can be made (or choose) to bear the burden of our wrong-doing (or that of an entire family, perhaps?) and thus liberate us from our own responsibility, accountability etc. In fact, this also parallels the idea of confession – again the idea that we can have our transgressions lifted from us by someone/something else … an almost ‘transfer’ of responsibility. As someone recently told me, “families who have a history of alcoholism or mental health issues seem to ALWAYS have to have one person estranged. that person may not WANT it, but they are forced into that role. it is inter-generational in my family–always one person who is estranged to the point of not knowing if they are dead or alive.” Is estrangement a form of forcing one person in a family in to the role of ’sin eating’ for the entire family?
I have to wonder about the Sin Eater, as another form of scapegoat; not born, but made? Is a Sin Eater something one ‘is‘ or something one ‘becomes’.
Is sin-eating a type of personal legend? An accidental occupation? A punishment?
Wikipedia provided the following:
The 1926 book Funeral Customs by Bertram S. Puckle mentions the sin-eater:
“Professor Evans of the Presbyterian College, Carmarthen, actually saw a sin-eater about the year 1825, who was then living near Llanwenog, Cardiganshire. Abhorred by the superstitious villagers as a thing unclean, the sin-eater cut himself off from all social intercourse with his fellow creatures by reason of the life he had chosen; he lived as a rule in a remote place by himself, and those who chanced to meet him avoided him as they would a leper. This unfortunate was held to be the associate of evil spirits, and given to witchcraft, incantations and unholy practices; only when a death took place did they seek him out, and when his purpose was accomplished they burned the wooden bowl and platter from which he had eaten the food handed across, or placed on the corpse for his consumption”.[3]
Howlett mentions sin-eating as an old custom in Hereford, and thus describes the practice: ‘The corpse being taken out of the house, and laid on a bier, a loaf of bread was given to the sin-eater over the corpse, also a maga-bowl of maple, full of beer. These consumed, a fee of sixpence was given him for the consideration of his taking upon himself the sins of the deceased, who, thus freed, would not walk after death.’”
Taking on the ’sins’ of others …. a sixpence doesn’t seem hardly worth it ….
- How might the idea of ’sin eating’ be relevant to family estrangement?
- Do you ‘eat the sins’ of your family?
- Do they ‘eat’ yours?
Scapegoats
In Biblical times, the Scapegoat was an important community ritual, whereby a litany of the sins and tribulations of the tribe were recited, and symbolically laden onto the back of a goat. The goat was then released into the desert, to bear their burdens away.
A cleansing had occurred, through the ritual of naming and atonement.
~*~
But scapegoating isn’t about ritual anymore, is it?
We don’t make masks, or sacrifice goats – we sacrifice people – people who challenge our status quo, make us feel uncomfortable, do things we don’t agree with or think are ‘right’ – or people who fail to do what we have decided they ’should have’ done. Scapegoats are people who are vulnerable to the hostile psychological discrediting some people use to shift accountability, responsibility, guilt and blame away from themselves. As was said in a recent Tricycle post, “if you want to hurt someone, demonize them first.” This is especially the case if, as the article suggests, you want people to approve of, or support the diminishing or attacking of another person(s).
Scapegoats are sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, lovers, husbands, wives, ex-anyones, co-workers – they sit beside you in restaurants, on buses, and at your dinner table.
Scapegoats are never born. They are made.
Scapegoat could be me …
or you.
Thoughts to ponder:
- Do you feel you have been scapegoated in your family?
- Can you be self aware enough to see where you may have scapegoated others in your family?
- What might change in your family if people could deal openly and compassionately with the issue of scapegoating?
[reposted from WrongSide]
Mark Sichel, Burning Moms In the Town Square
As many will be aware, I have been hard at work on my research about family estrangement. As a part of my research I do what every good researcher does … I trawl Google looking for other writers, books, people who share the interest. As such I was pretty stoked when I found an article in Psychology Today, tagged estrangement. The article was doubly interesting to me as it was written by Mark Sichel, a psychologist who has written one of the very few books available about family estrangement, Healing from Family Rifts. I clicked the link, and up popped the article, Once a Parent, Always a Parent: One Mother’s Resignation by Literary Defamation: Children are off limits when writing about personal experiences.
My social worker ’spidey’ senses tingling, heart sinking, I began reading.
The Reader’s Digest version of the article is, writer, Julie Myerson is accused of writing about her children, thusly denying them both respect and privacy. She is accused of betraying love, intimacy and motherhood by various rabidly angry critics and Mark Sichel, rather than taking a more objective, principled high road, throws a few more sticks on Myerson’s pyre in the town square. He states that Ms Myerson, “resigned from her job as Jake’s mother“, after asking her 17 year old son to leave the family home for his drug abuse and chaotic behavior. A strategy known to many parents as “tough love“.
Mr Sichel might have chosen to explore the historical context of tough love, and how various people have experienced this parenting strategy as both powerfully positive and also horribly horrific. He may have wanted to look at the sorts of advice parents are given from family, friends and so called ‘experts’ about how to manage an ‘out of control child’. He might have looked at how very often mothers are blamed for children being ‘out of control’ and how the responsibility to manage these ‘out of control’ children resides with the mother. He may have chosen to look at the social constructions of motherhood, mother blame and ‘good enough’ parenting as presented by psychologist Donald Winnicott. He may have wanted to acknowledge that Myerson is hooped either way she fights the fight: Allow her son to remain in the family home, exposing the larger family to the chaos of a drug abusing teen – or ask him to leave … either way, she will be criticized as a mother, as a woman.
Sichel criticizes Myserson’s decision as an abdication of parenthood and frames it in the context of Myerson’s estrangement from her own father. There is a suggestion here that Myserson has somehow failed to ‘learn the lesson’ inherent in her own experience of parental estrangement . Sichel however, does not go on to explore the very frequent pattern of inter-generational family estrangement, or to consider how Myserson may have been profoundly shaped by her experiences. There is little of compassion in Sichel’s criticisms of Myerson, a quality I consider as primary and central to the family estrangement discourse.
Sichel points out that Myerson may have used her son’s period of abstinence ‘as a stepping-stone to repairing the rift
between Jake and his family‘ and seems to freeze this possibility as a one off opportunity, now missed – due to the fact Myerson broke the Golden Rule, Thou Shalt Not Write About Thy Children. It should be said that even after a fairly vigorous search for this literary ‘rule’ I have seen no evidence of it. The world is full of books, blogs, magazine articles of people writing about their kids. It is not until we see mothers, speaking of their experiences of parenting in less than glowing terms, that the ‘mommy police’ come out of the woodwork. [see my recent post, Bad Mommy]. Had Sichel included even a brief mention of this phenomena, I’d have been appeased. But no.
“Julie chose to publicly expose her child’s drug problems and the related behavioral problems caused by the drug abuse. Now that, in my opinion, is off limits, indecent and obscene.” So says Sichel. “Any parent with respect for their child and human decency, love and kindness would not be critical of their child in their writing and publicly humiliate them for their own glorification as a writer.” Suddenly Myerson is without decency, love or kindness and has behaved ‘obscenely’. There is no room given for Myerson to write about her obviously very difficult experiences as a parent, no question about the truth of her experiences having equal validity, no room for Myerson to be central to her own story.
In Sichel’s opinion, “Julie Myerson, however, made two indefensible moves: she not only publicly defamed her son but she never, at least in public, reflected on her role in her son’s problem.” Is it defamation to speak truthfully, openly, passionately about how Myserson as a mother was impacted and influenced by her child’s behavior? I say no, no it is not. I have read excerpts from Myerson’s book, ‘The Lost Child: a True Story’ and no offense to her, she is perhaps more literary than some, but it’s nothing that I haven’t read in numerous places (books, blogs, articles) from other parents and mothers who have parented through a teen’s crisis. I would argue that Myerson’s choice to write at all about her children may be viewed as an effort to make sense of her experiences as a mother, and is nothing if not a reflection of her role in her son’s difficulties and broader life.
All this leaves me wondering what is it about Myerson that brought the “mommy police’ out in all their rampant glory? As I ask that question, I am quite cognizant that it doesn’t have to be much, luck of the draw, wrong place, wrong time, one ‘hostile bystander’. Why Myerson, remains however a valid question.
I’d like to see Julie Myerson’s choices as a writer considered both from a place of gendered analysis and also framed in context to larger research about family estrangement. Hell, I’d like to see Julie Myerson’s choices as a mother considered from the same places. I dare say the article would read considerably different from that of Mark Sichel, a publicly acclaimed psychologist and an “expert” in family estrangement.
I am so very grateful that I did not find my way to Mr Sichel’s office to address my family estrangement issues. Shame on you Mark Sichel.
[Cross Posted from WrongSide]
Can We Ever Really Give Up?
Without question, being in a perpetually hurtful relationship hurts. Many people come to estrangement after years of working really hard to try to mend broken relationships, heal wounded ones and grow stunted ones – and failing. For most people, estrangement was not their first choice, but does estrangement really put an end to the hurt?
“I don’t have to deal with new hurt. That’s the ‘gift’ of estrangement. I know if I were involved with my family, I would fall right back into being their punching bag. I’m not ok though. Not ok at all.” Estrangement can seem like the only solution when it feels like you have tried everything else. In the case of truly abusive and damaging relationships, estrangement might appear a wise and healthy choice indeed. “My father sexually abused my sister and me. He has no remorse around any of it. We don’t need him in our lives.”
However, some people who have consciously chosen to estrange to prevent further injury, will report feeling emotionally tethered to the relationship, even though the person(s) are no longer a part of their lives. “I feel like I have spent my whole life looking for people to give me the love, acceptance and approval I never got from my mother. We will die without me ever having known why she couldn’t love me.” Other people who are estranged from a family member report very high levels of ambivalence about their relationship and choice to sever the relationship. “I don’t want to be around him, but it hurts to be without him. I’m numb about the whole thing.”
Estrangement carries consequences that people may not consider at the point of choosing to cut away from their families. Each family member carries a piece of the ‘collective’ family story and to lose even one person, is to lose an essential part of the history and story of the family. “I have no photos of myself as a child. My family would have them, but I can’t ask for them. I feel like I am a ghost sometimes.” Estrangement also carries some very pragmatic losses. “I’m pregnant and will be having my first child. I have no idea if there are health things I should be aware of..you know, stuff that runs in the family … because I don’t talk to anyone in my family.”
Estrangement does not always end the hurt, and in fact, can create a whole different set of consequences, which are often just as painful.
Things to ponder ….
- Has estrangement ‘fixed’ your hurts?
- Has your estrangement created hurt for others?
- How do you emotionally ‘manage’ your estrangement?
- Do you feel like you have lost part of your family ’story’?
- Do you ever feel like you have lost essential pieces of your own history?
Growing Up With Mad Mothers …
Catherine Camden-pratt
I’ve been reading this book, which I picked up at a recent AASW conference I attended. This post is a bit of a review of the book, but is also liberally peppered with my own experiences and thoughts both as a social worker and as a woman who has grown up with a mother who, I now recognize, had mental health issues.
Firstly, Catherine’s book (and research) is primarily based on the experiences of 11 women who are all 40-ish or so. This places these stories in a particular period of time, generally speaking the 60’s-70’s. The research is Australian and reflects Australian practices around mental health and institutional care of women/mothers who were diagnosed with significant mental health problems. It serves a reflection of the mental health system as seen through the personal narratives of the women who participated in the study.
The book addresses the stigma associated with having a ‘mad mother’ – and the isolation, shame and fear that these women experienced as children, the impact on their everyday lives – and the ongoing effect it has had on their adult lives, relationships etc. As a collection of lived experiences, the book certainly highlights the resilience of children and families. The criteria that the mothers must have been institutionalized was frustrating for me. I would have liked the broader inclusion of women who had experienced growing up with ‘mad moms’ who were not medicated or institutionalized but still left their daughters with a legacy of ‘wtf’.
I grew up with the peripheral understanding that my mother was an alcoholic. I say I have ‘peripheral’ awareness as there are many things, which are not openly addressed in my family and I left home at the age of 15 and have had, all in all, minimal contact with my mother or my extended family. Many of the situations which were a part of my growing up, I attributed to having a very young (she was 16 when I was born) mother who struggled with alcohol addiction. I saw her emotional estrangement and violence in this context and it was not until I was an adult that the story shifted to include a diagnosis of depression, which had gone undiagnosed and untreated (as far as I am aware) while I was growing up. As an adult I am aware of my mother’s ongoing relationship with mental health professionals, drug therapies and hospitalizations, which include electroshock therapy. I have been peripherally aware of the fact that her mental health issues have prevented her from working, or using the social work degree she earned in her mid 30’s. I am also deeply aware of how unhappy she has been most of her life, and the impact that has had upon me, my life choices, my relationships and my parenting.
This is not about ‘mommy blame’, as I sometimes felt while I read Catherine’s book. For me, the book lacks a clearly articulated social justice framework, and a gendered analysis which may have allowed for more of a compassionate view of the mothers than that which I found while reading this book. And tho I found the stories of the daughters highly compelling, I would have found the book more balanced if the mothers stories, the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been considered in more depth.
I imagine the context of the book was to give each of the women an opportunity to be central in their own story. So often when someone in your family is ill, they become the ’star’ and everyone else becomes a shadow – hence the book title. However, I believe the possibilities for healing would have been greater, again, if the stories of the mothers and the social construction of mothering and mental health, and the relationship and responsibility of the wider family and community had been more fleshed out.
For instance, a daughter may view their mother’s ‘crazy’ behavior in relation to the impact it has on her thoughts, feelings and physical reality – but would that reality change with an appreciation of how the mother was experiencing that same moment? Also, again, would there not be greater capacity to be gentle and generous with our own struggles to maintain relationships and raise children, if we could understand where personal issues begin and end?
It is not the ‘fault’ of the mothers that they had mental health problems. It is not the fault of the mothers that mental health problems carried/s such social stigma. It is not the fault of the mothers that there were/are very poor supports, services or resources for themselves or their families. It is not the mothers fault that the institutional care provided to them was so very often the best of a worst solution. It is not the fault of the mothers that the fathers and wider family and community were not there to offset and support the mothers or their children. Yes the mental health of their mothers created a legacy of issues for each woman, but locating the responsibility of those issues with the mother, who was ill,and also suffering, seems to me, to grotesquely miss the mark.
We don’t talk much about my mother’s mental health problems. Actually, we don’t talk. Estrangement is part of the legacy of the mental health and addiction problems in my family, as is the significant pattern of relationship ruptures through divorce and the inability of individual family members to locate themselves in those issues. My mother’s mental health problems are one variable in a complex tapestry of family dynamics. What I can say is, I have come to see my mother’s story in a gendered, socially conscious manner – and that allows me compassion – even tho, it does not allow me a relationship.
[Re-posted from WrongSide]
The Geography of Estrangement
We’ve all heard the expression, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but when it comes to estrangement, what role does geographical distance play?
A bit of a dichotomy to to consider: When you are in a conflictual relationship but live far away, the good news is, you are unlikely to bump into your estranged family member at the corner store, or Sunday dinner. The bad news when you are in a conflictual relationship and live far away is, you are unlikely to bump into your estranged family member at the corner store, or Sunday dinner.
Some people insist that putting distance between the person (s) they are estranged from is a simple matter of self-preservation. These people argue that proximity heightens the issues, which led to estrangement and that remaining in closer contact would cause the situation to deteriorate even further. For instance, when estrangement occurs due to issues of reoccurring abuse, distance may be a fundamentally pragmatic decision. Consider the following; “My son has significant addiction issues. When he is permitted to live at home, or even regularly visit, insane things happen. Last time he threatened to kill my husband, and stole money from his sister. When Mitch is around we all get a little ‘crazy’. We love him, we just can’t be around him. Maybe things will be different if he ever cleans his act up. I don’t know.” Sometimes, we are the person who has the problem or who has done the ‘wrong’ thing. The inability to forgive ourselves may be as much a barrier to reconnecting with our family as any rejection we may potentially experience from them. Distance can create a sense of safety in both directions. No more rejection, no more craziness. No more having to risk more hurt.
But distance can also breed anxiety.
Consider the words of a man who hasn’t spoken with his brother in over fifteen years, “I don’t talk to people who piss me off. My brother’s in Germany and I’m in Montana. I guess I won’t ever know if he still pisses me off. I get worked up even thinking about talking to him.” Distance has a way of removing the immediacy of relationship. A week of not speaking, slides into a month, slips into years. We may not even remember how or why the lack of communication began and have even less idea of how to remedy it. When enough time lapses, our focus turns to other people, other relationships – more pressing connections and less stressful communications. “I want to know my dad but I don’t know if he wants to know me. We both know where each other is, but no one is, you know, taking the step.”Taking the step to reconnect may be made even more difficult when you factor large distances into the picture. “My sister lives across the country. It’s not like we can just have a coffee together and talk.”
People have told me on numerous occasions that estrangement is exacerbated by geographical distance. Issues which may be readily dealt with when living in the same town or city, become insurmountable from the other side of the world. “My sister has this entirely skewed idea about me. There’s at least a dozen emails between us and each one sends us further into estrangement. It’s so frustrating! Twenty minutes of conversation in my living room could clear this right up.” Even with excellent writing skills, emails, letters, text messages and SMS’s are notorious for going sideways.
As is the way for most things which are touched by estrangement, there is no right or wrong answer to the distance equation. Different people and families will experience this issue in different ways. Some questions to ponder:
- Does geographical distance play a role in the estrangement in your family?
- Do you think matters would be better or worse if you were closer? Further away?
- Have you chosen to move in order to manage the tensions in your family?
- Does distance solve problems or create them?
Inter-generational?
Across many conversations with other people, and certainly as a part of my own family story, estrangement is seen to be inter-generational. Don’t we all say, ‘with my children/mother/father/sister/brother it will be different?’
What is it that perpetuates the cycle of family ruptures? Do they share features across the generations; ie/ occurring between specific relationships mother/daughter, father/son etc., and similar life stages, for similar reasons? Or are the features different and only the result the same?
Estrangement; A Dirty Little Secret
I was having a conversation recently with a woman who was in her 60’s. We hadn’t known each other long, but somehow the conversation turned to family and she began to speak about her relationship with her estranged daughter. After she had spoken at some length, she tearfully advised me she had, “never shared all that’ before.” With some gentle questioning, it soon emerged that she felt a deep sense of shame, as a mother, as a therapist (her profession) and as the daughter of a mother, who had also chosen estrangement. Her daughter had initiated the rupture of their relationship, without sharing her reasons but still my new friend asked, “How could I have let this happen?” In the absence of reasons, we have an astounding propensity to blame ourselves. It is not then, what happened with ‘us’, what do ‘we’ each bring to the creation of the problem – but rather, what did I do wrong?
Shame, guilt, and a pervasive sense of being bad, wrong or not good enough is a frequent feature of estrangement, whether the individual initiated the estrangement or not. This seems to be one area where it matters less who is the dumper/dumpee (See Rebuilding: When Your Relationship Ends, Skinner) and is more about the perceived responsibilities for the relationship. Parents often feel that they must keep putting out fires to maintain their relationship with their child, even when it is evident their child is ferociously burning bridges. Children often feel profoundly disloyal and strangely ‘orphaned’ even when they make the choice to disconnect, armed with multiple ‘good’ reasons to do so. Siblings feel fractured when relationships crumble, even when they are the ones doing the crumbling. Assumptions are made, realities built, stories told and retold until they crystallize into strange structures resembling truths. Polarization occurs and very often even people central in the estrangement equation are left wading, knee deep in ambivalence, wondering ‘why’?
Not only do people who are experiencing estrangement often feel badly about themselves, they are often judged quite harshly for their estrangement, whether self imposed or not. In another conversation, a friend advised, “my sister is estranged from her son – and everyone knew it was going to happen. Jess (name changed) was always a terrible mother‘. Considering the harsh judgment, I asked my friend if she was estranged from her sister or her nephew, she denied it saying, “I’d never do something so terrible.” The judgments were dual – only ‘terrible’ people become estranged and only ‘terrible’ people do the estranging.
Is it any wonder that estrangement becomes hidden, a poison dart, straight to the heart, a family secret, that is not so secret?
But you are not alone. Many people, famous and completely un-famous, experience estrangement. Consider some of the well known celebrity estrangements; Julia and Eric Roberts; Angelina Jolie and her father, Jon Voigt; Tori Spelling and her mother, Candy; Alice Walker from her daughter, Rebecca; Brittney Spears and her mother, Lynn. This is by no means a comprehensive list, just a quick Google sampling of famous disconnects. You are not alone. Read that again…
You are not alone …
Just because you find yourself estranged from a family member doesn’t mean you are bad. It doesn’t mean you have done something terrible. It also doesn’t mean that the person you are estranged from is necessarily bad or terrible. Estrangement is complex. There are many reasons it occurs; sometimes due to catastrophic factors like abuse, mental illness, addiction and sometimes for reasons of intolerance but often reasons are seen differently across time and across relationships. Being estranged does not need to be shameful and it does not need to be a secret you carry, like a large boulder on your shoulder.
It’s okay to hop out of the “bad person box’, it’s okay to let go of your judgments of yourself and its even okay to let go of your judgment of others. This doesn’t mean you don’t have rights to your grievances, it only means you don’t need to carry them like a heavy cross.
Should you tell your secret?It’s become something of a social norm to blow family business wide open. I read recently of how one celebrity would not maintain a relationship with her mother after their ‘dirty laundry’ had been very publicly aired. Obviously we need to exercise discretion, and consider carefully where we lay our trust. Sharing with other family members may result in further estrangements, if they are unable or unwilling to meet you at your needs or insist on colluding to maintain the family ’secrets’. Yet there are people who will support us, who can hear our stories and validate our experiences. Some of these people may be family, but they may equally be friends, therapists, clergy members or people who have experienced similar circumstances. In the absence of sharing with another person, we can try other methods of opening and releasing; journaling, visualization, meditation, and body work to name a few.
Estrangement is what it is – a complex web of interactive, interpersonal and changeable variables. Don’t allow family fractures to become dirty little secrets. Give yourself the support and healing that comes from sharing your story, appropriately, with people who care.
