Once Upon A Time …
People carry around thoughts, feelings, behaviors … issues about the estrangement that has occurred in their family. We tell ourselves why the estrangement has happened, whose fault it might be, what we should have done, what others should have done. We obsess over details; who said what, who did what, when it happened, how it happened, where it happened. Sometimes we refuse to allow ourselves to think about it at all.
What may be more useful is to start where you are, find your own way through the labyrinth that is family estrangement. We can begin this journey by carefully considering the stories we tell ourselves about estrangement in our family. When I say ’stories’ I am speaking in the narrative sense, not the ‘truth telling’ sense. Let’s face it, in situations of estrangement, getting at truth can be a very tricky bit of business.
So we each have our own story, or set of stories. These are the constructions we use to make meanings of the events in our lives, to understand our actions and to make sense of the actions of the people we interact with. We don’t do this ’story telling’ because we are bad, or sick, or immature people – we do it because story telling is the way we, all of us, make sense of the world.
Consider the following:
“I never knew my father. He disappeared when I was a baby and never made any effort to find me. I don’t think he liked kids. I can see how that’s probably true. I mean he was a young guy, and maybe he wasn’t ready to be a father. He didn’t marry my mom, so I guess that says a lot.“
This is a ’story’. It may be constructed around a set of clear facts; father was not present and he didn’t marry mother (at least, not that the teller is aware of). However, there are a number of assumptions that are not verifiable facts – even if mom said so. The above story not only tells us the verifiable bits, it also gives us a sense of what sorts of meanings the teller has made about them; father was not present … therefore he never tried to find me. Father was young, therefore did not like kids. Father did not marry mother … therefore he did not want a family or a child. There are probably other assumptions or ideas embedded into this story that we cannot pick apart but the words:’I guess that says a lot” is a bit of signal, that there is more story to come.
If we believe this story, we begin to have a picture of what sort of person father might be … young, irresponsible, uncaring … perhaps. If we retold that story over and over to ourselves, particularly if there were other people who would agree with our story, and even embellish it with details of their own, it would not be difficult to come to believe the story was the only story. We tend to seek out information that supports our understandings, and to fail to see, leave out, or reject information that doesn’t fit.
So what happens if we aren’t even aware we are making stories as we go? What happens if we are largely unconscious, not only about how we construct stories around other people’s behavior but also how we construct stories around our own? Well, these sorts of unconsidered stories, allow little room for the complexities of life. They don’t give room for people to make sense of their own particular actions or the context within which they occurred. They leave very little possibility for movement or for change.When we agree to stick to a script in a story we have been telling ourselves for a long time – it prevents any chance of considering other possible meanings or actions. For instance in the above story, how would the teller’s feelings, thoughts, behaviors change if the story was expanded to include the following details:
“Before she passed away, my grandmother told me that my dad’s family were very angry that he’d been seeing my mom. They shipped him off to a school in England and though he tried to stay in touch with my mother, my grandmother and grandfather blocked his correspondence thinking to protect my mother. My mother and father never spoke again, and my mother was never able to let him know that he had a daughter.”
Whoa. Suddenly we have a whole other set of meanings about father’s absence.
Stories or descriptions of people’s behavior or personalities are often constructed by others – people who by virtue of their position or power, can label and define others; parents, teachers, health professionals, clergy, counselors etc. BEWARE: Stories are often expressed as truth. Within family stories, the person who is targeted may be seen as ‘bad’, ‘a troublemaker’, or ‘sick’, the ’scapegoat’ or ‘black sheep’. [see early post on Scapegoats]. We may also turn this critical lens upon ourselves. Stories may be used to dis-empower us, or we may also use them to dis-empower others. When this is happening, we begin to see ourselves or others as flat, one dimensional – a collection of traits and behaviors that best uphold the story we tell. As the story grows it becomes increasingly narrow, gains momentum, becomes more powerful and has ever greater capacity to impact the way we think and feel about people or circumstances, which in turn, impacts future events.
When we think about estrangement, perhaps one of the simplest (although not easy) places to begin, is with estrangement from self, and the stories we create. We need to challenge ourselves to start examining the stories we have accepted to be true about ourselves, about other people, and about circumstances in our lives. We don’t do this to punish ourselves or to let others off the hook – we do it to better understand ourselves and to give ourselves room to move , think, and feel differently. We want to be able to create alternate stories, richer, more varied, and complex stories. Stories we author with intention. We want to expand limited stories which prevent change, and instead seek multi-layered meanings which allow possibility.
Things to ponder….
- What is the story of your relationship with your family? You could think about each person separately, or you could think more globally in terms of family roles (responsible one, scapegoat, brain, clown…), scripts etc.
- What is the story of your response to your family relationships? Is this story closed, or is there room to seek new ideas, meanings and possibilities?
- What do you tell yourself about …. yourself?
- What sorts of stories have other people told about you?
- Were these stories limiting, or did they give you room to be multi-dimensional?
Families Gone AWOL
I started my morning with a cup of coffee and reading Allison Gilbert’s well considered article, Parenting Without Parents: How to be a parent without your own. It’s an interesting article and it raised questions for me. For starters, I wondered how hard it had been to find a photograph of a typical, nuclear family of four, cheerfully visiting the cemetery, undoubtedly fondly remembering the departed family member. I couldn’t help but think of the differences between families who experience ‘legitimate’ loss and grief through death and those who experience estrangement and not only feel loss and grief, but also guilt, shame, anger, and often pervasive ambivalence about having the missing member(s) of their family restored through possible contact. I pondered what sort of image you would have of a ‘typical’ estranged family … and was pretty clear it probably wouldn’t be a picture of a nuclear family, smiling at a graveside.
Estrangement is, but is not, like a family death. People choose estrangement, they do not (unless suicidal) choose death. Estrangement is not an inevitable part of life that every family will experience; estrangement is not generally perceived as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. People will usually access a fair bit of support when discussing the death of a family member. Even though our capacity to manage death is often not great, it’s acceptable to talk about it, and grieve. When someone dies, we are given both formal and informal ‘permission’ to section off a space in our life to be present with our grief. This is rarely the case with estrangement. Estranged family members don’t get a funeral service, or a memorial and there is no graveside to mourn at. Grieving members of a family are usually not criticized and blamed for the death of their family member. In cases of estrangement, people are often blamed or criticized for their failure to ‘be a family’. Like a death, estrangement often comes with little warning. Estranged people don’t typically see the family break as something that will drag on or be permanent. And like preparing for a death in advance, even if we do suspect estrangement may be permanent, we are often unprepared for the vastness of the loss.
Similar to the grieving process around a death, estrangement often follows the well known, 5 stage grieving process as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her pioneering book, On Death and Dying; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. However, in the case of estrangement, the process often has no sense of finality about it. It is not a ‘complete occurrence’ or a necessarily ’shared occurrence’. Estrangement, may feel more like a very acrimonious divorce than death. Estrangement means we still know the other person is ‘out there’, still living their lives – just they are doing so, without us. They may maintain relationships, possibly with mutual acquaintances or other family members, but have no connection with us. We may hear news about recent positive or negative life events, but be unable to share in the events; even really positive things like the birth of a new baby or traumatic things like a car accident or health crisis. For many, estrangement continues right through to death – where many people will not be informed about the death in a timely or sensitive manner, or be invited to attend funerals or memorial services. Imagine how difficult coming to terms with loss and death might be, when compounded by estrangement.
Like Allison Gilbert points out, loss of a parent (or extended family in general) means we lose access to parenting support and family histories. Like the death of a parent, estrangement means we too will have to deal with ‘practical and emotional voids’, ‘fear of dying young’, ‘the impact that estrangement has on marriages and other significant relationships and certainly the dilemma of how to give our children a sense of family when ‘family’ is AWOL. Unlike Allison, I was not surprised to find an utter lack of research about how losing both your parents (and/or your extended family network) through estrangement profoundly informs the way we parent our own children. Estrangement is after all, one of the dirtiest of family secrets.
** I am currently researching and exploring family estrangement and will be covering a number of estrangement topics in article and book form. If you would like to be a part of this important research about family estrangement, please click HERE for further information, or to take the survey.
Estrangement, Is It Hazardous To Your Health?
I’ve been having a rough couple of months in respect to some health issues and these problems have had me thinking about some of the wider impacts of family estrangement. You see, I have been in hospital and in and out of doctor’s offices often enough to make me believe that setting up a tent in the clinic, might not be a bad idea. Each time I see a new doctor or specialist, they want to play the ‘getting to know you’ game, which doesn’t only involve me sharing everything that I know about my personal medical history – but also ideally involves giving concrete information about my family’s medical history. Unfortunately, it is shocking how little I am able to tell the doctors since estrangement occurs inter-generationally on both sides of my family and involves both my parents. In my situation, not only have I lost essential parent to child medical information, things which may have occurred when I was a child (how many times did I have chicken pox??), or could be genetically passed between us – but I also have lost the histories of both sides of the family that are locked away in each parent’s head.
A doctor generally takes a family medical history as a means of checking to see if you require specific tests or screenings for disease or potential health problems. The medical history can assist a doctor to consider potential health risks and whether you need to take particular preventative steps to safeguard your health. It may assist to determine whether symptoms that you may have, follow a family pattern, which suggests particular diagnosis. When we know our family’s medical history, we can be watchful partners with our doctor aware of things like breast cancer, heart disease or drug sensitivities. We may worry that we are carriers of a particular condition that could pass to our children, and so seek prenatal screening or advice. Not only does a family history assist our doctor(s), it also assists us to ask better questions about our health and to make more informed decisions.
In cases where family members become estranged, we often lose our medical history. This can occur not only with the primary person we are estranged from, but also entire family networks (previous generations and current) as a result of the way in which information is shared (or often, not shared). A former client of mine, who had been diagnosed with diabetes relayed how shocked she was to learn that her estranged ‘alcoholic’ aunt, was actually diabetic and not an alcoholic at all. For years she had, along with select other family members, assumed the family stories of auntie’s slurred voice and stumbling about were indicative of alcoholism only to learn through requesting a family history, that alcoholism wasn’t the issue but diabetes was; a fact that she would most certainly have benefited from knowing about.
Even in connected families, not everyone feels comfortable disclosing their medical history. In cases of estrangement a number of factors may heighten these issues and contribute to a person’s reluctance to discuss medical issues, including guilt, shame, anger or trust issues. Some people who are estranged, try to overcome this ‘gap of knowing’ by gathering information from other family members or family friends and gradually building a picture of family health and well-being from there. This of course, is far from precise and may lead to more problems than it solves. For instance, a client was told by her mother that her estranged father was ’schizophrenic’. It was not until some time later she realized the label was used by her mother as a sort of catch-all phrase to describe any significant emotional distress.
So how do we deal with obtaining a family medical history?
One possible way forward, is to draft an email or letter requesting each family members’ knowledge of health issues that have appeared in their lives or the lives of other family members. There are a number of family history frameworks you can Google online, or resources which might assist you to think about what sorts of questions you want to ask. For instance, The Mayo Clinic suggests that we look at diseases which are known to run in families such as: Cardiovascular disease (hypertension and stroke); Cancer; Diabetes; Mental illness; Osteoporosis; Arthritis; Obesity … and also recommend that you collect at least three generations of medical history.
If you are considering requesting a family medical history, it may help if you:
- Share why you are undertaking a family medical history
- Keep the questions specific, simple and short
- Assure the information will be kept confidential
- Offer to compile all the information you gather, including your own medical history, and send it back to them.
Finally, like any effort to contact an estranged family member, its important to be realistic and consider how you might handle silence, out right rejection, hostility or a refusal to trust or share. If the very notion leaves you feeling vulnerable – now may not be the time to undertake this investigative sleuthing. If it is not possible to contact your family, let your doctor know that and work to keep a detailed medical history of your own. Personally, I’m making a family medical history list and checking it twice … and that’s what I’ll be sending out with my Christmas cards this year.
Broken Bridges
We all have capital N – NEED for security, for safety – for relationships we can depend upon. While it is obvious that no relationship can be guaranteed to provide 100% safety, or security – and no relationship is impervious to lesser or greater betrayals, most of us expect that our families will be the relationships we can most rely upon. Not all people experience their family in this way. Consider the 34 year old mother of two who said, “I remember growing up watching families on t.v, how they were there for each other, supporting each other. It was completely alien to me. I’m still trying to figure it out with my own family” Or, as one man pointed out, “I still think of family as something to escape from.”
It can be really difficult to acknowledge family as a place of wounding or betrayal, difficult to remain in relationships that hurt and yet, also very hard to think to think about walking away. I’ve spoken to number of people who have chosen to distance themselves from family because they were keenly aware of having to pay a hefty price for remaining a part of their family. There may have been a number of spoken or unspoken ‘rules’: do not remember, do not challenge, tolerate intolerance, do not be authentic, do not feel your feelings, etc. There’s many reasons family members might clash. On the recent survey I have been circulating, some of those reasons included: “I’m gay. There’s no room for that in my family.” “My mom and I got along but only if I did things her way.” “I married a black African man. Goodbye family.” We can choose to ‘forgive’, we can choose to be silent, we can choose to suppress or hide parts of who were are. We can choose to maintain family relationships – but at some point, remaining in the situation may begin to feel a lot like self harming — this seems especially the case in families where betrayal and abuse are not distant childhood memories, but continue in the present.
Whilst reconciliation in families seems considered the ideal, possibly because our connection to tribe and family is such an integral part of our sense of identity – it is not always possible or desirable. Sometimes we cannot safely raise issues with family so that they can be resolved. Sometimes connection only provides further opportunities for shaming, blaming, abusing, harming. Sometimes family members are absent through death, divorce or disconnection and we can’t connect even if we want to. We’re told that acknowledgment of hurts, apology and forgiveness may lead to reconciliation – but they are not always possible. We may have made previous efforts to reconnect, and been greeted by a closed door. Relationships involve two people and one person cannot carry the responsibility to heal, grow and nurture a relationship on their own. Knocking on family doors until knuckles are bloody does not feel good. Neither does opening the door only to get sucker punched.
I often think of the Buddhist ideal of Ahimsa. Ahimsa, is the awareness and practice of non-violence in thought, speech and action. It advocates the practices of compassion, love, understanding, patience, self-love, and worthiness. So what’s Ahimsa got to do with non-Buddhists or with family estrangement? Ahimsa could be considered an interesting framework through which to consider our responsibility to ourselves as well as to others. A pretty cool part of the idea of Ahimsa is that its not limited to how we treat others, we are included. How we treat, respect and care for ourselves matters too. Ahimsa is also not just about behavior. Behavior springs from the internal – the things we think and feel, things we say. Ahimsa suggests that it is important to adopt an attitude of gentleness, of ‘do no harm’ to self, not only physically, but also mentally, emotionally and spiritually
This idea of ‘do no harm’ is very powerful when considering whether or not to maintain any relationship, including those with family. The idea that we can put ourselves first, and that indeed we must do so, opens a sense of ‘permission’ to protect and care for self. It means we don’t have to be doormats or victims if that is the price of maintaining family relationships. It means its ok to take ourselves out of harms way. It’s ok to put distance between ourselves and other people who would do us harm; even if those people are our family. Ahimsa means we do not have to allow others to wreck havoc in our lives and stand idly by and allow it. I really like what the following woman had to say, both because she is able to acknowledge that trying to reconnect doesn’t seem possible in the moment but also allows room for things to change in the future: “My daughter cut me off when her father and I divorced. I’ve tried to reconnect, but each time I get nothing but anger and blame. I’d love to be able to work it through, but I have to stay away from her until something changes.“
No one can tell you if reconciliation is a desirable goal for you in your family circumstances and only you can determine whether distancing from a family member is genuinely a decision based on self love and the need to protect self. It may also be worth remembering that decisions need not be frozen in place forever. It may be we need distance in order to protect and care for ourselves today and at the same time, it is possible to leave a door open in the event that people or circumstances change, as they so often do.
- Is the price for connection with family ever ‘too high’?
- How do you care for yourself in relation to your family?
Loss
Loss is easier to bear
when it is understood as a permanent condition.
~ FM
Things to ponder …
- Is family estrangement a permanent condition?
- How do you think about 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 for them. 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.” 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.” 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.
“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. In some instances, estrangement is carefully considered and necessary. However, 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?
‘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 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?
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.
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?
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