Thank You

“In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.” 
― Elizabeth Gilbert

Dear lovely readers,

I am pleased to say that I am back and there will be posts and business as usual! I want to thank each of you, my loyal readers for sticking with me and for continuing to support each other (and me!) in my absence. Also many thank you’s are owed to all who left such heartfelt messages here for me, and to those who have emailed me. I cannot express my gratitude enough.

You are generous, dear readers and I intend to continue to thank you for as long as I have a voice.

With love and caring,

Fiona

Who Chose Your Estrangement?

Happy New Year!

“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

― L.M. Montgomery

I am back after enjoying a bit of a holiday – a break in routine and an opportunity to recharge my batteries.

I’m so pleased to see the outpouring of sharing and supporting that happened in my absence. Each comment really is a gift!

I hope that each of you have found some space through the madness of the holiday season to rest, regroup, laugh and enjoy yourself. I wish the best of all things for each of you in 2012 and look forward to spending another year with you, my readers.

Happy New Year!

Are You Estranged From Your Father?

I Have Mail

Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience. It is not for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.” 
— Frank Smith

You might think that this quote is a funny way to kick off an E-Stranged post, but bear with me. I have been sitting this morning reading through a rather significant backlog of email from all my lovely readers.  I want to thank you all for the interest you show in my work and for your trust in sharing your stories with me. These stories form the back drop of my work and certainly my writing, so I could never maintain this blog without your emails; your stories; your courage to share.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer quantity of mail I receive, I don’t always get to respond in a timely fashion – and given a very busy off-line career and practice, sometimes I don’t get to reply at all! I have been sitting and thinking about the best way to manage this happy conundrum of lots of emails, and little time and I wanted to share some of my thoughts with you, my readers.

1. First and foremost I want to share my view of blogging. I could have written a static website, or a book (or wait I have!), but instead I choose to blog. The reason for this is I think one of the most important things for people who are estranged is a sense of community. It can be very powerful to know that you are not alone in your story, that there are other people going through the same sorts of things. I chose blogging to give you all an opportunity to interact, to share, to create your own community around the ideas that I share here. In other words, my blog is an invitation for you to interact and share with each other as much as with me.

2. Often the email I receive is very thematic – possibly because many of them are in response to something I have written here but sometimes I think there is a certain synergy or serendipity to the things people share that has nothing to do with my writing. If we share openly, on the blog, these themes are made explicit, and can be explored in greater detail. Your emails give me clear direction about what you, my readers, want to read and what I should be writing about. For this as well, I thank you all. Sometimes I think that you might all be very surprised how much similarity there is in your experience and how much wisdom and insight you each possess.  As I have written about before, we are all our own best experts on ourselves and our circumstances.

3. Instead of answering the same or very similar email questions, I often choose instead to write a post about them. This is my way of ensuring that questions get answered and responded to, without responding to 20 or more separate emails. In short, I write a post which I hope addresses them all. Whilst this has seemed to be a reasonable way of managing things, I worry sometimes that in not receiving a direct response to your mail, that you may feel unheard, or unsupported. This is definitely not something I rest easy with!

What would work even better for me is if you were to ask your questions or share your thoughts with each other as well as with me. I’d like to pool our collective wisdom and highlight how much you all already know. It’s not then about me giving answers as much as it is about us having conversations and sharing with each other.

4. I understand that some things are just too personal to share. Many of the emails I receive are people’s individual stories and experiences. Often these emails are raw and not for public consumption. I honour these emails and the courage that it takes to write them. I will always endeavour to read and respond to these because they are important and they are an act of trust.

I may not be able to give you a therapeutic response. It can be very time consuming and labour intensive to put my therapist hat on and reply to emails. I also very often do not feel that I have enough information to give a truly considered response. As such I want to let you know that I do work as a therapist on-line through a number of different mediums which you can read about HERE. If you are looking for more intensive support, and would like to take advantage of my services, please don’t hesitate to contact me for further information.

5. As the Frank Smith qute above says, “Writing is for ideas, action, reflection, and experience”. That is the spirit of sharing I hope for on this blog and I have seldom been disappointed. Some readers have shared with me the negative and often painful or marginalizing experiences they have had on other blogs and forums. I am deeply saddened that their on-line experience of sharing has been negative. I do moderate this blog and keep a pretty close eye on comments. It is my intention to ensure that this blog remains a safe space for sharing, whether that be points of commonality, or points of difference. What this blog is not about and will never be about is “ for having your ignorance exposed, your sensitivity destroyed, or your ability assessed.” I promise to ensure this is so.

6. Writing and sharing on this blog is an opportunity to practice our compassion and tolerance. It asks us to transcend our own experiences and hear those of others. It also allows our stories to be heard so that we might be the beneficiary of that same compassion or tolerance. The skills of compassion and tolerance (and make no mistake, they are skills, which must be practiced and honed!) are often lacking in families where estrangement has occurred. Whilst I don’t cast blame or think that you are responsible for this in your family – I do believe genuinely listening, demonstrating tolerance and compassion is something we can all stand to grow and develop.

So there we have it. A few ideas about why I think blogging is an amazing platform, and why I also think that it is an important way of building community and giving and receiving support and caring. This is a shout out to both have compassion for my over flowing email box – and to also really consider the benefits of leaving your comments whether openly under your real name, or with a safe alias if that feels better for you.

What do you think?

I’m Sorry!

 I’m Sorry!

Just a quick update, and thank you for your emails! No I’m not sick and I haven’t given up this blog, I’ve just had a couple of intense offline work weeks. I had been delivering every other day content, however, for the next couple of weeks will scale back to a weekly posting on Fridays.

Again than you for your concern and your many warm messages!

MORE Exposure For Family Estrangement

Just a quick note to say how pleased I am to see family estrangement capturing mainstream media attention. The April edition of More magazine featured an article, How to deal with family estrangement, It’s never too late to fix the broken ties that bind By: Sarah Treleaven. Not only was this article topical for those of us dealing with estrangement issues, it also featured my work and this blog!  Have a read!

Pick A Side

“People are like coins, just flip them and see all them sides”
— Samar AlDhamadi

Recently I received a passionate email from a reader. She said, “Your blog confuses me. I am not sure if you are for or against estrangement. When I read it I think, pick a side!

I want to thank this reader for expressing her honest, heartfelt conundrum. The fact of the matter is, I don’t have a side. I have been both the estranger and the estrangee in my own family relationships. I have worked equally with clients who have opted to estrange from their families, as I have with those who have been estranged. My research has captured both sides, remarkably equally. My personal experience is reflected in my research. Many people have been both estranged, and have estranged in their own turn.

I have come to see the dilemma as two sides of the same coin. The end result is the same, regardless of whether you left or have been left.  You are minus a family member, or several. You must either resolve to try to reconcile, which may or may not be an option and may or may not be in your best interests. If reconciliation is not agreeable to you, again whether you have left or have been left – the task of coming to terms with estrangement, healing and stepping forward with your life remains the same.

The healing process regardless of whether you are the estranger or the estrangee, is remarkably similar.

My blog, my work, my research interest is focused on helping people who are estranged from their families go on to create meaningful, loving, nurturing relationships and lives for themselves .. with or without their families.

Flip a coin, it’s all the same to me.

The E-Stranged Research Project

In The Beginning – The E-Stranged Research Project

Hello! Welcome to the E-stranged blog.

E-stranged began as an emergent, social action research project, which sprung from my personal experience as well as from the many stories of friends, colleagues, clients and families who have entrusted me with their experiences of family estrangement.My research aim was and continues to be, to participate in the collection, creation and sharing of knowledge about estrangement. The framework for this important work has been the voices of individuals in the context of their lived experiences. To date I have collected over 7o individual stories of estrangement and over 250 survey responses. Thank you for your participation! This research is qualitative as well as quantitative, with my predominant interest being the narratives of people’s lived experiences of estrangement.

The gathering of this information has been purposeful.

1. Researching the subject of family estrangement allows for the demystification of the experience. Currently there is very little written or said about family estrangement. This silence leaves those who are experiencing estrangement feeling marginalized and isolated. Many times people are swamped by guilt and shame believing their family is the only family who ‘breaks up’.

2. Bringing a wide variety of people together who have been impacted by family estrangement allows all of us a broader understanding and appreciation of the issues. Because people experience things differently, their knowledge and understandings are also different. E-stranged lets us take advantage of this pooled experience.

3. Researching family estrangement allows movement away from seeing the issues solely as ‘personal problems’ and allows us to place them in their larger social context. We can explore the nature of family across a continuum of time and social change. We can see it’s actually not, all about us!

4. Action. E-stranged as a project, involves the people who are most impacted by the issue of family estrangement – the people who are in the situation! E-stranged is not an academic exercise, nor limited to a clinical exercise and the research is not being ‘done to’ or ‘on’ anyone. E-stranged is research done by, for and with those who are actually impacted by family estrangement.

It is my profoundest hope that the gathering and sharing of this information will have the capacity to lead to understanding, healing, connection and change at a personal, familial and community level. If you would like to learn more or be involved with the E-stranged project through completing the survey or sharing your story, please email me, Fiona McColl at: e-stranged@live.com

I’m Listening

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to get it!”

~Maya Angleou

I realized, somewhere between Christmas and New Years,  that this little bitsy baby blog of mine is growing up – my goodness we’ve passed the momentous occasion of 10,000 views! I have some good things on the horizon for you, dear readers,which I do hope you’ll hang around to see! In the meantime, I want to thank you all, not only for your readership and comments, and supporting and promoting this blog, but also for all the wonderful ideas and suggestions you have given me. You all shape my work in so many ways!

I want you to know I am listening. Your feedback is so important, I have created a small survey so that you can gimme some more! If you can  give up a few moments of your time to answer a few quick questions, I’d be most grateful.

Help Me, To Help You!