It’s Your Party, And I’ll Come If I Want To …

“My invite must have gotten lost in the mail,” she said venomously. “But I don’t mind crashing this party. 
— James Patterson

Last week, in my post, You’re Uninvited, I started writing about family events and estrangement. I wrote this in part, to a number of emails speaking about the inevitable tensions of knowing an important family event is about to occur and trying to make the decision about whether we should be involved (attend or invite).

In the follow up comments there was a fair bit of confusion about why we even worry about this issue when we are estranged. I mean, estrangement in and of itself should make this issue a no brainer, right? We’re estranged, that means we’re not in relationship and that means that we not only shouldn’t want to attend these sorts of events or invite estranged members to them – it also should mean we have no emotional conundrums about them.

Other people found this position offensive and short sighted. They spoke about the tension of wanting family and to belong, or wanting connection with some people in their family, even tho they were disinterested in other relationships within their family. They wrote, often very eloquently, about the way such dilemmas took up a substantial amount of emotional and thinking energy and how they struggled within the confines of estrangement to be “good” people, making considered and fair choices.

It’s not easy. It’s not simple. Sometimes it’s down right messy!  One off solutions will never cover the range of complexity inherent in these situations.

Two pieces of information came my way this week that I thought might be worth sharing. The first is from a reader who shared a bit of her story with me about attending her father’s funeral, even tho she had been estranged from him for many years, and consequently with many other people in her family too. She wrote about her vast ambivalence about attending the funeral, and also about her fear that she would not be able to find any closure with her relationship to her father if she did not attend the funeral. The story did not have a positive ending. The family event was marked by vehement in-fighting, blaming and anger. In her own words, “I didn’t find the closure I was looking for, but I found enough hurt to fuel even more estrangement.”

The other bit of information I stumbled upon was from an advice column, Ask Annie wherein a reader asks how she should manage family events where people she did not want to be in relationship with, would be present. Dear Annie’s solution? Attend but follow “etiquette”and feel free to snub the offending family members, whilst building on the other relationships in her family. This is a tricky one as it involves “snubbing” the spouses of certain people, while having “nice” interactions with their partners. It goes without saying, I did not agree with Dear Annie’s advice.

Clearly the business of attending family events or inviting others to your family events where estrangement issues are alive and well, is fraught. I’d like to propose some things you can think about in these situations. They aren’t advice per se, just points for your consideration. Remember, your estrangement situation is yours, and no one, including me, will have the answers for you.

1. Check your motives. Think about why you want to attend the family event or invite an estranged family member. Often we are triggered around family events to reach out and connect with family members, even though it may not be in our (or the other person’s) best interests. Consider whether by sending an invite or choosing to attend, if you are opening a door that you’d really rather stayed shut. Consider what you feel.Consider how the other person might feel. Is attending/inviting informed by guilt? By shame? By obligation?

2. Consider your resilience. Think of the best/worst case scenarios. Consider whether you have the reserves and resilience to deal with them. If you extend yourself and make an overture and it is rejected, how are you going to feel? Can you attend or invite without having any expectations? This is not about being negative or thinking of the worst, it’s about choosing from the heart and ensuring you can look after yourself if it goes sideways.

3. Yes, do think of the children! Family estrangement is grown up business. If it is possible to leave children out of it – please do. Something as simple as a card can make the difference between another generation learning to cope through distance and one which understands that difficulty in one relationship is not an excuse to obliterate all other connections too. Think really carefully about this one.

4. Don’t fake it. If your family is not inviting or attending you or your children to important family events, it hurts. It hurts them and it hurts you too. This is a BIG family estrangement owie – as the implications are enormous. We can live with knowing we will not have access to family, but it may break our hearts that our kids will grow up marinating in disconnection and distance.

Any time there is a special occasion involving children, we can find ourselves feeling very badly indeed for our kids, as well as for ourselves. This extends outward to extended family who do not feel able to connect with children or young people whom they love and care about, because they are estranged from their adults.

Despite all the pain and anger this may stir up, we need to be honest with our kids. Age appropriate honest. We don’t make excuses and lie for people. We also don’t demonize them. We need to let kids know that they may not get acknowledgment or invites from certain people ie. grandparents, the way that their friends do, but that it doesn’t meanthey aren’t important or loved. That’s right, we take the high moral ground around our children. We explain that there is pain, hurt feelings and disconnection AND that it doesn’t mean the missing family members don’t love and care for them. We give them an alternate story, that is capacity building and life enhancing. We give them a chance to break the legacy of estrangement.

5. Graciousness and gratitude. If someone you are estranged from sends you an invitation, consider the spirit it is offered in. Even if you do not desire any connection whatsoever, think about whether refusing the invitation is a means of self-care, or a  means of punishing the other person? Do the right thing. You’ll feel better for it.

6. Consider speaking to the person who is holding the event before you attend. Try to be even handed and honest about your concerns. Use the conversation to inform the decision you are making. If you let the person know you are worried about attending and don’t want to escalate existing family hurts or dramas, yet would also like to be present, you give an opportunity to brainstorm and discuss the best way to be present, or conversely to make a better informed decision about not attending. Consider doing the same before you invite someone who is estranged to attend one of your events. Don’t be naive. People who are estranged from their families have feelings about it, regardless of the importance of the occasion.

Try, Try Again?

“Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.” 
— Rosa Parks

I’ve been out of commission for a couple of weeks and have been going through the email I received while I was away.  It’s curious how people’s comments seem to flow in similar patterns at similar times. This time a good deal of mail seems to have drifted in from people who have made the decision not to reconnect, and are perhaps questioning what that decision means about who they are as people.

” Everyone tells me not to give up, to keep trying. Well I did try for a long time. Now I don’t want to try any more.”

“How dare they judge me for not wanting my sister in my life. She didn’t hurt them. She hurt ME.”

“My minister says its a sacred charge to keep believing in people, especially at times when we don’t believe we can.”

“Good people forgive. Bad people don’t. I guess I’m bad.”

It seems lately I am writing a fair bit about people who don’t want to reconcile or reconnect. I am doing so in response to people’s comments and emails, but I am also writing about this because I think it is a less popular or widely supported view. I am writing about it because it may be more difficult to find support when you have decided reconciliation is not what you think is in your best interest.

First off I have to say, no one knows your circumstances the way that you do. Other people have not had to walk your path. They may not know what you have experienced, or understand it, even if they do know. They may not know the things you have already tried. They may not know why you decided to stop trying. Our task as human beings is to know ourselves and know our limitations as well as our strengths. We have a responsibility to ourselves, to love, care for, nurture and protect ourselves, as much as we ever do someone else. Not only are we tasked to do no harm to others, we are also tasked with the responsibility to do no harm to ourselves. I have often wondered if  maybe that is where Ahimsa, or non harming, needs to begin.

One person cannot repair a relationship. It takes two people who are committed to the task. If you find yourself repeatedly taking the initiative, putting yourself on the line and getting rejected or hurt over and over again, it’s fair enough to decide that you don’t want to keep taking that risk, or exposing yourself to that harm. If the hurt caused is not only historical but has a way of being re-enacted again and again, it’s okay to evaluate the circumstance and say, “I’ve had enough.” If the apology is one directional and the onus of responsibility is left on you to change or repair the relationship – there’s no equity of commitment.  It’s okay to decide you don’t want to carry the “fix it” burden on your own. When you have tried and tried to engage the other person in conversations to clear the air and promote healing and they are more concerned with punishing you and keeping you down, it’s okay to decide you’d rather stand up and walk away.

For all the platitudes and clichés that exhort us to never give up, never surrender, there are an equal number that advise we should know when enough is enough. Recently there was an ABC article by advice guru Liz Pryor: Overcoming Family Estrangement, wherein she says, “There isn’t a person on the planet who regrets making the effort to bring a family member back to the front row of their life.” I know from both personal and professional experience, this is not universally true.

So what do you think …. is there a point where enough really is … enough? Who benefits by the idea that we should never stop trying? Is it okay to move on?

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Theme of the Week: I’m Sorry

“It is always so simple, and so complicating, to accept an apology.” 
— Michael Chabon

 If you are estranged from a family member you have undoubtedly thought about or been told you ought to both apologize and/or accept  apologies.

It is often suggested or implied that if we apologize, or the other person does, we can simply graciously accept the apology (or that ours will be graciously accepted), problems will be resolved,  rifts will be mended and life will move on. Sometimes this is even the truth. Yet, many of us have all kinds of experience with apologies or the lack of apology that lends a more complicated view to the words, “I’m sorry.”

Apology is located deeply in our system of beliefs. How we feel about giving or receiving apologies is influenced by all sorts of things like culture, age, gender, authority as well as things like the general distance in relationship, our perception of wrong doing, the way we interpret the act of apology and our history with making and receiving apologies. Much of this is deeply ingrained in our families and we may or may not even be fully conscious of what we think, feel and believe to be true about apology.

Consider some of the things research participants have shared:

“Why should I be the one to apologize. I didn’t start this.”

“Everyone in my  family is quick with an apology and quick to do the same thing again twenty minutes later.”

“My mother expects apologies but never gives them.”

“If you really love someone you shouldn’t have to say sorry. I mean, they should know you are sorry.”

“I’m not sorry. All I did was tell the truth.”

Some families, cultures and religions place a very high value on apology and it’s sister, forgiveness. Other ones don’t. There is plenty written about the “right” way or the “wrong” way to apologize; plenty that speaks to us about the how and why of making an apology or receiving one.  The follow along is we have expectations about what will happen when we make an apology and what should happen if we accept one. One of the recurring themes in my conversations with people who are estranged from family members is this tension of working out when we should make apologies and when we should accept them and aligning this conundrum with our experience of apology in general. Many of us will not have had particularly positive experience with apology in our families for all sorts of different reasons. This struggle with apology (making them and receiving them) may in fact, be one of the reasons estrangements occur, continue and are perpetuated.

You might think  the solution is simply to get on with the business of apology. Yet it is not nearly so simple. The landscape of apology is steep and fraught with many perils. In order to look objectively, or as objectively as any of us can about something so intrinsically personal, we may need to spend some time picking apart our experiences and beliefs about apology. We need to see how we move with apology generally and then, in a more focused way on  apology within the context of the relationships we have with people we are estranged from. We may need to get clear about what apology means for us, so that we can make informed decisions about making them and receiving them, or risk slipping into apologetic reactivity.

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