Estrangement. A word that sends a sting of unpleasant finality as it hits my ears. The sound as loud as the door she slammed behind me when I walked out for the last time refusing to acquiesce to her way of thinking.

I’m sorry I have to write this. Not because it isn’t true, but because it is; because I know that she will read it and she will feel hurt. I know that she won’t understand, she will become inflamed again, she will likely strike back. That’s also exactly why I’m writing it: some of us share our stories to usher in permission for those still trapped in their own disorganized confusion around relationships where they aren’t allowed to tell the very truth that will release them. My heart aches.

This is a story of permission and if it strikes you, if it hurts? Ask why. What’s happening in you, beloved? If you are the parent estranged this isn’t your story, but perhaps it offers a glimpse in? I can’t possibly know. Permission to examine, to close the tab, to keep reading. To read it as a distant story, to feel it if you need to; to follow up with questions if you have them.

The day I broke up with my mother is a day seared into my mind. The story itself full of complicated grief, necessary chaos, tears and disbelief. This is my side of the story, she will have her own. It should be known that her side will be a completely different tale where she is the victim once more. Should she choose to tell her story please leave me out of it. Leave my sister and our children out of it as well. We’ve been hurt enough, discounted and neglected enough by our mother.

As I reflect back, I know that that year of my estrangement was extremely painful. Perhaps had I not already suffered two of the four human losses that were coming within eight short months I’d have stayed in the relationship even longer. I don’t know. Technically I ended up with five losses if you count my mother’s husband but I don’t, not really anyway. It’s hard to count a man whose idea of family was to avoid all human interaction preferring instead to lie and cheat, only appearing at family gatherings long enough to make derogatory comments and add tension to the air. His gift cards at Christmas couldn’t make up for the ways he couldn’t deal with himself the rest of the year. The fact is I also lost my beloved grandfather that year, my namesake and cornerstone, just months before my community would suffer the death of our professor and friend. She is the one who taught me about becoming and taught me that being a strong, independent, intelligent academic was a powerful contribution too. Losing my mother in the midst of this should have been a greater loss than it was, but for those of us estranged from our parents we know that the day of estrangement is always a long time in coming. Built on years of abuse and neglect, choosing to walk away from that relationship in many ways ended up being a choosing between her and my own children.

My mother’s life is a tragedy of her own making. Countless times she’s been invited in, cared for, provided for and yet still she chooses to become inflammatory to those who could be her lifeline. I wish I could know more about her story and why she sees the world the way she does. I wish she could tell me the truth, not a version of the truth, but the actual truth. Back then I kept waiting, kept trying to wade through her story, holding my tongue and judgment and offering her a withness she just couldn’t extend to me or my sister. That day that I last saw her I was anticipating creating a home for her near me and my kids. I still thought at that time that she would need me to care for her and that she would allow me to especially because she’d already drained everyone else’s patience with her antics. That was a clue I didn’t want to acknowledge. My role was to parent her past her difficulties, to mediate between her and her sisters, between her and my sister, between her and my children.

What I was really mediating, though, was enabling her entire family system to keep allowing her to reject accountability for herself, her actions and her relationships.

As children of emotionally neglectful parents, of parents who are emotionally immature, mediating is often a role many of us feel a responsibility to step into. It is a seamless construct not of our choosing. As humans we have a natural drive to connect in with our caregiver(s). It’s an innate drive that seeks safety and soothing from them whenever comfort is desired; an unconscious drive to go toward in need. There is something that happens, though, when the person to whom you are driven to find comfort in is also the person who is chaotic, scary and disorganized themselves. Essentially the brainstem says seek! and the limbic system (where our experiential memory resides) says warning! It leaves the human feeling a sense of internal chaos and confusing insecurity. It looks like the adult child staying in relationship with a parent who at times offers something of value, however trivial or significant, and yet lacks consistent belonging with that same parent. These are the relationships that leave us exhausted and unsettled.

…empathy absent of boundaries opens the door to toxic dynamics

-k. dudley

I believe at my core that my mother is simply not well and for that I have loads of empathy. But empathy absent of boundaries opens the door to toxic dynamics in relationships and I ended up holding too much of her emotional health.

I think in the faith community we get the balance of the two concepts of empathy and boundaries really wrong.

I had allowed myself to be used by her and to be honest resentment had quietly built inside of me. Though I staved off that resentment with the internal conditioning I knew well, the one that said to stay quiet, stay soft, stay helpful. The weekend that I last saw her I was a sole parent, in a PacNW snowpocalypse, having spent overnight in a parking lot with my dying cat, and working full time as a private practitioner. I dropped everything and left my kids at home alone to go make sure she felt supported in her loss. My body was giving out. When I walked into her house five hours south of where I live, the unmistakable smell of cannabis was everywhere. I confronted her and found that they had had an illegal grow operation. It was quickly becoming my problem and I tried to help her see how inappropriate and dangerous the situation was. I helped her come up with a plan to report and safely get rid of everything. Naive me, I didn’t realize how complicit she was in all of this; she was such a fantastic liar. If you meet her, you will not know this is happening inside of her home and if for some reason you find out? She’ll support this part of her life by blaming her dead husband and the guy at their church who taught them how to do it. No, I’m not kidding, I couldn’t make this drama up if I tried. The reality is she is double minded and while this one story gives legitimacy to my estrangement please know this is one of the least of her harms in my life.

I reported her shortly after I left, not of spite but of asserting healthy boundaries, a lovingly no response to her self-imposed chaos. No, I will not participate. No, I will not cover up your toxicity. No. Simply, NO.

Empathy says I feel with you. Boundaries tell us that I am not you and you are not me. The balance between the two offers healthy differentiation and that, dear readers, helps create healthy belonging in relationship. I hear confusion around this a lot in my practice, the idea that servanthood to our beloveds and strangers alike seemingly disrupts the ability to practice healthy differentiation. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see, the thing is that when I know how to hand you back your life I also instill trust in you to work out what’s happening in your world. Empathy says I am a helper when you need me to walk with you, boundaries say I believe that you are capable to do it. Compassion say’s I’ll cheer you on, sympathy says I can share my resources; boundaries say you can’t hurt me by taking what I need to be healthy, sane, and whole. Boundaries say my generosity is complete and I am happy to offer you what I have; they also say you cannot make me accountable for your actions, behaviors, nor your words and choices.

When we estrange from our parents and caregivers, it’s not a knee jerk response to a one-off conflict. Those of us walking through the murky ache of estrangement have actually spent years trying to avoid being disconnected from our parent(s). We have fought to be seen, we have fought to be known. We have tried to explain what we need, excused behaviors, made excuses for their ways of being all in an effort to have the parent-child relationship we crave. We’ve withstood abuse, we’ve forgiven the half-assed apologies that have found their way to us. We hurt still in the release of our relationship with them. When we cut out a parent, we cut out a part of our make up and we suffer too. Imagine that level of suffering being preferable to the constant dismissal of our wholeness as humans, it must have been extremely unhealthy for any of us children to finally cut off and estrange from the parent we need and needed most to love us as we are.

As my friend, Sarah, said recently on her timeline: when you hear that a person is estranged from family please don’t assume that all family experiences are universal, that our parents were ever capable of the relationship you have with yours. Don’t assume that we didn’t try every way of staying before we finally said no more. Some of us have been harmed physically, emotionally, psychologically and sexually by that person in your pews. Who you know in public is rarely who they are in the quiet of our home. We’re done because we have to be.

To my peers, to those of you who had to do the estranging, I see you. Your anger, your choices, your self-protection are valid.

and to my sister, who knew well before I did that we needed to get out, I should have listened sooner.

-xoxo kimberly