Post Estrangement: Changing what you hope for.

During the early days of estrangement you hope and dream that it had never happened.  This is the denial stage when you still have the misguided notion that it is all a bad dream and you will just wake up one day and it will be back to family life as usual.  That whatever they were upset about will be dealt with and you just go back to being a normal family.  A family that goes through difficult times but manages to stick together and work things out.  Blood is thicker than water and all those kinds of messages run through your mind as you struggle with the hardship of being shunned. 

Then you get to the stage where the estrangement has been going on for long enough that you accept that it is real.  Your child really has done this thing called estrangement.  They have also cut ties with those members of the family that do not agree with them.  You realize that this is a power struggle and they want above all else to be “right”.  They drop anyone who suggests that compromise might be in order. 

During this stage you start to ask all the harrowing “why” questions, that unfortunately resolve nothing.   But you cling to hope. It is a desperate kind of hope.

Your hopes change to wishing for your estranging adult child to recognize the damage they are causing to the family and that they will somehow come to their senses and do what is necessary for the family to reconcile.  You have these hopes that it is a “personal growth phase” they are going through and when they “grow up” they will realize how silly their behaviour is.  You hope that this Mother’s Day or this Christmas or this Birthday everything will be resolved.  You send letters and then hope they will reply or hope they will open the door to communication.

During this stage you place all your hopes on the adult child that has estranged.  You hope their hearts will soften, you hope they will care enough to make amends.  You hope they will change.

And as you hope for change; and have your hopes demolished day in and day out by the continuing silence you come to realize that this hope is slowly destroying you.  This hope causes you pain every morning and every evening when your hopes are once again unfulfilled.  This hope keeps you stuck in wistful thinking and magical make believing.  This hope takes power out of your hands and places that power into the hands of the very person(s) causing you to suffer. 

This stage, I fear, was the longest and also the hardest part of the grieving journey for me.  It kept me stuck in the past.  It kept me repeating useless questions like:

• What made her turn out to be the kind of person who can do this?
• Why doesn’t she see that this is not the way to communicate and work things out?
• Why won’t she respond to my letters and my apologies?
• What did I do that was so horrible that deserves this kind of punishment?

Until finally I woke up one day and realized I was losing myself in useless hope.  I was giving up my own power by placing all the hope for healing into the hands of the very person who caused the wound in the first place.

That was when I realized I had to change the direction of my hopefulness.  

Instead of placing my hope outside myself and giving power to the estranger, I had to place hopefulness on my own shoulders and upon the actions I could take to regain peace in my life.

To live means to hope, but the hope needs to be about what I need and what I want to have a better life.  That meant I had to become hopeful that I could and would survive this traumatic event.  I had to build and then believe in the hope that regardless what my estranging daughter did or did not do I could create a meaningful life.  

• I stated to hope that I could heal
• I stated to hope that I could create a different life than I expected but good none the less
• I started to hope that I could find joy and happiness again
• I started to hope that I could live an exciting and enthusiastic life even though…..
• I started to hope for new and rewarding friendships
• I started to hope that a future without what I had expected can still be good.

And as I started to place my hopes in what I could do for myself, I was able to start the long journey toward healing, toward reclaiming the right of every human, a full and rewarding life here and now in the present.

Hope placed in my abilities to change and transform was essential for me to recognize that just because the life that I dreamed of did not turn out, I still had dreams to pursue, and challenges to be met and living to do. 

And best of all, I started to realize that I deserved this!

Because I am worth it!

Renate Dundys Marrello

2014 - 04 - 19 

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Advice for my Grandson - Choices

Life is about making choices.  

Each day we are faced with a decision about how we are going to face the challenges of that day.  And in the choices that we make we determine the energy we bring to the day.  Will it be positive energy or will it be negative energy?

The same choices apply to how we come to our relationships!  

- Will we bring positive energy to them or negative.  
- Will we build the relationship up or will be tear it down?  
- Will we see the person as bad, or as a good person who made a mistake?  
- Will help the other person up when they stumble and fall, or will we hurl stones at then while they are down?

The choices we make with regard to our relationships determine the nature of that relationship.
You cannot expect a relationship to survive and grow if you are putting negative energy into it.
You cannot injure a person and expect them to embrace you with affection

The choices you make today and the actions you take based on those choices determines the tapestry of your relationships in the future.

Will it be whole?
Or 
Will it be full of holes?

The choice is yours. 

Always remember that what damages have been done in the past are often difficult to repair in the future so be careful about what you choices you make. 

Your Mamma-rae





"Advice for my Grandson" is a series of letters I write to my grandson because as an estranged parent I have been deprived of the opportunity to share advice with him in person.  These are things I imagine a young person needs to learn to become a well rounded kind and loving human being.  As I get older I realize that there is all kinds of stored up knowledge of the lessons that life teaches us and these are the gifts I would give to my grandson.  He is always in my thoughts and someday, through this legacy he will know how much love I had to share.
Renate Dundys Marrello 

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post-estrangement: Coping Skills Become a Lifeline

I think that learning coping skills is an important part of the healing after estrangement.  Estrangement is like a wound that never seems to heal and so you have to figure out different ways to cover up the "woundedness" while you struggle to put the pieces of your soul back together again. 

My first vow post- estrangement was "I will travel and / or see something every month".  

Seeking adventure became that activity that motivated me to do something.  

When I wanted to stay in bed all day, the planning of an adventure got me up and doing the research.  Once the itinerary work was done there was the packing and preparing.  Then of course there was the actual adventure itself and the thousands of photographs to journal the event.  (more about the purpose of photography in another blog) 

Adventure travel has been the common thread for me through these years of grieving and gradual recovery. 

I remember my first trip was with my sister in September 2009.  I could barely put one foot in front of the other I felt so weighted down with sorrow.  And yet I still vividly see in my mind’s eye the beauty and marvels of that trip.  At first it was really, really hard to plan and execute these adventures.  Slowly it got easier and easier.  Now I realize that at first I was "running away from the grief".  Gradually that changed and now I am realizing that I am "running towards life".  

Having a new desire / goal in my life has been like an anchor through all the chaos of the swirling emotions brought about by being estranged.  I sometimes wonder if having this centering goal was one of the factors in keeping me focused on what I needed to do for myself in order to heal.

I am pleased to report that not a month has gone by since that decision in 2009 without an adventure.  Even a small one counts (like meeting a friend in another city to go on a hike).  And then of course there are the big ones like 3 months back packing in Europe.  I feel that in forcing myself to create new memories I am slowly building up a stock pile of "go to" images for when my mind starts to ruminate. 

Whenever I feel the urge to ruminate; I start to visualize a trip. I try to see as much detail day by day of the trip that I can while recreating the adventure in my mind.  

Focusing on those details gradually drowns out the memories of the estrangement.  They are never totally gone, alas, but at least I can push them into the background and allow the more pleasant memories center stage.  This has proven to be especially useful on those restless, can’t sleep nights.

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 04 - 11

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Down Memory Lane: Stories for my Grandson

I love swimming!  As far back as I can remember I have always loved swimming.  I think I connect swimming with freedom.  My earliest memory of actual swimming, is riding 2 miles to take swimming lessons at Humberside C.I. swimming pool.  I know I was young, only 7 years old because that was the summer that my sister was born and I was allowed to go off more on my own.   I am not sure if it was because it was normal in 1959 for children at age 7 to be independent or because Mom wanted one less worry as she cared for my baby sister.  

Oct 1957 - This is me on my fat wheel bike with training wheels.
I am 5 years old. 
I was 7 and 8 years old riding to Humberside CI
on the same bike minus training wheels. 
I was ashamed to still be on a baby bike, but it was still freedom!

Either way, I loved my freedom. Once a week off I rode to my swimming lesson. 

However I was horribly embarrassed because I was still riding my first bicycle, a small fat wheel starter bike.  I was embarrassed by my bike because it was a small kid's bike and at nine years old, I thought of myself as a big kid, and because it had fat wheels and none of the other kids had fat wheels.  I so wanted a new “big girl” bike but that was still 2 years in the future. 

At Humberside C.I. that first summer I learned water basics and how to swim.  I got my “width badge”, which meant that I had learnt how to swim and could cross the pool’s width on my own. 

The following summer, still on my little kid bike, I once again made my way to Humberside C.I. once a week and earned my “length badge” meaning that I had accomplished the skill of swimming the length of the pool. 

That was the end of my swimming lessons.  The thought was, you know how to swim and so all you need to do now is practice.  I practiced every chance I got and though that was not often, by the time I was 14 and entered high school I was a fairly good swimmer.  

I loved swim class.  First reason to love it, it was swim class! Second reason to love it, NO BOYS!  We were separated into boy group and girls group for all physical education classes.  I loved this because I was always being teased by the boys.  So Phys Ed was my favorite class because there were no boys around to tease me!

I was always the first person changed so that I could 'quick walk' (no running allowed) to the pool and dive in.  I was always thrilled when I was able to swim 2 lengths before the other girls arrived.  That became my challenge every class. 

I relished every lesson we had in that first year of high school.  I felt at home in the water.  I was the first one in and the last one out.  While the other girls were rushing to get changed so they would have time to dry their hair before class, I swam one more length.  I always made an effort to be at the far end of the pool at period end so that when teacher blew the whistle and called, “swim to the deep end of the pool”.  This meant that while all the others were clamoring to be first out I had those precious moments to slowly swim to the other end.  I wonder now if my teacher knew?  She never scolded me for that slow swim.  She never urged me to go faster.  Did she know my love of swimming?  Maybe that is why she invited me to swim team!  

Then it was time to head to the dressing room and change as fast as possible.  There never was time for hair drying and I always went to my next class with wet hair! 

The next year tragedy struck.  Bruce Leighton, a boy who lived just a block away from me died.  At 15 it was my first experience with death and that was traumatic enough.  Even worse was the way he died.  He was the first boy in the pool. He was the boy, who like me, always wanted to be first in the pool.  If that had been ‘girls pool day’ that would have been me, dead in the pool.  Dead of electrocution!  One of the pool lamps had a water seal failure and the electric wire came in contact with the water and the water became a big carrier of electricity.  When Bruce dove in for his first length, just the way I did, he was instantly electrocuted.  

For days I walked around in a daze.  Not only was I mourning the loss of a childhood neighbor, I was also fully aware of my close brush with death. 

Happily the pool was only closed long enough for repairs and safety upgrades to be made and then it was back to normal swim classes and fun in the pool.  And yes I continued to be the first one in the pool, diving in for my first length before the other girls arrived!

Renate Dundys Marrello 

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Post Estrangement: the reality of healing

You don't just wake up each morning feeling better. 

You wake up each morning and you make a choice "today I will work on _________".  (Fill in the blank). 

I wish I could tell you that you just one day wake up with your old zest for life back and feel the exuberant joy.  It is not so simple.

Each day I choose to read things that inspire changes  and force me to work on the way that I look at life in spite of the grief I still feel. 

I was thinking yesterday, the grief never goes away, you just get a whole lot better at managing it and controlling how much of your life it takes over by it. 

I think that this message from "Your Life After Trauma" by Michelle Rosenthal really helped me:  

"The intention in recovery is less to excise the past than to integrate it, folding it into yourself and your brain so that it becomes a small part of the larger you."

Yes I do believe that is true, the event of my trauma is estrangement.  It does not go away.  It is a part of who I am.  But I do have a choice.  The event can become my life, or I can choose to make the event become a small part of who I am.

Always it comes down to making a choice of what to do and how to do it. 

That sometimes is really hard to do!  There are days when you want to just go with the flood of emotions and curl up and give up.  Those are the days when I call on my inner warrior and I fight back for my life.  Those are the days when I use my anger against what was done to me and what was taken from me to fuel my warrior into action. 

I just don't want to give anyone a false illusion that healing just spontaneously happens.  It is a step by step, day by day, choice by choice journey.

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 04 - 08 

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Post Estrangement: Does rumination help me or hinder me?

There is nothing wrong with the life that I am leading.  

I have people that care for me and for whom I care.  I do things every day that I enjoy doing.  I see things and do things that bring me joy. 

And yet I spend an inordinate amount of time each day pining for something that I have no control over.  I pine for my estranged daughter who has taken herself out of my life.  I pine for the relationship I had hoped to have with my grandson.  And in pining for these things I am telling my unconscious mind that what I do have is somehow “not good enough”.  

And today as I ponder all the wonderful grand things in my life I consider this:  am I being fair to myself?

Is pining for the “might have beens” preventing me from fully reveling in and loving every moment of what I do have?   If I had never had children, then what I am doing now would be a dream come true. 

I am doing now all those things that I put on hold to have a family.  I should be over the moon happy.  So is my own habit to daily focus on what I don’t have pulling me into a negative thought spiral?  Am I actually the one preventing me for really truly being content in the life that I do have?   And if I am my own biggest obstacle to contentment how do I change my attitude and my approach to the thoughts with which I navigate my day?

Something in me is crying to be heard.  Something in me wants to be healed.  Something in me wants to get to that place where the yearning for “what isn’t” ends.

I think I need to stop thinking of myself as an estranged parent.  Being estranged is something that happened to me, like losing a limb.   If a person who loses a limb sees the rest of their life as a limbless person do they not handicap themselves?  Do they not need to find a path to seeing their life from the perspective of all that is yet possible?   And if someone who loses a limb can fight back and live life fully, surely I can do the same.  An event, no matter how traumatic is an event.  This event is something that shaped my past.  This event does not have to define my present nor shape my future.  This is the choice that I need to make, to stop living my present wishing the event had never happened or could be in some way altered. 

The past is what it is.  My life now is what it is. 

And there is so much in my present that is good and should be celebrated with joy and enthusiasm.  

Does ruminating help me or hinder me from living the life that I do have to the fullest?  

I am starting to believe the later.  And the encouraging thing is that in seeing this I am empowered to change the way I think! And in changing the way I think I can start to respond to the situation with a different outlook.  Hopefully as I work on this I will be able to make the breakthrough to put the trauma of estrangement into the past where it belongs instead of in my daily present. 

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 04 - 04 

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Post Estrangement - Learning to Change Expectations

The after the children are grown up stage of parenting is not at all what I expected.  

Just like all other parents I had visions of what family life would be like when my children became adults.  Quite possibly they were too rosy, but I thought, at the time, that they were realistic. 

I imagined occasional family meals and holiday celebrations together. I anticipated chats and sharing special events.  I know I expected friendship and respect.  And I certainly expected to be included in family milestones.   

None of this panned out the way I had anticipated. My hopes were crushed and my dreams were broken, by a daughter who thought she knew better than I and who wanted to coerce me into behaving in a certain way by withholding her approval  for anything less than what she expected.  She wanted me to respect her and do things her way, but she showed no respect for me. The day I said "NO" to a demand she made and said "I will not allow you to treat me this way" was the beginning of the end. 

Not much long after that deciding day came the accusations that I was the source of all her problems.  That was when the blaming started. That was when the lies were circulated that attempted to justify her actions and make her appear blameless. That was when the manipulations and control tactics began.  That was when other family members were "forced" to pick sides. 

That was when my world crumbled.  Since that time I have gone through many stages of dealing with an incomprehensible situation. The early days of dazed confusion now seem like an eternity ago. There are weeks and months that I can't even recall.

Then I went through what I call my angry stage.  When all my actions came from the adrenaline of anger.  Anger got me through the day and doing things, simply because I refused to give her the power to destroy everything good in my life. 

There was the apathy stage that really terrified me.  During those days I was like a robot marking time but I really was not present.  Those were the days when I did not care if I lived or if I died. 

Then came the, I deserve better than this stage, when I started to fight back. I took all the emotions I was feeling and translate them into seeking for knowledge. 

I started reading and learning about estrangement.  This was also when I joined support groups and learned that I was not alone and I was able to draw strength from this knowledge. The problem was that I got stuck here for a while in what I call the "pity me" place.  I was feeling sorry for myself and asking question like "why me?"  The kind of questions that have no answers and lead only to more negative ruminations. 

This roused me to a second round of anger;  I deserve so much better than this so I am going to make it happen. I used my anger to inspire me on my journey of discovery and it got me out of the "pity me" phase.  

That was when I discovered terms like PTSD and the dynamics of trauma on the body and the mind and the spirit. I learned about behaviour patterns and conditions like NPD (narcissitic personality disorder) and BPD  (borderdline personality disorder) and that in all likelihood my daughter suffers from some degree of these mental conditions.  It was during this stage that things started to make some kind of perverted sense to me.  

The wonderful thing about that stage was that it opened the door for me to discover the healing stage.  As I entered into this stage I never realized how long it would take (1.5 year now and still on the journey).   I devoted energy and time to healing research, started healing practices, gained knowledge and skills that became a part of my "wellness tool kit".  

This is a good place to be because it is all about me. For the first time in my life, I am my own first priority.  Not that I would recommend this as the path to this kind of discovery, but that is the silver lining in my estrangement cloud. 

Gradually I am releasing some of the more negative emotions I have been carrying in my heart. I call this "acceptance the second time around."  

I am more at accepting of the way things are now than when the estrangement happened in 2009, when my then 32 year old daughter decided to start calling me names and telling me what she expected me to do.  When she used estrangement as the tool of control. "do as I want you to or you are out of my life".  

I have not seen or spoken to her since.  I have sent letters countless times and have received no reply.  My grandson was born 2 years ago and I have never seen him, I was not invited to baby shower or christening.  I am a grandmother in name only. 

As I remarked earlier, estrangement has split our family in two; those who side with me and those who side with her. It is what it is. 

I have allowed my earlier expectations to end.  I have made peace with the fact that things are unlikely to change. There is no "happy ending" just around the corner. 

Now I am at a place where I am looking at what should be my happy golden years, and I find a drastically changed vision.  Instead of family being the center of my thoughts, I am at the center.  What do I want to do to achieve joy?  How do I want to express myself?  In what way can I find fulfillment?

I have lost several years to intense grieving.  Then I spent a couple of years geared toward healing, and now I see a future where the goal is that I will hopefully be able to create a full and rich life inspite of the devastation that has happened.

I have come to realize that some things you can't "FIX".  Some things you have to replace.   In this case my expectations needed to be replaced.  Such a hard process but I am starting to see that it may be possible.  In general I have a happier outlook on life now.  Many of the "bad" habits I fell into as a result of the pain and depression I am erasing one by one.  

I try hard to now spend more time on looking forward and healing and less time looking back at the why's and the how comes.  I remind myself that all the understanding in the world changes nothing when I am the only one trying to understand. 

Yes there sure was a stage I went through, when I tried to figure it out, make sense of it, but now trying to understand no longer serves. Instead I find those times when I do ruminate, distracting and destructive because they take time away from my primary goal which is making things better for me. 

I have come to realize I will never "make sense of it"  and the time I spend trying to make sense of the senseless is actually "wasted" time.  

I am happy to say that my healing is well underway. I am not fully there yet, but I can see where this proactive stance is taking me.  I can see myself slowly taking back joy, enthusiasm, and love of life.   I am sure there will always be some "holes" some "pockets of emptiness", but I have learnt how to deal with those and there are many tools in my "wellness tool kit" that I can resort to on those dark days that inevitably happen.

I also get great pleasure now from leading by example, to be an advocate, that healing is do-able.  There is life after estrangement.

I hope that you will be able to find a path toward healing also. It is so much better than the fog of despair that I lived in at the start of this horrible experience.

Find the support of support groups, which are so helpful at the beginning of this oh so confusing experience.  Check out all the options for healing that are available.  Try different things to create a post estrangement life that is satisfying and life affirming. Never accept less than this because you deserve so much more.  

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 03 - 26 

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