Post estrangement: Whose rules?

When you are the parent of an adult offspring who shows signs of having a disturbed character, you can probably look back and realize that you were “groomed” for the role of “doormat” by them from when they were quite little.  You realize that your commitment to unconditionally love has been used against your own best interests.

What I believed while I was parenting. 

If you are like me, you overlooked the little mean things they did and the cruel things they said, you excused the behaviour, explaining to yourself; “she (or he) is only a child and will learn to become a kinder and a more compassionate person because that is what I am showing them every day by role model and as I treat them kindly even when they hurt me they will most surly learn kindness”.

However they never did learn that!  What they learned instead is that “Mom (or Dad) backs down when I treat her bad” and they then continued to repeat the behaviour over and over again.  



And the process is repeated over and over as the parent backs down again and yet again in the name of unconditional love and compassion and kindness and a desire to keep the peace and to be mindful of the child’s self-esteem!

And then suddenly one day you wake up and realize that you have become a compete and total door Mat! 

Everything you do or say is with the singular thought of appeasing said child (walking on eggshells), to make them feel good about themselves in hopes of them learning to be kinder and more compassionate. 

Then finally you realize that being a door mat only made one thing possible, the aggrandizement of said child to the point where they think they are superior and better than you.  They feel that they have the right to bully you and put you down.  They feel that because you have backed down so many times before that you will always back down to their controlling demands.

Time passes, you back down so often that it becomes your expected response to all their bullying behaviour.  The trouble is that they keep upping the ante.  The demands and the desire for control, the put downs, the abuses keep becoming greater and greater, causing you more and more hurt and pain.  Your own self esteem is slowly whittled away and whittled away some more.

Until one day everything charges.  It is the day when they cross a boundary and say or do such hurtful mean things to you that you are backed up against a wall of resistance.  That wall of resistance is your self-esteem hollering at you that “No we can’t back up anymore and see ourselves as a self-respecting individual with rights and deserving of equal respect.”

That is the day the door mat gets up off of the floor and says “NO MORE”.

That is the day the controlling abusive child now grown to controlling manipulative adulthood screams “you have changed” and now they call you crazy for deciding that it was time to stop playing their game. 

They now turn to a new game!  They start to play the victim, blaming you for everything wrong in their lives.  You have refused the designated duty as their door mat and so they rechristen you their “scapegoat.” 

When you stopped playing the door mat game by their rules of conduct, when you no longer supported the abusive and unkind behaviours, you then became their “scapegoat” to explain why they do not need to change their oh so perfect ways to conform to the normal social rules of decent behaviours and conduct, because it was all your fault all along anyways.

Using you as a scapegoat becomes their way of excusing their bad behaviour.  Their treatment of you now is because “you deserved it” their reasoning being, because you did not conform to their rules. You stopped allowing them to be the one in control of the relationship!  You stood up for your right to be treated with respect! 

Now they go to outlandish extremes pointing out your many, many faults and flaws as to why you deserve to treated this way, why you deserve to be shunned and ostracized and estranged.  Why you deserve to be punished and bullied with emotional abuse.  

They will create stories about you and spread those stories as truth without even a second’s worth of remorse, because of course they deserve to make sure the world sees them as perfect and you as the awful person you are for not supporting their wonderfulness at the expense of your own self-worth.

They continue to act like the controlling bully they have been all along only now you are rejected for having the temerity to stand up for your own rights to be treated with respect.  And the rules they have written for the future is that you won’t be allowed back into their lives until you apologize for changing the rules and revert back to your door mat role.  For only by going back to the previous status quo, where you enabled your own abuse can they feel all powerful and in control.

And that is why I believe that many, if not most, estrangements by adult offspring will never have a happy ending. 

They feel they have no need to change their character or their behaviours, while we are expected to revert to previous doormat status.   

They do not need to grow or learn or change to become better people (because they already perceive themselves as perfect), we need to revert to subservient mode to allow them the illusion that they are, always have been and always will be superior. 

They have no trouble justifying their behaviour because they truly and deeply feel entitled to everything we are withholding (adoring praise of their perfectness even when that perfectness includes hurting us).  And they deeply hold on to the conviction that we are at fault for all their perceived unhappiness, issues, difficulties in life and whatever else is less than perfect in their estimation. They deeply feel they have the right to punish us for not seeing their perfectness. How dare we refuse to continue to play slave to their omnipotence!  How dare we disrupt their dream bubble, their facade of pretenses that entitles them to manipulate us for their personal gain!

They do not see their character disturbances as a weakness; they see their lack of conscience and empathy as a strength, one they do not wish to relinquish.

They do not wish a relationship between two equals they wish a relationship where they are the power and the controlling force.  Nothing less is for them a satisfactory outcome. 

And that is why they do not relent in their continued estrangement; we are denying them their expected outcome. As we continue to grow and learn and confidently say “I deserve more, I deserve better, I too am worthy" we set the bar for a much higher return of respect than they have ever had to give us in the past.

In many ways the longer the estrangement lasts the less likely there is to be a resolution.  For the longer we are forced to deal with all the emotional fall out of being ostracized, abandoned, bullied, shamed, etc. that comes with being estranged the stronger we grow in our desire to never again revert to being subjugated. The stronger and more confident we become the less likely we are to cave to their demands. And the less likely we are to cave the less likely they are to give us entry into their world.

Renate Dundys Marrello

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Post Estrangement: Managing my expectations

Expectations!  We all have them.  

The problem is when we equate expectations with fulfillment.  Not all expectations are fulfilled. 

Expectations are not always met and when we face unfulfilled expectations we can take the wrong message from the experience. 

To have hopes for how something could unfold is not a blue print for how it will unfold.  There are other factors involved in the process that we have no control over.

If I allow unfulfilled expectations to create resentment or bitterness in my life then my expectations have become a negative influence in my life.  I am learning that it is vitally important for me to “manage” my expectations versus allowing my expectations to “manage me”. 

What do I mean by this?  If my expectations “manage me”, I get upset when my expectations are not met.  I feel anger or resentment towards the person who I see as “having let me down”.  The problem here is that I have not taken into account what is happening in the other person’s life that prevents them from living up to my expectations.  If I do this, I am putting undue pressure on the other person to live up to my expectations and to what end?  

If I analyze this thought carefully I realize that my expectations are built upon the foundation of what I want for my gratification!

I have to learn to let go of expectations that come solely from a place of what I want and include also a recognition that the other person also has expectations and needs of their own.

If I do this I am in effect “managing” my expectations.  I am cognizant of the fact that what I expect may not be possible because my needs and the other person’s needs are not congruent.

If the other person does not live up to my expectations it is not because of some cosmic ill will, or even ill will on the part of the other.  It simply means that for whatever reason the other person is just incapable of doing what I expect because of where they are at emotionally or psychologically.  This is neither good nor bad it just is.  It is my interpretation that creates the stigma.

If I see their “letting me down” as a personal attack on me I become disappointed or angry or hurt.  On the other hand if I see their “letting me down” as a statement of their own shortcomings or personal demons I can feel compassion for their challenges and imperfections.  Once again in doing so I am in control of “managing” my expectations by selecting my response.

Of course, this is neither easy nor comfortable to do.  It is much easier to feel resentment and disappointment when my expectations are not met, than to “manage” my expectations to honour the other person’s challenges.

I find myself once again choosing to travel the more difficult path, as I try to learn to control those things in my life that can lead me toward negative responses.  

How does this reflection change my response toward my estranging offspring?   It allows me to honour the expectations that I had for our relationship and at the same time release and let go of the expectations I had for her part in my life.  In accepting that where she is at in her personal life experience is not conducive to a relationship between the two of us, I manage my expectations.  It is accepting that she has issues and demons to deal with in her own time.

It is acknowledging that she has expectations of me that I have failed to provide because of my own shortcomings.  It is accepting that her resentment of me stems from her unfulfilled expectations of me.  And finally it is recognizing that until she learns to let go of her expectations about me, as I have been learning to let go of my expectations of her there can be no reconciliation. 

Reconciliation requires releasing expectations about the other person, allowing them to be who they are. 

As long as there are expectations there are disappointments and as long as there are disappointments there is resentment and bitterness.  And as long as you hold on to expectations you hold on to the bitterness and the grudges fueled by unfulfilled expectations.

Finding peace requires learning to "manage" expectations rather than allowing the expectations to "manage" the relationship.

I have my intention firmly set on finding that peace and part of that peace stems from letting go of the expectations that my estranging daughter will come to the same conclusion anytime soon. She is who she is, she has her own journey to navigate and I release her from the expectation that we can or should walk life's path as mother daughter or as friends. 

Maybe we are meant to learn the lessons that only walking separate paths can teach us. I certainly know that walking alone I have learned many lessons I would not have learned otherwise.  And maybe that was my destiny.  Certainly that was never in any of my expectations!

Renate Dundys Marrello 

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Post Estrangement: Letters for my Grandson

Song 70 for Walter: "Where Is The Love?"

Dear Walter,

There is so much judgement and negativity in the world.
There are wars and terrorism and there is discrimination.

There are disputes and the need to be right. 

But where is the love?

• Even in families the content of the argument is more important than the love.  
• The hanging onto old grudges is more important than the love. 
• Being right is more important than love.
• Judging others is more important than love.
• Punishing is more important than love.
• Controlling others is more important than love.
• Telling others what they ought to say or think or do is more important than love.
• Feeling good is more important than love.
• Feeling superior is more important than love.
• Getting what you want is more important than love. 

Love has become twisted and contorted by the ego.  

If you love me you will do what I want you to do for ME.  
I ask you Walter, “is that love”?  Is this what you are learning about the nature of love?

Is that what people have started to equate with love? 

• Is the quality of my love gauged by my willingness to sacrifice myself to please them?
• Is my worthiness to receive love based on what I sacrifice to earn it? 

I am completely baffled by today’s standard of what love is. 
In my old fashioned view, love should not be used to control and manipulate other people’s behaviour.  Love should be a gift freely given and not have strings attached.

Maybe your Mamma-rae has it all wrong, but in the world I want to live in, love is not used as a tool of acquisition.  Love is a gift to be shared from a level playing field.  Love should not be withheld as punishment or used to coerce certain behaviour. 

And it brings me to the place where I have to ask what is wrong with people who feel they have the right to use love as a tool to get what they want?  What character flaw is in them that they feel they can use love to hold others hostage?

If this is what love means in today’s world then I truly feel sorry for those who, like you who are growing up with this definition of love.

“whatever happened to the values of humanity

Whatever happened to the fairness and equality”

What happened to loving people for WHO they are not for
WHAT they can do for you?

Has love now become a commodity and when you can’t pay the price of receiving love you are denied it?

It seems that now we toss people away when they can no longer provide the services desired to earn love.

"It just ain't the same, old ways have changed

New days are strange, is the world insane?"

How will you experience love?

What message of love are you receiving?
What message of love are you learning?

I wonder and fear for all the young ones and the message they are receiving. 

Will you wonder “where is the love?”

Or will your generation 
wonder as I do, 

"What has become of love?"



Your Mamma-rae 


Renate Dundys Marrello 

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Post Estrangement – Wondering what she expects?

Sometimes I wonder what exactly it is that my estranging daughter expects of me.  Does she expect me to come groveling on hands and knees begging to be allowed back into her life?   Does she want me to apologize for the first honest expression I allowed myself in response to her and that significant outsider’s gas lighting strategies?

All my life I always backed down, and backed down and backed down.  Whenever there was a conflict I always was the one to put my feelings and my needs aside to honour other people’s needs and wishes.  I had somehow been given the message that this was my duty.  That to keep the peace necessitated putting myself last.  All through those years of marriage and child raising, my needs were secondary to everyone else’s.  If I was angry I had to push the anger down and not express it.  If I felt hurt or neglected, I had to rise above the occasion and not let others know the sadness or anger I was feeling.  

Child raising books compounded that false message I had received.  They told me that protecting my children’s self-esteem was the ultimate goal.  So I praised even when I felt what was really needed was correcting.  I encouraged even when I saw that there was failure down that path in the future, I did not want to be the bearer of bad news and so I supported falsely when I should have been honest and said “no you are not good enough at that skill”.  

Between those two messages I was led down the garden path.  Life experience has taught me how false those messages were.    In putting my daughter’s needs and wishes foremost, I accepted treatment by her that I should not have.  Hurtful things she said to me, I explained away in my mind as “childish behaviour”.  Instead of correcting her that it was unacceptable to treat me that way, I allowed it to continue because I was told by the child experts that preserving her self-esteem was my number one job.  

In allowing it, I taught her that it was okay to treat me that way.  I trained her that I was less than her.  Why should I be surprised that she continued and repeated this behaviour as she got older?  Is it any wonder that she integrated the message that she was more important than me into her psyche?  Is it any wonder that she continued to treat me as less than and felt a constant need to prove she was better than me?

Having grown used to this superiority she grew to believe that she was better and had the right to put me down.  After all I never stopped her from doing so.  I always backed down and gave in to her wishes and desires.  Even when I disagreed I allowed her plans and ideas to take precedence over mine.  I created this negative situation out of the erroneous messages I had internalized;

#1  My needs are less important than other people’s needs

#2  I have to be the peace keeper at all costs and

#3  Preserving my child’s self-esteem is my duty.

So what changed?

After years of backing down, of taking it, there was a pattern in our relationship.

She pushed and I gave in over and over again.

She expected me to continue as I had always done, she expected me to back down and give in because that was how I had always behaved.

However she pushed too far!   She started to send messages that I was inadequate, that I was incompetent, that I was stupid, and even that there was something wrong with me mentally.  She started spreading rumours behind my back not realizing that other people told me of the unkind and untruthful things she was saying.

Over what seems like only a few months the ultimatums started escalating and escalating to the point where I broke.

The day I broke, it was the first time ever that I stood up for myself.  I felt not only betrayal but such an intense anger that I hardly recognized myself.  Yes another erroneous message that I had internalized, I am not supposed to get angry and when I do then there is something wrong with me.

The day I broke, I realize now, was the day I had finally had enough and said to myself; “I am allowed to be angry when someone treats me badly!"   Looking back now I see this as my unconscious self finally saying enough is enough, you don’t deserve to be treated this way.  In my anger I swore and cursed for the first time ever.  Such foul language came out of my mouth, I even surprised myself.  In my anger I wrote; “No you cannot treat me this way, the mother that you knew is dead”.

I did not know at the time how true those words were. 

Since that day I have gradually changed as I reorganized my perceptions of who I was and how I deserved to be treated.  I started to expect respect and love in return.  How novel!  I used to believe that I earned love by giving in and keeping peace and allowing myself to be treated badly, by always being the giver. 

I learned that I deserve to be loved and respected for who I am!   How bold.  What a dramatic change.  The doormat awoke and said, “this is not right, I will not tolerate this anymore”

Sadly however, by now the damage had been done.

My daughter had already developed the mindset that she had more value in the love relationship than I did. 

• In her mind it was my job to love her no matter how badly she treated me. 
• In her mind she was better than me and she constantly had to prove in how many ways she was superior. 
• In her mind it was okay for her to berate me, to betray me and then the ultimate put down, say that these things were done from a loving place!  

I have since learned that this is a classic narcissistic trait, to explain away bad behaviour by saying the other person (the victim) deserved it and it was done with love.  Hog wash!  No one deserves to be treated with disrespect!  NO ONE! 

Trying to absolve the blame for doing the wrong thing by claiming the other person was to blame, the classic “she made me do it” is also a narcissistic trait.  For example I now know that she expects me to apologize for finally having had enough and not backing down anymore.  I broke the pattern that she was comfortable with.  I refused to give in to her demand peacefully. 

She did not realize that her demands had escalated and escalated to the point where I could no longer give in without destroying my self-respect.   My self-respect was already damaged and frail.  It was like a safety short circuit went off in my sub conscious mind that said, “Enough, you can’t continue allowing this kind of disrespect.  It is time to say NO.”

I can see the humour now, and I realize now that this radical change in me, this abrupt NO was interpreted by her as me having a “mental break down”, when in reality it was a “mental break through”.  A break through in realizing, that all my so called expected behaviour patterns, were based upon a lie.  The lie was that it was my responsibility to please others, to put myself second, to build others up at the expense of my own needs.   Once I was backed into the corner of loss of self-respect, I realized the lie for what it was.

Gradually since then I have worked on my healing to the point where there is no way that I can ever go back to living that lie. My relationships must now be more balanced.

• I demand as much respect as I give.
• I demand to be respected by those who would have me respect them.
• I expect to be treated to the same kind of love that I am willing to give.
• I no longer will tolerate being manipulated into doing things that I don’t wish to do. 
• I recognize a manipulative and controlling tactic for what it is, a put down.

I have changed so much.

So back to my initial question, what does my daughter expect of me?  She expects me to be the old me, the one that is dead and buried.  She expects me to continue to support her while she treats me with disdain, as less than, as undeserving of respect, a lesser being to her superior being.  

The fact that she feels she is entitled to punish me shows clearly that she wants to be the “parent” in our relationship and that I have to “behave” or the punishment will continue.

But I am not her child, nor am I a criminal.

She does not have the right to punish me or to control my behaviour by the abusive punishment of estrangement. 

She does not have the right to be judge jury and executioner of my actions based on the fact that she did not get out of me what she desired. 

That is not how relationships between equals is conducted.  And so, as long as I refuse to return to my old role of “door mat”; as long as I refuse to back down and accept responsibility and blame for her choice of actions, as long as I stand firm in my need to be loved and respected for who I am, I see no end to this stalemate.

Does this sadden me?

Yes it does.  However in coming to understand the dynamics of our past relationship, I also have a kind of closure.   She is who she is partly because of how I allowed her to treat me in the past.  There is my responsibility and for that I am sorry.  (and for this I am more than willing to apologize)

If I knew then, what I know now, I would not make those same parenting mistakes.  Alas there is no redo button. All I can do is acknowledge how I contributed to her character flaws.  Accept her for who she is and as a consequence accept the type of person she has become and the actions that she is capable of.

What can I do now?  

• I can hope that she comes to realize that her behaviour is distorted and unnatural. 
• I can wish that she seeks the help that she needs to learn which of her behaviour patterns are destructive to a healthy relationship with me. 
• I can be compassionate towards her, for her mistakes and her wrongful actions.
• I can open my heart to a willingness to forgive in response to a respectful desire to atone.
• I can imagine the possibility of a new beginning based on equality not control.

But more importantly,

• I can continue to build up my own personal boundaries for the type of treatment I will endure or not endure.
• I can build up my self-esteem and self-confidence that no matter what any future outcome might be, I will be alright.
• I can continue to free myself of the negative thoughts and concepts that used to plague me and created within me a feeling of inferiority.
• I can continue to be the kind and good hearted person that I always was without being a “push over” or “door mat”.
• And finally and most importantly, I can love and respect myself as much as I used to only love and respect others.

As I reflect on all these thoughts, I realize that I am no longer who my daughter expects.  I have changed so much and this new me can't give her what she expects unless she too learns and grows and changes to be the kind of person that can treat  me the way I deserve to be treated.

Renate Dundys Marrello

2015 - 09 - 22

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Post Estrangement - Today I am angry

Yes I an angry!

Read the following newspaper clipping for the reply posted to the paper by a grieving parent and see if you feel the anger I feel.

I get angry when someone spouts off without forethought or compassion or understanding about something they don't have a clue about. 

Some people are so glib!  They rattle off comments and thoughts as if estrangement is a simple fixable thing.  They have no clue the devastation estrangement causes. 

This grieving parent who made such a callus reply to the newspaper, aches as she grieves the loss of her child I am sure.  I, even in my own sorrow and hurting can feel compassion for her grief.

But it annoys me that she can so easily, without thought or compassion, discount the suffering of how I and all other estranged parents feel.  She feels that by saying that the possibility exists that I might one day be reunited with my child and my grandchildren somehow makes my grief negligible compared to hers.  That is presumptuous to say the least and wrong on so many levels.

I have been thinking on this for a long time.  Trying to define why is estrangement so hard on us? Why it goes beyond grieving, and why in many ways it is so soul destroying.

Here are some of the reasons (I am sure my readers will remind me of any that I might have missed) that we estranged parents go beyond grieving for our lost child:

#1 Estrangement is an act of rejection and being rejected hurts us deeply.  Rejection reminds us of all the times we have been rejected in life starting from when we were little. We even re-live abandonment issues that linger from our childhood.

#2 Estrangement builds doubt within us, raising questions such as "what did I do wrong" or "how can my child act this way"?  These go way beyond the loss of the child and the relationship. These affect our self-confidence, our belief in our ability to do and be good.  It reflects into all our other relationships as we wonder if there is really something fundamentally wrong with us and if our own child can reject us then maybe others will do the same.

#3 Estrangement is used as punishment.  We feel punished, and often we don't even know why we are being punished.

#4 Estrangement is bullying.  It is used to control and manipulate us.  We feel bullied, why? Because we are being bullied.  We are being cornered by the bully into feeling less than or inferior.

#5 Estrangement brings out in us the fear of "not being good enough".  This is a primal fear, a fear that if we don't perform to the tribe’s standard we will be cast out of the tribe, and in those early days, being cast out of the tribe meant death.  How we deal with this primal fear adds to our distress.

#6 Estrangement isolates us.  Grieving for a death rallies the whole community around you.  Everyone is supportive and giving condolences and sympathy.  Being estranged, people look at you sideways and talk behind your back and sometime even to your face that you must have done something wrong to be estranged.  Beyond grief you are ostracized as well.

#7 Estrangement destroys your dreams. Dreams of what you thought your family was like.  Everything you believed to be true is turned false.  Your dreams are not ended, they are destroyed and there is a huge difference.  With a death the dreams end because time ran out, with estrangement they are destroyed by a willful act carried out by your offspring.

#8 Estrangement robs us of time.  Time cannot be regained even if in the very unlikely chance that there is a reconciliation, the time that has been lost is lost forever.  You can’t go back and relive those years.  You can’t go back and hold a baby grandchild when they are no longer a baby.  You can’t get back all the holidays and special days that were lost.  They are gone. This time is gone not because of fate, but through an act of violence against us.

#9 Estrangement is an act of violation.  It is a deliberate act undertaken with intent to harm.  We feel violated because we have been violated.

#10  Estrangement grief is ambiguous.  It leaves us dangling, uncertain, and fearful.  We are never sure if there may be an ending or not. And even as we contemplate an ending we realize that the relationship is broken.  There will always be long term repercussions.

#11 Estrangement destroys our ability to trust.  This is something that can’t be easily regained.  For most of us we never fully trust again.  There is always the thought in the back of our mind that this can happen again, with any one at any time. 

#12 In estrangment we not only loose our child, we lose a huge part of ourselves.  Sometimes with great effort we can heal some of those parts but even in healing we remain aware of the scars.  Even as we heal our emotional wounds we know them intimately and our wounds are now a part of who we are.

#13 In estrangement we are told by our own child that we are unlovable.  This is an enormous burden to carry with you every single day.  That child that you cared for, nurtured, encouraged and loved thinks you are not worthy of being loved in return.  This is emotional abuse and we live with it day in and day out. 

So yes we grieve just as any other parent that loses a child to death grieves. 

And yes I feel great compassion for all parents that lose a child to death.

But we estranged parents lose so much more, we lose a part of ourselves and we do it in secret, in anonymity isolated and alone.

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 09 - 12 

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post estrangement: Living with a Broken Heart

I always follow support groups for parents that have been estranged. One reason is that only a parent who has suffered the agonies of being abandoned understands what I feel and to know that someone understands makes me feel less alone.

Secondly, I like the questions that get posted because they remind me to stay strong and focus on my quest to struggle towards healing.

The question that caught my attention recently was: "Can you live with a broken heart?"

All of us that have been estranged do in fact live with a broken heart. The deeper question is does the suffering get any easier?  

In the process of healing I have taken to doing lots of reading. Reading for me is a source of solace, and inspiration and thoughts and ideas that I can apply to my life as I strive to regroup and rebuild my life.  In the process I have come to the conclusion that;  "Yes you can live with a broken heart" but you have to work very hard to live "well" with a broken heart.

I think that typical literature on the "broken hearted" is about romantic love.  Romantic love is between two people who meet and feel a connection. They feel sorrow when that connection does not work out and they need to heal from their heart break to be ready to try again for that romantic someone special in their lives. 

This does not translate very well into the feelings of parental love.  First of all, you can't have a falling out with your child and then heal and go on to another relationship.  When a parent child bond is broken there is no replacement. 

Secondly parental love goes so much deeper and our heart strings are attached in mysterious ways to our offspring. There is a biological bond that nature created in us to nurture and love our offspring.  This biology is what ensures the survival of the species.  This is a primal love, that when we first experience it overwhelms our senses.  I will never forget the glow of love I first felt at the birth of each of my children. The intensity of that feeling took my breathe away and even now remembering that first bonding moment I can reconnect to the powerful emotion of love and desire to care for and protect and nurture.  One does not forget that feeling ever!

As our children grow up this love moves beyond simple caring for and nurturing and beyond all our fears it allows us to let them spread their wings, to learn and explore. It helps us to encourage them to become independent adults.  We go from seeing them at their most vulnerable as infants, to staunchly protecting their own points of view and rights. 

And through it all our love expands to include all of their characteristics, their flaws as well as all their good points. We love unconditionally all that our children are and everything they are not.

Estrangement changes something vital in our relationship with our adult child.  Their actions speak loudly that we are not loved in return. We are told about all of our imperfections and these become the reason for our being abandoned.  We, who accepted all their shortcomings as a testament of our love for our children, learn that their love has conditions attached. 

This hurts us unbearably and yet we want to love them in spite of the pain they cause us.  We grieve the loss of them in our lives and at the same time would gladly forgive them and take them back because they are our children. 

The early stages of grieving involve all the usual steps of dealing with grief but we become stuck sooner or later in the knowing that there is no resolution to a grief that is in essence ongoing.  You don't stop grieving for someone who is still alive.  You move through grief into acceptance and you work your way through healing and living again but that which was broken remains broken.  That connection that we thought of as enduring through all time remains enduring for us because we don't stop being parents.

We can reclaim our lives but we can't erase that being a parent has changed us. We can fill our lives with new meanings but we can't shut out all those years of loving. 

Healing from our broken heart is a very different journey than recovering from a romantic broken heart because the nature of our connection to our offspring is so different in its origin and our heartstrings will most likely always be attached to some degree to our adult children even when they treat us poorly.

So how do you heal your broken heart?  You accept that most likely you never will.  What you learn to do instead is how to live with a heart that has been broken.

The first step is making a decision that you will.  That you choose to live.

For many of us there are days when we would just as soon not live. When you go to bed at night and pray "Lord let me not wake up in the morning".  Or when you wake up in the morning and you say "Lord, why did you not take me in my sleep?"

The decision comes to us at different times that this is no way to live. Those are the days you decide that maybe living in grief is no longer an option.  In the early stages this feeling comes and goes.  Then gradually over time you have more and more days when you choose to live again.  Not because the pain is any less, but because you decide that you deserve better, that you deserve a good life even though....
I think what is different for us parents surviving estrangement is that every day we must make choices that reflect our decision to move on. We do not stop grieving but we learn to not let our grief colour every moment of our lives. 

You don't wake up one morning "all better".  You work hard toward healing.  Every day is another opportunity to heal. Every day is another day to choose to live in spite of having a broken heart.

I think what many of us sometimes shy away from is that fact that living with a broken heart is hard work.  On a bad day it is so easy to say "why do I have to work so hard to create joy in my life".  But there is always the knowledge that if you don't do the work you will be right back in the pit of sorrow and despair.

For me I have just passed the 6 years estranged mark.  I have come to realize, and accept, that every day I need to start with certain thoughts and reflections just to get my day going in the right direction.  I have certain rituals that I perform each day upon awaking that set the tone for my day. And on my successful days I have an almost normal day. 

There are still trigger thoughts and certain days that trigger certain memories that easily catapult me into a downward spiral.  I have contingency plans in place now, sort of a "go to manual" to build a bridge back toward equilibrium.

photo by Christine Glade

I hold my broken heart gently and try to be understanding and loving to myself when the pain resurfaces.

So what does change over time?

The times of overwhelming sorrow happen less often and the recovery times become shorter.  There is a learning curve and as the skills you use to heal become second nature, you apply them sooner and prevent the downward spiral from escalating.

You remain aware of the ache in your heart, it is never far from your thoughts, but the choices you make allow you to live a full, active and love filled life.  The challenge is to make those choices that give you that freedom. 

Renate Dundys Marrello 

2015 - 09 - 08

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Reflection on Estrangement by guest author Nina Wornham

photo by Thodoris Tzalavras

Once again I am delighted to share a wonderful article on the topic of estrangement.  Many words of wisdom here.  I especially love; 

"What will happen to our adult children in the future when they wake up and realise they have chosen to make themselves orphans 
disconnected from their roots?"

Family alienation, Estrangement & Being Cut Off
by Nina Wornham. 

Last year when I began researching the topic of estrangement, there was little out there on the internet other than a deafening silence. I may have made mistakes as a parent but I know I did my best. Being snubbed, left out of important events, discredited and cut off from both my adult children for several years, I knew I did not deserve such treatment especially after I had given money and other help along with all the sacrifices most parents make. On the occasional forum, I observed a handful of posts written by shy parents fearful of the shame of being judged if they opened up and poured their hearts out.

In only a year, how things have changed. The floodgates are open as parents who have been cut off by adult children now openly tell of the daily heartbreak and pain in which they exist. Their bonds cruelly severed after being disowned, cast out and left out in the cold by the very people they gave birth to, the ‘tribe’ to which they belong.

Greeted by only an invisible wall of silence, they are cruelly and dismally left emotionally stranded. Uninvited to all the important occasions a parent looks forward to but are made painfully aware of through social media such as Facebook, they are unable to collect their natural heritage of precious memories. 

Excluded from the essence of family life, deprived of any sense of belonging, they are denied the opportunity of being part of the family they gave birth to. 

This often includes grandchildren as the aggrieved adult children force their own children to live their grievances, deprive them of belonging to a wider family and also deprive them of knowing their own gene pool. The long term consequences of such action can only be disastrous for all concerned especially for the grandchildren who by nature will at some point want to reconnect with their own roots.

At first it’s easy to imagine that this newly emerging social ill only exists as a result of divorced families, but it’s more than apparent that estrangement affects even the most solid, nuclear married families too. Alienation and estrangement are not biased, they can arrive within seconds of any kind of dispute where the word that lands out of a loving parent’s mouth has been NO or ‘I don’t agree’.

Stories of endless sacrifice where parents often did two jobs to cover the bills, gave up careers, borrowed money to pay off their adult child’s debts, paid for them to attend university and gain degrees, free childminding service, taxi service, free banking, loans that never got paid back, undisputed accusations, character assassinations, emotional blackmail, threats, discrediting their lives and achievements when the answer was still NO and then creating a smear campaign to make the parents look wrong to cover up the adult child’s reasons for ‘unfriending’ and casting out a devoted parent or parents into an emotionally bleak existence.

After years of servitude and sacrifice, magical Christmas mornings, birthday parties, trips away, never a forgotten special moment, estranged parents in their 1,000’s now face Christmas and birthdays alone without a card or any kind of explanation.

Meanwhile, all over the internet, messages abound, ‘stay away from toxic people’, ‘walk away from negative people’, ‘don’t give a care for anyone but yourself’, ‘only YOU matter’.

It’s easy to see where the attitude of selfishness and the right to be ‘right’ lays. 

The influence to be ‘your own individual and ignore everyone who dares to offend you’ is mind blowingly clear. Yet human beings rarely succeed as individuals on their own. They always operate better when they feel connected within a group.

But things are changing. A new voice is emerging and it’s an angry voice. It’s the voice of a responsible public, many are parents who have given their best only to find themselves rejected when they can no longer live up to the expectation of their adult children. They want to know what happened to loyalty, compassion, tolerance, discussion, and most of all, they want to know why?

No longer are the experts laying the blame at the door of the parents. There are too many of us. Something else in our modern world is blatantly wrong.
Why does the word ‘rights’ not equate to responsibility? Why is the word ‘entitlement’ one sided?

Why is estrangement a secret? Who wins from being estranged? What will happen to our adult children in the future when they wake up and realise they have chosen to make themselves orphans disconnected from their roots?

The parents will and are coping by coming together in their masses to share their stories and support each other. We’ve all been through loss and chaos before, we have coping strategies. We know how to survive the curved balls life has so often thrown at us. We’re surviving now.

But we’re not even concerned with ourselves. Our hearts still look out for our children. Their behaviour is guaranteed to bring them nothing but failure in future years. Estrangement is failure. 

While they may believe their actions are justified in their 20’s and 30’s, what happens when they meet life in their 40’s and 50’s? They've trashed their family connections, blown up their bridges, burned their parents in anger and rage because of some perceived injustice that they just can’t get over and ripped the family apart till it no longer exists.

What then for our adult children?

Written by Nina Wornham. Copyright 2014.

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