I started my morning with a cup of coffee and reading Allison Gilbert’s well considered article, Parenting Without Parents: How to be a parent without your own. It’s an interesting article and it raised questions for me. For starters, I wondered how hard it had been to find a photograph of a typical, nuclear family of four, cheerfully visiting the cemetery, undoubtedly fondly remembering the departed family member. I couldn’t help but think of the differences between families who experience ‘legitimate’ loss and grief through death and those who experience estrangement and not only feel loss and grief, but also guilt, shame, anger, and often pervasive ambivalence about having the missing member(s) of their family restored through possible contact. I pondered what sort of image you would have of a ‘typical’ estranged family … and was pretty clear it probably wouldn’t be a picture of a nuclear family, smiling at a graveside.
Estrangement is, but is not, like a family death. People choose estrangement, they do not (unless suicidal) choose death. Estrangement is not an inevitable part of life that every family will experience; estrangement is not generally perceived as ‘natural’ or ‘normal’. People will usually access a fair bit of support when discussing the death of a family member. Even though our capacity to manage death is often not great, it’s acceptable to talk about it, and grieve. When someone dies, we are given both formal and informal ‘permission’ to section off a space in our life to be present with our grief. This is rarely the case with estrangement. Estranged family members don’t get a funeral service, or a memorial and there is no graveside to mourn at. Grieving members of a family are usually not criticized and blamed for the death of their family member. In cases of estrangement, people are often blamed or criticized for their failure to ‘be a family’. Like a death, estrangement often comes with little warning. Estranged people don’t typically see the family break as something that will drag on or be permanent. And like preparing for a death in advance, even if we do suspect estrangement may be permanent, we are often unprepared for the vastness of the loss.

Similar to the grieving process around a death, estrangement often follows the well known, 5 stage grieving process as outlined by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her pioneering book, On Death and Dying; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. However, in the case of estrangement, the process often has no sense of finality about it. It is not a ‘complete occurrence’ or a necessarily ’shared occurrence’. Estrangement, may feel more like a very acrimonious divorce than death. Estrangement means we still know the other person is ‘out there’, still living their lives – just they are doing so, without us. They may maintain relationships, possibly with mutual acquaintances or other family members, but have no connection with us. We may hear news about recent positive or negative life events, but be unable to share in the events; even really positive things like the birth of a new baby or traumatic things like a car accident or health crisis. For many, estrangement continues right through to death – where many people will not be informed about the death in a timely or sensitive manner, or be invited to attend funerals or memorial services. Imagine how difficult coming to terms with loss and death might be, when compounded by estrangement.

Like Allison Gilbert points out, loss of a parent (or extended family in general) means we lose access to parenting support and family histories. Like the death of a parent, estrangement means we too will have to deal with ‘practical and emotional voids’, ‘fear of dying young’, ‘the impact that estrangement has on marriages and other significant relationships and certainly the dilemma of how to give our children a sense of family when ‘family’ is AWOL. Unlike Allison, I was not surprised to find an utter lack of research about how losing both your parents (and/or your extended family network) through estrangement profoundly informs the way we parent our own children. Estrangement is after all, one of the dirtiest of family secrets.

** I am currently researching and exploring family estrangement and will be covering a number of estrangement topics in article and book form. If you would like to be a part of this important research about family estrangement, please click HERE for further information, or to take the survey. You can also check out the E-Stranged website.