I was a child who hadn’t been loved, and who had had no family relations of love and intimacy. So I probably thought to myself that, finally, I was going to have a child and would have this wonderful unconditional loving relationship.

But this child was his mother’s victim, I was a totally incompetent mother, because I, myself, was an abused child from a problematic home; and it was so important for me that my child would be enveloped in love. I found it hard setting limits for him, because I perceived this as child abuse . . . and his father would undermine me in every way and tell everyone how weak I was, how I didn’t stand my ground.”

For some mothers who are estranged from their children, the reason for estrangement is embedded, like a sharp thorn, deep under the skin of history and goes back a lot further than the birth of their child. I’d like to talk for a moment today about the legacy of complex trauma, childhood abuse and inter-generational estrangement.

Research indicates that women who have had adversive childhood experiences are also more likely to have experienced multiple disconnections and separations in their immediate and extended family. Family ruptures may go back several generations and are likely to profoundly historically shape the family’s experience of love, attachment/connection, betrayal / suffering and ultimately the way children are viewed and the way that they are parented.

Moms might not have thought about wider patterns of family ruptures and estrangement or have considered how such patterns might influence their choice of partners (and other relationships), how they choose to parent or what they believe they must tolerate or allow in their relationships.

Many estranged mom’s consistently express disappointment with themselves and their performance as mothers. Far from denying their responsibility, these moms are quick to accept blame for the estrangement with their children; quick to own their ‘failure’ as mothers.

It gets even more complicated when their family of origin, and possibly their ex/partner’s family all hop on the bandwagon to undermine them and their relationships with their kids. The final straw is often when adult children not only refuse contact, but may actively join in with other family members to demean, diminish and slander their mother. Another generation of abuse.

These mothers often retreat and appear to give up (which is interpreted by hostile eyes as ‘not caring’), because its far too painful to keep dancing with such soul splitting rejection and shame runs deep.

Meditation on Motherhood

This Mother’s Day, lets stop to remember how complex and traumatic family estrangement can be. Let’s take time to recognize the inter-generational legacy that family estrangment can build and acknowledge how deeply embedded scars of childhood trauma and attachment may impact upon parental capacity.

Let’s not assume that every mother who is estranged from her children is “narcissistic“, self-absorbed and uncaring. Let’s leave room in the family estrangment story for estranged mothers who may have stopped pursuing relationship with their children, not because they don’t love them, but because they do not have the skills to manage the emotional intensity and dysregulation that is the result of the historical and current shame, that ongoing rejection triggers.

Do you know a mother who is estranged from her children for reasons such as I have outlined above? Are you one of those mothers? Was your mother one of those children?