Fleeing Family: A Reading List on Estrangement

During the three years I planned on fleeing my abusive family and in the year after cutting all contact, I never knew the word “estrangement.” When I encountered the term in a college literature class in 2014, I Googled it, curious and desperate to understand myself. Yet, I couldn’t find any relevant articles with the advice I actually needed: how to navigate holidays alone. I disappeared instead through writing, reading, and, later, living abroad; I established a chosen family and developed a repertoire of coping skills.

A decade later, while researching for an essay, I was shocked to see an increase in estrangement narratives. Instead of finding community, though, reading these only made me feel further isolated. Most articles and books prioritized reconciliation and bemoaned bereaved parents: Why would someone dare abandon their family? Estrangement experts like the psychologist Joshua Coleman dismissed the idea of emotional abuse as mere generational differences and spoke disparagingly about estranged adult children (EAC). Some media portrayals even blamed social media for convincing people they had been emotionally abused. In reality, the National Domestic Violence Hotline acknowledges that emotional abuse is abuse. Karl Pillemer, a sociologist at Cornell University, estimates that 25-27% of Americans are cut off from at least one family member. If every story had two sides, why had the bereaved parents’ side been polished while the second face of the estrangement coin remained blank?

I found my answer outside of writing. Last September, I learned about and joined Together Estranged (TE). According to this nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering EAC and destigmatizing estrangement, there are four types: cordial contact, low contact, no contact, and complete estrangement. Groups like TE, Calling Home, Nate Postlethwait’s Online Community, and Stand Alone offer an essential aspect for healing: community.

The TE community gave me a vocabulary for my experience, offered resources for my healing journey, and identified writers who wrote ethically about the topic. To me, writing ethically means acknowledging abuse. In a society that prioritizes both good and bad parents, I could finally read stories that resonated with my own survival instead of blaming me for ripping apart my already broken family. I began collecting relatable narratives from the perspectives of EAC, as if I were collecting coins from the street. Each shiny penny I stumbled on, I cherished.

Thankfully, our stories had begun to emerge. Eamon Dolan wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about breaking up with his mother, Lea Page identified insight after leaving in an article with HuffPost, Jenisha Watts explored going low contact with her mother in a viral personal essay for The Atlantic, and Dawn Clancy detailed her choice of estrangement despite societal judgement in Good Housekeeping. With each piece, I finally imagined the second side of the coin taking shape with our stories in a truly balanced way.

My endless search to find non-stigmatizing stories from the EAC perspective inspired me to compile this reading list. Leaving was not a decision I made suddenly; estrangement originated with abandonment and abuse during my childhood, behavior I refused to accept in adulthood. These longform articles offered the solidarity I had yearned for my entire life.

I Had to Leave My Mother So I Could Survive (Elisabet Velasquez, Longreads, October 2019)

While there has been a dearth of research analyzing the correlation of abuse to estrangement, all EAC I personally know cite abuse as their primary reason for leaving.

As Elisabet Velasquez notes so eloquently in her title, estrangement was key to survival. In her essay, she relates how she broke the cycle of abuse. For me, the first step in breaking that cycle was when I was 15, acknowledging that my parents—individuals I depended upon for love— failed to protect me. Instead of holding a parent accountable as someone who ought to provide shelter, food, basic needs, and love, a minor might blame themself. This cognitive dissonance ensures mental survival. Velasquez says, “As a child, my mother’s behavior was a cruelty I learned to love. As an adult, I want to make excuses for her abuse and emotional abandonment. In my writing, I search for reasons to forgive. . . ”

Growing up, my mother would often say the devil was using me. This was her way of explaining any behavior that was not agreeable to her. This was her way of justifying any reaction of hers that was abusive in nature. One Sunday, just as we were getting ready for church, my mother was ironing our church clothes. While I waited, I began clowning around with my older sister. I don’t recall what in my laugh triggered the burning or what happened moments before she pressed the iron into my arm. I do recall the moments after, the smell of melting flesh, the flap of skin hanging off my arm, the moment I first met my blood.