A mother and grandmother who posts on her own blog about family estrangement and the loss of relationships with her son and grandchildren wrote to me this week. She sent me a link to her blog for inclusion here. I took a look and like her writing so much that I am happy to provide…
For Parents
New Link: Rejectedparents.net – a website for parents suffering estrangement
I found a website, rejectedparents.net, that was created in 2013 to offer support and information to parents who have been rejected by their adult children. It includes a discussion group for estranged parents. Here's the link: Parents of Estranged Adult Children: Help and HealingWhen Adult Children are Estranged: Support and Information
Slate staff writer Katy Waldman’s article on Narcissism: Link
Are you a Narcissist? by Slate staff writer Katy Waldman, August 2014 If you’re new to being estranged and to online discussions of the condition, you might not have experienced the word Narcissistic (with a capital N in the context of Narcissistic Personality Disorder) occurring frequently in discussions of family estrangement. If you are a…
Baggage, baggage, and more baggage
I've been thinking a lot lately about the baggage that people carry and how people interpret who and what other people are. The series of posts I wrote about Being Wrong were motivated by my desire to get through to those who believe they are right no matter what, no matter if there is evidence…
Family estrangement in photographs
I am reading estrangement into the action taken on old photographs. They say a photograph is worth 1,000 words. The photo above is a carte de visite (cdv) from the early 1870's. The mother's face was scratched out in the negative prior to the image being printed. It would have been scratched out by the…
How do you know if you’re getting better?
When does recovery occur? When do you get over a serious loss? Some things you never "get over" but you can heal. It is possible for life to go on. You know you're getting better when you make better choices. As described in the poem below. The poem is from There's a Hole in My…
Guest Post: Life As We Know It Now
My husband and I are the parents of two estranged adult children. I consider us both survivors and warriors of a war that had lasted a very long time. We had put up with this serial estrangement – this on-again, off-again bullshit for almost 38 years – so long, in fact we didn't know which…
Being Wrong: Part Six
I woke up this morning and realized that I was not finished yet in talking about Being Wrong. There is another important question that we can ask ourselves as we examine our ability to be wrong and how our errors impact ourselves and others. Going back to the description of what occurred between Carol and…
Being Wrong: Part 5
That sure was a long seven days since I last posted an entry on this topic of being wrong! That delay occurred despite my best intentions to do what I said that I was going to do. It has been difficult for me to finish this piece. My goal is to make a point but…
Being Wrong, Part 4: How is it that sometimes we choose the wrong answer?
Funny how things change. In that first post on Being Wrong that I wrote in May 2011, I talked about a couple that I knew, "Bob" and "Janice" and how I had gone from initially disliking them a lot to becoming good friends with them. I was using that transformation as an example of how…