Estrangements, the website, <\/a>has lists of links to information about celebrities and others who have experienced
\nestrangement, links on information about psychological conditions
\nthat can be catalysts for estrangement, links to support and discussion
\ngroups, lists of books, movies and online articles on the topic, a
\npoetry page, and the blog from 2001 to 2005. <\/p>\n\nThe blog includes my own story of family estrangements and my writings on
\nvarious issues that relate to estrangement. My own story is just that,
\nmy own story. Others in my family have their own stories and their
\nstories differ from mine. I don’t know the
\ninternal lives and perceptions of the others in my story even if we
\nonce were close and even if we thought we all knew each other
\nwell. Even if we were currently on good terms, I wouldn’t know what it is like to be them.<\/p>\n
We are all encased in our own skin and can’t know
\nexactly what it is like to see through the eyes and walk in the shoes
\nof another person. We can try but it is impossible. Great novelists can
\nbe good at it but still, no one really knows what the exact interior
\nlife is like of another. We can guess. We can approximate. We can hear
\nit described. We can extrapolate from our own experience but we never
\nreally know. So we can each tell our own tale but if we dare to try to
\ntell another’s, then we had best tread lightly because we operate with
\nincomplete information.<\/p>\n
As for my other writings and
\ndrawings in the blog, they are my opinion and my expression of themes
\nof estrangement. The cartoons are not meant to be a specific person.
\nThey are cartoon drawings of human beings caught
\nin the drama of being human. The characters in them are generic and are based on my life
\nexperiences, on stories I have been told, and on composites of people in
\nthe roles that they live. <\/p>\n
\nIn May 2007 I began writing the Diary of An Ordinary Woman which is not
\nspecifically on the topic of estrangement but is about a person who is
\nestranged. The person happens to be me. Since I was writing the Diary of an O.W. almost daily, earlier posts on the topic
\nof estrangements were buried from view. Consequently, as of June 12, the Diary of an Ordinary Woman is on its own blog. I deleted all of the Diary posts from Estrangements except for the Deere post and have provided a link to the Diary blog here on the Estrangements blog as well as a feed to recent Diary posts.<\/p>\n
I have more than one reason for writing the Diary of an O.W. I give one reason in the first post of the Diary. <\/p>\n
I have encountered other people’s baggage many times in the last 12
\nyears of writing and talking with people about the subject of
\nestrangement. I have been impressed by the amazing ability of people to
\njump to conclusions about me and others whose similarities to their own
\nestrangement are the facts of being estranged and their position in
\ntheir family. They jump to conclusions that are colored by their own
\nexperiences. <\/p>\n
\nSubjective assumptions are part of human nature. We do the best we can
\nwith what we’ve got. We use our own experiences, limited as they are,
\nto develop ideas about what is happening in the world. We try to make
\nsense of things and we use our experiences as our source material. The
\nmore emotion attached to the story that we are trying to make sense out
\nof, the less objective we’re likely to be. The more we identify with
\nsome of the people in the story, the less we are able to identify with
\nthose we see as "the others". The more we see similarities through age,
\nrole, physical resemblance, gender, position in the family, education,
\ndisability, and other traits, the more we make assumptions about
\neveryone involved including those who we think of as "like us" and
\nthose we think of as "like them". <\/p>\n
\nThe best way to know another person and to know what makes them tick is
\nto walk in their shoes but that is an experience we can’t do. If
\nsomeone has a high ability to empathize and has had similar
\nexperiences, then they can have a better idea of what it might be like
\nto be another person and can draw more accurate conclusions. But who
\nhas the time to go around studying others in such detail? Who really
\ncares that much? When do we know if we are being conned?<\/p>\n
\nTo understand a situation completely, we’d have to be able to empathize
\nwith everyone involved and put our own subjective assumptions away. If
\nwe could do that, then we’d qualify to be the most perfect therapist
\nwho never existed! Not even great therapists are able to put away all
\nof their subjectivity and baggage.<\/p>\n
\nSo I concede that eliminating the baggage of my visitors is something
\nthat I can’t do. I can draw cartoons about baggage. I can write about
\nbaggage and my thoughts on it. I can think about creative ways to
\nportray the concept of baggage and how we can make subjective
\ninterpretations but I can’t eliminate it. I concede that I can’t win
\nthat fight But maybe I can make an inroad here and there through my
\nefforts. <\/p>\n
\nThe only ones who can eliminate baggage are the ones who carry the
\nbaggage and they have to realize that they are carrying it before they
\ncan begin to shed any of it. So along with my cartoons and my other
\nposts on baggage, I write about myself as an Ordinary Woman because
\nthat is what I am. I am just Ordinary. <\/p>\n
\nI am through and through Ordinary. I am not superhuman nor superweak. I
\nam not a therapist, not a mindreader, not able to discern what someone
\nsays who doesn’t tell me things. I am not able to do superhuman things.
\nI am not able to be perfect. I do not know all things. I am not only a
\nmother, a daughter, an ex-wife and a wife but I have a life. An
\nOrdinary Life but a life. Like other people who come here to this site
\nwho are pretty Ordinary too. <\/p>\n
\nWhen I use the word Ordinary, I mean it in a nice way. By Ordinary I
\nmean someone who doesn’t have extraordinary abilities, extraordinary
\nmental illnesses, extraordinary mean streaks. I mean someone who is a
\ngenerally good person who wants to live a life that means something,
\nsomeone who would rather do good than bad, someone who tries to do
\ntheir best, someone who would not go out of their way to hurt anyone.
\nSomeone who doesn’t deserve to experience pain but who experiences pain
\nbecause in an Ordinary Life there is pain as well as good times.<\/p>\n
\nWhen visitors come to my site, I want them to know that I am indeed
\nOrdinary. And that estrangements happen to all of us, even Ordinary
\nPeople. It would be great to be a SuperHuman and be able to solve all
\nthings but then not even Superman was able to do that. <\/p>\n
\nWhomever you are and whatever caused you to visit this Estrangements
\nsite, I hope that any estrangements in your life work out for the best
\nfor you. That whatever solution you find, that it is one that allows
\nyou to live a productive, meaningful and satisfying life. I wish I
\ncould provide the answers that you are looking for but I’ve found that
\none constant truth for me is that if answers exist, they vary for each
\nof us and it is up to each of us to find them. <\/p>\n
\nI wish you the best of success in finding your answers and that the outcome of finding them is a positive one.<\/p>\n
\nGinny<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Estrangements, the blog and the website, is primarily about estrangements in families between blood relatives. It is less about the estrangements between former lovers, even though that is such a common form of estrangement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introduction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}