{"id":63,"date":"2013-09-17T13:33:26","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T13:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/2013\/09\/17\/on-baggage\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T18:07:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T18:07:43","slug":"on-baggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/2013\/09\/17\/on-baggage\/","title":{"rendered":"On Baggage"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Baggage<\/h3>\n
\n
\n

(This post was originally written on May 25, 2007.)<\/p>\n

I receive email occasionally. Most emails come from mothers who
\nhave been estranged by their adult kids. Much less often, maybe twice a
\nyear, I get an email from someone who has estranged their mother or both
\nparents. (I rarely get emails from men who are fathers or sons. I may
\nhave received two emails from men in thirteen years.) Invariably the reaction
\nto my website and blog is different for mothers who have been estranged
\nby their kids from the reaction of adult kids who have estranged their
\nparents. (I can’t recall EVER getting an email from a parent who has
\nestranged themselves from their kids.) I’ve written on the baggage we
\nall carry previously. I made a series of posts about baggage which can
\nbe found in the Creative Expressions category (see link in side bar).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

As for me and my baggage, of course I have baggage like everyone
\nelse but I think I am
\nmore aware of my own baggage than many people for the simple reason
\nthat I have experienced estrangement from more than one perspective.
\nConsequently I can relate to people who have estranged their parents
\nwhile also relating to mothers who have been estranged by their kids. It
\nis also true that it can be easier for both groups to relate to me because I
\nhave experienced something of what each has experienced. However, most
\npeople, whether mother or daughter, relate to me based on my experience
\nas a mother estranged rather than as an estranging daughter.<\/p>\n

I am frustrated sometimes by people who presume things about me
\nbecause they pigeonhole me into a category such as “mother” or
\n“daughter” or “parent” or “woman” or “older woman”. People carry such
\nstereotypes of people in their minds. I find this less in real life
\nwhere people who have experienced estrangement meet and get to know the
\nflesh and blood me as a human being. It is so easy on the internet to
\ntake a bit of information and draw conclusions about someone and ignore
\nthe fact that the gaps in the information are being filled in by
\nwhatever is going on in the reader’s mind. We look for things to relate
\nto and understand in what we read. The “filler” that we have is the
\nmemory of our own experience to use to create information to fill in the
\nblanks. We use whatever we’ve got lying around in our minds which are
\nloaded up with BAGGAGE!<\/p>\n

I first noticed this phenomenon ten years ago when I began writing on
\nthe internet about estrangement. Some people began to react to me as
\nthough they knew me well.<\/p>\n

Strangers sometimes react as though they know what I want, what I
\nthink, why I do what I do, why I’ve done what I’ve done. People react as
\nthough they know me better than I know myself and they feel sure that
\nthey can educate me about my own mind. If they met me in person I doubt
\nthat they would do this or if they did, that they’d feel some hesitation
\nin drawing such definite conclusions. But in the more anonymous more
\nimpersonal internet, they feel confident that they are experts on me and
\nthat analyzing me and giving me their opinions on my flaws as they see
\nthem is their obligation and duty. They are most often daughters in
\nconflict or estrangement with their mothers.<\/p>\n

My observations of that kind of reaction, which felt quite dramatic
\nto me when I have been certain that I haven’t done anything that fits
\nthe person’s vision of me, has been the inspiration for the Baggage
\nSeries in the Creative Expressions category.<\/p>\n

What I think is interesting and sad about “baggage” is that having
\nbaggage and not being aware of baggage prevents people from
\nunderstanding themselves and from understanding the humanity of others
\nabout whom they draw such firm conclusions. It’s much harder to discern
\nthe truth about people when we stereotype them. It’s much much harder to
\nbe angry at people when we let ourselves relate to them as human beings
\nand as people who have some similarity to ourselves. Even when people
\nare different in so many ways from each other, there still are things
\nthat they have in common. Maybe the purpose of baggage and stereotypes
\nis to make it easier to put up walls between ourselves and others when
\nwe feel unsafe and angry?<\/p>\n

Being aware of our own baggage might not change our decisions about
\nwhom we want to allow to be in our lives but we can make better
\ndecisions if we open up our minds to the possibility that we don’t know
\neverything there is to know about other people.<\/p>\n

People are always surprising me. I imagine that those who try to
\npigeonhole me might be as surprised by the reality of me as I’ve been
\nsurprised by others. In general I think we’d all do better with a bit
\nless baggage to carry around. Putting some of it down might be a relief.<\/p>\n

I will say before I finish this post that 99% of the emails that I
\nreceive are from mothers who are in pain over their estrangements from
\ntheir kids. They don’t write to tell me about myself. Women who see
\nthemselves as mothers who miss their kids write to thank me for sharing
\nmy story on the internet. I appreciate every one of them who has written
\nto me to say that. It is one of the things that makes my efforts feel
\nworthwhile.<\/p>\n

Ginny<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Baggage (This post was originally written on May 25, 2007.) I receive email occasionally. Most emails come from mothers who have been estranged by their adult kids. Much less often, maybe twice a year, I get an email from someone who has estranged their mother or both parents. (I rarely get emails from men…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[70,121,54,120,9,89,113,112,88,123,31,122],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cutoff","tag-empathy","tag-estrangement","tag-estrangements","tag-family-estrangement","tag-narcissistic-personality-disorder","tag-nf","tag-nm","tag-npd","tag-parental-alienation-disorder","tag-pas","tag-sociopathic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","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=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":364,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estrangements.com\/theblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}