Being Estranged From Your Child
The Parental Cost of "No-Contact"
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Dear Philippa
I know you’ll have covered this situation before and I’ve attempted to follow advice from a variety of sources but I’ve not seen my daughter for over 5 years. It came to a head during lock down when she was made redundant (and lives 3.5hr drive from me). It seems I was over-bearing and overly-concerned which lit a touch paper the ramifications of which I still feel today. I was told by my daughter that our relationship had been breaking down for years but I just didn’t have the intelligence to realise it. I was told I was fat-phobic, homo-phobic, trans-phobic and racist. I can truly say that I have never fully recovered from this declaration. I apologised to her at the time and told her how ashamed she must feel to know me. She accepted this apology with some gladness. However, after much heartbreak and tears and discussion with friends I contacted her to tell her that I didn’t really recognise the person she had described. This caused a huge and ugly response.
My confidence was so shattered I found it hard to speak to people for fear of upsetting them, I was volunteering in a mass vaccination centre at the time, and hardly dare greet the public so great was my fear of causing offence.
I’ve had help with my mental health and received some inter-personal relationship counselling via the NHS which was hard but hugely helpful.
My daughter agreed to mediation but after individual initial appointments she went off to have some counselling via her GP and said she’d resume the mediation after that. That was almost 4 years ago. I have a son who I see but he just won’t speak about the situation or her, she really is the elephant in the room when we are together and my contact with him stirs me up so much inside it takes me a long time to pull myself together afterwards. It just triggers the yearning I have to see her. Perhaps you can tell from this that I’m so much at a loss I don’t really know what I’m asking you. I feel helpless. I am in a better place than I have been and don’t wish to die these days, but it’s been a close run thing at times in the past. Even a serious illness I had 3 years ago didn’t soften her thoughts towards me. I know nothing about her life bar the rare snippets I come across on social media that I can see. I don’t even know where she lives now.
I thought we had been close. I fear I will take this to my grave
My Reply
This is heartbreaking to read. It has all the weight of a bereavement that has no rituals, no condolences, no place for the grief to go. You lost your daughter in every way except the literal. It seems you don’t really understand what your sins are supposed to have been. It sounds shocking. I don’t think there are many worse punishments than banishment.
To be told you’re seen in a way you don’t recognise, and then to have no way to speak into it can feel annihilating. I guess, maybe she feels a similar way as you don’t see you, as she sees you, but how she does see you is so harsh that it must feel impossible to collude with. I suppose the thing is to allow her version of who you are, but not take it on board yourself, because it is not who you are to you.
I can hear how hard you’ve tried to keep your footing. The counselling, the attempt at mediation, more counselling. And volunteering when you felt at your lowest. These efforts you’ve put in to keep going sound heroic to me.
It must be agonising to not be able to talk about her to your son too. Those visits sound as though they stir everything up again because nothing can be said out loud. If I had any advice it would be to decide to really appreciate your son, so you concentrate more on what you have more than what you’ve lost. Easier said than done, I’m sure.
I held the hand of a friend of mine as she went through something similar, she and her daughter are back on track now, and how she did it was by not disagreeing with her daughter’s experience of her and of her daughter’s childhood. Dramatic statements like, “you ruined my life” she just let go, she stayed steady. And eventually her child did come back. But there have been no reckonings, no “it wasn’t really like that you know” from my friend. It is okay if someone holds a different view of you than you hold of yourself. For some relationships, that is necessary.
You have been blamed for how she feels and then cast out. It is a horrible situation. And I’m hoping that there will be more succour from readers in the comments, and perhaps some comments too from people who have felt it necessary to go no-contact with their own parents and their reasons.
I wish I had something that would ease this, but I don’t. I’m relieved you’re in a steadier place now, but I know the scar still pulls and really hurts. And I’m so sorry.
If you ever get suicidal ideation again please ring the Samaritans 116123
My comment: All or Nothing Thinking is The Fashion. I’m not saying going no-contact isn’t a good last resort when real abuse is denied or continued, but I get too many emails like this one, where the parent doesn’t know what they’ve done to deserve this. Cutting your parents off used to be very rare, it’s now very common. What has changed? I blame the internet and social contagion. Sure your parents might make you feel uncomfortable, their presence might remind you of a time you felt unhappy, they certainly made mistakes in how they brought you up, everyone does, they may see things differently to you, they may see you differently to you, and they make be a bit slow in picking up the new wokisms - “mum, you can’t call people fat anymore” - they may have different political views, but they did bring you into the world and kept you alive. And they still feel a bond towards you and if you break that bond, you break their heart. Put up with it. They’ll die and leave you half a house. Send happy Christmas texts this year with a pic of your dog. Make a start on building back a bridge. Happy Christmas. Everyone.
So I leave this comment as the daughter of a mother I wish I had no contact with. I haven’t been able to do it out of the guilt that I would feel, but this goes to the heart of the problem.
When I read this letter it sounded like something my mother would write- all about her, all about her feelings, all about her relationship with me. Sorry I know that’s really harsh and I absolutely don’t know the context of this relationship, but this is how it feels with my own mother. I can’t even tell her when I’m sick because very quickly the conversation is about how worried SHE is, how helpless SHE feels. And that makes me then feel guilty for causing her worry or stress. I’m never allowed space to feel how I feel without constantly worrying about the impact it will have on her. She sucks all the oxygen out of every conversation and it feels unbelievably selfish from my point of view.
I wonder if this woman’s daughter feels the same way? Just an alternative perspective- I don’t mean to cause any offence!
I write this as a therapist, after much thought. I'm very familiar with this sort of awful, painful, unresolved relationship-breakdown through my work. I also have a friend in a similar situation to this mother. I've known my friend since we were at school, I've known her daughter since she was born. I see the family, and their dynamics from the outside.
With my objectivity, I see the ways of being that the people inside this family can't. We all have learned ways of being, passed down to us by parents in our 'family system', they are largely unconscious to us. There are always things that sit in our blind spots.
We don't know what we don't know. Something I uncovered recently with/for my friend, after hours of late-night talking, following much talking over the years, was a link between how her relationship with her own mother and sister was, and how this has been 'acted out' in her difficult relationship with her own elder daughter.
As my friend's daughter once used to confide in me, I've heard how she has experienced her mum. I know my friend (and her partner) feel all of the problem is with their daughter. That she carries attributes of my friend's own mother. It's as if the very last thing my friend might hear, or accept, is the part she has played, her tone, the way her own pain/anger is unleashed and, unfortunately, is triggered by this daughter.
What I'm trying to show (and it's incredibly hard to talk about) is that this kind of breaking down of relationship, between a mother and a child, often belongs to a generational system, that goes back in the family; everyone who is seen as a 'perpetrator' is also a 'victim' of the dysfunctional or difficult relating pattern, that they are not able to see.
It is hugely complex, hard to get hold of, and the ideal, I always think, is to have both parties in the room with a therapist, to work, over time to uncover these learnt ways of relating that have been painful but also get passed down. Ideal - but generally, impossible. I wonder if this mother can think about how she was parented, what difficulties she may have experienced as a child to a mother? It may provide a path (perhaps with some more therapy sessions? with a psychodynamic or analytic therapist?) towards greater understanding, or a different kind of conversation with her daughter?
At the end of the day, to say 'i love you', and 'I've been doing a lot of work, and thinking, and trying to understand us' is surely the best that anyone can put forward? If your daughter chooses not to respond to this, I think you can at least feel some peace that you have done the very best anyone could do.