My Keynote at Colorado Counseling Association’s 2024 Annual Conference

“How’s it going?” My close community kept checking in on me as a I prepared to give my keynote at the Colorado Counseling Association Annual Conference in Keystone the next day. “I keep crying at certain parts of my speech,” I shared. I’d already given myself a grief hangover just writing my speech, now I was doing my best to stay composed as I said it out loud. “It’s okay to cry, your message is important,” each of them said. I agreed with them and continued to prepare. When it was time, I stood in front of almost 300 members of my community and introduced them to the term confidential grief. Defined by Dr. Lena Salpietro as losing a client to suicide and not being able to talk about it, I invited the audience to apply confidential grief to all the experiences in our industry that feel secretive due to feelings of shame, guilt, and judgement from others. I named the Big Five Fears of client suicide, client death, client violence, subpoena, and grievance as examples. We got to know our shame monsters together as a group. I had chosen to share my personal and professional journey of becoming a Confidential Grief Specialist. 

To help my colleagues understand the impact of confidential grief, I took them through six impactful and painful points in my 14 years as a therapist. These were stories that weren’t public knowledge due to confidential grief, and I named them as moments of self-doubt, shame, and leadership trauma. We grieved the loss of community members to violence and clients to suicide. We shared outrage at circumstances outside our control. And this time, I didn’t cry so hard that I lost my place. Instead I carried that emotion with me as I embodied vulnerability to a group of people I felt I was just starting to know more fully. 

As the talk continued, there were invitations to laugh, cry, and connect. I shared how I’d learned from my experiences that introversion is welcome (and necessary sometimes), vulnerability in leadership is allowed, and stories eliminate isolation in our field and as humans seeking connection against burnout. We talked about how to combat confidential grief through building community, showing up fully, and creating healing spaces for ourselves and others. I introduced bread crumbs imagery as bite-sized messages of hope and healing for folks to find when they were ready. Lastly, I shared a beautiful image on screen to start and close the talk. “There are not enough words” became an anchor amidst waves of emotion that come with confidential grief, and I invited my audience to share those words with others.

After my keynote was finished, I was given the gift of my community approaching me in both in the moments after and for hours into the next day to share their stories. You felt safe to share your losses of client suicide, your leadership trauma, and how you needed the term confidential grief to feel more seen. I heard countless exclamations that having a name for your experiences (both confidential grief and leadership trauma) was encouraging you to heal from here. I’m confident in the ripple effect of collective healing that will come from this gathering of clinicians, and find myself full of gratitude and with ‘not enough words’ to express the profound effect this experience will have on me for years to come. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the collective healing and sharing together at CCA’s annual conference, I can’t wait to hear where your journey takes you from here.

A reflection on my Keynote titled Combatting Confidential Grief, Colorado Counseling Association Annual Conference

The Human in the Helper: You cannot heal what you don’t reveal

Dr. Kendal Wellington Humes is a trailblazer. As a doctorate-level psychotherapist in private practice, he’s recently taken on the task of building a behavioral health program from the ground up in academia, as it’s first department chair. He’s had a busy few years, however they haven’t been without challenges. “I’m winning and I’m losing irreplaceable things.” In the past 8 years in Colorado, Dr. Kendal has experienced the loss of a parent, godparent, pet loss, and two painful divorces. “My private practice has kept me alive,” he shared.

“People see my progress but not my process,” Dr. Kendal reflected. He’s no stranger to wanting to excel since he’s achieved four degrees and multiple letters after his name before his mid-thirties. Educational and career achievements provided him a sense of purpose and control when his personal life felt rocky. “No one can take that from me,” he reflected.

Dr. Kendal named the pressure he feels to succeed. “I can’t afford to be mediocre. I’m Black. I’m an immigrant. I’m tall. I’m dark-skinned. And I’m openly gay. I don’t have the privilege of being mediocre.” He’s achieved quite a bit in his career so far, working in community mental health, offering supervision, starting a private practice, and now working in academia. He spoke of the bittersweetness of achieving success while grieving. “People are celebrating the successes but not the losses. Transparency can be weaponized.” Dr. Kendal also spoke to the pressure mental health professionals feel to have things all figured out. “We get the message that we should know better. We should be better.” As a mentor to younger generations of therapists and professionals, It hasn’t stopped him from sharing the hardships as well as the victories.

“I’ve been through divorce. My father died.” Dr. Kendal has experienced depression and he’s felt immense grief. “I didn’t feel like I could give people an honest answer about how I was doing. People don’t always understand what sacrifices have to be made for the successes they see.” Dr. Kendal also recognizes he’s hardest on himself. When experiencing divorce, he found himself saying, “I can’t even heal my own person. I can’t heal my own shit.”

Now Dr. Kendal is all about seeing both sides. “I can see the good and the bad. You cannot heal what you don’t reveal.” He describes his approach as strengths-based and holds onto some humor, even when things get heavy. “I have a strong sense of self. I had to forgive myself.” Dr. Kendal has similar ideas for others going through immense pain in their personal life. “Keep moving. Fall on your back instead of your face. When you fall on your back, you can still see what direction you need to go.”

As for himself, Dr. Kendal’s purpose has become clearer thanks to added perspective and deeper insight from the losses he’s experienced. “Sometimes letting go will put you right where you need to be. Stop fighting.” He’s attempting to take the changes in stride, knowing he has more people to meet and engage in his journey as a psychotherapist. “I’m a wounded healer,” he named. “Failures can be a win too. How will failures help us grow?”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

The Human in the Helper: I felt better pregnant than any other time in my adult life

Emily is passionate about mental health, Medicaid practices, and her pre-teen daughter. She serves as a consultant to therapy practices taking Medicaid and to folks wanting to build quality substance treatment programs that meet community needs. Although she’s feeling strong mentally and physically these days, she’s suffered from depression on and off in adulthood since college. Then Emily got pregnant and stopped her antidepressant. “It wasn’t contraindicated, but I wanted to be extra cautious.”

Although her pregnancy was labeled geriatric because of her age, Emily reported she felt her healthiest while pregnant, both physically and mentally. She remembers wanting to go with the flow regarding labor and delivery, which was the plan until her daughter decided to come 10 days late. At that point, her doctors scheduled an induction that she felt catapulted her into some postpartum depression and anxiety symptoms. “I remember questioning if I should have had a child. They kept us at the hospital for a few days because my daughter had jaundice. I struggled to breastfeed.”

Emily isn’t the only woman to notice a dramatic shift in mood based on the hormonal changes of postpartum. Because of her history with depression, she felt like she knew more what to look for, even if it took her awhile to seek support. “I didn’t have a therapist or medication provider at the time. That could have made my timeline to getting help look different,” she reflected. Emily noticed depression, anxiety, and being quick to cry as some symptoms that things weren’t right. “I was quick to cry and I’m not a crier.” Amidst balancing being a new mom, she shifted jobs postpartum as well. Unfortunately, her symptoms got worse before they got better.

“My relationship was impacted by my mood.” She realized things weren’t sustainable as they were, even with a schedule change, which resulted in separating from her daughter’s father. “I know now we weren’t compatible.” At the time of the separation, Emily was hard on herself, adding the relationship end to her list of things she didn’t feel she was doing well. Then she got the support she needed to regulate her hormones again.

In the present, Emily holds a lot of compassion for colleagues who are trying to balance work with being a new parent. “All these things that we think we are prepared for, we’re not. Be forgiving of yourself.” She encourages new parents to go with the flow, while also recognizing how hard this is when caring for an infant. Adjusting and embracing parenthood isn’t a perfect science, but Emily wants people to feel hopeful that things will get better. If colleagues find themselves getting stuck in the “shoulds” of parenting or work-life demands, Emily suggests channeling our inner therapists for some added gentleness towards ourselves. “Think of things you would work on with your client. Notice what you would say to them and say those things to yourself.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

The Human in the Helper: You become invisible when you become a widow

Claudia is one of few art therapists in her area, and she’s passionate about helping people paint their process. It’s something that helped her in her own process when her husband died. “The hospice sitters told me when it was okay to sleep, when it was okay to work.” Claudia chose to reduce her private practice caseload in response to her husband’s frequent doctors appointments and the emotional fatigue she was experiencing as the result of his decline. He died at the same time Americans were reeling from 9/11. “It was my own personal 9/11, my own painful loss,” Claudia reflected.

After her husband died, Claudia experienced immense grief. “Grief makes you feel crazy, my thoughts were crazy.” She sat shiva and underwent grief counseling at hospice. Claudia discovered her one and only instance of suicidal thought at this time, before being gently reminded by her doctor that she still had family left. After her own grief counseling, Claudia was asked to lead 4 week art therapy grief groups for others experiencing loss.

In offering a “Painting from the Heart” groups to therapists, Claudia finally felt ready to paint her grief from the loss of her husband. It was powerful, it was visceral, and she finally felt seen by others when they looked at her art. “Then I had enough of drawing the process of grief,” she said. Claudia was missing her family and suggested to her daughter that she’d like to move closer to her. It was then that Claudia closed her private practice to relocate to Denver. A friend supported this decision by sharing her own perspective after the loss of her children. “What are you waiting for?”

Moving to Denver was a process for Claudia, who needed to refer out clients, secure her files, and close the practice to open one in another state. She currently enjoys working with clients who are ready to embrace art therapy or sand tray work to process their feelings. “Painting my process helped me slow down with my clients, to go deeper. The feelings goes from being inside to outside.” Claudia self-discloses with clients when it’s clinically relevant, helping them do their own work when they are ready.

Although Claudia is happy to be closer to her daughter and enjoys her client work, she still finds herself adjusting to a new state. “You become invisible when you become a widow.” She spoke to the shift in dynamics from having friends as a couple to having friends as an individual. Claudia named it’s hard to make friends in a new state, especially at an older age. That doesn’t stop her from being involved in volunteering, community, and choir, which serve as points of connection at this newest stage of her life.

As for colleagues, she has some ideas for fellow professionals going through the loss of a spouse. “Ask for help. Stay on top of finances. Write an ethical will.” Claudia acknowledged the tears that came to her eyes when sharing her ethical will with her family. Unlike a last will and testament, an ethical will speaks to the moral inheritance and qualities passed down to family members. It’s an emotional process of writing out wishes for loved ones and then sharing them out loud with those loved ones. Claudia encourages everyone to engage in this process as part of connection and healing. She also recognizes the importance of utilizing supports for grief work. “Try art. Draw it out or engage an art therapist or sand play therapist.” Going through the loss of her spouse has helped Claudia see her own strengths. “I’m stronger than I ever wanted to be. I can do this. I am doing this.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

The Human in the Helper: It’s easier to prioritize our kids over ourselves

Jenny knows what it’s like to juggle many roles. At one point in the pandemic, she was running a small private practice, a second business of an online community, and working a full time job with a toddler at home. When her second child arrived, she was grateful for family to be present immediately after her son’s birth, an experience she didn’t get with her daughter who was born in September 2020. Jenny brought their son home, and days later noticed a rash developing on his tiny body but thought it was related to the 100 plus degree heat of Houston where they live. At her son’s check up, the doctor had concerns. “She calmly said, ‘you’re going to the emergency room now.’ I felt like I was in the dark as to what was going on but took him right away so they could run tests,” Jenny recalled. Her son was nine days old and remained in the hospital for three days as they waited for test results.

Jenny’s son had a staph infection. Although it was a relief to know the cause and receive treatment, Jenny found herself in self-blame. “Did I cause this to happen? Were there too many people around him at his birth? Should I have done something different?” Jenny isn’t alone in having these thoughts as a woman and mother. “I struggle to accept help. I tend to not rely on others and do things myself.” But as she stayed in the hospital with her son, relying on her spouse and others to keep things going at home was necessary.

A second opportunity to accept help from loved ones came when her son got a second staph infection at two months old while visiting family in Colorado. Jenny found herself telling clients about her son as she needed to cancel and reschedule appointments in order to address his needs. “It’s easier to prioritize our kids needs over our own,” Jenny reflected. She wants to operate from a ‘family comes first’ place but recognizes how that can feel challenging to herself and others when holding the role of primary earner in a household.

Figuring out our own needs as therapists and small business owners is a work in progress. Jenny had to learn how to slow down to meet her own needs. “Our bodies tell us when they’ve been ignored and neglected, and then we don’t have a choice in how to practice self-care.” As a mom, woman, and therapist who keeps others’ needs in mind, Jenny named the experience as “weaponized self-care, how are we supposed to do that?” She spoke to how it felt hypocritical to help clients and colleagues practice self-care when she wasn’t doing it well herself. Now she gives herself more grace and owns it when it happens. “I’m trying to model self-care but it’s not perfect,” she said.

Being a mom of two small children has also influenced her approach to self-care. “Our kids are purely living in the present, they model this for us. It’s also how we can recognize we aren’t taking care of ourselves in that present moment.” Jenny brings this insight into her online community for trauma therapists, who are working on their own journeys of balance and self-care. “We can join kids in the present moment, supporting healing and self-care through meaningful connection.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

The Human in the Helper: I was overwhelmed by how angry I felt

Julia is a mom and therapist who values working from an attachment lens with her clients. Becoming a new parent in the pandemic has also influenced her therapeutic work in ways she didn’t expect. “I was lonely. My husband was renovating our house and I was alone with our baby.” Julia describes feeling isolated and missing her supports due to them not being able to travel in the early stages of COVID-19. The absence of her spouse every day—who was attempting to make a house ready to become their home—and the absence of friends and family sparked anger in Julia. “I was overwhelmed by how angry I felt.” Although she felt loving and present with her son, Julia described significant anger showing up anytime she was apart from him and able to feel her feelings. “Then I felt shame for feeling so angry.”

Julia knew she needed to better understand where the anger was coming from. “Reading the book ‘Burn It Down’ really validated my feelings.” She discovered that many women’s postpartum experiences involve anger or rage in addition to anxiety and depression. That it wasn’t unusual to feel anger followed by shame. Julia knew that part of her feelings of anger was due to missing supports that would normalize her experiences and allow her to vent in healthy ways. “Feeling our anger allows it to move, which allows us to let go of shame.” Julia didn’t have this opportunity in the earliest stages of her parenting.

Since resources were limited in the pandemic, Julia found herself leaning on her lactation consultant, who would mask up and visit the home, reassuring Julia that her experiences were normal. “She was like a therapist, she was an angel.” Julia found things shifting for the better when her family was able to move into the renovated house and she was seeing her husband more regularly again. Then she started being able to interact with friends and family, which also improved her mental health.

Working with adults and fellow parents, Julia reflects on how her postpartum and parenting experiences have expanded her compassion for other parents. “I can see how they are stretched thin trying to parent and work,” she shared. As a therapist who operates from attachment and Internal Family Systems (IFS) lenses, Julia says the grace and compassion she has for other parents has only increased with her own lived experience as a parent who has battled anger and shame. She recognizes that without the validation of others and supports in place, mental health is negatively impacted. “What I learned about anger is why it’s here and how normal it is,” Julia shared.

Now Julia offers a parents of toddlers group where other women speak about their anger. It’s the community and safe space Julia was craving herself in a critical moment of her postpartum journey. “When unresolved anger turns inward, or when it’s not expressed appropriately, it makes us sick.” Julia is determined to create spaces for anger and shame to be expressed so they don’t fester and make people worse. She has noticed how suppressed emotions contribute to mental health conditions and wants things to be different for women and mothers. “My understanding of anger has given me a whole new perspective on mental health,” Julia named. Through IFS parts work, Julia is helping clients better understand their anger so they can process it appropriately. “Anger is here for a reason,” she shared, “we just have to discover why it’s here.”

Things happen to us as humans, even as we support our clients as professional helpers. Do you have a story you want to share the mental health community? Email us at croswaitecounselingpllc@gmail.com to learn more about the Human in the Helper Series!

Why Did I Write a Book about Mother-Daughter Estrangement?

Understanding Ruptured Mother-Daughter Relationships was inspired by my client work in therapy with women of all different backgrounds, but it was also informed by brief estrangement within my family tree, as well as four generations of estrangement in the family I’m married into. It’s a book that looks at a pattern I was seeing in the women I was serving as a therapist, specifically the energy estrangement was taking up in their lives and the possible stages they could experience as the result of a relationship rupture with their mom. I first wrote about the stages I was seeing—named the Estrangement Energy Cycle—in 2020. We were in the thick of the pandemic, and I think I was holding onto something that made sense at a time where nothing in the greater world made sense. I released a blog on the cycle that colleagues responded favorably to, affirming that they were seeing what I was seeing in their therapeutic work as well. That was when I knew I had a future book to write on the subject.

Fast forward to 2022, I’d self-published three books in three years on subjects that felt important to me and relevant to the populations I was serving. I had just become a mother to my own daughter and was on maternity leave when a request to review a book proposal came through, with an open invitation to pitch book ideas to the publisher. So my entrepreneurial brain said, why not? I was eight weeks postpartum when I submitted my book proposal, and my daughter was four months old when I started researching and writing this book. 

It’s not lost on me that I was writing a book about mother-daughter estrangement while fostering healthy attachment with my own infant daughter. Upon learning about my book deal with a publisher, my mom asked me outright if there was anything I needed to tell her. That conversation still makes me chuckle since I know she was just making sure that things between us were okay and it showed she was interested in this topic too. I’d had a couple tumultuous teenage years with my mom that I reflected upon while writing this book, which only strengthened my gratitude for our close relationship in my adult years as I watch her deep and unconditional love for my baby girl as her first grandchild. My mom had been estranged from her dad for a period of time as a young adult when her parents divorced after his infidelity. I know that my grandma’s devastation about the divorce influenced my mom’s decision to stop speaking to him. My grandma was so hurt and angry that I recall her speaking poorly of my grandfather to my sister and I as early as five years old, encouraging us to call him a derogatory nickname in her household as a sign of allegiance to her. This memory shaped a chapter of the book on the ripple effect on families, where family members feel pressured to declare loyalties to one family member or another as the result of the estrangement. 

Fortunately for my mom, she was able to reconcile with her dad and maintained a healthy, loving relationship with him for the remainder of his life, all while setting boundaries with her mom on how she expressed her hurt and distrust in front of us kids. Boundaries in families were again revisited when watching my in-laws pursue estrangement that resulted in four generations not speaking to one another over the course of several years. Observing the walking-on-eggshells dynamic, the justification for broken ties, and the sadness and hurt that resulted from those estrangements informed multiple chapters of this book, including what community members could say or do to support someone who is estranged. 

As for the writing process of this book, I would read and research estrangement during my daughter’s many naps as an infant, and would write for two hours every night after putting her to bed. Oftentimes the writing came easily, although sometimes I spent my evening reworking a chapter or story to address writer’s block and anchor myself in what content was coming next. A silly memory I have of this time was sitting in my closet on the floor, writing away while trying not to wake the baby, all while remaining several feet away in case she fussed or needed me.

My favorite part of this book was capturing stories of women going through the estrangement energy cycle, inspired by clients I’d served as a therapist for the past decade. Recalling my clients’ hard work was a gift, they had inspired this book’s content from the very beginning and writing about their stories felt like the work had come full circle. Not only was this book capturing the beautiful, vulnerable work clients had done for themselves, it would serve as a beacon of hope for other adult daughters exploring estrangement and reconciliation with their mothers.

Having colleagues to survey and beta reader feedback of the first draft helped flushed out the content even more. My mom has been the first reader and editor of all my books, so her feedback felt very symbolic for this book in particular. It even spurred some additional compassionate conversations about my grandma from the lenses of abuse and trauma, that I felt helped my mom heal from rocky relationship moments in their mother-daughter dynamic too. In writing every night, I finished and submitted my manuscript in four months time! Then came the journey of cover design and awaiting the finished product to put out in the world.

As I reflect on this journey today, I’m feeling so grateful for the process and connections this book has brought into my life as an author, therapist, and mother. Hearing from clinicians and adult daughters as readers of this book has been very fulfilling, and I hope it encourages healing for many readers, including the mothers and daughters within my own family tree.

Five Tips for Talking to Kids about Estrangement

“Mom, why don’t you talk to Grandma?”

Being an adult in a family with estranged loved ones feels challenging. Being a child witnessing that dynamic can be even more difficult. What does an adult daughter say to her child who asks why she doesn’t have a grandma? How do the adults in a child’s life explain estrangement? What can be shared when a child comes home with a family tree assignment and asks why they don’t have lots of family members like other kids? 

Over the years, child therapists and grief experts have emphasized the importance of straightforward and truthful answers to children regarding all sorts of difficult topics, including death and suicide. When it comes to the emotionally charged topic of estrangement, the same rules can apply. Let’s look at five tips for speaking to kids about estrangement:

1. Keep it Short and Straightforward

You may have heard of the acronym KISS. In our example, KISS stands for Keep it Short and Straightforward. The length of the explanation is directly related to the child’sage. Meaning a short, simple answer for a young child and a potentially longer, more detailed explanation for a teenager who wants to know what happened. Straightforward is important to emphasize because it captures the importance of being honest in our disclosures as parents. Just as mental health professionals would dissuade a parent from encouraging a child to view death as “the person is just sleeping,” to avoid or lie about a family estrangement could also backfire and have harmful consequences. 

2. Breathe

It’s understandable that your child’s questions about the estrangement can bring up emotions for you. It’s also not uncommon to overshare when feeling anxious or irritated. A great way to keep your emotions in check is to take a breath and ask your child what they want to know about the estrangement. Their answer may surprise you! 

3. Share as Much as They Want to Know

Don’t panic! As we alluded to in the previous tip, kids may have a simple thing they want to know that surprises you. They may have a quick question that doesn’t warrant significant anxiety, like asking where the person lives or if they look like anyone else in the family, or how old they are. Or they may want to know more about the conflict that led up to the estrangement, which would warrant a more detailed response. Even in this instance, taking a moment to pause allows you to remain mindful of what you share, keeping it focused on simple, straightforward details while grounding yourself in your emotions to avoid unintentionally oversharing with your child.

4. Validate their Feelings

It goes without saying that acknowledging your child’s emotions can go a long way in this conversation. How are they feeling with the information you shared? What if they are feeling sad, angry, or confused? Do they feel it’s safe to express these emotions to you?

5. Encourage other questions if they have them now or in the future.

Sometimes kids don’t know what other questions they have until they have some time to process what you’ve already shared. By saying out loud that they are welcome to ask other questions at any time provides a sense of reassurance and safety that it’s okay to come to you with questions, which most parents want their kids to do when navigating difficult topics of all kinds.

What would you add? With one in 12 people being estranged from at least one family member, the likelihood of kids having questions about family estrangement is pretty high. Check out our model of this conversation in our children’s book Penny McGee’s Family Tree: Talking to kids about estrangement. You can do this!

Four Tips to Heal from Estrangement with Your Adult Daughter

As a mother, you never imagine that your adult child is going to stop talking to you. To experience estrangement from your child is unbelievably painful. And for many parents, they report feeling bewildered and confused as to why estrangement came to be. The good news is that folks are sharing that reconciliation is possible. There are authors who have dedicated books and blogs to helping parents navigate this experience and support their desire of coming back together. Although there’s no exact formula that guarantees reconciliation, there are a few things to consider from what we know now from the adult child’s perspective.

First, what are your reasons for wanting reconciliation with your adult child? Getting curious about your responses to the following questions can shed light on your healing journey from estrangement as a parent.

1. Why do you want to reconcile? 

Being honest with yourself is the first step. Do you want to repair the relationship? Do you want to feel heard and validated in your choices? Are you looking to get even? Do you want a relationship with your grandchildren? There are any number of reasons why a parent wants to reconcile, and being prepared with a response for yourself and your estranged adult child should they ask would be an important first step.

2. What are your expectations of the reconciled relationship? 

As humans, it’s not uncommon to hear folks say they want everything to go back to the way it was, or to start over, both of which would be problematic for the estranger/adult child who made this choice reflecting that something wasn’t right. Going backward or to sameness would be a significant issue for them. What do you want the reconciled relationship to look like? Recognize that the relationship could be better or worse, but most likely just different. 

3. What steps will you agree to for reconciliation? 

As you attempt to reengage your adult child, what offerings or compromises can you accept? Are you open to phone calls to start? Are you willing to have a relationship with your daughter-in-law but not speak to your estranged son? Are you pursuing a relationship with your grandchildren, even if it means you aren’t on speaking terms with their mother? Knowing your own boundaries in the reconciliation process will help both you and your adult child navigate the testing phase of reconciliation. 

4. What can you take responsibility for? 

In other words, have you done your own reflection of what happened? Are you prepared to accept your adult child’s accusations and avoid arguing? Can you clearly name the offending actions prior to estrangement being pursued? Are you clear on the priority being repairing the relationship over determining whose memories of events are right? 

Which leads us to the second aspect of healing from estrangement and improving the possibility of reconciliation with your adult child. In serving hundreds of women over the years in therapy, I’ve heard from many of them that they are seeking the three “A”s: Acknowledgment, Apology, and Action. 

Acknowledgement

Adult children are asking for acknowledgement from their parents that things weren’t always perfect in their childhood. What feels tricky for parents is the fear that if they acknowledge they’ve made mistakes, that it means they are a bad parent. Not true! How can you acknowledge you were human? That you would do things differently now? We can’t change the past, but being present with your adult child now can be the start of the healing journey towards reconciliation.

Apology

Are there pieces worth apologizing for? What could your apology sound like? What tone? It’s understandably difficult to feel neutral in the face of your adult child’s charged emotions about your relationship with them. Some adult children will express anger or rage. Parents, in their own hurt, can respond in defensiveness. How can you remain present and authentic in your apology? Does it help you to soften by remembering that your adult child’s expression of emotion shows that they are hurting?

Action

What steps can you take to work on yourself and the relationship with your adult child? Does it mean going to therapy, working with a coach, or engaging a mentor? Is it about initiating family therapy with your adult child if they are ready to engage in that way with you? For so many parents, doing your own work is important to your own healing, regardless of if reconciliation is possible. 

Imagine that both you and your adult child have gaping wounds on your body. You are both raw, hurt, and bleeding. That’s what estrangement feels like. The process to heal an injury like this takes intention action, insight, and time. You can heal yourself and support your adult child’s healing. They deserve to get to know you as the person you are today.

Community Support of Someone Who is Estranged

How do we respond to someone who shares they are estranged from family? Imagine you’re at a work dinner attempting to make polite conversation, so you embark upon the topic of family. Instead of it being a neutral topic as you hoped, you watch the person across from you start to shut down, get angry, or fight tears. Or perhaps you are in the process of getting to know a new dating partner who shares that they are estranged and you don’t know what to ask or say next! Conversations about family can be tough for all parties in an estranged relationship. Let’s explore some common questions and experiences for support persons of adult children who are estranged. 

For Partners 

Recognizing how painful the process of estrangement can be for your loved one, here are some things to consider as the compassionate partner or spouse of a person who has experienced a relationship rupture with their parent. 

1. Know That the Holidays Can Be Heavy
Holidays are challenging for folks for a variety of reasons. This might include family conflict, death, trauma anniversaries, and toxic relationships. If your partner is not currently connected to family but is subjected to movies, advertisements, and events catered to holiday family fun, they can experience additional or elevated grief and loss. 

2. Recognize That the Body Remembers
Trauma events have a way of sticking with us, not just in our memory but at a deeper, cellular level as well. Clients I’ve served weren’t actively recalling these events, but their body remembered and responded by recreating some of the emotions or sensations associated with the trauma. 

3. Acknowledge Cultural Expectations of Family
In addition to holidays being heavy, a cultural expectation of the importance of family can increase your loved one’s feelings of shame or guilt about their estrangement from their mother. Cultures that emphasize family over individuals can bring up self-doubt in your loved one about not trying hard enough to repair the relationship, or can intensify feelings of failure that they weren’t successful in healing the relationship with their mom. It’s important to recognize how every day, normed portrayals of family can be triggering for your loved one in not having that expected dynamic. 

4. Follow Your Partner’s Lead
When walking into a scenario where discussions of family systems or dynamics come up, allow your partner to lead the conversation. Support them in their decision to disclose as much or as little as they need to in order to interact with others in ways that feel safe to them. If they decide to not disclose their estrangement, they have their reasons. If they choose to name their current status as an adult estranged from a parent, that’s their choice too. 

5. Ask, “What Do You Need?”
When your partner or loved one finds themselves triggered by people, places, media portrayals, or memories, there is one powerful question you can ask them as their partner. Couples’ therapists would agree with me when I say this question has saved relationships! Try asking your loved one, “what do you need?” Or ask, “what do you need in this moment?” These questions can be especially helpful because they give your partner permission to advocate for what might help them best.

6. Encourage Chosen Connections
As a partner, it’s not expected that you be the one and only support person to your loved one. It’s not fair to them and it’s not healthy for you. Therefore, it’s recommended that you encourage your partner to develop additional healthy relationships, including some with parental figures if appropriate. By exploring and building their support network alongside them, your loved one will feel they have options without over-relying on any one person, including you. 

For Siblings
A strained relationship between parent and adult child can ripple out to siblings as well. Siblings may feel that they are caught in the middle, wanting to please both parties and maintain connection to both. Or they could feel pushed to choose sides, aligning with one and becoming estranged from the other as a natural consequence. Should you choose to walk the delicate line of maintaining relationships with both your parent and your sibling, here are some ideas to keep your boundaries healthy with both. 

1. Don’t Share What They Share
The urge to report back on what your parent is saying about your sibling is strong. However, this information can be very hurtful to your sibling, who is attempting to achieve a clean break from that relationship. Your disclosures can intentionally or unintentionally keep the trauma cycle alive by giving them a play-by-play of what your parent is saying. The reverse is also true, where you share what your sibling is saying or doing with a parent who is estranged. Not only does this keep the wounds raw for your parent, who is trying to grapple with feelings of abandonment and rejection within their family system; your sibling may feel betrayed by your sharing of information they believed was shared with you in confidence. 

2. Don’t Attack Their Character
When a sibling or parent attempts to vent to you about the estrangement, it’s not uncommon for them to want you as an ally. This is not an invitation to attack the character of the other party. Allow your loved one to vent without taking sides. It is also not your responsibility to defend either side or their choices that resulted in estrangement. 

3. Attempt to Remain Neutral
Recognizing that you may only see one piece of the puzzle in the conflict between parent and sibling, attempt to remain neutral around the details of the estrangement. Even if you were raised alongside your sibling and feel that you witnessed all the same events, trauma cements different memories for different people. Your experience is not their experience. Arguing or defending one perspective as the “true perspective” will result in further distance from your sibling if you aren’t careful. 

4. Reflect Their Emotions
Instead of getting caught up in the details, remain focused on your sibling’s emotions. By reflecting their hurt, anger, or outrage, you keep the focus on them and their needs rather than the details of the conflict. They may disclose a variety of emotions, all of which are valid. Acknowledge without attempting to minimize or negate their emotions. Statements such as “I can see how that hurt you,” or “I hear how painful this is for you,” can indicate that you are listening with compassion. 

5. Don’t Be a Mediator
It’s a delicate balance of empathy and compassion when listening to your sibling speak of the estrangement. You are at risk of triangulation in being connected to both your sibling and your parent, and you will want to avoid being the messenger between both parties. You may find yourself taking on the role of mediator in wanting them to reconcile. The desire to reconcile is yours to own. Avoid allowing hope to push you into the “fix- its” where you attempt to repair the relationship for them. 

6. Have Your Own Support
You are human and the desire to have an intact, healthy family is natural. However, watching your family members go through an estrangement can take its toll on you as well. Consider having your own support outside of your family. This could be a mentor, mental health professional, or friend who can re- main neutral to your circumstance while allowing you to speak of the estrangement’s impact on your life. A counselor or therapist can take this a step further by introducing new coping skills that allow you to understand and adapt to your current situation. 

For Friends and Community Members 

Friends, colleagues, mentors, and community members may also be looking for guidance on how to best support a person in their social sphere who is estranged. Consider the following dos and don’ts. 

DO 

1. Encourage new holiday traditions like Friends-giving in lieu of traditional Thanksgiving. 

2. Remain compassionate to triggers in conversations about family.

3. Respect their choice to be estranged.

4. Follow their lead on whether they want to talk about the
estrangement or not.

5. See them as a whole person, not just estrangement.

6. Listen when they choose to talk about their family.

7. Encourage healthy, supportive relationships with others.

DON’T 

1. Push them to attend family gatherings that would make them feel unsafe.
   

2. Argue with them to reconcile because “they might regret it!”
   

3. Assume the reasons for their estrangement.
   

4. Label them selfish, impulsive, or manipulative for choosing
   estrangement.
   

5. Shame them because “family comes first.”
   

6. Attack the character of their estranged parent, thinking it’s
   helpful.
   

7. Expect them to reconcile when estrangement may be
   permanent.
   

Each estrangement comes from unique and personal circumstances for both adult child and parent. It can’t be emphasized enough how important it is to realize that the decision to be estranged isn’t an easy one to make. As a support person, attempt to set aside your own thoughts or opinions on the matter, in order to be fully present and compassionate for the person who has chosen estrangement in support of their own safety, survival, or mental health. Check your biases at the door and ask what would help them most in this moment. If you stumble and offend them, apologize. You are human first and can make mistakes. Pay attention to their body language and ask for feedback on how you can remain a valued support to them in this difficult process. By being genuinely caring and curious about their experience, you are conveying an important message of connection in an otherwise stigmatized existence of estrangement.