We want—and expect—family ties to last forever. From infancy forward, we naturally seek lasting bonds that will make us feel safe and loved. Yet, sadly, as people change and move through life, family ties can fray and even break—sometimes permanently. Such fractures are sometimes for the best, especially when abusive dynamics are causing substantial harm. However, when the cause of estrangement is a mystery—when family members feel cut off without cause—ongoing pain and suffering result. Can (or should) family estrangement be healed? Join Dr. Carla Manly and Aimee Palmer, founder of Parents of Estranged Adult Children (PEAC), for a deep look at the causes of estrangement, the grief it creates, and how healing might be possible. This powerful interview discusses a range of topics from healthy boundaries and the effects of social media to the importance of hope and support. Please note that this episode contains sensitive information including the discussion of physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, spiritual abuse, trauma, depression, loss, and grief; listener discretion is advised.

 

Get the help you need:

www.peacinternational.org

https://www.peacinternational.org/resources

https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

 

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy from Fear: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Fear-Carla-Marie-Manly/dp/1641701218

Date Smart: https://www.amazon.com/Date-Smart-Transform-Relationships-Fearlessly/dp/1641704675

Aging Joyfully: https://www.amazon.com/Aging-Joyfully-Optimal-Relationships-Fulfillment/dp/1641701412

The Joy of Imperfect Love: https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Imperfect-Love-Creating-Relationships/dp/1641709057

 

Oracle decks by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1757477615/imperfect-love-reflection-oracle-cards  

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Imperfect-Love-Reflection-Oracle-Cards/dp/B0D1Z5M4YK

 

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

 

Connect with Aimee Palmer:

Website: www.peacinternational.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aimee-j-palmer-12388a4a 

E-mail: [email protected]

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the episode here

 

Navigating The Pain Of Family Estrangement With Expert Aimee Palmer

 

Introduction

We want and expect family ties to last forever. From infancy forward, we naturally seek lasting bonds that will make us feel safe and loved. Yet sadly, as people change and move through life, family ties can fray and even break, sometimes permanently. Such fractures are sometimes for the best, especially when abusive dynamics are causing substantial harm. However, when the cause of estrangement is a mystery when family members feel cut off without cause, ongoing pain and suffering result. Can or should family estrangement be healed? We’ll focus on this real-life question.

“As of last year, my daughter refuses to talk to me and my husband. She’s now 28 and has moved to another state with her boyfriend. She has a little bit of contact with our son but won’t have anything to do with us. We were good parents, and I don’t know what we’ve done wrong. I never thought our family would be divided like this. What can I do if she won’t talk to me?” That question is the focus of the episode. Please note as this episode contains sensitive information, reader discretion is advised. If you need support, please see the special links.

—

I’m joined by a very special guest, Aimee Palmer, who will be sharing her expertise on family estrangement. Aimee is the Founder of Parents of Estranged Adult Children, PEAC. First, Aimee, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

It’s a pleasure. Could you tell us a little bit about what makes you, you, before we launch into the subject matter?

I’m from the Midwest. I am a mother of two adult children. I’ve been married to my husband for many years, and we knew we were getting married by our second date. That’s a fun fact. I have been doing my dream job since I retired from my career in advertising after my daughter was born. I’ve been home, taking care of my family ever since, and I absolutely love it.

I do have to ask, how did you know by your second date that he was the one?

I’m crazy. We both had similar values. We both were looking for the same thing. When he called me to ask me out on our first date, I said, “I’m looking for somebody who wants to get married, have kids, and go to church with me. If you’re not that guy, if that’s not on your radar, there’s no point in us going out.” I think by the time we get to be 29 years old, we know what we are looking for at that point. It’s been a road, but it’s been a wonderful one, and he’s a great husband to me.

 

Creation Of PEAC

It sounds wonderful. I know from your background that it hasn’t always been rainbows and butterflies and cupcakes for you. Could you tell us a little bit about what drew you to create the PEAC Foundation?

Absolutely. I became a member of the club nobody wants to belong to in 2017 when my only daughter, who was eighteen years old and a senior in high school, estranged herself from our entire family, not just my husband and me, but everyone. I was completely devastated. I never saw it coming. I’m normally an upbeat, outgoing person, but I found myself struggling to function. I ruminated on it. That’s all I could think about. I didn’t want to go anywhere because I didn’t want to run into anyone I might know and have to start crying in front of them. I didn’t know what would happen because the emotions are so high in estrangement.

I struggled some days to get out of bed. I thought, “I need help. I need a support group.” I didn’t know many people this had happened to. When I started looking for a support group, there wasn’t one in my area. Back in 2017, there wasn’t a lot online either. Unfortunately, it’s ramped up. There are a lot more resources. It’s good because resources are available, but unfortunately, estrangement is on the rise. I decided to start PEAC as part of a ministry. I felt the Lord calling me to do this. It was not something that I wanted to do. I felt very ill-equipped. I was a hurting parent and wanted to help others along the way.

The rest is history. I started in a very small church here in Wisconsin. At my first meeting, I had seventeen people, which blew me away. I thought if one other person showed up, it would be a success, and then we kept going from there. I have online groups that meet in every time zone in the US. We have lovely facilitators, along with myself, who have helped people every week and month come and be a part of this community because there is strength in numbers.

Every time I hear, “I thought I was the only one,” it spurs me on to keep going because there is so much shame involved in estrangement that people don’t share, and so they don’t know. I applaud you for bringing this topic out and having a discussion about it because we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge. I think it’s important to acknowledge this as an issue in our culture.

 

We can't change what we don't acknowledge. Share on X

 

I am so excited for our conversation because I could already feel tears coming to my eyes when I was listening to your story. My heart was getting tight. It is such an important topic, and one that I can’t even imagine going through, what you were going through, because that separation from a child, when it’s inexplicable, you don’t know what’s happened. There’s no cause, nothing identifiable, and it is extremely traumatic. I would also like to ask one question before we get going. You talk about ministry, for our readers, those who might want to find you and check out your resources. Is it based on a specific religion or faith, or can anyone come to your support groups?

Thank you so much for asking. That is such an important question. Everyone is welcome at PEAC. We would love for everyone to come and join us. I always tell people right off the bat, “I’m a Christian. I’m a follower of Jesus. If that’s something that you find a little bit of an issue with, then this isn’t the group for you, but we have people who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, no faith, Catholics, it doesn’t matter. We’re here because we’re estranged from our adult children, and that’s what we focus on.” I would be remiss in not saying that it has been my faith that has helped me not only survive estrangement but thrive in it.

Absolutely. I think that faith, regardless of someone’s religion or spirituality, faith is something that unites us all. When there are ruptures, it is faith that unites us. These commonalities of knowing I am not the only one, that there are other people I can listen to, who can support me and listen to me, it’s so healing. I think sometimes it is so beautiful that in your situation, faith might be a faith-based platform or faith-based energy that drew you to create it. You’re saying, “Come one, come all, let’s work on healing and bringing light to this growing problem of people walking away from their families,” even if there was nothing toxic happening. Let’s use the word abusive because I think it’s important to set some foundations here first before we get going.

As you know, I’m a clinical psychologist, and I like to use terminology that will help our readers from the get-go understand things like abusive behavior. There are times, and I think you and I might agree on this, when we do want to have strong boundaries with family members. If somebody in the family is abusing someone physically, physical abuse, emotional abuse, where they’re chronically criticizing, demoralizing, making it so that person becomes anxious, depressed, and their self-worth dwindles. If there is spiritual abuse, if somebody is not being accepted because of their faith. We want to look and set the stage for saying there are times when we want to have very strong boundaries with family members so that we can heal, feel safe, and feel loved, and expand as human beings.

Estranging oneself from one’s family without something abusive being in the works because you no longer want to be there, that is, I think, where we see the estrangement as being problematic. When you’re leaving, you’re not trying to create a cure. You’re not trying to create a connection. You’re leaving because you feel like you don’t need your family anymore. They’ve bothered you, and they’re not the ideal family, so you’re going to leave them behind. Things like that. Is that what you find a lot of?

I always say that estrangement is never a good idea unless it’s total estrangement, unless it’s a situation of abuse. What we’re finding is that it is the thing to do in our culture, to estrange from your family for many reasons. Some things might be as simple as different political views. I can say I don’t agree with separating from your family because they don’t vote the same way you do. Maybe that causes you some distress, I can’t say that. I can say in a relationship, it’s never going to be perfect. We have to work together and work through those things together as a family. If you estrange completely, you’re robbing future generations of critical relationships, like with grandparents. It’s a slippery slope, we’ll say.

Thank you for that. I love that you were talking about the political piece because, to me, family, whether it’s biological or family by choice, whatever. It is so important. I talk a lot about this in my most recent book, The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships. True love is about us allowing others to have their perspectives. True love is about us allowing ourselves to evolve and grow, to see others’ perspectives. We don’t need to agree with them.

Certainly, we can have, but we can make space. When we do that, we are not creating this, “I’m right, you’re wrong,” mentality. I’m good, you’re bad. My party’s great, yours is awful. Instead, we can even have healthy discussions around that and say, “Well, tell me why you like this political person or this political measure that’s on the ballot. Tell me why it’s important to you.” To be able to grow the self by listening. Listening does not mean we agree.

We don’t have to agree, but we can build our sense of tolerance for our own beings, but also for other people’s beings. I think that’s something the world has lost, that ability to be tolerant of other people’s religions, their political views, their personal views, their views around gender, and all sorts of things. If we’re able to create more space within the self, then we create more space for other people.

I think you’re absolutely right. I think we’ve lost the ability to agree to disagree somewhere along the line. In my own situation, my daughter and I are completely opposite in a lot of our beliefs and values, but we can still have a loving relationship despite those things. I think we have learned, both her and I, because we are reunited, so reconnected. I think both her and I have learned from each other in different topics, being able to listen because God gave us two ears and one mouth. We should be doing more listening to other people than doing it with our own mouths.

 

God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we should be doing more listening to other people than talking. Share on X

 

I grew up in a family with ten kids. Most often, I think our mouths were pretty much shut because children were seen and not heard, kind of thing. Yet, we had a large number of aunts and uncles. I can tell you the differences. It was very welcoming because everyone was different. There were so many unique ways of being. I have cousins who are artists and some who are helicopter pilots and all sorts of things. You learn that your world gets richer. It gets bigger when you allow yourself to make space for differences and not see them as a threat but as an invitation to other things that are on the horizon.

I grew up Catholic, actually, and in my own family, things were very tight, very controlled. Yet, as I moved out into the world, I realized there’s so much more beyond this black-and-whiteness and so much to be seen and enjoyed. My tolerance grew, and as I became a psychologist, my tolerance and awe of other people’s perspectives also grew. I might not agree with someone, but my awe of their ability to describe their perspective, their interests, why they chose this, and why they are in this political party or demonstration.

We can learn so much if, as you said, and this applies to families, instead of wanting somebody to be like us, we can see them as imperfect, unique beings. Because we are all imperfect, unique beings, we should allow people, as long as they are not being abusive, allow them to be them. Is that the energy in your work that you encourage families to embrace?

Yes, we work primarily with the parents. When I am hosting a group, whether it’s in person or online, we are coming around and supporting and encouraging and offering resources to those parents whose lives are devastated. It’s more about that because so many of them have been cut off and they don’t know why. They’re never even given the opportunity, like you’re saying, to learn more or to have the opportunity to listen and find out what’s going on, because they’re often not given that chance. , at PEAC, we focus on supporting the parents and how to get through a day or a major holiday, your child’s birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, all those things are devastating when you are not in a relationship with your child.

 

Reasons For Estrangement

That makes perfect sense because, as human beings, our brains want things to make sense. We want to understand, we want the puzzle pieces to fit. Particularly as you’re talking about for parents, we all have our visions of what the future is going to look like, celebrating the holidays together, taking a family vacation, meeting over Zoom, whatever it might be. To have that taken from you with no explanation could certainly propel a loving parent into anxiety, depression, or worse. What have you found, Aimee, as some of the key reasons? If parents ever get reasons, what are the key reasons that adult children decide to estrange themselves? We’ve already talked about political differences. What are some of the other reasons?

I like to refer to it as a third party. A third party can look several different ways. A third party, like in my situation, was my daughter’s boyfriend and his family. A third party can be an ex-spouse. It can be parental alienation, where one ex-spouse turns the adult children against the other spouse. It can be a daughter-in-law. It can be a member of our own family. I have someone in my group who is an identical twin, and it is her sister who is the third party and has come in between her and her child. It can also be addiction.

The third party can be addiction. There are lots of different reasons. I want to clarify, too, it can be a completely cut-off, no-contact relationship, or it can be a strained one, where maybe it’s not the relationship you had expected or had at one time. Maybe there’s a phone call on your birthday or something. It’s estranged or it could be a strained relationship. It can be the same thing.

I like how you show us those two differences because the estranged is the full disconnection. The strained is what was once a flowing relationship, a connected relationship, now feels as though there’s this inexplicable disconnect, one that you can’t find out what the issue is. What do you encourage? What are some of the key tools that you offer to these parents?

I want to jump back a little, if you don’t mind. The other part that I didn’t talk about is social media. I think social media is playing a very big piece in estrangement. I think there are lots of people making money on TikTok and YouTube encouraging adult children to estrange from their family. They will give them the step-by-step instructions on how to do it for $29.99. I think that culture and social media are also playing a part in estrangement. It’s kind of the thing to do.

Let’s pause. Sorry. That was too big of a piece for me to let go.

Sorry.

No, please. It makes me angry to hear that because family is so precious. Family is so precious to my mom and dad. Family was everything. Family is so precious to have anyone out there making money off of creating heartache, which is abysmal. It is unconscionable, and because I believe firmly, truly that again, I talk about it in The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships and in all my books. Home is where we start from.

Home is where we get our roots in a very chaotic world. Home, whether it’s a husband and wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or ten kids, might not ever be perfect. We do want to do our best to create a safe environment with our family members so that we are that force against the topsy-turvy world. We are that force, no matter how big the family is, whether it’s a family of one or ten. When we look at how important that is for our well-being, our mental health, our physical health, to have that family structure, to know that even if we’re not under the same roof, we can reach out to mom and say, “Mom, I’m having a hard day. Can I have a virtual hug?”

Reach out to grandma or reach out to your son, saying, “Hey, babe, how you doing? I’m missing you like crazy.” All those things are so important, not for our mental health, but for our emotional and physical health. Because as animals, we do far better when we feel safe, loved, secure, and seen. When we invest in it, family is our most enduring source of the connection that keeps our well-being in top form. To hear you say that there are people on social media, well, I don’t have anything to say about that because it is unkind. When you are dismantling family systems, when there is no abuse present, you are doing harm.

As you said, not to this generation, that harm is substantial enough, but then you are robbing parents of seeing their grandchildren. You are robbing nieces and nephews. You are robbing those grandchildren of growing up around an adoring grandma or grandpa. I never knew my grandparents, but I imagine it would be wonderful to have someone doting on you like that, loving you up.

It does make me both sad and angry to hear that, and part of me wants to say, “I’m going to go check them out on TikTok.” The other part of me is saying, “No, I’m not. I’m not going to give them one view.” Thank you for letting me know about that and any other forms of social media where that’s happening. We can advise our readers to maybe stay clear of that. It sounds very destructive.

There are always two sides. If you get on Reddit and you’re on a thread about how to strengthen your parents, there are always two sides to everything. I think our family makes us who we are, both genetically and in terms of nurture versus nature, in your home and what your parents teach you, how to cook and how to live your life, it all makes us who we are. Extended family is a huge piece of that, whether it’s grandparents, as you said, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts. It’s all part of it. That’s why it’s so important to try to preserve that for you and for generations down the line, if again abuse aside.

 

Our family makes us who we are. Share on X

 

I 100% agree with you because I think my family growing up was far from perfect, far from it. I certainly knew that my dad and mom would never have cut one of us off. No matter what happened, they believed in family and didn’t know how to love the way we understand or I understand love. For their generation, they did try, and they gave us a good education and all the material things we required to survive and even thrive.

We want to, before we step back from any parent, be able to at least try to have conversations and say to someone, “I am taking a time out.” I’m a big believer in this. There are times in life where we do have to have boundaries in family relationships that are strong and uncomfortable. Ideally, again, unless somebody’s being abusive, we want to be able to say, “I need a time out. I’m going to take a 30-day time out because I’ve been trying to talk to you about not criticizing me, and you keep criticizing me, and I end up feeling hurt and unloved by it. I’m going to take 30 days to have a time out, and then in 30 days, I’d like to talk with you about maybe we can do family counseling together where we can learn to have different dynamics between us.” I think things like that can be helpful in giving people breathing space and a chance to recalibrate.

I have a hard time with, as you were saying, the trend to basically divorce a family without saying what’s wrong or giving it a chance to heal. It says a lot about a parent. If they’re hurting from the estrangement, there are some parents who are estranged and they don’t care because they never invested a lot in the family to begin with. I’m not talking about those parents because we can understand why there’s a division.

Nobody was investing or the parent wasn’t investing. When there’s a parent who’s truly showing, “I care about you. I want to be part of your life. Tell me what I can do if I’ve erred in some way. Let me correct it.” When that is occurring, and it sounds like you’re getting a lot of people like that, it doesn’t make sense for an adult child not to try to reach toward them and see if connection, slow but sure, is possible. What do you think about that?

The vast majority of the parents that come to PEAC are absolutely devastated by this. It was not their choice in the matter. As I said, it’s often contributed to a third party. We see a ton of daughter-in-laws who are severing the relationship. I think the sons are trying to be good husbands or good boyfriends, and vice versa. It happens the other way around, too. It’s so tragic because we are robbing people of these relationships. You’re absolutely right.

There is no such thing as perfect parents or a perfect family. It doesn’t exist. When this happens to you from a parent, and you talked about this before, your brain tries to make sense of it, so you ruminate on it all the time. You can’t think of anything else because our brains are trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense because we were designed to be in our families. We were.

We are, and I love talking about, the Harlow monkey studies from the 50s, where these poor rhesus monkeys were given, some were caged up and given nothing, some were given the choice of a wire mother with food and a cloth mother with no food. They so much wanted the warmth of the cloth mother that they would leave the food to cling. All of the monkeys, but particularly those in isolation, and those given the wire mother, did not function well. Their mental health had very aberrant behavior. We learned from that the importance of healthy attachment in our relationships. It’s one of the reasons I embrace attachment theory, as it is so well-researched.

We can see that when you have a parent reaching toward a child, and it’s interesting, taking a loop back to what you said about it often being a daughter-in-law, not to say that all daughter-in-laws are bad. There are amazing daughters-in-law out there, but it actually mirrors what I’ve seen in my practice, that it’s often a mother and father coming and saying, “Things were great, but when so-and-so got married, his wife won’t let us see the grandchild. His wife won’t let us see the two grandkids,” whatever it might be.

I agree with you. It’s often that the wife, for her own issue, whatever her own issues are, whether it’s an attachment issue, unresolved trauma from childhood, or whatever’s happening, becomes extremely possessive and does not let the mom and dad. It’s, of course, not the same in every estranged family, but I agree with you, it is more and more a common issue.

It is, and you’re absolutely right, it is not every daughter-in-law, and it can be a son-in-law. In my case, it was a boyfriend. It can happen at any stage too. That’s the other thing. It doesn’t always have to be as soon as they get married. All of a sudden, they’ve been married and you think everything is fine. Maybe the first child has come, you’ve had a relationship, you used to babysit, and then all of a sudden, the relationship is severed, or it gradually diminishes where you’re not allowed to see your grandchildren anymore, although you babysat for them for years. I don’t know. I go back to social media again, and our culture, and the thing to do, it’s kind of the buzz.

We want to be careful of the trends we embrace because there are certain trends, like maybe Barbie pink being in and then black being in, or whatever, that don’t do much harm except to the environment and our pocketbooks. When we follow a trend where we are breaking other people’s hearts, where we are affecting their mental health, we want to pause, and this goes to the concept of imperfect love.

The reason I love that phrase is I take it as a right and a responsibility that we all are imperfect, but imperfect doesn’t mean it’s an excuse. Imperfect means we look to our past. Imperfect love, we look to our past, see what our parents did that was great, if anything, and embrace it and carry it forward. Maybe there were holiday traditions, maybe they gave us cuddles, whatever it is. The things our parents didn’t do well, no shame, no blame, that doesn’t get us anywhere, but to look at it and say, “I’m learning a lesson from this. I don’t want to carry that forward.”

As we continue to work on the self and embrace more of what is healthy and makes us feel good and makes other people feel good, and let go of that which isn’t healthy, the more we evolve as mindful, healthy human beings. That rarely happens when someone is cut off, again, and I keep saying this, unless abuse is involved. If there is some sort of abuse, then you actually can’t grow when abuse is present.

However, if there’s something that a parent has done to offend you, or a child has done to offend you, cutting the tie without trying to work it, and I know we’ve talked about this again, but it’s worth emphasizing, is always important for self-growth and relationship growth to be able to have those conversations so that people understand your perspective. They understand what’s happening for you, even if it means you need a little bit of a timeout for a limited amount of time to recalibrate, and then try again if that feels possible.

You had asked me before to talk about some resources, and I think when you’re saying taking a pause and then maybe getting some counseling, where you two are working together, meaning both the parents and the adult child, working together with a mediator who is neutral, that can help people communicate better. Communication is a big piece. Sometimes, we have difficulty, and we need someone to say, “So, what I hear you saying is” and do that to help facilitate these conversations.

I also think that another key resource is being in a supportive environment where you can feel safe and share what’s happened in your life. So much of estrangement, part of what we suffer from, is silence. We don’t want people to know because of the shame. People are going to judge you and think, “What kind of parent are you that your own child doesn’t want to have anything to do with you?” We keep quiet about it. Being in a supportive environment, like a support group, whether it’s online or in person, is key.

Reading, there are so many great books out there. Dr. Joshua Coleman and Dr. Sharon McGregor have written some excellent ones. There are lots of resources that can help. I think one of the key things for people who are suffering through estrangement is to know that they’re not alone, and reading these books and tapping into these resources is key. There are so many podcasts, too, which is wonderful. Back in 2017, there was none of this going on. I think having some of that support would have been great initially.

Absolutely, because support groups, and I’m a big proponent of them, not only are they often either free or far less expensive than individual therapy, there is so much good in sharing heartache, that if you can’t affect a change in the relationship, with the person you’re estranged from, you can at least connect with people, get it, who won’t shame you or blame you, where they too are saying, “I have no idea what happened. I was a good parent, or as good as I could be, and my child stopped talking to me. I feel so alone, broken, and forlorn.”

I appreciate you talking about the power of the support groups, not that individual therapy, or if you’re able to get the child into a family therapy environment, where there is a wise third party, a mediator, because often, and I want to bring up something you said, we chatted briefly before we started. I want to highlight a piece that you said. That’s almost a cautionary tale for not only estranged people but also for therapists to realize you are saying that sometimes you believe that therapists are encouraging individuals to take a step back from their parents without having some conversations about why that might be necessary. They’re saying, “Leave them high and dry.”

I have heard from some of my parents, who are actually therapists themselves, that their coworkers are telling their clients to estrange. To my knowledge, they are shocked by this because there is no training that would recommend that. It’s something that wasn’t covered in their education. They’re reaching out to groups like mine for help, not only for themselves but also for their clients. It’s a problem that therapists sometimes recommend estrangement and diagnose clients’ parents as narcissists or whatever without ever meeting them or having a conversation.

It happens time and time again. I want to say there are a lot of great therapists out there. Not everyone is doing this. I’m making a general statement, but there are a lot of great therapists out there. There are always two sides, and you can’t make a diagnosis on someone, in my opinion, without actually meeting them and discussing it with them. You’re the doctor, not me.

We can see from what a client is telling us some signs of what their personality might be like, but a solid clinician does not diagnose people, A, that they’ve never met or have been asked to diagnose because people, if I meet someone at a party, they might ask, “Are you diagnosing me?” No, I’m having a conversation with you. You didn’t hire me to diagnose you, so no, I’m not diagnosing you. It would be like a heart surgeon going around saying, “Can I listen to your heart and see if you have some blockage there?” No, we stay in our lane.

For a psychotherapist to say, “You need to estrange from this parent because I’ve never met them and they live across the country, but they are a narcissist or they have a Borderline Personality Disorder, this or that,” The client may have suppositions, but the therapist will always want to steer clear of giving a formal DSM diagnosis because that’s not appropriate.

I believe that, before, again, absent abuse, there are many things, and there’s no, I’m not offering excuses here. I’m saying all parents have behaviors that are not perfect. Why? It’s because we’re imperfect human beings and we learn as we go. Nobody gives us a course in it, and as much as that would be helpful. If, as an adult, you are seeing things in your connection to a child or a parent that give you pause, reach out for family therapy. Have one, two, or three sessions so that you can hear each other’s perspectives, even if you don’t agree with them.

I love this story because it’s so interesting how child and parent perspectives can differ. This child and the parent were talking, and the child was saying, “Do you remember when you drove us six hours every Saturday to visit grandma and how excruciating the drive was?” The mom said, “Honey, grandma lived about ten minutes away and we went once every other week.”

It doesn’t mean that the child’s perspective is wrong. It means that depending upon where you’re sitting in the room or in the car, things will feel very different in this case. To each person, time and experiences are based on where we’re actually physically, emotionally, and mentally at the time. In many cases, a child’s or even the parent’s perspective is very different.

That’s one of the beauties of being able to do it. I love doing limited family therapy and couples therapy. Why? Because you have a chance to help people see that even if their perspectives are very different from each other, you’re getting a window as that person’s talking to you. If you can put aside your, let your defense mechanisms go down and put aside your personal perspective. You’re getting a window into how that person perceived an encounter, situation, or an entire life stage.

That’s where listening and the power of therapy create this healing. It’s so important because to cut someone off because you saw it on TikTok or a therapist said that’s the way to do it doesn’t sound like it allows for anyone to grow. It sounds like it allows people to cut off and shut down, which is never positive for our mental health.

Sometimes, they’re cutting off from their family not because they want to, but because they’re being forced to by a third party. That happens quite often. A controlling situation can be, in my daughter’s case, that’s what it was. My daughter didn’t necessarily want to cut off her family, but she was in a relationship where he wanted that to happen. Sometimes that is the case. Sadly, people live in those situations, and I would call it abusive.

Abuse doesn’t always have to mean that you have bruises on your face. It can look different ways. It can be financial, or it can mean you’re required to sever the relationship with your family, and I think that is abusive, especially when we’ve had panels with estranged adult children at our meetings. I want to stress this too: very often, even though the child chooses to have a strained relationship or cut ties, they still love their parents, which is something that surprised me initially, but they do. They love their parents. They might be in a situation where the relationship isn’t possible at this moment.

 

Abuse doesn’t always mean having bruises on your face. It can look in different ways. Share on X

 

Maybe it’s because of a boyfriend, a daughter-in-law, or their dad not allowing them to have a relationship with their mom, those kinds of things. I want to stress that adult children generally love their parents, which I have found when we’ve had panels with the adult children. As parents, we sometimes question and say, “I was a good parent. I don’t understand. They don’t love me.” I think they do. I do. If you’re an estranged parent, your child loves you. They do.

I would agree that the bond between mom and child, dad and child, is so strong. In my work with adults who are suffering distance from a parent, whether they are estranged or the person has passed on and healing wasn’t possible, they mourn and yearn for that connection. This is particularly true if the parent was a good enough parent and if the parent was accessible and there. That’s why I believe in trying to come together through some form of therapy. As you say, one of the signs of an abusive relationship is a person who starts alienating you from loved ones.

It may initially feel for some people like love. It feels like love. It’s like, “They want me all to themselves. This is so lovely. We’re in our little love nest. I’m so loved.” You realize that they’re cutting you off from your mom or your sister or your dad, then it’s your friends and your coworkers. It is definitely abuse because you are taking away someone’s personal autonomy.

To take away family, again, I go back to it being foundational, even if you live on opposite sides of the earth, you can feel connected to that parent because they’ve known you all your life. They know you through and through. To have somebody take that connection away, whether intentional or not, I don’t see how it could be unintentional because trying to get somebody away from their own family, I’ve never seen it be anything but intentional because it is manipulative.

They do it subtly. It’s very subtle.

That’s the nature of manipulation, isn’t it? It’s very subtle. Before you know it, you’re stuck in it, and you too feel ashamed because how did you get there? How could you have possibly chosen a partner who wouldn’t look out for your best interests? Shame can be on both sides, on the child’s side like, “How did I do this,” or, “How did I let this happen?” On the adult’s side, who is saying, “I’m so ashamed because all of the other families out there?” It’s social media comparison, “All of the other families out there are so happy. I’m seeing all these pictures of the moms and the dads and the weddings and the grandkids and this and that, and I alone am broken.” The truth is there are a mounting number of people who are estranged from their kids.

They’re estimating. A study shows that one in four families is affected by this. We’re starting to see the storylines and people talking about it in mainstream media. There have been articles written in the New Yorker. Dr. Phil had a show on estrangement on entertainment television. He’s out there to get ratings, but the fact that he’s having a conversation about it is encouraging because I think the more we can get out there that people hear estrangement, the more they might think, “I thought I was the only one.” It will start a healing process and maybe correct a way that we’ve taken as a society that’s not right for anybody, especially grandchildren who are robbed of that relationship with grandparents. It is heartbreaking.

I have one person who’s been a part of my group, whose grandson came up to her and said, “Nana, why did you quit me?” because she’s not allowed to see them. She had a close relationship with both of her grandsons. It’s heartbreaking, and these young children, or even older children, are caught in the middle because they love grandma and grandpa. Yet, their parents sometimes are not allowing them to have that relationship. It’s heartbreaking for everybody involved.

Absolutely. A piece with the grandkids too is that I’m a firm believer in passing on tradition. Grandparents are often the keepers of family traditions and the ones who have the extra time to create the special this and the special that, and to pass down all of these things that keep us linked to parts of our history and prior generations. These traditions are so important because they give us a sense of meaning in life, a sense of where we came from, and also who we want to be moving forward.

 

Reconnection And Hope

As a firm believer in the power of love, I believe that for the parents out there who are estranged, if you get support, hold steady, and reach out with an olive branch, a card now and again, staying steady, there will be a day, we hope, where that child will be in the right place to accept it. Of course, honoring their boundaries as well.

Also, for the adult children out there who are reading, if there is a place in your heart for reaching out to your estranged parent to offer them an olive branch, a baby step toward connection, remember that life is too short and far too precious to let unspoken things or even spoken things get in the way of creating healthy, stronger connections. Because, in the end, no matter how many material things we have in the world, it’s love that keeps us going.

You are so right. You are absolutely right. It’s imperfect love. There’s no perfect thing out there, perfect family, perfect mom, perfect child, it’s not. The very first family was imperfect and dysfunctional. One brother killed another brother, so it’s been going on for thousands of years. I think if we can find grace in our hearts, for both children and parents, to find grace in our hearts.

I will tell you that when my daughter reached out to us, we never looked back. We moved forward. If you are going to try and reconnect, either as an adult child or as a parent, you have to move forward. We have had a few discussions along the way. It’s been two years since we’ve been reconnected. The most recent one, that’s another little side note. If you were estranged once, the chances are high that you might become estranged again. My daughter did it twice, and the same young man was involved.

We never asked why. We loved on her and brought her into our arms because she allowed us to, and moved forward. You can’t look back. You have to keep looking forward. When you talked about getting to the place where either one extends an olive branch, I think we all, as parents involved in PEAC, try to get to that place where we live in acceptance of our situation the way it is because sometimes there’s not a lot we can do, because it’s not our choice. We never give up hope that we will be reconnected with our child and find that sweet spot. It’s not easy. It is a marathon, not a sprint.

Ultimately, the only thing you can change is yourself and how you feel about something or how you react to something. Working on yourself and ministering to yourself in a way, by resources, reading, knowing you’re not alone, and joining a support group. Although social media might tell you otherwise, it’s important. It’s important to be with others and get that resource to support you through this and hopefully move you toward reconnection. As you said, family is so important. We need to be together.

It is, and for the parents and kids, if you’re grieving, remember that this type of loss can often propel us into grief. Realize that the grieving process involves not losing that child, that adult child, and the grandkids, if there are any, but also losing all those hopes and dreams you had for the future. Realizing that grieving is a normal and natural part of the process doesn’t mean you give up hope. Unlike a physical death, there’s always hope as long as you know the individuals are on the planet. Please realize that what you are moving through is grief, which gets better over time but never goes away. Especially if the child is alive, you are always hoping for them to come back. As you say, Aimee, get the support that you need.

Don’t be afraid to reach out and realize that love for yourself and the people in your life and your friends, can be sources, not replacements, but sources of nurturing and joy. When you’re ready to infuse yourself with joy, there are other ways to find joy. But certainly, the loss of an adult child to estrangement is heart-wrenching. I also wanted to add one more piece about imperfection because so many people are looking toward a parent, saying they didn’t listen well to me, or they messed me up, or this is why I’m estranged. The truth is, again, emphasizing imperfect love doesn’t mean we accept abusive behaviors but it does mean we make space to realize that all of our actions in life are generally not neutral.

They’re either reaching towards or pushing away. I talk about that a lot in my book, The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships. That’s where our choices and with families, with friends, we can choose to reach toward people. That’s where connection is. That’s where love is. That’s where the feel-good is. That’s where joy is.

If we are pushing away a person who’s not abusive but may be imperfect, we want to look at, can we reach toward them? Can we make that relationship a priority enough to try to mend it? We live in a very quick-fix world and cutting off people, throwing away people, disposing of people, disposing of relationships, it’s, in some ways, an epidemic. When we come back to it, our relationships, our love, are our most valuable assets. They are our most valuable asset, so pause before disconnecting from someone when there’s some form of hope for reconnection.

I couldn’t agree more, and you talked about joy. We have something that we talk about regularly at PEAC meetings. It’s choosing joy. Every day, you have a choice. You can choose to be sad and depressed and not get out of bed. You can choose, and I’m not saying it’s easy, or you can choose something else that takes the same energy. We often say, “Choose joy today.”

We all have something to be grateful for. Having an attitude of gratitude can help. Maybe you don’t have a relationship with your child, but you have a home. You have food in your refrigerator. You have a cat. You have a job. Everybody has something to be grateful for. If you focus on what you do have rather than what you don’t, I think it makes for a better life.

It does. Research shows us gratitude matters. It doesn’t mean it takes the grief away, but it makes it easier to bear. Thank you, Aimee, for joining us. It has been such a pleasure and a delight. Where can our readers find you?

You can always Google PEAC and estrangement, and it will pop up. Somehow I got embedded. I don’t try, but it happens. It pops up, or you can go onto our website, which is PEACInternational.org. Feel free to head to my website. There is a resource tab that will list lots of different options for you to get help. There’s also a tab that has Find a Group. If you want to join a support group, you can go there. My email address is on there, so you can use the direct link. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. We’re happy to help here at PEAC.

Thank you so much. That’s PEAC, Parents of Estranged Adult Children. Aimee, again, I’m so grateful to you for your wisdom and your energy. Readers, thank you for joining us in this episode of Imperfect Love.

 

 Important Links:

• www.PEACInternational.org
• https://www.PEACInternational.org/resources
• https://www.NAMI.org/support-education/nami-helpline/
• The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships
• https://www.DrCarlaManly.com
• https://www.Instagram.com/drcarlamanly/
• https://www.Twitter.com/drcarlamanly/
• https://www.Facebook.com/drcarlamanly
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/
• https://www.YouTube.com/@dr.carlamariemanly8543
• https://www.TikTok.com/@dr_carla_manly

 

About Aimee Palmer

Aimee J. Palmer grew up in a small town in the Midwest with lots of extended family. She holds a BA in Communications and after enjoying a successful career in advertising, she retired to her “dream job” as a stay-at-home mom. Aimee has been married to Jim for 27 years and is the mother of two children. In 2017, after her then 18-year-old daughter estranged from her and the entire family, Aimee felt called to start a ministry that offered support to other parents, who also had been abandoned by their adult children. With the help of many people including her husband, PEAC (pronounced PEACE) Parents of Estranged Adult Children, a non-profit organization was born. Currently PEAC ministers to over 2,500 estranged parents by offering information, community, and support through their in-person and online support groups and private Facebook page. Although Aimee has been reunited with her daughter, she continues to support, speak out and educate about this often silent epidemic.