Revisiting estrangement…

Every now and then I feel a little triggered by people who insist that forgiveness is essential. It may very well be for them, but for me it would mean putting myself back in a place that always felt gloomy, like I was participating in something not quite right, something that kept me shrinking instead of supporting me.

It seems easier for people to believe the child is dramatic than to accept that the parent was harmful. Admitting that some parents are unsafe or unkind forces people to look at their own childhoods, their own parents, their own unresolved pain, and most people won’t go there. So they cling to the comforting myth that all mothers love their children, because the alternative is too confronting.

People romanticise parents, especially mothers. There’s a collective denial around motherhood. People can accept that romantic partners can be abusive, bosses can be abusive, friends can be abusive… but mothers? That hits the sacred cow.

So the brain rejects, you’re pushing against an entire cultural mythology, not just one person’s opinion.

People love to say that cutting off a parent is a rash decision, a tantrum, a grudge, or an inability to forgive. But anyone who has actually lived it knows estrangement is usually the last option, not the first. It’s the decision you agonise over, justify for years, second guess, try to repair, try to reframe… until there’s simply no room left to keep hurting.

There’s a particular ache that comes with being estranged, but it’s not anger, not for me. It’s a quiet sadness of realising a parent would rather cling to their pride, their story, or their dysfunction than repair the damage. You stop grieving the relationship itself and instead grieve the idea of what a mother was supposed to be.

And yet, with distance, something unexpected happens. Your body and your life soften. Things calm down, there’s space to breathe. You become more yourself than you ever were inside the chaos.

My trigger today was a friend sending me a reel by a popular wellness influencer, suggesting that we can’t forgive parents because we’re holding onto anger, and that this anger causes illness. There was no malicious intent in forwarding it, but it did get me thinking.

Some people insist that illness or struggle comes from not forgiving. Maybe that’s true for them. But for others, forcing yourself to stay in a relationship that feels unsafe, invalidating, or chronically stressful can take just as much of a toll, sometimes more. Silence isn’t healing if it requires you to betray yourself.

For me, estrangement isn’t a lack of forgiveness.

It’s an act of preservation, choosing peace over loyalty to dysfunction. Finally refusing to keep your body and spirit in a place that keeps wounding you.

And the life I have now, the calmness, the steadiness, the emotional maturity, grew in the space that opened when the cycle finally ended. I didn’t know it at the time, but estrangement was the beginning of healing. There’s no anger in me now, just disappointment. But also gratitude, gratitude that I no longer have to juggle internal conflict.

Because the truth is this, I didn’t cut my mother off over an argument, I cut her off over a pattern.

People who haven’t lived it can’t understand the years long timeline, the repeated hurts, the lies, the emotional abandonment, the manipulation the lack of repair, the accumulating grief.

Estrangement is rarely impulsive. It’s the last door left after every other one closes.

I didn’t walk away from a mother, I walked away from emotional harm.

And any time I doubt myself I look at the life I now live. Peace is the biggest indicator that I made the right choices.