This month, the advice columnist answers a question about walking away, unexpected losses, and making space for sorrow and for healing.
Q: I’m having a really hard time grieving my family. For context I chose to go no contact with my parents 3 years ago. My brothers who I was close to growing up no longer talk to me because they don’t agree or respect my no contact and it’s just been really difficult.
A: Hi there, anonymous friend,
Let’s talk about estrangement and grief.
Estrangement never exists in a vacuum; for those of us who chose to leave, our choice is constantly being reflected back at us in a funhouse mirror of other people’s perspectives, opinions and reactions.
Unfortunately, at the moment, those reflections are often drawn straight from the well of the very estrangement-negative society we currently live in.
In my experience, opinions toward estrangement don’t exist so much on a binary (‘for it’ or ‘against it’) as on a spectrum, like so:
Estrangement negative
Estrangement neutral
Estrangement positive
From an estrangement-negative perspective where reconciliation is the ultimate goal, the way(s) we feel and express ourselves can be too easily turned into cudgels used against us.
Can’t be too happy, or we'll be accused of thoughtlessness, or heartlessness, or ‘throwing it in their faces.’
Can’t be too sad, or we’ll be told we did this to ourselves, and any sorrow we expressed is evidence that we made the wrong choice.
And grief comes with its own sharp edges, wielded by others or turned inwards on ourselves.
After all, an estranged person’s grief — “But what if you regret it when they’re dead and can’t go back?” — is often treated as this sort of ‘ultimate boogeyman’ to threaten and scare the estranged- and potentially-estranged back in line.
(That question — “but what if you regret it?” — of course forgets that every choice made implies another that was not taken; that a person could regret choosing to stay in a relationship as well as choosing to end one.)
Not only that, but these estrangement-negative narratives also rob us of one of the most important ways humans have found to understand, process and express our grief — being in community with one another during hard times.
When we think about grief in terms of grieving a death, we often think of funerals and memorials and wakes … and meal trains, and people coming over to sit with the bereaved or to help them with tasks around the house, and social media feeds full of stories and condolences.
When it comes to estrangement, we don’t have so many widely-accepted ‘scripts’ that teach us how to care for someone who is walking this path — to rejoice with them, to help carry their sorrow, to share in their worries and joys and doubts and discoveries and lingering regrets and newfound certainties.
That means we have to write our own scripts.
I think back to the day before the first anniversary of my own estrangement, nearly six years ago now. That night, grief wasn’t the question at the top of my mind — in the tangled lump of emotions I was only just starting to tease apart, I was searching for celebration.
I decided I was going to treat it like a proper anniversary. I invited friends over to share this moment with me; I went to the grocery store and bought myself some fancy cheese and chocolate ice cream and ingredients for the raspberry pie I was going to bake; I planned out a snazzy outfit and cued up a playlist.
And then, when midnight rolled around, I looked around and I just started laughing:
Look at this place I live! Look at this pie I’ve baked! Look at this life I’ve built!
I had carved out the space for happiness to come in; and it did. And I was. (And I am).
So, what does it mean to carve out the space for grief and for healing?
Do you need a space to tell stories and share memories? Do you need to share this with other people in your life who care about you and your well-being? Do you need some kind of a grounding practice or ritual (secular or religious), to acknowledge what you lost — all that you had to walk away from; all that could not or did not come with you — to stand on the shore of the life you have now?
For some people, grief can also turn outwards toward the rest of the world — to reflect something valuable that was lost, or to fight back against the circumstances that caused that loss (I think about the people who donate to scholarship funds in memory of a beloved teacher; and the people who run marathons to fundraise for cancer research in memory of loved ones who died of that cancer). Is there something you find precious from your family of origin that you would like to carry forward in the world, and remember that there was once something good here, even if that good thing wasn’t enough to account for all the rest of it? Is there something you can do to ease the way for other people who are in situations like you were, working towards a gentler and more just world for them?
On your own terms, in your own time, and with whatever structures speak to you, you can build your own space for grief and for healing.
You will open the door. You will invite them in. And here's what I think will meet you in that space:
Grief, yes, but not grief in the form of a weapon. Or a test. Or an exclusive club with bouncers checking invitations, or a medal you have to earn by some objective measure.
I think, when it answers your invitation, your grief will show up as negative space — the way an artist carves out a design to make a linocut. Something used to be here, or it should have been here, and either way it is not here now.
But a negative space is not a hollow space: It is the reflection and the echo of everything it was and everything it could have been.
You don’t get to decide how all of this came to be. But you do get to decide how to hold it and care for it, how to examine it and sort through it, and how you want to acknowledge it, tend to it, and let it become as much a part of your healing as it is a part of your loss.
Wishing you all the best,
Hila
Hila (any pronouns) is the Advice Columnist for the Together Estranged Newsletter. They have been happily estranged for a number of years, and now live with their chosen family and beloved, silly dog in rural Canada. They have a background in mental health, peer support, writing and journalism. Outside of work, Hila can be found recreating desserts from The Great British Bake Off, running on the beautiful trails near their home, singing show tunes, and learning to knit.
Please Note: The peer to peer Advice Columnist is not a licensed mental health professional; this is not medical advice. If you are in crisis or you think you may have an emergency, please go to your local urgent care center to talk to a professional counselor.
The views and opinions expressed by Advice Columnists are those of the Advice Columnists and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Together Estranged.
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