After The Estrangement, It Fell Into Place

People estrange; then you are stranger.

I know what you’re thinking: Uh oh. This is going to be a whiny, self-serving rant.

Well, that might be true. But it’s going to be a helpful, entertaining whiny, self-and-other-serving rant!

After The Estrangement is my effort to make sense of past trauma and current events, through the lens of estrangement and the dual filters of survivor and therapist.

I love family. It just didn't work out with the one I was born into.

Once, I had three half-sisters, two half-brothers, a huge extended family on one side and a substantial one on the other. As a result of being the youngest, the only one from my then-married parents, and the only cousin who didn’t have a full-sibling watching my back, I was positioned at the bottom of the hill that shit rolls down.

After struggling to set appropriate boundaries with both parents for most of my adult life, I went through long periods of little-to-no-contact with either or both of them.

Then they died, and hell broke loose. Currently, I have little-to-no contact with both half-brothers, four half-sisters (surprise!) most aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews; on both sides. And one frenemy.

Some might say I came from a toxic family while others might favor the theory that the common denominator is me.

Regardless of what combination of both those factors comprise the truth, estrangement has been my catalyst for individuation, whether I like it or not.

It is only after the estrangement that I really knew who I was. It is the prism through which the blinding light of rage can be refracted and looked at in different components, where I can see the effects of trauma and disconnection and how they have affected the way I think about my body to the way I see politics.

Estrangement is a French word that literally means “to make strange.”

And estrangement did make me a stranger, to my family and to myself. It also made me stranger.

And to quote one of my old therapists, “your parents really weren’t around for you at all during your formative years, and what I hear you saying is that in some ways, that’s a good thing.”

The estrangement sieve has made me tougher, stronger, more independent, and more clear about my values.

It also fucking sucks not to have a family.

Besides the one I created, which is great, but…you know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t. But if you got this far, I bet you do.

Here you’ll see both bits and pieces of my story and also the stories behind the stories I am covering as I make the slow, odd transition from mother to crone, from therapist back to journalist. and from stranger at the bottom of Shitroll Hill to the person in the center of a chosen family who is here to lift them up.

So…grief, pathos, drama, healing, opinion, perspective, current events, helpful tips—

and rants.