The holidays are approaching, and if you’re like me, that can bring up a lot of tension. Our culture expects family togetherness, warmth, and celebration—but what happens when family isn’t safe, healthy, or even present in your life?
I’ve been feeling unsure about how to talk about estrangement given our world is full of so much fear and uncertainty right now. It kind of reminds me of the 2020 pandemic and not knowing if it was appropriate to talk about narcissism and family estrangement when there were people unable to visit dying relatives in the hospital. I didn’t want to be seen as insensitive or uncaring, but I wanted to talk about my experience because surviving a global pandemic as a freshly estranged person was heavy.
Because I’ve shared much of my personal healing journey from familial narcissistic abuse and estrangement, and it doesn’t feel authentic if I don’t share this update too. I broke no contact in 2024 and again in 2025, but there has been no change in my relationship with my family of origin.
I wanted to share some of what I’m feeling, the raw emotions, the raw experiences. And it feels a little odd to me to share this because I’ve realized I don’t often share the parts of my story that I don’t know how to tie up with a pretty bow. There is no ending or moral of the story here, it just ends….
If you’re new here or if you don’t remember the details of my healing journey’s origins, just to catch you up to speed, in early 2019, a painful experience with my sister and mother made it impossible to continue a relationship. My trauma therapist identified me as the blacksheep scapegoat in a dysfunctional family with traits of narcissistic and borderline personality disorders, alcoholism, enmeshment, triangulation, parentification, and emotional immaturity. By the end of 2019, after countless conversations that led nowhere, I realized I needed distance to protect myself and heal.
It’s almost impossible to heal burns on your fingers if you keep touching the hot stove, so I took some space. And when I was trying to heal, it came out that my parents and siblings had moved on and were spreading lies about my health and wellness, my marriage, really anything they could do to try and save face and explain why I wasn’t around. The contrast between their narratives and my lived experience was a painful reminder of why I created space.
Fast forward to Christmas 2023:I am holding my three month old newborn. Two weeks prior I had had surgery to remove one ovary entirely and cysts from the other ovary. These cysts were something that were discovered during my pregnancy and the doctors were alarmed to put it mildly.
I spent the first half of my pregnancy with my arms paralyzed from morning sickness whiplash. As soon as my arm movement started coming back thanks to daily exercise, working with a chiropractor three times a week, and Joe Dispenza-inspired mediations, I found out I may have cancer and the doctors were concerned if I moved the wrong way the cysts could twist and I would need emergency surgery. In short there was a significant amount of risk to me and my baby. Suddenly I went from wondering how many kids I wanted to have to wondering how much time left I had on Earth.
That same week the cysts were discovered, I also had been told I would likely be laid off either right before I went on maternity leave or shortly after I returned, oh, and it was my birthday. So to get to this moment on Christmas where I’m holding my baby and I’ve known for about a week that the cysts were benign, to say I’m incredibly emotional is putting it gently. I can’t tell you how relieved I felt that this is not going to be my one and only Christmas with my daughter.
And it just so happens a box arrived at the door. It was from my mom. She had heard through the grapevine I had a baby and wrote a letter and sent a blanket she had used for me when I was a baby. The gesture was sweet to me at first, and unlike other people who have gone no contact, I tend to read and open everything that is sent to me. Because most of the time it’s a great reminder of why I became estranged in the first place.
For starters, I’ve moved twice since I went no contact. How my parents have my address, I’m assuming they use my Dad’s private investigator software. But the fact that they track me and contact me has always felt like a power trip move to me. So I don’t respond to these letters but like I said, they often remind me why I felt the need to get this kind of space. But since I went no contact my mom has never tried to contact me. Until December 2023.
In her letter, my mom wrote something that caught my attention: she said she wanted to end our estrangement. At first I didn’t think anything of it. But then, as the overthinker I am, I couldn’t stop thinking about that specific phrase she wrote. Was she saying that she had estranged herself from me?
It was the first time I ever considered the perspective that I wasn’t the one who went no contact, and that my mom was the one who chose to estrange herself from me.
As an astrologer, I know that making decisions in the dead of winter is not recommended. And as my therapist wisely told me: Wait before you share something you learned about healing with your parents and siblings until you are absolutely certain it needs to be said. This was in relation to me discovering what sibling triangulation was all about. I wanted to tell my sister immediately that our inability to get along was planned, a setup, but my therapist was right that I needed to wait to be certain it was worth sharing.
I’ve never had that conversation with my sister. I know she’s the Golden Child. And given that all of this happened when we were in our late 20s, and she had been married for ~7 years when she tried to claim my husband, my newlywed husband, was abusive, without any evidence and just a few weeks after standing next to me as my matron of honor? I honestly don’t think she would care.
But I digress, I waited until July 2024. It was Leo season and I remember working on an astrology update for the Leo New Moon and I kept getting this message to be brave. Be bold. To take a risk because the fiery powers of Leo embolden us to feel confident in a way that I don’t necessarily feel year-round. But I felt the timing was right, I thought about how I felt and what I wanted to get out of the conversation: clarity. So I asked the question that most people want to know when a relationship ends: What happened? Where did the love go? Why was I not worth fighting for? Changing for?
I surprisingly got an answer. Not necessarily the answer I wanted, but I had done enough research on my healing journey and as a coach to know that it was an honest answer. I knew I had pressed on my mom’s biggest wounds and she had shut down. And when you have experienced the amount of trauma and betrayal like my mom has, I think she regressed back to being a 2-year-old, maybe even younger, which speaks volumes by the way how early she was betrayed by her parents. Because the age we often regress to often reveals a lot about our earliest trauma experiences.
My mom’s response to my initial message about the trauma and boundary violations I experienced was no response because she was stuck in a place of shame, in a place where the version of her making decisions was 2 years old. A two-year-old can’t handle big messy conversations where it’s required to take accountability for your actions and decisions. She remained quiet until she learned I had a baby and that’s when her mind allowed her to stop demonizing me. Because people with personality disorders can’t think in gray; they can only think in white and black.
While she said the word ‘sorry’ it was surrounded by a lot of excuses and “but you made me…” sentiments. She even wrote that being a mom is the most important part of her life. A strange thing to write to your daughter whom you chose to walk away for 6+ years instead of having the hard conversations and doing the work to keep your child in your life.
Something has changed in me since having my daughter though.
I didn’t want to feel like I was running from these hard conversations and hiding behind the rules of no contact. But unlike others who go no contact and can never look back, I struggle because I loved these people. I loved my mom, I loved my dad, I loved my brother. I have always struggled to have healthy relationships with my sisters but I still want the best for them. I don’t want them to suffer, I want their kids to do well and feel loved.
So in Leo Season in 2025 I communicated with my mom again. This time she initiated contact to let me know my childhood home would be on the market soon. I have not been to my home state in almost a decade. I have not lived there in more than a decade, and while I always imagined showing my husband and kids where I grew up, it’s not going to happen for me this lifetime I guess.
When my mom asked if I wanted to reconcile in between asking me where my “stuff” should go, I answered honestly. As a mom myself I would want to know the truth of how my daughter felt. But also as a person on a healing journey, I just don’t want to hide. I don’t want to try to protect myself by pretending I don’t care because I do. I can’t pretend like my heart doesn’t hurt because it does. Does it hurt all day everyday? No. Does it hurt the same way it did back in 2019 when this all started? No, not at all. It’s a quiet grief. But it affects me. It has changed who I am.
And in honoring and accepting who I am I have to also honor and accept that I am a total softie. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. I love big. I cry easily. I am very sensitive. And I don’t want this estrangement experience to harden me. I don’t want to act like it doesn’t bother me or it doesn’t hurt because it does.
And while some people in the healing community may judge me for it, I’m hoping others will relate to my story and know that you’re not alone.
If you are navigating estrangement, especially during the holidays, I want you to know: you are not alone. It’s okay to feel grief, love, anger, confusion, or even longing. You can honor your truth without pretending the pain doesn’t exist. And you can love yourself, your healing, and your life even when family relationships remain unresolved.
This season, may we all find the courage to honor our hearts, embrace our softness, and hold space for ourselves, even when the story doesn’t have a happy ending.