How to Reconcile After Estrangement

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, filling in for Brian today. We are one week away from Thanksgiving, a holiday that many celebrate by gathering with friends and loved ones, but for some people, the holiday season can also surface the painful loss of people who you are estranged from. Journalist Fortesa Latifi recently wrote a piece for Vox headlined Family Estrangement Doesn't Have to Be Forever, where she spoke to people who reconnected with family members or friends they were estranged from.

We're going to end the show today with your calls on reconnecting after estrangement. Listeners, have you gotten back in contact with a loved one after previously cutting ties? Maybe you were the one who called for the estrangement. What changed? Why did you let this person back into your life? What were the terms and conditions set before rekindling the relationship? Conversely, were you the person cut off by a sibling, child, or another important person in your life? How did this estrangement affect your behavior? Did you make a significant change to break a no-contact rule? The number to call is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

With Thanksgiving coming, as I mentioned, we've been thinking about all the bonds that maybe have been severed due to interpersonal conflicts or political differences, memories of trauma. How many people out there are living without speaking to their parents or children or other members of their extended family? How many will not see this person at the upcoming celebration? If this is you, give us a call with your questions on how to reconnect with estranged loved ones or your stories of how you did it. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 433-9692. You can call or text.

Again, I am joined by Fortesa Latifi, a journalist currently working on a book about family vloggers and child influencers, and she recently wrote that piece in Vox, Family Estrangement Doesn't Have to Be Forever. Fortesa, welcome to WNYC.

Fortesa Latifi: Thank you for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Fortesa, your piece features a lot of examples of people who reconnected after estrangement. Could you maybe start us with one of those stories?

Fortesa Latifi: Sure. One of the people I talked to was named Sydney. She was outed to her evangelical parents as gay when she was 18, and it ended up with this terrible situation in which she says she was being held down while her parents and older brother prayed over her "screaming and spitting" and it was like an exorcism type situation. Sydney didn't talk to her parents for nearly a year before her mother approached and begged for forgiveness. Now they have a relationship again.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. How common could you get a sense is estrangement in the United States, and how many people are currently in a no-contact situation with a member of their family?

Fortesa Latifi: One 2020 study showed that 27% of Americans over the age of 18 were estranged from a family member, so it's about one in three.

Brigid Bergin: That's a much larger proportion than I was expecting. What is the experience like for both parties in this kind of situation? What are the estranger and the estranged experiencing during the severance of their relationship?

Fortesa Latifi: The experience can be wildly different for each person in the scenario. If you think about it, one person is by definition activating the estrangement and the other person is being cut off. For the person who's being cut off, it can sometimes come as a real surprise or a shock, whereas for the person activating the estrangement, it can feel like their last choice after years of effort and disrepair in the relationship.

Brigid Bergin: I want to start with Lisa in Manhattan as one of our callers who I think has a story of reconciliation maybe.

Lisa: Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I started the estrangement with my mother about-- I want to say at this point, it might be about 10 years ago. I have a long history of issues with my mom, as I'm sure many people do. The estrangement went on for a little over three years and with her attempting to reconcile with me but me just shutting her down. Then I finally just thought, she is who she is, she's not going to change, and if anything were to happen to her while this was going on, I would for the rest of my life feel really guilty about it.

For selfish reasons, I guess, I reconciled with her. Things are wonderful. We actually just went to Europe together for two weeks. It's a very, very wonderful relationship now.

Brigid Bergin: Lisa, thank you so much for that. Fortesa, any reaction to that? I know you talk about the different ways that someone might consider reconciling and maybe some of the boundaries someone should consider before doing that.

Fortesa Latifi: Yes. Well, I was really struck by Lisa's story because I think when I talked to the experts in my story who study estrangement, they said that even an effort at reconciliation can ease that psychic burden that she was talking about where she's like, "Oh, my God, if something happened--" It didn't sound like really that Lisa's mom had changed that drastically as much as Lisa had changed what she expected from her.

I think that that's really interesting because it mirrors the things that I found in my research, which is that there are two paths to reconciliation. One is more explicitly facing what went wrong in the relationship and one is not doing that.

Brigid Bergin: We have a bunch more callers with questions for you about potentially how to begin this process of reconciliation as well as some stories about people who have reconciled, I want to get both in there, and some people who say maybe reconciliation isn't the best way forward. Let's try Craig in Morganville, New Jersey, who I think has a question for you. Craig, welcome to WNYC.

Craig: How you doing? I have an aunt who I used to be very, very close with. When my mother, which was her sister, became ill and then passed away, she became distant during the illness and even more distant after the passing away. We said some things, and we just stopped having contact. I can't find a way back, and I'm trying to. I don't know how to start it or what to do.

Brigid Bergin: Fortesa, any suggestions for Craig based on your reporting?

Fortesa Latifi: Yes. I think one thing that I learned from the experts in my reporting is that you want to approach gently. Something that you don't want to do is what we see in movies or TV shows where people show up to the estranged person's house or Thanksgiving table and just force a confrontation. That is not really what the research shows would be helpful, but kind of like a gentle approach. I don't know. Maybe an email or a text or a letter in the mail or something like that where the person can really take their time and decide what this means for them.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to another caller. Let's try Alfonso in Somerville, New Jersey. Alfonso, I think you have another story of reconciliation.

Alfonso: I do. Hello. Thanks for taking my call. I stopped speaking to my older brother, who's only a year and three months older than me, maybe 12 years ago. We stopped speaking because, the way that he treats our family, it wasn't very good. However, when we grew up, he was my best friend. We spent every day together. We moved around a lot because we didn't have a lot of money and he was always the guy, but he was not a good brother. He was a better friend than he was an older brother.

As we got older, he distanced himself from us. We got into a little disagreement, and we just stopped speaking to each other completely. It really bothered me. It just really took over my daily because he was the person I grew up with. I was going to therapy just because it's healthy to go to therapy, and my therapist said something to me that I didn't think about, that you don't have to maintain this relationship. If it's really working negative, you don't have to do this. When he said it to me, it made me feel so relieved. It's like I felt like I had permission to just let that stress go.

Then after about eight years of not talking to him, my grandmother got sick with Alzheimer's, and she got really sick. She was wheelchair-bound at one point. Maybe it was about three years ago, and she just really, on her deathbed, basically asked us to reconcile, just let the past go, and be better. For the last three years, we've had a better relationship. We talk to each other a few times a month. He has kids. I don't have kids. He has grown adult children who are in their early 20s. I don't have children. Those are my children by extension. [chuckles]

Fortesa Latifi: Aww.

Brigid Bergin: Alfonso, thank you so much for that call. We have a full board of callers, a lot of people with stories of their reconciliations, and then some caution around reconciliation. Let's go to Leah in Manhattan with another story of reconciliation. Leah, thanks for calling.

Leah: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. My reconciliation is with my mother. It is very, very recent. We have been estranged from my initiation for about four years, and I did agree to reconcile after she reached out to me just plainly saying, "I want to reconcile. What can I do?" I told her for years that we can only do this while seeing a psychiatrist or a therapist together. We had separate meetings with a single therapist. We wrote letters instead of talking face to face. We also live very separately. She's in another state, so we did it all virtually.

Through the therapist, I communicated my rules. She was physically abusive and still is verbally abusive. My rules were to address those issues, and her rules were to accept that those issues happened. Since it is very, very new that the reconciliation happened with this therapist, I'm still keeping her boundaries very set. She has a letter that she said she keeps with her with boundaries. We'll see what the upcoming Christmas holiday brings. She does her rules, and the whole family knows the rules. That was also part of the reconciliation is that everyone agrees to the situation.

Everyone was included in the family therapy session. We'll see. I hope it goes well, but I am not averse to re-implementing my boundaries and estrangement. I only did it because I have sisters and I wanted my sisters to feel better with the family relationships.

Brigid Bergin: Leah, thank you for calling and for sharing that. We wish you well in the upcoming holidays. Kristen, she raised some issues that you talk about in your piece, both in terms of reckoning with issues that led to the estrangement as being one of the paths to reconciliation that can obviously look differently for different people, but can you talk briefly about what that might look like?

Fortesa Latifi: Yes, absolutely. The thing that Leah was talking about, where there is a therapy session in place, that is one of the ways that people reckon with the issues. Sometimes one person will go to therapy and then invite the other or vice versa, and they really try to understand how the estrangement came to be. This really struck me in the reporting, this idea of really explicitly facing what went wrong in the relationship. It's so vulnerable and so intense.

I was also interested when Leah said that she has these specific boundaries for her mother. That's something that I also found was that after a period of estrangement, when they're entering reconciliation, people often have to institute these strict boundaries. The experts that I talked to told me that sometimes those boundaries can relax over time. If there's a moratorium on talking about, let's say, politics or things in the past, sometimes that can relax over time, but it's really important to have, especially in the beginning. I just think that that's a really lovely story.

Brigid Bergin: I want to bring in another caller but set this up a little bit. We know there are listeners who are about to spend Thanksgiving without loved ones who may be wondering how to reconcile, how one goes about reconnecting without further upsetting the estranger. With that context, I want to invite Paul from Brooklyn to share his story. Paul, thanks for calling.

Paul: Hi. I haven't seen my brother in 16 years. As far as I can tell, he thinks that I cheated him out of some of what remained of our mother's money after she died. Two years ago, I sent him a letter just saying, "Please consider the two of us getting together." When I didn't hear from him, two weeks later, I sent an email saying exactly the same thing. A couple of days after I sent the email, I got a cease and desist letter from a lawyer saying, "He doesn't want to hear from you. Don't contact him."

I had been wondering all along, was he waiting for me to reach out? Was I waiting for him to reach out? Now I don't have to think about it anymore, and I'm sorry that it's like this.

Brigid Bergin: Paul, thank you for being willing to share that story. It sounds really hard. Kristen, I'm sure in the course of your reporting-- Excuse me. Fortesa, I apologize. [chuckles]

Fortesa Latifi: That's okay.

Brigid Bergin: Our previous guest was Kristen.

Fortesa Latifi: It's okay.

Brigid Bergin: Reconciliation is not a certain thing. It's an effort, right?

Fortesa Latifi: Absolutely, yes.

Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit about that?

Fortesa Latifi: Well, one thing that I found really hopeful was that even an attempt at reconciliation, like the last caller was saying, can bring some relief. There's this feeling of, I tried, and you don't have to carry around those questions of, is he waiting for me to call? Am I waiting for him to call? Because that is a really heavy psychic weight. Even if it doesn't work, the attempt at reconciliation can ease the intensity of the feelings around the estrangement, which I found really hopeful that even if it doesn't work, even trying can make you feel better.

Brigid Bergin: We're getting more messages from listeners on all of our platforms. One of our listeners texts, "I haven't spoken to my parents in 32 years and I'm going to go and visit them in March so that I can give my father a hug because he's 92 and I don't want to feel guilty forever for not trying to bridge a gap." I want to bring in another caller with a slightly different take on reconciliation. Dale in Manhattan, thanks for holding. Welcome to WNYC.

Dale: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I think it's important that, first of all, the woman [unintelligible 00:16:32] it's really remarkable. That is what's required for reconciliation. A lot of parents will simply not go into therapy with their children and they will not choose to find a way forward with boundaries. That was my experience. I tried for 30 years to personally get better, do much therapy, and everything else, and then my parents, my entire family [unintelligible 00:16:57] to die alone, very sick, because my father wanted to teach me a lesson.

In the end, it was that that broke the spell [unintelligible 00:17:07]. I come from a very big Jewish family and leaving a family is not something that we do in Jewish families. I'm not married and I have no children. I raised my siblings and I raised two of my nephews. It's one of these things where I was finally diagnosed with complex PTSD, childhood trauma. I think it's really, really important. As a culture, we really prize the family and I think it's a great thing, but if you have a deeply toxic family, sometimes for our own safety and health and well-being and our abilities to grow and to be a contribution to society, we have to [crosstalk]--

Brigid Bergin: Dale, I'm going to have to jump in there. I know it's such sensitive stuff and I appreciate you sharing, but we are running out of time for today's show. My guest has been journalist Fortesa Latifi. I see you're currently working on a book about child influencers and family vloggers. We'll have to have you on when your book comes out. Thank you so much for joining me.

Fortesa Latifi: Yes. Thank you for having me, and good luck to everyone.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely. Good luck, everybody. We've got big holidays and much more to talk about. I'm Brigid Bergin. This is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Stay tuned for All Of It.

 

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