7 Lies Estrangement Tells You About Yourself |
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The thoughts that make estranged adults feel broken usually aren't true.
Blaming yourself is what a child does to survive a parent who couldn't show love the way the child needed.
As an adult, you can learn to notice the old, harsh voice and answer it with something truer.
When I became a mother, the grief of being estranged from my own hit me in a way it never had before. Loving my daughters was immediate and total. I would do anything for them, and that fierce, unconditional love raised questions I couldn't put down: Why couldn't my own mother do this for me? What was wrong with me that she didn't?
I've since spent years researching estrangement and sitting with people living through it—mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, people who left and people who were left. And I heard the same hushed sentences again and again. Not the ones people say out loud, like, "Shouldn't I be over this by now?" but the ones they only say to themselves at two in the morning and never repeat to anyone.
These thoughts feel like private evidence that something is broken in you. They're not. They're the lies estrangement whispers when you're wired to love someone who couldn't love you back safely.
Here are the ones I hear most, and something truer you can put in their place.
1. "What was wrong with me that they couldn't love me?"
This thought usually starts early. A small child can't make sense of a parent who isn't there for them the way they need, so they land on the only explanation that feels survivable: It must be me. If I were different, they'd love me right.........