Estrangement is a trend...
Part 1/5: ... is it?
(This is a 5-part series I started writing a few months ago when I saw a clear link between estrangement picked up by media and treated as a “trend”, the Epstein files and Palestine. Bear with me as I unpack all of this. And take care of you !)
A few months ago, I noticed that Oprah Winfrey had done a segment on estrangement, and around the same time more and more magazines began publishing pieces about estrangement as a supposedly “new” phenomenon, something that has become a “trend” among Millennials and Gen Z. Listening to many of those conversations, often led by Boomers, was both gut-wrenching and unsurprising, because again and again the question being asked seemed to be whether it is right or wrong for adult children to choose estrangement from their caregivers, while the far more important question was left almost entirely unspoken:
what led them to make that decision in the first place?
PS: if this topic is interesting to you, you might be interested in my next workshop, We Can’t be Abolitionist & Conflict Avoidant, happening next Saturday.
It often feels as though people are willing to do almost anything except look in the mirror — or better yet ask their own children: What have I done that made you decide to separate from me?
If you have been reading my work for a while, you know that much of it revolves around agency, because agency is central to healing, and trauma at its core is the experience of having our sovereignty and dignity stripped away.
Estrangement, despite how it is framed in public discourse, is often about exactly that:
