The unfortunate truth of growing up is that sometimes you have to face the reality of all your family dynamics. Whether it is immediate family or not, as you get older and become your own person, you reach the point where you learn to set boundaries with the closest people in your life who don’t have your best interest in mind. You create and enforce these personal boundaries, which can make your family members uncomfortable with the fact that they no longer have the unconditional love that is given when you’re a child. There are many reasons that someone can stop talking to their loved ones, but what happens when enough time passes, and you are ready to reconnect? What do you say to an estranged family member?
Talking to estranged relatives is something that I still struggle with, even though I reconnected with my parents about a year and a half ago. During the period of no communication, it was a long journey full of guilt, revelations, acceptance, and a ton of therapy. While it has been worth going through all that, it can still be challenging at times to handle everything. Thankfully, I had a therapist at the time who helped me realize that going no contact with my parents could be beneficial for the relationship in the long run. If you’re like me and have, at some point, had no contact with your parents or family members, you know it’s not an easy choice to make.
For me and many other LGBTQ+ people, this tends to happen when you reach your limit with the backhanded homophobia and the feeling of being othered by your family, but saying that my queer identity was the sole reason as to why I cut off my parents would be a cop-out for us both.
As the TikTok above beautifully explains, this decision doesn’t happen overnight; it happens over decades. Years of having boundaries crossed and disrespected add up until you can no longer make excuses for them. If it were any other person who wasn’t related by blood, the same behavior would’ve had you kicking them out of your life a long time ago.
For the most part, the idea of cutting off your family members feels like a very isolating experience. Hearing people use the “but they’re your parents!” argument makes you feel like maybe this isn’t the right decision. It’s comforting, though, that every year that I have gotten older, I seem to meet a new friend who has had a similar situation. Their decision to cut off their family might differ, but their journey there is similar.
Back to the point, once you get to the point of going no-contact, committing to that doesn’t get any easier as time goes by. For me, I went almost two years without directly speaking to my parents, and it was both the easiest and hardest thing to do. While I had those moments where I just missed my parents and wished for things to be okay, I also experienced the most growth as an adult during that time.
At first, the hardest thing to accept was the fact that my parents were just not good parents. Being first-generation and coming from an immigrant household, this was the most significant and challenging thing I had to accept. Their journey for the American Dream made our neglected childhood worthy of sacrifice because they thought they were doing what was best for us. Having it ingrained that college will open so many doors so that one day we can provide double what they offered us all seemed like the least we could do. While I argued with my therapist about this, unpacking my childhood turned into a long journey of realizing the damage of having emotionally and physically absent parents.
After taking the space from my parents and continuing to work through all my issues in therapy, the next big step was figuring out how to reconnect with them once I felt ready. Deciding to start talking to my parents happened slowly without me realizing it. At first, I would occasionally answer calls and texts and tell them how my day was and vice versa, nothing deep or too personal but enough to start building a rapport. I’ve had friends who took a different approach and decided to sit down and have a deep conversation before deciding whether or not they would be in contact again. I gave them props because that was a brave approach.
Even though I started slow and small, this was a personal test of whether I could hold myself accountable for saying no and setting boundaries with them. When I reached this point in the journey, I no longer had a therapist that I could go to if things did not go as planned, but I had also grown enough and had the tools to help myself through it. So, I told myself that if a quick conversation on my terms went well, I would be open to slowly rebuilding the relationship. If it didn’t go well, then that would be a sign to stay no contact.
As advice, the first step when trying to reconnect is to check in with yourself and your boundaries and see what you are comfortable with when making initial contact. Do you feel more comfortable having that conversation in person or over the phone? In public or private? Deep conversation or surface level?
Again, since every relationship is different, the best thing you can do is check in with yourself before talking.
Another thing that I learned after initiating contact was that no matter how hard I tried or how much time I spent overthinking what to say to them, whatever I landed on saying wouldn’t matter because I couldn’t predict what they would say or how they would handle it. I instead decided to go at it with no specific topic and decided that the best thing to say to them was, “I miss you,” and go from there.
There is no surefire way to figure out what to say to an estranged family member. Realistically, it can be so hard to get to the point of no-contact and then reconnect, let alone know how to reach out. So, last piece of advice: Good luck with whatever you choose, and remember to respect your boundaries.
Have you ever been no-contact? Do you know what to say to an estranged family member? Let us know in the comments!
Leave a Reply