mrstiffanystark's review against another edition
4.0
Considering how few books I’ve been able to find on the topic of adults choosing to live estranged from their parents (why is this topic THAT taboo?), I’m so grateful for Brown sharing her story (and research). It wasn’t full of as much wisdom (or maybe answers?) as I would have hoped, but made me feel less alone, which definitely made this read worthwhile.
zhzhang's review
3.0
After reading "Brave Girl Eating", I started to pay attention to the books written by this author. This book is a little heartbreaking because almost eight out of nine chapters, the author was narrating the the estrangement with abundant examples. Yes, she did a lot of research writing this book, but I am a little lost in the point that the author tries to make.
nicksbooknook's review against another edition
4.0
I picked up this book off the library shelf without knowing anything beforehand. I've known what estrangement is, but I've never had to go through the process myself (thankfully), and reading this memoir was really informative on the different ways estrangement can look.
I really enjoyed how this memoir was laid out; felt like the stages of grief were each addressed in each section of the book, and concepts such as forgiveness and reconciliation (and more) were dissected and discussed in much more depth; I've known those aforementioned words before, but I have never truly thought what it means to forgive someone, so breaking down those concepts into more tangible definitions and actions were fascinating to me.
Would recommend.
I really enjoyed how this memoir was laid out; felt like the stages of grief were each addressed in each section of the book, and concepts such as forgiveness and reconciliation (and more) were dissected and discussed in much more depth; I've known those aforementioned words before, but I have never truly thought what it means to forgive someone, so breaking down those concepts into more tangible definitions and actions were fascinating to me.
Would recommend.
dnlrbchd's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent
Moderate: Child abuse, Toxic relationship, Bullying, Sexual assault, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, and Physical abuse
nataschabelle's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I love memoirs and research based books and this book was phenomenal. Estrangement is a taboo topic, and this book brings so much understanding and empathy to the subject. I think it would make many people feel seen, including me, and make the experience of having toxic family members and needing clear boundaries a less isolating experience.
I wish I had known Harriet Brown was a professor at Syracuse while I was a student there!
I wish I had known Harriet Brown was a professor at Syracuse while I was a student there!
sammantha's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal cruelty, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual assault, Grief, Gaslighting, Eating disorder, Death of parent, Death, and Suicide
traciereads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting and Emotional abuse
Moderate: Death of parent, Eating disorder, Abandonment, Grief, and Death
Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, and Domestic abuse
angelatolsma's review against another edition
This book didn't really tell me anything I didn't know. It did help me find words to a few questions I had but it definitely did not give me answers to those questions. The book was definitely more of a you are not alone in how you feeling and there aren't really clear answer for the situation either. I enjoyed the read, it was quick and well done.
Below are some lines that I wanted to remember
Why, just because we're related by blood, do I feel this sense of duty or responsibility to take this bad treatment? 0 Mario, forty-two, estranged from a brother pg 1
For those of us who feel this way estrangement is not a problem; it's a solution, a response to an otherwise unsolvable problem. It's an extreme repose, no question about it, a last resort people choose only after they've exhausted other possibilities. pg 17
They might feel sorry they had to make those decisions in the first place, but I have yet to interview anyone who regrets their actual estrangement. pg 19
It's not like I purposely went out to stop contact with my brother. I just stopped making the effort. And that's when I realized I was the only one making the effort all along. - Rachel thirty-nine. pg 25
Maybe that's why I read estrangement stories compulsively. I am looking, I think, for reassurance that my situation was just as bad as other people's, that all the times I cut off contact with my mother were justified, reasonable responses to an unreasonable situation. But even as I write this I know this is a pointless exercise. There's no one alive who can pronounce judgment on my story, no one who can definitively say what I did was OK. Comparing myself to others is, as always, unhelpful. The guilt and rage and grief and shame I've carried for so many years are still mine to carry. They cannot be fully healed by other people's stories.
What I am really looking for, I think, is for someone to tell me I'm not evil for choosing estrangement. pg 26
generational traumas pg 27
This suggests that this mother is the only one who loves her daughter, that no one else can or will, that in the great competition of life only her love matters. And maybe therein lies the real problem between them. pg 33
It also doesn't make my sister right and me wrong, or vice versa pg 34
The problem isn't that we're unwilling to give our parents a second chance; most of us have given them hundreds of chances. The problem is that unless something changes, that fifth or fiftieth chance is just another excuse for the same kind of treatment. pg 36
That's right, and I'm going to be as happy as I can, and being away from my mother is the only way to do that pg 41-42
Would it have changed anything? I don't think so. pg 49
"I realized, Oh my god, these people don't even know who I am, they don't prioritize me, they can't see what's important to me. I just represent an object, their property."
The hardest thing, she says, has been giving up the illusion of unconditional love she once had. She misses the idea of the loving and supportive family she thought she had, or maybe once had. But she doesn't miss her actual family. pg 52
golden children pg 55
scapegoats
Many narcissistic families include one or more "golden children" who can do no wrong and at least one "scapegoat" who's typically blamed for every problem. pg 56
But the problem with looking at estrangement through this lens is that it sets up the parent-child relationship as transnational: I will support and love you as long as you do what I want and be who I want you to be. It creates a conditional relationship, which is problematic on many levels and is a common precursor of later estrangement. pg 62
she finds it both ironic and a little heartbreaking that days like Christmas and Mother's Day now bring on waves of grief. They force her to give up on the fantasy that her family will ever be like other "normal" families. pg 68
crappy parents 90 percent of the time and good parents the other 10 percent. He wondered how that all shook out. Does the 10 percent of good parenting count for more than the 90 percent of bad parenting? What if the percentages were 75 percent crappy and 25 percent good? What if it was 50/50? In other words, at what point do the crappy parts outweigh the good ones, or vice versa? pg 70
She wanted me to deny myself before I even knew exactly who I was pg 85
Even though I know what my mother was doing (though I still don't know why), her gaslighting haunts me. My first instinct always has been to discount my own observations, to assume I'm misremembering. To distrust my memories and dishonor my feelings. To gaslight myself, in a way. I can't think of a more potent example of emotional abuse than this: to teach a child that she cannot trust herself. While children can certainly hurt parents in all kids of ways, this isn't one of them. pg 87
Even a young child can feel the difference between a parent who genuinely sees her for who she is and a parent who says and does all the fight things but is blind to her essential self. pg 93
She still wories about being sucked back in. She's anxious, for example, about what will happen when her grand mother dies. If she goes to the funeral she'll have to face the whole family. If she doesn't go, if she doesn't pay her respects, maybe she'll burn in heel the way the church and her parents used to warn. She knows these worries are regressive and irrational. And she also knows they're a sign of just how important it is for her to stay estranged, to project her hard-won freedom. pg 103
When my mother asked me what she had done, how could I say it wasn't any one thing by itself but everything together? How could I tell her that while there were specific incidents that distressed me, it was more the way she looked at me, her tone of voice in talking to and about me, the disapproval and judgment she radiated in my direction? pg 127
Of course I love my mother because that's what I'm supposed to do. Maybe I was making a point: Of course I love my mother; she's the one who doesn't love me. Or drawing a distinction: of course I love my mother - I just don't like her, respect her, admire her, ever want to see her again. I don't know and I can't know now, not really. This is something a lot of estranged children grapple with: What does it mean to love someone who treats you badly? What does love even mean in that context? pg 135
"The part that I am bothered by a lot is the desire, that I still want his love," she says. "I still want it so bad. And why? I don't even want it from this person, but I do. You know?" pg 140
When people ask about her family of origin she says simply that she doesn't have one. She lets them assume that either something catastrophic happened or that her parents aged and died in the usual way. She doesn't talk about it because she doesn't want that to become her narrative. She doesn't want the estrangement and everything that let up to it to be a negative thing, a drag. pg 142
Pushing someone to reconcile with an estranged family member, especially a parents, is a lot like pushing someone to go on a diet: it's a social pressure masquerading as helpful information. pg 148
"Nobody should require weeks of self-therapy or real therapy to get over a freaking conversation with somebody. Right?" pg 149
"It's very difficult when you're grieving for people who are alive" pg 150
parents don't give you their blessing you must learn to bless yourself pg 163
Without my mothers of choice, and my husband, and the wider circle of friends who have become my family, I might never have truly felt the deep connection with other people that makes us tender and alive and human. pg 165
Who takes care of aging parents when a grown child is estranged? Who gets called in times of emergency and who doesn't? Who is allowed information about family matters and who is shut out. Whose grief is supported publicly and who has to cry alone in private? pg 171-172
That's the whole point of estrangement, after all. It's a giving up of hope, an acknowledgment that nothing more will change. Pg 172
When children show their parents only what those parents want to see, they bury not just their true feelings but also their ability to access those feelings. They lose touch with their essential selves, with their ability to experience true pain and joy and grief and excitement. The false faces they put on become their only faces. So yes, forgiveness can harm the forgiver, if it's done out of a need to conform, to appear virtuous, to please others, to win approval, rather than out of the slow and often agonizing processing of hurt and anger that leads to empathy.
Forgiveness has never had a healing effect. Pg 189
grieving and letting go. Grieving means letting yourself relive the original anger, hurt, and betrayal, really feeling it, and he told us that two years was plenty of time to work through those feelings. When we hang on to hurt and resentment for longer than that, when we get stuck in rage and helplessness, he suggested, we're having a kind of cosmic tantrum, throwing a hissy fit about not getting something we want. pg 195
Forgiveness, he said, is about the gap between what we want and think we're entitled to and what is. There is no such thing as fair, and the sooner we're clear about that the better. Forgiveness is one way-the best way- re respond to a world that owes us nothing. pg 196
who's estranged from her mother, says she absolutely forgives her. It's just that she's not going to let her mother abuse her again.
"I have forgiven her," she adds "I just don't want to be around her." She no longer thinks of her mother as a kind of evil monster; instead she sees her as somehow broken, someone who hates herself so much that she can't help lashing out at others. pg 199
Below are some lines that I wanted to remember
Why, just because we're related by blood, do I feel this sense of duty or responsibility to take this bad treatment? 0 Mario, forty-two, estranged from a brother pg 1
For those of us who feel this way estrangement is not a problem; it's a solution, a response to an otherwise unsolvable problem. It's an extreme repose, no question about it, a last resort people choose only after they've exhausted other possibilities. pg 17
They might feel sorry they had to make those decisions in the first place, but I have yet to interview anyone who regrets their actual estrangement. pg 19
It's not like I purposely went out to stop contact with my brother. I just stopped making the effort. And that's when I realized I was the only one making the effort all along. - Rachel thirty-nine. pg 25
Maybe that's why I read estrangement stories compulsively. I am looking, I think, for reassurance that my situation was just as bad as other people's, that all the times I cut off contact with my mother were justified, reasonable responses to an unreasonable situation. But even as I write this I know this is a pointless exercise. There's no one alive who can pronounce judgment on my story, no one who can definitively say what I did was OK. Comparing myself to others is, as always, unhelpful. The guilt and rage and grief and shame I've carried for so many years are still mine to carry. They cannot be fully healed by other people's stories.
What I am really looking for, I think, is for someone to tell me I'm not evil for choosing estrangement. pg 26
generational traumas pg 27
This suggests that this mother is the only one who loves her daughter, that no one else can or will, that in the great competition of life only her love matters. And maybe therein lies the real problem between them. pg 33
It also doesn't make my sister right and me wrong, or vice versa pg 34
The problem isn't that we're unwilling to give our parents a second chance; most of us have given them hundreds of chances. The problem is that unless something changes, that fifth or fiftieth chance is just another excuse for the same kind of treatment. pg 36
That's right, and I'm going to be as happy as I can, and being away from my mother is the only way to do that pg 41-42
Would it have changed anything? I don't think so. pg 49
"I realized, Oh my god, these people don't even know who I am, they don't prioritize me, they can't see what's important to me. I just represent an object, their property."
The hardest thing, she says, has been giving up the illusion of unconditional love she once had. She misses the idea of the loving and supportive family she thought she had, or maybe once had. But she doesn't miss her actual family. pg 52
golden children pg 55
scapegoats
Many narcissistic families include one or more "golden children" who can do no wrong and at least one "scapegoat" who's typically blamed for every problem. pg 56
But the problem with looking at estrangement through this lens is that it sets up the parent-child relationship as transnational: I will support and love you as long as you do what I want and be who I want you to be. It creates a conditional relationship, which is problematic on many levels and is a common precursor of later estrangement. pg 62
she finds it both ironic and a little heartbreaking that days like Christmas and Mother's Day now bring on waves of grief. They force her to give up on the fantasy that her family will ever be like other "normal" families. pg 68
crappy parents 90 percent of the time and good parents the other 10 percent. He wondered how that all shook out. Does the 10 percent of good parenting count for more than the 90 percent of bad parenting? What if the percentages were 75 percent crappy and 25 percent good? What if it was 50/50? In other words, at what point do the crappy parts outweigh the good ones, or vice versa? pg 70
She wanted me to deny myself before I even knew exactly who I was pg 85
Even though I know what my mother was doing (though I still don't know why), her gaslighting haunts me. My first instinct always has been to discount my own observations, to assume I'm misremembering. To distrust my memories and dishonor my feelings. To gaslight myself, in a way. I can't think of a more potent example of emotional abuse than this: to teach a child that she cannot trust herself. While children can certainly hurt parents in all kids of ways, this isn't one of them. pg 87
Even a young child can feel the difference between a parent who genuinely sees her for who she is and a parent who says and does all the fight things but is blind to her essential self. pg 93
She still wories about being sucked back in. She's anxious, for example, about what will happen when her grand mother dies. If she goes to the funeral she'll have to face the whole family. If she doesn't go, if she doesn't pay her respects, maybe she'll burn in heel the way the church and her parents used to warn. She knows these worries are regressive and irrational. And she also knows they're a sign of just how important it is for her to stay estranged, to project her hard-won freedom. pg 103
When my mother asked me what she had done, how could I say it wasn't any one thing by itself but everything together? How could I tell her that while there were specific incidents that distressed me, it was more the way she looked at me, her tone of voice in talking to and about me, the disapproval and judgment she radiated in my direction? pg 127
Of course I love my mother because that's what I'm supposed to do. Maybe I was making a point: Of course I love my mother; she's the one who doesn't love me. Or drawing a distinction: of course I love my mother - I just don't like her, respect her, admire her, ever want to see her again. I don't know and I can't know now, not really. This is something a lot of estranged children grapple with: What does it mean to love someone who treats you badly? What does love even mean in that context? pg 135
"The part that I am bothered by a lot is the desire, that I still want his love," she says. "I still want it so bad. And why? I don't even want it from this person, but I do. You know?" pg 140
When people ask about her family of origin she says simply that she doesn't have one. She lets them assume that either something catastrophic happened or that her parents aged and died in the usual way. She doesn't talk about it because she doesn't want that to become her narrative. She doesn't want the estrangement and everything that let up to it to be a negative thing, a drag. pg 142
Pushing someone to reconcile with an estranged family member, especially a parents, is a lot like pushing someone to go on a diet: it's a social pressure masquerading as helpful information. pg 148
"Nobody should require weeks of self-therapy or real therapy to get over a freaking conversation with somebody. Right?" pg 149
"It's very difficult when you're grieving for people who are alive" pg 150
parents don't give you their blessing you must learn to bless yourself pg 163
Without my mothers of choice, and my husband, and the wider circle of friends who have become my family, I might never have truly felt the deep connection with other people that makes us tender and alive and human. pg 165
Who takes care of aging parents when a grown child is estranged? Who gets called in times of emergency and who doesn't? Who is allowed information about family matters and who is shut out. Whose grief is supported publicly and who has to cry alone in private? pg 171-172
That's the whole point of estrangement, after all. It's a giving up of hope, an acknowledgment that nothing more will change. Pg 172
When children show their parents only what those parents want to see, they bury not just their true feelings but also their ability to access those feelings. They lose touch with their essential selves, with their ability to experience true pain and joy and grief and excitement. The false faces they put on become their only faces. So yes, forgiveness can harm the forgiver, if it's done out of a need to conform, to appear virtuous, to please others, to win approval, rather than out of the slow and often agonizing processing of hurt and anger that leads to empathy.
Forgiveness has never had a healing effect. Pg 189
grieving and letting go. Grieving means letting yourself relive the original anger, hurt, and betrayal, really feeling it, and he told us that two years was plenty of time to work through those feelings. When we hang on to hurt and resentment for longer than that, when we get stuck in rage and helplessness, he suggested, we're having a kind of cosmic tantrum, throwing a hissy fit about not getting something we want. pg 195
Forgiveness, he said, is about the gap between what we want and think we're entitled to and what is. There is no such thing as fair, and the sooner we're clear about that the better. Forgiveness is one way-the best way- re respond to a world that owes us nothing. pg 196
who's estranged from her mother, says she absolutely forgives her. It's just that she's not going to let her mother abuse her again.
"I have forgiven her," she adds "I just don't want to be around her." She no longer thinks of her mother as a kind of evil monster; instead she sees her as somehow broken, someone who hates herself so much that she can't help lashing out at others. pg 199