Oprah Explores the Rising Trend of Going No Contact with Your Family

26:29You're still young, Bristol, let me tell you that. No, but... So what do you mean by young, okay? No, like just being eight, nine years old. Yeah, and I had family that saw how I was treated as well and tried to step in. So it's something I sadly always knew would happen. Is it like what Chris said? There isn't one thing, but there was a series of things? Yeah, it is multiple events. It's not just one traumatic event. What was the final straw for you that you said, that's it, no more, I've had enough? it was a phone call actually where I, you know, I spent my whole life trying to change every aspect of myself to be the perfect daughter and to make the relationship work.

27:13And it was a phone call where I tried to set a boundary of just don't talk so rudely about your children. Like we were not punching bags. And my mom is actually the one that blocked me initially. So she's the one that laid down that foundation and I followed suit and just cut off contact everywhere else. I hear you have a question for Dr. Gibson. Yeah, I do. So I have no regrets about my decision to go no contact. But every time I see a girl with her mom or dad, it physically aches in my heart. And so does the longing for that connection, despite never experiencing it myself, ever go away? Or do you just learn to live with it?

27:58Yeah, I mean, it's like any terrible loss. Do any of our terrible losses ever go away? We all know that it never goes away. Okay. But I think our job in this kind of situation is to enlarge ourselves so that we know ourselves better, so that we are expanding our own life, so that this terribly hurtful loss becomes a part, an integrated part of our lives. of the tapestry of your life, of your overall life. It'll never go away, but it's not all there is to you. And so you carry this, I see it as part of your increased complexity as a human being, your increased depth, and your ability to know what it is that's good for you and not good for you.

28:51And when you bring all that together, yes, that feeling is still there, but the context is now so much bigger because you're a much more complex person. Nedra, you wanted to say what about this? Yeah, I think that void gets smaller as time passes, but there will always be something there because you do have a mother, you do have that part of your family, and both things can exist. You can miss people and decide to not have that relationship, and you don't get to erase the feelings in either direction. So it's something that you'll come to live with. Thank you. But how's your life otherwise? Do you miss, miss, miss, miss the contact with them?

29:34Or have you been able to create a life that's full and vibrant without them? I love my life. I have five animals. So I've created my own family. When I went off to college, I am used to spending holidays alone. So it's not like much has changed. I'm just not being walked all over, actually. So I know peace for the first time. It's amazing. I felt my nervous system leave fight or flight. And I think this is so fascinating to me because I've been doing this so long. And I remember in the early days doing this, people just suffered. They just went through hell with their parents. And we were always talking about relationships with your parents.

30:18Have you as therapists seen it evolve over the years also? Oh, absolutely. You know, and I think one of the things, Oprah, is that there was a study done in 2016 which showed that our ideas about what constitutes harm, abuse, trauma, and neglect have radically expanded in the past three decades. Radically expanded. So what often happens is an adult child like any of you may come up to your parent and go, you emotionally abused me. You neglected me. You traumatized me. And your parents are going to be like, what the hell? I would have killed for a childhood like yours. Yes. So generations are talking past each other.

30:54I mean, it's kind of incumbent on us as parents to really learn how to speak the language of our adult children if we want to have a relationship with them. But that is one of the most significant changes, is our expanded views of what constitutes abuse and harm. And that has changed. That has changed radically. And it has evolved exponentially in the past several years. Exactly. Well, the past few decades, but social media is an enormous amplifier of that. Yeah. Thank you, Bristol. So thank you so much. We need to take a break. Next, we're going to hear the parent side of going no contact. Mothers and fathers speak out.

31:28Thank you. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Thanks for joining me on the Oprah podcast. We're talking about the dramatic rise in estranged families, people who've chosen to have no contact.

32:08My hope is that this conversation can help you or someone you know who might be going through the same thing. We have another Brie in our audience. and says, please, it's with two yees, in case you're going to get them confused. Okay, so you've decided no contact with your mom. What happened? Yeah, so my mom abruptly stepped away from our family when I was six years old to be with someone else. And not only did she leave my dad, she didn't want to be a mother to me at that point either. So your mom basically abandoned you. Yes. When you were six. Yep. She was just like... She left to go with an old boyfriend.

32:39Yep. She decided to go be with her college boyfriend, and she wanted to kind of just live this new child-free life. and it was very jarring and traumatic for me because I was used to having a two-parent household and doing things with them and it was just a night and day and at that point, she just kind of stepped away, didn't really have as much contact, would see her sometimes. It was very off and on and I would try and whenever I would try, I felt like I would be let down. I had a wonderful dad who like filled the gap but it's just like, just no mom and I would see all these girls being raised with their moms and I wanted that And so when I was in college, I extended out of the branch and I invited her to my college graduation and she ended up humiliating me.

33:21I was on the floor with the graduates and I saw this crowd of people walking towards me, security, the counselors and looked in the middle. It's my mom. They brought her towards me. They said, Bree, it's been an emergency. So I'm like, you know, what's going on? And she's just like, I'm ready to leave. like we're about to go, her and her boyfriend. And that was what the emergency was in front of all the graduates before I even walked. And so I was bawling, crying, the whole stadium's looking at me. And from that point on, I was like, this is done. Like she does not have a care for me. And with me being a mom now.

33:56She couldn't leave quietly. And she couldn't just get up and go. I know. And so. She had to cause a scene. A whole scene. And so like I'm a mom now and I'm a single mom. And so there's points in motherhood where I'm like, like, I get that it can be a lot like, you know, but I could never just walk away from my child. Like, I just couldn't understand doing that. And so I get a lot of judgment for it. Like when something happens and people are like, you know, your mom isn't feeling well or something like that. Like, it's like, you know, I don't have that empathy because it's just like, you know, she didn't really have it for me.

34:27and it's hard for me because it's like, you know, I understand, you know, like that she is my mother and this whole you only have one mother thing. However, we did not have that relationship. And so what weighs on my heart and mind a lot is the forgiveness. And sometimes I'm like, will I ever be able to just forgive her and let this go? Because it's like, you know, some people's mothers have passed away. My mother lived 20 minutes from me my whole life, you know, and just didn't want to be there. And didn't see you. Yeah, and just didn't want to see me by choice. Well, I think that's so interesting because people use that phrase, particularly in our culture.

35:01You only have one mother. Yes. And they use that to guilt you. No matter what's been done to you, no matter what you've been through, you only have one mother. And it sounds like that you allow that sometimes to bother you, right? You feel embarrassed or the shame of that in some way. Absolutely. I'm very empathetic. And it's the fact that it's like, I do understand she is my mother. However, it's like we just we don't have that relationship, you know. And so it's just like, you know, she was never there for me. Like, you know, and whenever I would try, it would be I would be met with her. And so it's like, you know, I want to be able to, like, forgive her for my own peace of mind, not to bridge the relationship, but just to, like, have some kind of a start to healing.

35:49So your question is? So my question for Nedra is, how do I carry the void of the disappointment and the hurt and the distance? But also, like, is there a chance that I could truly forgive her and be able to kind of move on, even though we obviously are both still, you know, here in the world? I think you have to accept that people can birth a child without parenting them. And what I'm hearing in your situation is you have a mother, but you don't have the nurturing of one. And it's very hard to reconcile that while you're mothering, right? And other people are being mothered and they're telling you about their mother and you should do this for your mother, but you don't have that role or that connection with your mother.

36:39And so it's very important for you to accept that you can give birth without parenting. I think you also need to allow yourself to be angry because sometimes we're not making room for that and we're just rushing toward forgiveness. I have to hurry up and forgive. Especially if you live in a culture that says, but it's your mother and it's the only mother you have. But you are her daughter. But you are her daughter. And so on both sides, if we're going to say, but this is your mother, this is your father, you are also a daughter. And you get to be upset about not being parented. Yeah. After you work through that stuff, what does forgiveness mean for you?

37:18Because you can forgive and reconcile. You can forgive and continue to not have her be a part of your life. You can forgive and readjust what the relationship is. Maybe she's not a mother, but she's a great friend. So you get to decide what that forgiveness... Did you see her just do this?

37:40I don't think so. Maybe she's an associate. I'm not sure. But perhaps there is something there. If you can remove that expectation of parenting from her because she hasn't done it and she's not doing it, maybe there's a little bit left there that she can have. I don't know what that is. And maybe it's nothing. But you decide what that forgiveness looks like. And it sounds like you have learned how to be a nurturer even though you didn't have it. Yeah, and may I say this, that in all the years of all the shows and all the experts, my best example or best definition for me of forgiveness that has carried me through many a situation is that forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different.

38:32I don't even remember who said that so many years ago, but when they said it, the hairs on my arm raised because I was like, wow, it's not even about that other person. It's about you giving up the hope and you accepting finally that this, as Bristol has already done, that the relationship is what it is. And there's not going to be one thing you can change. You cannot change yourself. You cannot change that situation. Give up the hope that it's going to be anything other than what it is and accept the reality of it. That's what I hear Nedra saying. Once you accept the reality of it, you can meet her where she is or not meet her at all.

39:10Yeah, you wanted to say what I'm talking about. Yeah, the only thing I would add to that is we can't really forgive people who've hurt us unless we really believe we didn't deserve to have what happened. I mean, you were abandoned by your mother. She treated you really poorly. And you probably don't yet fully know that you really didn't deserve that. You might consciously feel like you don't deserve that. But we can't really forgive somebody until we really, really know in our guts that we didn't deserve to be mistreated. So usually compassion can follow from that. Well, we have some parents here who have a different perspective.

39:39First, watch this short clip of what a mother named Christy posted on her social. So I'm going to ruffle some feathers with this one, but I don't care. So I'm going to address a comment that repeatedly gets commented on my post and other people talking about estrangement. And it's the comment that says, your children are not estranging from you to hurt you. They're doing it to protect themselves. I call BS. What are they protecting themselves from with us? Loving parents who've always supported them, loving parents who's always done everything in their power to be there for them, who financially has supported them, who has went out of their way and put their life on the back burner for their kids.

40:27what are they protecting themselves from? Okay, Chrissy, so you've had no contact with your daughter now for what, three years? My daughter, yes. She's estranged from my side of the family three times in seven years. The last estrangement came as a shock because we had reconnected for two and a half years. I let my guard down. We got matching family tattoos, beach vacations with me and her brothers. And so I thought we made it. We're golden. I'm not going to lose her again. and bam, a little conflict happened and out the door. And I tried to talk to her and I was like, we need to sit down. Can we just please sit down and talk?

41:04And like, why are you so upset? It was something so minor. And she refused to communicate with her brothers and I. She's cut my mother off, the only grandmother she's ever had who's completely heartbroken. Her brothers don't have a sister. You know, they're - She's cut out contact with them. Yes. And in the beginning, the first estrangement I will give, you know, it wasn't her fault. She was 17, 18 years old. I went through a divorce. She felt she had to choose and she didn't choose me. We worked through that, you know, and she explained some things to me and I understood it. But now she's 25, almost 26.

41:37She knows I'm a good person. She even, you know, we made TikToks together. She made me beautiful TikTok that I have pinned on my profile, you know, and, you know, literally Mother's Day. And then two weeks later, there was a conflict. So my daughter, she is smart. She's funny. She was a joy to raise. She's a college graduate, but I feel she lacks conflict resolution skills. And I just feel like my question to the therapist is how do we move forward to help parents and children that weren't an abusive parents? Like a lot of us are really good parents. We aren't deserving of this. How do we teach parents and children that we can work through the messy, hard stuff so that we can talk and not go no contact?

42:26Because I'm not going to lie. Like, it's been three and a half years. No word at all. And the glimmer of hope of us ever reconnecting is going away. You know, I talk about a platform and give parents a place to be seen and heard. And, you know, when it first happened to me, I was like you. I was like, I thought I was alone. So now I have a platform where parents can be seen and heard because we are villainized. And that video was about how villainized we become on that app. What was the response to that video? Parents were thankful. And, you know, so many, I felt like I was alone. And to be honest, so many of us parents, I'm not a therapist, but I've heard hundreds of stories.

43:08so many of us never even got the opportunity to sit down and talk to our children. Listen, I'm all about, we don't decide what hurt, we don't get to decide what hurt someone. They don't get to decide what hurt us. So if my daughter came to me and said, mom, can we talk? Heck, yes, absolutely. I would take ownership of anything she said I did to hurt her because I don't get to decide what hurt her. Okay. But she refuses. Well, you know, that brings me to the point. when you said the thing, the reason we are not talking now, it was such a little thing. We all are wondering what little thing was that?

43:43What was that? And you know what I was going to say, but I didn't want to interrupt you. Maybe it was a little, obviously it was a little thing to you, but it wasn't a little thing to her. It was something she didn't get her way. Okay. She didn't get her way. And you know, my boys are in my life. I'm a mom of three. They reassure me all the time. Mom, you are not a bad mom. Do you have a specific question for, My question is, how do we work on teaching conflict resolution skills so that the no contact doesn't start? Because we all know once it starts, it's a hard thing to go back from. Yeah. I mean, what I always tell parents is you have to start with telling your adult child that, I know you wouldn't do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do.

44:26Now, I may not feel that way to me. Is that the first rule of estrangement? That's the first rule of reconciliation. Okay. Yeah. The first thing is you have to reach out to your adult child and say, you wouldn't do this unless you felt like it was the healthiest thing for you to do. Now, you may not feel like it. You probably don't feel like it's the healthiest thing to do. I, as a therapist, may not feel like it's the healthiest thing to do. But it doesn't matter. Your kid does. And there's no way they're going to come to the table unless you do. Second of all, you have to find the kernel, if not the bushel of truth in the complaints.

44:53And maybe you did all that. I mean, I get it. You're right. Some of these adult children who cut off contact, they're conflict avoidant. They don't know how to have a conversation. And they tell their parents that they're gaslighting them or they're, you know, emotionally mature, sorry, or they're, you know, narcissism or whatever. And it's actually that they have mental health issues. Yes. You know, or they're being negatively influenced after a divorce. Or they're married to somebody who says, choose them or me, you can't have both. Or they're involved with a therapist who assumes everything's a result of parental trauma.

45:20Or they don't know any other way to feel separate from the parent other than to cut them off. But this idea that it's only bad parents who are getting cut off. I'm sorry, I called Boa on that. Thank you. Thank you. You agree with my TikTok. Yeah. Uh, so we have another mother here, Kendall. Kendall? Hi. Yes, I am estranged from my 30-year-old son by choice. And what I do notice, even in the room, when the children were speaking, people were kind of nodding and agreeing with them. But the moment Christy started telling her side of the story, people were kind of like, hmm, you know what I'm saying?

45:54My platform speaks similar to hers on behalf of the parent because parents are suffering in silence. And when children become estranged, they are celebrated, they're supported. People rally behind them. But when their mother decides to go no contact with their child, she's demonized. And that's been my experience. You made the decision to go no contact. Why? With your son. My son has been, he's caused me verbal, emotional, physical trauma and financial trauma for over 15 years now. And you just decided enough? Two years ago, he threatened my husband and myself and I made a conscious decision that that was the last straw.

46:32Yeah. Because he didn't get his way. He didn't get his way? Yeah. And has he respected the no contact? No. He has not? No, he has not. He sends threats that if we don't unblock him. He just threatened my husband yesterday. as I got off a flight, saying if we don't unblock him, if I don't speak to him, he's going to do some harm to us. Wow. So that's been my experience. And parents don't go no contact for very small reasons. It takes a lot for a mother to make that conscious choice. And I've been experiencing this for over 15 years, since his dad and I got a divorce and I got remarried 18 years ago.

47:10And you have a question? My question is, why are parents always demonized when they speak their truths or when they make a conscious decision to go no contact, but estranged children are celebrated and rallied behind? Good question. Who wants to answer that? If someone was coming in to see me as their therapist, I'm listening for what that person's experience is. And I have had parents come in whose children are asking for money or they're making the parent feel morally obligated to give them exactly what they want. It's the emotional immaturity switched. OK, I mean, you don't have to be the parent or the adult child to be emotionally immature.

47:54And so whatever it is that is crossing the boundary of the relationship or the other person's right to their own life or to their right to say no, I mean, that has to be dealt with every time in order to keep your own stability and mental health. So I see it very much as going both ways. Whoever it is that's going across the boundary and saying, you have to give me what I need because I'm the most important person in the relationship here, in effect. Whether that's parent or child, that has to be addressed and it's for your own mental health. I would add to that that for a parent, when they're estranged, there's no upside to being an estranged parent.

48:46It's all downside. It's all heartbreak. It's all shame. It's all getting cut off from your grandchildren. It's all guilt. It's all sorrow. It's regret. Whereas when you're an adult child, it's, I mean, you're not doing it unless you were in pain in the first place. I get that. But it's also wedded to our very powerful themes of identity and personal growth and personal happiness and protecting my mental health. And those are much more resonant themes in our culture. So they're much more likely to catch fire than, you know, some parent is getting cut off. Thank you so much. After the break, can you rewrite family patterns without cutting off contact with your loved ones?

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50:01I encourage you to send a link to this episode to someone, anyone who may need to hear this conversation. Let's jump back into it. I wanted to now bring in Aaron. Aaron is a husband and father of four whose oldest daughter chose to go no contact for three years before reconciling. Correct. Take a look at what he shared with other parents about that experience. Parents, no one prepares you for the silence after no contact with your adult children. One day you're texting, I love you. The next, you're staring at a phone that doesn't ring. That silence, it doesn't just hurt. it haunts you. Wow. Painful.

50:58Painful. It's painful. It's very, very painful. So what's your story, Aaron? So my story was my daughter, I think it was around 20, 21, she decided to go no contact. That turned into three years of no contact. Three years. And I'm going to be honest with you guys. I thought I was a great father. I really did. I thought I was a great father. I did the best that I could, provided her with everything, took care of her, just did everything I thought that I was supposed to. Yeah. But what she told me, and when we had the conversation, she said, Dad, you're a helicopter parent. I said, a helicopter parent?

51:37I didn't know what that was. Again, I didn't know what that was. She told me I was a helicopter parent. And a parent, a helicopter parent is a parent that wants to fix everything. And then I started thinking about it. She was right. I was a helicopter parent. I was trying to fix everything. I was always doing too much. I was overstepping my boundaries. And I had to realize that and understand that. But weren't you doing that as a man providing for his family, trying to protect his family, wanting the best for your children? You were not doing that because you were trying to inhibit her. You were doing that because you wanted the best for your children.

52:13Yes. But then she also told me I didn't listen. She wasn't wrong about that either. I don't listen. I'm hard-headed. You know what I mean? Yeah. So she wasn't wrong about that. But she told me, she said, you're a helicopter parent. So is she having this conversation after the three years? Correct. After the three years. So for three years, she said nothing? Nothing. You thought everything was great? I thought everything was great, and then my wife reached out to her, and she didn't respond to my wife. And my wife kept trying to reach out to her. Is your wife her mother? Her mother, correct. Okay, okay.

52:40Yeah, she kept trying to reach out to her. And then we went through a situation where we started talking to her roommate, just trying to figure out what's going on. No contact, no communication, no nothing. So then she needed some help, of course. So she calls me. Dad, can you help me? I'm enrolling in college again. Okay, cool. I was just happy to hear her voice. Yeah. Because I haven't heard from her in so long. So she came over, we talked, and that's when she told me. She said, Dad, you're a helicopter parent. And I'm going to tell you something. So you were willing to help her even though she hadn't spoken to you all these years?

53:11Oh, yeah, that's my baby. Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. I got you. Okay. You know what I mean? I'm going to help you as long as I'm living. So then after the conversation, she said, I said, well, how can we work on our relationship? What can we do? She said, I'll tell you what we can do. We can go to therapy. As a man, I did not want to go to therapy. I'm going to be real with y 'all today. I did not want to do, I didn't want to go and be vulnerable to somebody that I don't know. So went to therapy because I want to get my baby back. So I went to therapy. And the therapist, the therapist told me, she said, listen here, What you got to do and you got to understand, you have to parent your children at different stages differently.

53:50You're still trying to control her like she's a teenager. You're still trying to do too much like she's a teenager. She's a full-fledged adult. Yeah. Understand that. Yeah. You know what I mean? So that changed my whole outlook. Yeah. And then the therapist also told her she has to learn how to communicate and stop running. A lot of adult children run and hide when they don't get their way. Yeah. Or when their parents don't. I think this is so interesting. I have a friend who just went through the, is going through this with her daughter. And she said, we had gone out for Thai food and bowling.

54:24Correct. I thought everything was fantastic. And then I get a letter. A letter arrives in the mail telling me from this day forward, no contact. And she thought something had happened to her daughter. She thought like it was like that her daughter had been kidnapped or somebody had done some harm to her. She calls the police. They go to the park. All of that. So I think it's harder when you don't even, you don't know where it's coming from. Correct. Yeah. And in this situation where they tried to work it out, you tried to get them to accept your new wife, you tried to get them to accept that you're having a child, very different than if you just suddenly disappear and nobody knows what it is.

55:02Correct. Yes. I totally agree. Yes. So the positive, our relationship now is phenomenal. We worked it out. We learned how to communicate. I backed up. Like, I backed up. So what I started doing now, and I'm going to tell you parents out there, this is how you can help your situation. First thing first, stop overstepping boundaries. Stop overstepping boundaries. Just have a normal conversation with your adult child. You know, if they ask for any more information or if they need a question answered, answer that question. But stop overstepping boundaries. That's what I did. I changed my relationship.

55:37Yeah. We're so happy to hear that your story worked out. but I also can hear that every situation is different. I mean, in Kendall's situation where there is verbal and physical abuse, uh-uh, no. Yeah, exactly. Not tolerating that. And I agree with what you said earlier, too. In our generation, the way we grew up, you know, you loved your parents no matter what. Yeah. They're not doing that no more. They're not doing that anymore. And now that you think about it, you know, I can see. Some of these situations, I understand. Yeah, I know. I mean, listen, I've been doing it so long that people were, like, severely abused physically, emotionally.

56:10and still felt like they had to tolerate whatever from their parents. So I think some of it's good. Some of this being able to, I think, reaching a state where you're able to honor and protect your own emotional and mental health, that's a good thing. That means that we are evolving as human beings. Have we gone too far? That's the question. Well, what I'm hearing a little bit of is if someone isn't coming to me with an issue, it's very important to ask ourselves, why? Do they not feel safe with me? Is there something maybe I've done in the past that has prohibited them from wanting to clear the air, talk about an issue with me?

56:55Sometimes we don't recognize that with ourselves. We think, oh, I'm just being a dad. I'm just being a mom. But what's actually happening is you're overstepping their adult boundaries. But isn't it also true, though, because Erin and I were talking about being raised in a different time, that a lot of the parents who are parenting kids, they're raising kids the way they were raised. And so you're raised not to come to your parents with your problems. You're raised not to have conflict with your parents. You're raised not to disagree with your parents. So nobody knows how to even begin to have that conversation because your whole life you weren't allowed to disagree because you always had to be compliant.

57:33Correct. Yeah, but just as the kids have more information, and we know gaslighting, and we know nurses, we know all these terms, it's also available for parents to find and understand these things as well. Okay. You want to say that? Yes, Dr. Gibson. Yeah. No, I was just going to say that you show the one thing that turns this thing around, and that's the willingness to self-reflect. Correct. Ah. You, I mean, that is the change agent. Because if you can't reflect on your own behavior and say, gee, I wonder if there was something I did that may have contributed to this. A lot of times when people are scared and they're in fear of loss, their first reaction, of course, is to be defensive and to find all the reasons why they're not the bad guy.

58:27Because that feels horrible. Which is what Dr. Coleman did the first, when his daughter had the conversation. Anybody would do that. Yeah, thanks for reminding me. It's what we do. It's your natural reaction. It's not me. It's like you've just been injured, okay? Your first reaction is going to be to clench and to defend, okay? But nothing can change until you ask that question, which is, gee, I wonder if there was something that I did too. Once you do that, you begin to become more objective, and you certainly become more receptive to your adult child. And that is the platform from which you can have a different relationship.

59:06So I just wanted to point that that is a hallmark of emotional maturity that you can self-reflect and understand that you are not the most important person in the relationship. Erin, you are the hallmark of emotional maturity. I'm all with it. Fantastic. I'm all with it. Thank you for saying that. Thank you, Erin. I think that absolutely you would want to hear what your daughter had to say, that you would want to work it out and do that conflict resolution. Absolutely. The problem is that some of us have such a strong personality and such a strong way of engaging other people that it becomes a little intimidating.

59:48dating. And we don't know we're doing it because this is our energy. This is who we are. So one of the things we have to remember is that when you're trying to get someone to engage with you in conflict resolution, that you have to be aware that you may have more power than you actually think you do. And they may be backing up from that in a way that feels unnecessary to you. But to them, it may feel like I can't stand my ground with this person. And if you feel like there's no hope of standing my ground, there's no hope of the conflict resolution. So I think we have to just be aware of how we come across with our energy.

1:00:30There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with being a strong personality. Yeah, my sons communicate well with me. The problem is, is it's not all on my daughter. I'm not saying that, but she has cut her father off. She's cut other people off. when there's a conflict, I feel like she lacks those skills with anyone, not just me. Well, is it that she lacks the skills or that she lacks the feeling of personal power? That she could stand? You just said something, and this is definitely not a criticism, but I'm just going to say that because I said it's not a criticism, you're going to think it is a criticism.

1:01:05I'm used to it. I take it all the time on TikTok. This is what I noticed that you said, and I just wanted to bring up this point from Dr. Koblen's book, that there are separate realities in every family. And for years, I've had multiple discussions with lots of families, and lots of parents say what you just said, Chris. They say, but my sons did this, and my other child did this, and my other... Everybody in the family, in the same family, you're doing the same thing with all the kids, they're all having a different experience. Correct? Yeah, not only is it correct, but, you know, our children also have, they kind of come into the world with a certain temperament.

1:01:45If you've got, you know, three kids, they might all have really different temperaments. Some might be really assertive. Others might be really resilient. Others might be really conflict-avoidant, anxious, depressive. And, you know, how they see us as parents is going to be reflected through that filter. So if you have a kid who's sort of prone to depression or anxiety, they're going to see, they're going to be much more reactive to you. They're going to be much more sensitive. and they're going to later say, well, you were emotionally abusive. You're going to be like, the hell I was because you're not really reading the world from their perspective.

1:02:13And that's why I agree with what Lindsay's saying, that we need to sort of see it through their eyes, not through just our own eyes. All your kids see their experience in the family. And I understand that. And like I said, I've never had the opportunity to talk. Like we didn't come from a family where we just fought and yelled. That wasn't our family, you know? In fact, a lot of things were shoved under a rug. And I have thought to myself, did I teach her how to communicate? Because a lot of things in my marriage was shoved under a rug. Not on my end, but it takes two people to talk. And if there's not communication, so I've thought, did we teach her that?

1:02:50Did we teach her to just shove things under a rug and not talk? Where did she learn not to have conflict resolution? But I can't make her talk to me. She has to be wanting to come to me and say, let's sit down. Let's go to therapy. Let's talk about this. because I've said so many times on my platform, I will own it. Bring it to me. I will own it. I've not had that chance. And so many other estranged parents haven't had the chance either. Does she know you want that chance? Yes, I'm sure she's seen my TikToks. So we thought this was interesting. Thank you all so much. We thought this was interesting.

1:03:21Hadley, stand up. So Hadley, y 'all, is a hospice nurse and a New York Times bestselling author about her experience. And she says that sometimes her dying patients will ask her to call their estranged adult children who have gone no contact. And when my team saw one of her videos, we wanted her to join us in this conversation. Here's a quick look. If you are the type of person who continues to be no contact with your dying family member, even after I as a hospice nurse call you and say that that is their final dying wish to talk to you, then I think that's totally fine. I don't judge you, and I don't think you owe people who abused you peace.

1:04:08I don't mind being the bad guy and telling them no. I'll even update you when they pass if you ask me to and be your shoulder to cry on. and if all you feel is relief, that's totally normal too and you're not a bad person. You know, when I first heard your story and I hadn't seen you on TikTok, I was like, wow, what an interesting thing. You're putting these strange children with their dying parents, but it's not that at all. Not always. In most cases, they don't, right? They say no. I don't want to see them. They do in most cases, but it's difficult. I've had conversations before where they say, what should I do?

1:04:50And they ask me, and that's very difficult. When I became a hospice nurse 10 years ago, I was not estranged from my own biological father. And about seven years ago, I did become estranged from him. So I really began to understand more how those children are and what they're feeling whenever they're getting that phone call. Wow. Wow. And so what do you find when the people who are dying ask to see their children? Are they asking to see their children, their estranged adult children, because they want to apologize, because they have regrets, because they want to have final words? I don't believe personally that they usually want to apologize because they're telling me, do they know that I'm dying?

1:05:37It almost feels like a guilt trip to me. Like, please tell them that I'm dying and maybe they'll talk to me. Has anybody expressed, you know, regret or grief that they were estranged from their adultery? I did have one person in particular I think of that really told me that they had a lot of regrets and they wanted to make amends. And I did with our social worker, make that phone call to the child and asked if they wanted to hear them out and give them that chance. They ultimately decided not to. They went really back and forth. They ultimately decided not to. So what myself and the social worker did is we offered for that patient to write a letter to the child.

1:06:22And we said, after you pass, we'll make sure that they get it. We can't promise that they'll read it. And the patient decided to not write that letter. Really? You told my team that you think that this is oftentimes a form of control on the part of the parents. I do, yes. Yeah. Well, first of all, what it takes to be a hospice nurse. Can we just give that a round? Thank you. Thank you. That is the Lord's work you are doing for sure. And do you find that when you're asked to reach out to these estranged children, adult children, that the adult children appreciate being reached out to or not? Not always.

1:07:09I think that sometimes they have no idea that anything about their parent at all. And I'm usually making these at like 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, and they're in the middle of a work day, and I think it's very jarring, understandably. Yeah, right. And how long have people been estranged from their children? I think the most I've seen has been like 20, 30 years. Yeah, yeah. Well, I can understand it's been 20 years. Yeah, to get that phone call on a Tuesday while you're working. Yeah, hard. And then you call them after the person has passed, if they want you to? I ask them, or a social worker will. I ask, and most times they do want to know, which I find interesting.

1:07:51They want to know that they've passed, and I understand that. I mean, being estranged myself, I think it would also be extremely jarring to find that out from, like, Facebook. Mm, yeah. So you said you now are estranged from your biological father. Yes. Why, can we ask? I say it's a million cuts that bled me dry. and I could give you one reason, but I think that it wouldn't reflect the entirety of the situation, and I think that someone would judge that one situation and say that wasn't enough of a reason, and in reality, it wasn't just that. It was a million things before that that led up to that.

1:08:27Yeah. It sounds like it's never one thing. Yeah. Nobody does it over one thing. So thank you so much, Hadley, for sharing that with us. I want to close with a word from our experts. Nedra, let's start with you. Well, I think there is hope because we have more information on the topic. And if we want to preserve relationships, we have to be open to hard conversations. And sometimes we have to be the person to start it, whether that's the parent or the child. We have to get out of these patterns that we've been in with our parent. If they've been domineering, if they've done something to us, we have to learn to use our words and speak up.

1:09:09I think that the boundaries that we're starting to see with so many adults is not necessarily a new thing, but people are more vocal about wanting emotional connection with their parents or not wanting to be told who to marry or what they should feel in certain situations. And that's not necessarily a bad thing because we want to feel closer to our families, But we also have to learn to deal with the conflict within our families. And I don't think everybody is just like, I'm out of here. I've never had a conversation. Sometimes people make it hard for us to talk. Some people are intimidating. Some people become defensive.

1:09:51And so it's hard to tell a person who's doing that, that they're actually doing that. But if you are disconnected in a relationship, you have to look inward. and you have to own your part of it and not just assume that this other person is wrong. It's two people. Perhaps we both did something. So being open to that conflict is really important for repair. That's what you said, Dr. Gibson. Self-reflection is the key. Yeah, I mean, it's the key for any relationship to have things get better. But I just wanted to mention that, you know, societally and culturally, what we're all up against is that everybody has tremendous stress in dealing with a very complex world now.

1:10:40I mean, this is not the world of 30 years ago, even. The things that adult children are having to think about, weigh, succeed in are very different. And it's very, very stressful. We don't have the energy to put into relationships where someone is going to be continually pushing back and making us feel that what is going on inside us is not valid or is not true in some way. This old way of the respect for the role itself, I think, for the role of the parent or the authority figure. Honor thy father and thy mother. Yes, exactly. Yes, it says honor them. It doesn't say obey them, agree with them, do whatever they say, make them the most important person in the relationship.

1:11:30So those days of the role trumping everything else are gone. People do not have the energy now to sustain a relationship that is draining or difficult or constantly conflictual. They do not have the energy to keep on maintaining that and live this very complex life. I think it's a very interesting thing you just said. The days of the role being the almighty in the relationship, because it's not about the role. It really is about the relationship. And that's what's happening to these poor parents, because they're thinking that there is some security there for them in the role. Okay. But what has happened is that...

1:12:22And that's what people mean when they say, oh, she's your only mother, that's your only one. They're talking about the role. You actually haven't had a relationship with a mother who mothered you. Yeah, it shifted from the role to relationship skills and to empathy and to understanding the other person's subjective experience. There has been a ground shift in that. That's not going to go backwards. people are not going to become less aware and less conscious of their own inner experience. The ship has sailed. And so we have to find ways of understanding that our kids are stressed. They're exhausted in this very complex society.

1:13:04They don't have a lot of extra energy to work stuff out with you. And so you have to, if you want to get along or regain the relationship, you have to treat them like a treasured friend. Like, how would you keep a friend that you wanted to keep? A cherished person. That's how you have to treat them because they're exhausted. You'll have to improve the relationship skills. Yes. Thank you. That's what I'm trying to say. The relationship skills have to take the place. You have to do that and not use the, I'm your mother, I'm your father, and so automatically you should give me whatever. Yes, exactly.

1:13:41But see, nobody comes along and tells the parent, You have to undergo this shift, and you have to understand now that it's going to be the quality of the relationship and the empathy that's going to count. Nobody told them that. Everybody's being caught unaware by that. Well, I agree with all that. But I would add that the Surgeon General recently came out and added parenting as one of the risks of adulthood currently. And parents are under enormous pressure, including parents of adult children. in part because the criteria of what constitutes good parenting has gone through the roof. I mean, it's what I call the soulmate parent.

1:14:20You're not only supposed to be, you know, get your kids out of the house and independent. You're also supposed to be sensitive and empathic and psychological and a coach and a learning disability specialist and a psychiatrist. And that's a lot of pressure on parents. And then later, your adult child might estrange you because you didn't do one of those things. I mean, I'll see letters from adult children saying, well, you didn't see that I was depressed when I was young and get me help, so I don't owe you a relationship. I'm like, well, your parent isn't a damn psychiatrist, you know? I mean, they didn't know that you were depressed.

1:14:52And to cut off a parent for that reason, to me, that just seems wrong. Okay, now final comment. Two things. One is I have close family who are in recovery, and I've learned a lot from the fourth step, which is that you make a fearless and searching moral inventory of yourself. This is similar to what Lindsay and Nedra are saying. You make a serious and searching moral inventory of your own character flaws. Because we all have them. Y 'all have them. We have them as parents. Everybody has character flaws. And what I often tell parents is, you know what, it's about humility. It's not about humiliation.

1:15:23Because parents don't really necessarily want to write that a strange letter. It's probably hard for you to hear what your daughter had to say. It was hard for me to hear what my daughter had to say and to really open myself up and be vulnerable. But I think what we're all saying is nothing's going to happen unless we can do that. unless we can sort of see our own character flaws. But I think adult children, also, you have to see the ways that you push your parent away, or you don't give them credit for the things that they did, or you don't recognize that they might have grown up in a culture that, you know, didn't, wasn't so psychological, wasn't so emotional and sensitive, and love them in any way, see that their efforts were still loving.

1:16:01And so those are my final words. Okay. I thank you, all of you, for being a part of this conversation. and for all of you who were thinking, oh, you were alone. Well, there's rules of estrangement. There's adult children and emotionally immature parents and drama free. People are writing about it and now we're all talking about it. And hopefully this has been eye-opening for many of you, particularly those of you who are going through it. Thank you so much for joining us. Go well and we'll meet up again next week.

1:16:33You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.

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