Last week I watched Oprah’s podcast on family estrangement, which brought up a lot of difficult feelings.
I thought about the complexities of estrangement from my own family and the painful experiences of my clients trying to navigate the mindfu*k of layers around this topic.
So, in this weeks podcast, I respond to Oprah’s session and share reflections that speak to the themes I see repeatedly with clients where adult children become the “problem” for telling the truth, heinous betrayals, sibling enabling, scapegoating, and the grief of choosing distance as an act of self-preservation rather than punishment.
The episode names estrangement not as failure, but as a boundary that emerges when repair is not possible and invites compassion for the parts of us holding both relief and heartbreak.