How do you live through estrangement? Not just how to go through it, but how to keep living when the person you love is still here, but has chosen to step away? This week, we’re tackling a topic frequently on your mind and very present in mine, too.
On a weekly basis, I receive a handful of questions or comments about familial estrangement. How to address it as the person who has been cut off. How to address it as the person who is stepping away from the relationship?
And I don’t mean that I’m being asked how to go through with it. I’m being asked how to live through it. How you can do the work of grieving through estrangement, when the other person isn’t gone, but actively choosing something that removes them from your life. Earlier this year, I had an entire research project mapped out on the subject. One featuring brilliant minds on the subject of communal care, rupture and repair, collective grieving, and more. But something held me back from moving into the work. It didn’t feel like the right timing, despite the clear need for such an intersectional resource.
And then recently, I connected with a friend who is going through an estrangement of their own – with a family member who is declining in health. The complicated nature of their rupture only adds to the complexity of the open-ended grief experience. In that moment, I was reminded that we do not teach about what we have not healed. My friend expressed similar thoughts, knowing this difficult area would be in their own future body of work, but for now, they’re waiting to see how they can heal first. How does the work of grieving through estrangement transform our understanding of self, connection, and others?
My friend’s story is not theirs alone; it’s a reflection of the shared struggle so many of us face when ties fray in ways that feel both sudden and inevitable. And that’s where I’m at, too. Estrangement is not falling out of touch; estrangement is a direct disconnect. When we or another decide the relationship is not healthy and intentionally break connection.
But I realize while I’m not the one to answer about estrangement right now, I am one who understands in part what it is like to be rejected as family. I am one who, like so many of you, is trying to navigate unspoken boundaries and nuances with respect while healing.
Every situation is complicated, because in every situation, there is usually more than a single crack that shattered the relationship bond. While one moment became the final blow, wisdom tells us many moments led to the ultimate breaking. If the shattering feels mysterious, the choice that follows is often even harder: deciding what to do with the pieces. That’s where the autonomy of relationships comes in.
I think that is where so much of it hurts – the uncertainty of understanding. Being pushed away and held responsible for something you aren’t able to see. Can we guess at the reasons? Yeah, of course! That’s what the brain wants to do – constantly. To imagine scenarios, trying to resolve them, to rebuild a bridge where the first was burned.
But when the person we’ve lost has been passive, breaking relationship without explanation, we have so much more to wonder about. In so many cases of strained relationships, there is a blowout fight that goes along with the rupture. Countless tiny offenses left unaddressed, building pressure until the moment when one party finally loses their patience. Small comments over the years were dismissed or disregarded. Opinions on culture, parenting, faith, or other areas ignored or minimized as less important.
When we are unable to divest a person from their principles or alternatively; when we treat a person poorly because their principles are different than ours, we are faced with a choice to remove ourselves from the scenario. That’s another part of estrangement we often struggle to understand. The autonomy of relationships. As individuals, we get to choose who we are connected with. We get to decide if we allow someone into our day to day. If we say yes, and then regret the choice, we get to remove them. But autonomy doesn’t erase grief. In fact, it often sharpens it, reminding us that relationships are both chosen and fragile.
So when we do it in ways that feel uncommunicative – think ghosting or gossiping – we aren’t removing them in a way that allows us peace. With these techniques, there will always be an air of grief and discontent in how it all went down.
Setting boundaries with a family member because of a disagreement or distaste for them is fine. But setting the boundaries isn’t always safe to do. If the person is abusive, it is necessary to step away without explanation. No one is owed an explanation – even you, sweet listener – even if you do not understand what went wrong.
So that’s where we stand. Those individuals who continually reach out to me about grieving through estrangement find themselves frustrated knowing how the cracks began, and hurting because the “final blow” seemed so far out of left field. Understanding grief work with a living entity means navigating the world in a way that leaves you experiencing embodied security that is sustainable; not dependent on a continually repeated mantra of not caring what happens. That’s why the work is not only about understanding the rupture—it’s about learning how to remain grounded, even as uncertainty swirls.
Because you do care. That’s why you’re asking. It’s why you’re listening to a podcast on familial estrangement, hoping to gain understanding and perhaps, something more.
Learning to keep our hearts open to the possibility found within uncertainty is scary. But when we allow love, grief, belief, and hope to coexist with the unknown future of that person, we counter our self-protective tendencies to detach from our own inner world. We can’t stay connected to someone who doesn’t want connection – that lack of honesty leads us into numbness and bitterness.
We can remember that our identity is not on trial, however. We are not responsible to manage someone else’s beliefs or ideas about us, even if we think they have us dead wrong. That is a dysregulated nervous system approach trying to manage an external circumstance that is not ours to manage. So it’s not about trying to change their minds.
We are especially not beholden to their idea of us – communicated or otherwise – if it would result in our actions working to resolve the outcome at the sacrifice of our sense of self.
If we can recognize our own actions and intentions as pure (without manipulation or a power struggle to be seen as right and good), then we can begin the work of rooting down into non-attachment. This freeing sense of admitting we cannot control the outcome, but that we are committed to our values and integrity – grounding in our identity over the result of the relationship.
Can you imagine? Can you imagine what it would look like to wish peace upon the person who rejected you without the mental caveats of, “But you’re wrong about me,” or wishing they “wake up to reality?”
The energy it takes to maintain disdain for someone is energy you are stealing from your own creative, intuitive self. Your life was not meant to be lived at the altar of another person’s ego. Your life was meant to flourish through expressions of self-awareness, compassion, curiosity, and care for yourself and others. When you find a person that you want to love is unavailable to you, your work is to move away from your ego state that deflects responsibility and staunchly defends itself with low energetic responses.
Let’s wrap up on that – what is a low energetic response and how do they keep us disconnected from the version of ourselves that can heal through estrangement?
When we remain in cycles of blame, defensiveness, or disdain, we are operating in low energetic frequencies. These behaviors aren’t just tiring; they literally keep us vibrating at a level that limits healing. Low energetic responses include resentment, gossip, and repeating arguments in your mind. Think of it like Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness: resentment and shame vibrate at the lowest frequencies, while love, joy, peace, and enlightenment resonate at the highest. Choosing compassion over disdain literally shifts the energy you inhabit.
Higher frequency responses are those of compassion, curiosity, and self-trust. They are expressions of love toward an entity that cannot or will not return it. They are an act of trust in the process and power of love through uncertainty. We do not have to extend the olive branch over and over; if a person is determined to be happier without us, that is okay. A higher frequency response is to allow them the autonomy they also deserve to express.
The lower levels are about force, ego, and survival. After estrangement, a survival response makes sense. But if we stay there, grief only deepens. Our responsibility is to move toward an embodied response. Healing requires an act of choice toward the higher frequencies not to fix the situation, but to anchor in ourselves and our chosen values.
So when you ask how to live through estrangement, the answer may not be in reconciling or forgetting – it may be in noticing where your energy resides, and choosing the frequencies that allow you to keep living fully, even through uncertainty. What would it look like, for you, to practice living through estrangement without letting it lower your own frequencies or turn you against the other person?
Thank you for listening to episode 212 of Restorative Grief. Living in a way that honors a pursuit of compassion, care, and curiosity toward ourselves is hard enough – trying to learn how to do that toward others when they’ve hurt us is the work of grieving. That’s why this podcast is so necessary. We can’t heal if we are actively resisting the work of grieving. So as you go through the rest of your day, I hope you’ll consider small ways you can increase your energetic output toward self and others. How can you demonstrate a more intentional energy toward another person where rupture exists? Not all relationships receive the repair we want. But sometimes, the repair comes in a different container, too.
If this is your first time listening to the podcast, thank you for being here. I hope you’re choosing a gentle response to yourself through all of the grief you are carrying, and if you like what you heard today, please remember to subscribe and leave a review so others can find the work, too. You can learn more about Restorative Grief in the show notes or at MandyCapehart.com. I would also humbly ask you to consider becoming a Patron of the show for as little as $2 a month, which means you’ll not only keep this going, but you’ll gain access to monthly bonus episodes and a weekly workbook to go along with each podcast episode.
Thank you as always to the Patrons of the show – the work continues, and I’m grateful to have you as partners in it. And before we go, as always, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I’ll see you next week.
Links + resources from this episode: