Estrangements

A Survey on Family Estrangement

My friend who is working on a documentary about Family Estrangements has prepared two surveys on the topic. She asks both parents estranged from their children and children estranged from their parents to respond to the survey. Here is what she says:

"Finally.. surveys are ready.
There is a survey for Parents that are Estranged from their Adult Children and there is a a survey for Adult Children. I urge all of you to take the time to answer honestly! If there are ever going to be answers or help for this issue, we need everyone's participation! Thank you in advance for your time!"

She also says, "Please know that this is totally confidential!!!!!
I am hopeful that everyone will take the time to answer these questions. The results will be used to continue to try to get the attention of therapists and the psychology community that this is a real problem that really exists.
The only way this will make a difference is to have your participation .... adult children as well as parents."

Click here to take the Parents Estranged from Adult Children survey now.

Click here to take the Adult Children Estranged from Parents survey now.

A small piece of the past revisited

It's been a long time since I wrote a post that talked about estrangement. It is almost a year since the dialogue begun on May 12, 2008 that I had with my estranged daughter in the comment section of a post on here. One point of contention for her was whether I would mention certain things or not in my blog. I would not agree to what she wanted from me but I knew it was a sensitive point so in my own heart and mind I had decided not to write about those issues unless I had a good reason to do so. Since May of 2008 I have not mentioned those issues here.

Estranged Stories ~ a new support group on Ning.

There is a new online site for sharing stories of family estrangement. It is a Ning group. The link to it is here:
Estranged Stories

What can you change?

You cannot change the cards you are dealt. Just how you play the hand.
                                                     Randy Pausch 1961- July 25, 2008

Randy Pausch - Life Teacher

New Jersey Support Group: PARENTS of ESTRANGED CHILDREN

I found an announcement online regarding a new support group. The announcement reads as follows:

A NEW JERSEY no-fee “PARENTS of ESTRANGED CHILDREN” community Support Group will begin meeting at the STARTING POINT in Westmont, New Jersey (Camden County).

Support Groups: Part III: Creating your own online group.

If you can't find a support group that meets your needs and in which you feel safe, you can create an online discussion group. You can create such a group with the tools provided online by a number of companies that provide online services. Companies such as Yahoo!, Typepad, Google (Blogger), Wordpress and others.

Support Groups: Part II (Online Support Groups)

Some online discussion groups have been offered on sites set up by the authors of books on the subject. Some online groups are public and anyone can read and write on the site. Others require people to become members using an email address or user name and a password but letting almost anyone join. Occasionally such groups may block a person who violates the moderator's rules of conduct but it is easy for someone to make up another user name, get another email address, and join again.

Support Groups for those coping with a family estrangement. Part I

A mother in pain over not having had any contact with her recently estranged son joined an online support group. She talked about her feelings and how grateful she was to find the group and how rare it is for a grown child to estrange themselves from their parents. I tried to say that I thought that the situation wasn't rare but she would have none of that. She insisted that it was rare. As I thought about it more, I realized that she is right. Relatively speaking, it is rare. Not unheard of certainly but if you ask one hundred parents with grown kids if this has happened to them, you will find few, if any, who will say yes. Not that I have tried this. I haven't.

Reconciliation: An opportunity to be surprised and impressed.

In recent months several friends and acquaintances have been reporting either reconciliations or communications from relatives that may lead to a full reconciliation. I have been delighted for them. Some have reconciled even though they had been assaulted physically by the relative who estranged them. Some had experienced verbal abuse. In each case they were delighted to hear from their returning relatives.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, . . .

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
                                                    from the poem "Maud Miller" by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

My father died in October of 1988. He died the day before my mother's birthday. They had been divorced for twenty years. They had been married for twenty-five years prior to the divorce.

Texas organization: Healing Estranged Relationships (H.E.R.)

This link is to an organization in Texas that offers support groups to those who are estranged. It sounds as though the groups meet in Texas only so far but that their long term goals may be to branch out to other locations.
H.E.R. Group

Their email address on their site which wasn't working earlier has been fixed and is now working.

When Parents Hurt by Joshua Coleman & related links

• "When Parents Hurt" by Joshua Coleman, Ph. D.. Link to listing page on Amazon. ~ When things go wrong even when parents have done their best.
• Discussion of book on Amazon.com: "When Parents Hurt" by Joshua Coleman, Ph.D.
• Website for the book, "When Parents Hurt"
• "When Parents Hurt" blog

I heard of this book for the first time yesterday and visited the sites at the links above. This sounds like a compassionate book that would be of interest to many parents who have lost their relationships with their children.

A reader mentioned "When Parents Hurt" to me yesterday and sent me a link. I thank her very much for letting me know about it. I hadn't heard of it before. It was published in July 2007.

Ginny

Estrangers & Estrangees: Two sides of the Fence Called Estrangement

The Problem with Discussing Estrangement Online.

People who have a family estrangement tend to have experienced one of two kinds of situations: they have decided to become estranged from someone or they have become estranged due to someone else's decision. The first group I call Estrangers. The second Estrangees.

Easter Sunday Mourning

When I don't know what to say, I find things that other people have said that make sense to me. Here is what someone else has to say about "Closing the door on the past".

Ginny

On HBO: Addiction

HBO has put together a package of excellent programs on this topic, one which has affected more than half of the blood related relatives that I know. Some of the new information about addiction shown in these programs offers hope for people that didn't exist in the past.
Addiction

Fragmented Families by Ellen B. Sucov

Due to a damaged hard drive that needs to be sent out for data recovery, I'm not currently updating the estrangements.com website. I expect to be able to do updates again in a couple of weeks. (I can do them now but it would be easier if I had some files back on my computer.) In the meantime, I will put the items that I would have put on estrangements.com here on the Estrangements blog.

July 18, 2006: keyword search: "how to let go"

These links were selected from the results of a Google search using the keyword phrase "how to let go":

1. From enotalone.com: How to let go of guilt and learn to forgive
2. From cancersurvivors.org: Letting Go (Note: This article pertains to all kinds of letting go.)
3. How to Let Go of Your Mad Baggage, a book by Lynne Namka, Ed.D.
4. On 43things.com: How to Let Go. (Note: This page has additional links as you scroll down to the bottom of the posts that also relate to letting go. I didn't go and read them all but there looks to be a lot of good input on the topic of learning to let go.)
5. On oandp.com: Delegating Effectively: How to Let Go and Why by Jodi Mills (Note: The "letting go" being discussed in this article is not the same kind of letting go as in a relationship. But the issues of perfectionism and letting go of control of others and things are important ones that can be extrapolated to cover more than one kind of situation.)
6. On Chet Day's Health & Beyond: How to Let Go of the Need to Be Right by Debbie Mandel
7. From techrepublic.com: How to let go the hard way. (A post on a blog about leadership and management issues.)

The Dialectizer & Harry Browne "Gift for My Daughter"

For a change of mood go here: Dialectizer's Redneck version of the online article, Gift for my Daughter by Harry Browne, and press the Dialectize button. Try the Cockney version and the Jive version and the Elmer Fudd version .... And then whatever other url or text you'd like to try the Dialectizer on.

Link to original Harry Browne article without being dialectized: Gift for my Daughter,

"The Art of Grieving", a Workshop, Sept. 9, 2006

"The Art of Grieving Workshop" is being offered on Saturday, September 9, 2006, at the Caron Recovery Center, 244 E. 58th St., NY, NY from 9:30 AM to 4 PM. The cost is $80 per person. For more information, call: 1-800-678-2332 Ext. 6288

I received information in the mail about a number of workshops offered by the Caron organization. In 1988 I took an Adult Children of Alcoholics Workshop given by Caron. I thought it was very worthwhile. I have read of Grief Workshops given by other organizations. This is the first one I had read of that is being offered by Caron.

More Links For Parents

1.  A Gift for my Daughter By Harry Browne, a Libertarian Party candidate in years past.
2. Daughter Therapy Interesting online article on unexpected results of therapy.  
3. When Our Grown Kids Disappoint Us: Letting Go of Their Problems, ... Book by Jane Adams
4. Articles on Recovery from Grief Written by co-authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook 

For Parents

It’s Never Too Late                   To Have A Good Relationship ... by Suzanne E. Harrill