The plan for today was to polish the column entitled “The Fork That Was,” a follow-up to last week’s “The Fork That Wasn’t.”
However, I am instead going to take the opportunity to recommend a number of pieces on estrangement I’ve read this week. Two were sent to me (you know who you are–thank you!), and I stumbled upon one this morning. More on that in a minute.
First is a piece on Substack entitled Controlling the Narrative: Estrangement as Information Warfare.
The author is named Steven Howard. A quick look around in Substack didn’t result in any information about the author, but I could have overlooked something in my self-imposed deadline haste. The piece posits strategies on how to “counter this ideology.” Though I can’t vouch for the author’s qualifications or any therein-utilized sources, it’s a thorough, thoughtful piece, and well worth reading.
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Next up is a piece in The Federalist entitled 1 In 4 Young Americans Cuts Off Parents And Calls It ‘Boundaries’ by Paula Rinehart, LCSW, a therapist in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s shorter and perhaps easier to digest, and among its important points you’ll find this:
As a therapist who is also a mother and grandmother, I can acknowledge there are parents or siblings too unsafe to see — or see very often. But this is rare and should remain so.
Historically, a “cut-off” with a parent or sibling is what every good therapist schooled in family dynamics worked her tail off to help a person avoid.
Many a PLACE parent has asked if therapists are trained to recommend estrangement. The answer is a resounding “no.” Please remember that, and feel free to state it loudly for the people in the back.
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Finally, this morning I stumbled upon the cover feature for this month’s print issue of Psychology Today, entitled Healing Family Splits: How to Navigate Estrangement. The article does not appear to be online yet.
Contributing authors include Drs. Lucy Blake, Joshua Coleman, and Karl Pillemer.
I’ll share the online version when it becomes available, as this is thought-provoking writing. In spite of the temptation to comment on this feature point by point, I have to be mindful about use of space.
The bottom line: It’s a good piece of writing, though some of its opinions would benefit from editing and/or peer input, and some statistics appear to contradict each other.
Example: Dr. Pillemer reports that 10 percent of families in a not-specified area are affected by parent-child estrangement, whereas the other contributors refer to commonly-cited estimates upwards of 25% in the US.
Look for “The Fork that Was” next week.
