A Different View (five year reflections)
As The Estranged Heart approaches the end of five years, I'm what I've learned from conversations with other families and continued reflection on my relationships.

As The Estranged Heart approaches the end of five years, I'm what I've learned from conversations with other families and continued reflection on my relationships.

Relationships accumulate history, and history accumulates meaning. When the same kind of hard conversation happens over and over, across years, it stops being a series of isolated moments. It becomes a pattern.

The pain of losing contact with your child doesn't sit still. It moves. It reaches. It looks for a place to go. And almost universally, it keeps reaching toward the same place: the person who caused it.

There's a story most people tell about estrangement, but there's another version of the story, and it starts in a completely different place.