Why I Estranged From My Parents, Even Though I Still Love & Appreciate Them.
A couple of weeks ago, I published an essay about the stigma attached to adults who estrange from their families, and the judgments we often receive from our choice to go No-Contact with parents.
One of the most common misconceptions about estranged adult children is that we do not love our parents, nor do we recognize and appreciate the good things they’ve done.
Now, granted—some people don’t appreciate their parents. I’ve seen everything under the sun, where people refer to their parents as mere incubators for sperm and egg. Some people don’t even feel sad when their parents die.
And honestly? I don’t blame them.
Because 99% of the time, those parents have fully earned their child’s extreme resentment. It takes a lot to bring your baby to that level of disgust. Many parents have been relentlessly wicked or neglectful, no matter which face they show the world.
For this reason, I will never judge someone who rejects their parents so harshly, because I know that their strong language and/or detachment will never accurately measure up to the level of betrayal they experienced as children.
However, I do not feel that way about my parents. While the abuse I experienced was pretty bad—I did not experience the most extreme forms of abuse. In fact, the first 7 years of my life are mostly filled with beautiful memories.
My parents did lots of things right, and I am grateful for my upbringing.
And I still estranged from my parents, for very good reasons.
I’d like to share a window into my early childhood, the root and nuance behind my decision to estrange from my family, and why I still feel like I did the right thing, after all these years.
I grew up in the golden era of the 90’s, when life was sweet. I come from an upper middle-class home in a small liberal town where my parents worked as Engineers. Our little nuclear family consisted of me, my elder brother (Baba), my Dad, Mom, and our cat, Syntax.
On the outside, we were the picture-perfect black family: one that had undoubtedly achieved the American dream. As a child, I had a spacious home, abundant access to nature, plenty of toys and games, neighborhood friends, and just the right balance between analog and technology. Memories of my early childhood are bright, sunny, cozy, and enriching—no matter the season.
To this day, I still endeavor to model my lifestyle after my early childhood in the 90’s. But the truth is—I can never fully replicate it because I was living under very different conditions, and so much of the enrichment I experienced came from a semblance of a family that has since fallen apart.
When I was a toddler, my Mother quit her job to be a full-time homemaker, pouring ample time and attention into her home and children, while my Father soared the ranks in his Professorship.
Mom made our home so warm and beautiful, inside and out. She would spend hours landscaping our yard, planting rows of flowers, spreading mulch, crystals, and white stones-and thoughtfully placing benches, swings, and Buddha statues in the garden.
Mom taught me how to read, and nurtured my literary gifts from a young age. I had a natural hunger for literature, and I would always try to read her Engineering books when I was just two years old.
She would sit with me on the floor, helping me pronounce my words—and then we would visit Media Play so that I could read books that were more entertaining.
My literacy skyrocketed very quickly, such that I had a 5th grade reading level when I was in Kindergarten. After school, I would visit my brother’s classroom to hang out with him and his friends, and they would make a show out of my skills.
The kids would give me one of their books, and I’d sit at an empty desk to read aloud with my brother and his classmates standing around, as they oohh and ahhh’d at my flawless reading.
I wrote my first book in Kindergarten. It was a little pamphlet, probably with my signature drawing of our cat on the front—but my Mom took it seriously, and looked into having it published.
That was Mom. She was very involved in our enrichment in the early days, she played a huge role in my early intellectual development. She believed in me, and I felt loved. In the wake of her emotionally abusive relationship with Dad, I guess motherhood was her only outlet.
The only bad memory I have of my Mom during my early childhood was her occasional punishments.