Angry Emails: Parents, Estrangement and the Need for Someone to Blame

Since publishing my recent article on family estrangement, I’ve received a number of emails from parents. Some were thoughtful and respectful. Many were angry.

The anger is often directed at me, at therapists more broadly, or at social media. I’ve been told that articles like mine are “dangerous.” That they “encourage” estrangement. That they give adult children permission to walk away. I’ve been admonished and told that I “should be ashamed” of myself. I've been called unethical, anti-Torah values and warned that I am “causing real damage.”

Underneath all those messages is a very specific fear: What if my child reads this article and feels vindicated? What if they feel reinforced in staying away? What if they start to believe that this is all my fault?

I understand that fear. It makes sense. 

I want to be clear that not all of the responses I received were angry. Some parents wrote with pain, humility and deep respect. In those messages, I felt their grief and fear immediately, and I had genuine compassion for them. Even when they disagreed with me, their willingness to speak thoughtfully and without attacking stood out to me.

What I noticed, in contrast, was how in some responses that fear was quickly redirected into attack, insults, and blame. When someone responds to discomfort by lashing out rather than reflecting, it’s often the same pattern their child has experienced in the relationship and one that continues to keep them away and that's worth mentioning here.

Estrangement is terrifying for parents. It activates panic, grief, shame, and a profound sense of helplessness. It can feel unbearable to imagine that something outside of you like an article, a therapist or a post online, might solidify the distance you already feel powerless to fix.

And at the same time, I want to be honest about something that is harder to hear:

Blame often functions as emotional relief.

When the pain is overwhelming, blame gives it somewhere to go. If the problem is an article, a therapist, or a cultural trend, then the story becomes simpler. There is an external cause. A villain. Something to fight against. And importantly, something that saves us from having to sit with all the shame, grief, or questions.

Reflection is much harder than blame.

Reflection requires tolerating the possibility that two things can be true at the same time: That you loved your child deeply and that there may have been ways they felt hurt, unseen, or unsafe, even if that was never your intention. That you did your best and that your child’s experience of the relationship may still be painful. That you are suffering and that your suffering does not automatically make your interpretation the only valid one.

Many of the emails I receive insist on a single narrative: I was a good parent. My child had a good childhood. This estrangement makes no sense. What is often left out is the terror underneath: If I allow myself to reflect, what might I have to feel? What if I have to grieve something I can’t undo?

Blame protects us from that reckoning. But blame doesn’t heal relationships. It doesn’t soothe nervous systems and it doesn’t bring children closer.

Another fear I hear repeatedly is that validating estrangement equals endorsing it. That acknowledging an adult child’s pain means I'm saying the parent is “wrong” or irredeemable. That is not how relational repair works though. Validation is not the same as agreement, accountability is not the same as blame and reflection is not a verdict on who you are.

What does matter is taking responsibility for your own emotions and actions. 

Parents cannot control whether their adult child reads an article. They cannot control what resonates for them or how they interpret their own experience. What they can control is how they care for themselves in the face of such a devastating loss, how they deal with their anger without becoming rigid or defensive, and whether they stay open hearted or dig their heels in further and refuse to find the “bushel of truth” in their child's complaints (as Dr. Joshua Coleman, a therapist who specializes in parent-child estrangement, calls it. His books on this topic are worth reading).

Estrangement is rarely repaired through arguments about who is right. It is far more often influenced by whether a parent can tolerate discomfort without defensiveness, be accountable without spiraling into shame, and stay regulated enough to not shut down or lash out.

That work is internal.

I know this is not what many parents want to hear. When you are hurting, being asked to reflect can feel like an accusation. It can feel unfair. But refusing reflection in favor of blame leaves parents stuck, angry, and focused on fighting narratives rather than tending to their own wounds.

This isn’t about blame. It’s about choice.

You may not be able to fix the relationship right now. You may not be able to change your child’s choices. But you can take care of yourself. You can get support that helps you process grief instead of feeding anger. You can work on being someone your child might someday feel safer coming back to.

I have worked with many adult children who were struggling in their relationships with their parents, and the goal was almost never disconnection. In my work, we talk about boundaries that allow for more connection, not less. We talk about how to protect emotional safety without severing relationships whenever possible. In all my years of practice, I have never encouraged a client to cut off contact with their parents. I can’t tell clients what to do; I can only offer perspective and guidance, but ultimately the choice is always theirs. Distance, when it exists, is usually a last resort, not a first choice and it is almost always extremely painful for the person choosing it. 

Estrangement is not caused by an article or Instagram post. And healing is not found by shutting down conversations that make us uncomfortable or shifting the blame onto strangers.

I understand how distressing and destabilizing this topic is for parents. Estrangement touches some of the deepest fears a person can have. I also know that naming a problem without offering support isn’t enough (and I make it my business not to do that), which is why I am working on additional pieces focused on what can help: How to take care of yourself in the midst of this loss, how to reduce harm, how repair might still be possible and how to prevent estrangement to begin with.

If there is a path forward, whether toward repair or toward inner peace, it begins not with blame, but with the courage to look inward, sit with the pain, and do the work that no one else can do for you.