Rachel Brougham: The harsh realities of family estrangement

It’s not something I ever expected to happen to me. Some days it’s the cause of a lot of guilt, sadness and grief for what could have been. However, I know that for me it’s the right decision, at least for right now.

I am dealing with the estrangement of a family member.

While I won’t go into many personal details in an attempt to protect this person’s identity, I do feel this is an important subject as research shows a whole lot of other Americans are also dealing with estrangement in their own family. In fact, 27 percent of Americans reported being estranged from a relative in a 2019 survey, according to Psychology Today. However, that number is likely higher, as many are reluctant to admit they are estranged from family members, thus making estrangement more widespread because it goes underreported.

There’s a number of reasons people decide to end relationships with family members, or greatly reduce contact. And the decision to do so doesn’t come easily.

For me, the decision to cut ties with my family member was years in the making. This person’s drinking caused riffs in our family for a long time. It was so prevalent that I have very few memories of family dinners, vacations and holidays that weren’t ruined by this person’s drinking and subsequent behavior. Sometimes the behavior was dangerous — we are lucky no one was ever seriously injured.

For years I was able to shield my son from it, but as my son got older it was no longer possible to keep him from witnessing this behavior. And this person refused to admit they have a problem. Every time we as a family tried to approach the subject, we were hit with denials, accusations and excuses. Alcoholism is an awful disease not only for the person, but for all those around them.

This behavior would cause my anxiety to skyrocket. I was anxious about what was going to happen when this person drank and how this person was going to act when they weren’t able to drink. I’d lose sleep, I’d get sick to my stomach, my brain was constantly coming up with scenarios and plans for how to better deal with the issue. I kept telling myself it wouldn’t happen again, yet it kept happening over and over and over.

And for a long time, I blamed myself. I wondered why this person’s behavior affected me so much. Often, this person would say things to me that would make me think I was the problem.

In 2021, it came to a breaking point during yet another incident that my son said left him feeling extremely uncomfortable. I told myself that was enough, and I knew that if I wanted to break this cycle, it had to start with me.

With the support of other family members, I wrote this person a letter. In it, I detailed how their behavior made me feel, how it made my son feel, how it has affected our family for so many years. I told this person that while we loved them and we’d do whatever we could to support them, we couldn’t in good faith be physically around them anymore unless we knew they were working on their drinking problem.

The letter was met with denials, accusations and excuses. And that was that.

I started going to therapy when my husband was killed in 2018. I took a break and started back up again in 2022 when my mom died. You’d think the grief I feel over those losses would be the focus of most of my therapy sessions, but you’d be wrong. Instead, I spend about 75 percent of those sessions talking about the estrangement from this family member. I talk about the grief I feel over that loss, the anger I feel over this person choosing alcohol over family and the guilt I sometimes feel over making this life-changing decision.

Choosing to cut ties with a family member is not a decision that is made lightly. I mourn the relationship we could have had. I hope for a day when we can reconnect. I wish for a future where this person and my son can once again have a good relationship.

Yet I also know that sometimes we have to make these tough decisions to protect ourselves and our children from a cycle of behavior that doesn’t benefit anyone.

— Rachel Brougham is the former assistant editor of the Petoskey News-Review. You can email her at racheldbrougham@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Rachel Brougham: The harsh realities of family estrangement