Navigating Estrangement from Adult Children
Later life is a season rich with experience, memory, and perspective, but not always easy on the heart. It is a time when we can look back on decades of accomplishments, relationships, and lessons learned, while also looking forward to what still lies ahead. And yet, this season of life can be deeply complex.
Even as we celebrate our history, we may face challenges that others don’t always see. Retirement, the loss of loved ones, changes in health, or the more subtle loss of roles that once defined us as capable, responsible, and needed can leave many older adults feeling anxious, sad, or uncertain.
For a growing number of older adults, this stage of life also carries an unexpected and deeply painful situation: estrangement from their adult children. This has become an increasingly hot topic as social media posts seem to encourage cutting off family members as a first step toward self-care rather than a last resort after much work and many conversations. These posts often ignore the far-reaching and devastating consequences of estrangement for everyone involved.
According to research by Dr. Karl Pillemer at Cornell University, in his 2020 book Fault Lines: Fractured Families and How to Mend Them, about 27% of American families experience some form of estrangement. While there are certainly cases where distance may be necessary or cut-offs are justified (abuse, repeated refusal to seek help with mental illness or substance use, for instance) many parents are left genuinely confused about what went wrong. Some are cut-off abruptly, without warning or explanation, and without a chance to acknowledge or take responsibility for the hurt their children feel, even when the pain was inadvertent.
As you manage the many transitions and changes that aging brings, the absence of your child can feel like the most disorienting and painful loss of all.
Therapy for older adults can provide a private, respectful, and supportive space to process this grief and help you move forward with dignity, self-compassion, and peace. If you are dealing with the repercussions of estrangement and looking for therapy in Ventura County-Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, Newbury Park, Moorpark, or virtually anywhere in California, I would be honored to navigate this difficult time with you or read on for more information about how therapy can be helpful when coping with the impact of estrangement.
The Ambiguous Grief of Estrangement from Adult Children
Estrangement from adult children is rarely discussed openly, at least on the rejected parents’ side. Many parents carry this pain privately, unsure where to turn or how to process this loss.
Unlike other forms of grief where we have rituals, support, and understanding, estrangement from adult children is known as an ambiguous or disenfranchised grief. Ambiguous because your child is alive somewhere and may or may not choose to resume contact-grief without closure or ending. Disenfranchised because there is love without permission to express it and with no one to acknowledge the deep pain you are feeling. In fact, the shame parents feel when they share with others about the rift in their relationship is only amplified by the judgmental comments they often receive in return or others’ avoidance of the subject as if estrangement might be contagious.
Parents often describe:
Shock or disbelief about how relationships deteriorated or disappeared completely
Guilt and shame about decisions they made and the loss of the relationship
Rumination over happy childhoods, trying to find where they went wrong
Anger about boundaries that feel sudden and unfair
Deep sadness especially during birthdays, family milestones, and holidays
Fear that time is running out for reconciliation
For high-functioning adults, who spent decades caring for others, solving problems, and holding things together, estrangement can feel especially disorienting. You may be used to managing and fixing everything, so now being in a situation you cannot fix may feel intolerable.
Estrangement does not mean that you failed as a parent. Relationships are complex. People change. Families evolve. Adult children make their choices for many reasons: some due to their own personal choices, some due to history, and some rooted in present dynamics. You may or may not see your part in where your relationship has ended up. Either way there is a difference between accountability and self-flagellation. Accountability will sound more like recognizing that your child’s experience of events may differ from your experience due to their own emotional needs, personality, and developmental limitations. Self-flagellation will sound more like broad generalizations such as, “I must be a terrible parent,” that aren’t helpful to anyone in this situation.
Therapy offers a place where the complexity of relationships can be explored without oversimplification or blame. When you are ready therapy can help you move from guilt and self-flaggelation to understanding and self-compassion.
Other Transitions that Estrangement Intensifies
While estrangement from adult children may be your central concern and deepest pain, later life brings many transitions that are only intensified by family cut-offs.
Retirement: When the structure of a career shifts or is removed, there is more space for painful thoughts to surface. Even estrangements of many years can resurface during these times of transition.
Health Changes: Aging often comes with physical and cognitive changes as energy levels begin to decrease, mobility may lessen, and new concerns come up. This can heighten awareness about unfinished conversations, the future, and reconciliation.
Loss of Partner: You may have once supported each other through family struggles and now you may feel like you are carrying the emotional weight alone.
Identity Shifts: Later life comes with many role changes as younger kids move out, job status changes, caregiving responsibilities adjust, and grandparenting becomes a new source of joy, another thing to mourn, or more complicated terrain to navigate. Parents often define themselves by family roles and as these roles change or dissolve many questions about purpose and meaning often follow.
Counseling for parents navigating estrangement from their adult children acknowledges and can be an opportunity to examine the full picture. Estrangement is not isolated from the rest of your life. It entwines itself into every component including: your identity, future, and sense of belonging.
What Therapy for Estranged Parents Can Help With
A main topic parents who are estranged from their adult children bring into therapy is “how should I reach out?” Therapy can be a great place to explore this question and get help before another failed attempt at reconciliation.
The first question we might explore is should I reach out? It is important to be clear if you truly want to try again. To make sure you have the emotional bandwidth to deal with disappointment or difficult conversations. There may be cases of addiction, untreated mental illness, or previous violence where reaching out may not be in anyone’s best interest. This can be extremely difficult for parents to even contemplate, especially for moms, who are culturally socialized to put themselves and their needs last and never stop trying.
There maybe things for you to work on and shore up before you make an attempt to contact your estranged child. If each effort to reconnect leaves you feeling shamed, overwhelmed, and worn down for days, weeks, or months afterward, taking time to rebuild your sense of self and clarify your limits can be an act of care, not defeat.
As the perhaps one person whose opinion you care about rejects you, this can take a toll on your self-esteem. This is especially true if you experienced feelings of rejection yourself, perhaps from your own parents, and you have already been fighting to feel like you have the right to have a life. Rebuilding your self-esteem before reaching out can help you approach contact from a place of steadiness rather than desperation.
As hard as this may be to hear, healing from estrangement doesn’t always mean reconciliation. Parents may never completely give up hope about having a relationship with their children, but oftentimes, it is important to not have this be the focus of your life no matter what the future might bring.
Healing can be about reclaiming and redefining your identity, as it is doing a disservice to yourself and your child to let them decide what kind of person you are. No one should have that power except you. Ultimately, you are responsible for your life, behavior, growth, and choices, just as your child is accountable for theirs.
When and if reconciliation is the goal, therapy can help you untangle guilt and blame, clarify what is within your control, build emotional resilience, and optimize your efforts and prepare your heart for the range of possible outcomes.
Working Together
Estrangement is almost never one-sided or simple. As a therapist, I do not approach this work by blaming either parents or adult children. Instead, we work together to create a safe, confidential space for exploration where you will find listening without judgment, gentle examination of patterns, communication, and boundaries, and compassionate guidance grounded in emotional health.
I always feel honored to work with older adults. There is something meaningful for me to sit with someone who has lived a full and complex life and being there as they reflect on their past and consider what truly matters now.
Mental health support for older adults, especially for those navigating something as fraught with emotions as estrangement, can be just as important as physical health care. Emotional distress can disrupt sleep, and impact energy, immune functioning, and overall wellbeing.
Seeking therapy as an older adult is not a sign or weakness or failure. It is a sign of strength, self-awareness, and love for yourself and your children as you continue to grow and evolve.
If you are in Ventura County including: Thousand Oaks, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village, Newbury Park, or Moorpark or via telehealth anywhere in California, therapy at Village Wellness offers a calm, private space where you can speak openly and be met with compassion and respect.
You have carried responsibility for decades. This can be the place where we gently examine what has been yours to carry and what hasn’t.
