Should I Keep Reaching Out to My Estranged Child, or Stop?

If your adult child has gone quiet, you already know the pull. Estrangement can create an intense desire to act right now, to do something to stop it. So you do. And then you wonder whether the next thing you do should be one more attempt, or whether it's time to stop.

Before that question, there's a different one worth sitting with. This is about improving your observation of yourself, because that's what informs the actions you use moving forward. The quality of your next step is connected to the quality of the map you're using. Most parents are reaching out with no map at all.

The things we jump into

When estrangement hits, most of us (yes, myself included) jump into something to try to stop the dynamic. Random calls. Text messages. Sending gifs. Cards. Flowers. Getting to a point of pleading. Sometimes anger and yelling. Sometimes trying to convince people. Sometimes shaming, even when we don't mean it that way.

Then there's the next round. Send another message. Explain yourself again. Apologize. Defend yourself. Correct the other person's version of events, because that's not what happened, this is what really happened. Ask somebody else to come in and help, because we can't handle this together. Search for the perfect words. Try to figure out how to restore the relationship.

They're not a problem and they're not a bad thing. They're things all of us can fall into when a child pulls away. But it's worth having an honest understanding that we do them.

Why the map comes before the move

Here's the thing about all of those attempts. They're actions taken before the observation. They're the next step chosen without the map.

Today isn't about taking an action other than improving how you observe yourself. Because whatever you do next is going to come out of what you understand right now. If the understanding is thin, the next step is going to be thin too, no matter how much you want it to land.

That's why the question can't be answered as a flat yes or no. "Keep reaching out or stop" is a question about an action. And you're not ready to choose the action until you've looked at yourself clearly enough to know what's actually driving it.

Getting honest before you send anything

So before the next message, a few honest questions, the kind this work asks you to sit with.

"What am I about to do, and what's it really for?" Is this message an attempt to explain myself again, defend myself again, correct their version again? Because those are the moves we fall into, and it helps to name which one you're in.

"Am I trying to convince, or am I trying to understand?" Convincing is one of the things on the list. It rarely does what we hope.

"Is their truth welcome with me?" This is the one that changes everything downstream, and it's the subject of its own conversation. But it starts here: if your real answer is "not really," then every message you send is going to carry that, and you'll get more of the wall.

What you're actually building

This work is not a webinar where you take a few notes and stay passive. It asks you to observe yourself. To consider perspectives you may never have considered, things you may have hidden from yourself, things that are hard to look at. To answer difficult questions. To write honestly. To notice your own reactions and responses, in your body, in your emotions, in your thoughts.

That's what makes the difference between reaching out from panic and reaching out from clarity. Not better words. A better map.

Whether you send the next message or stop is still yours to decide. But the quality of that decision depends entirely on the quality of the map you're using when you make it. Draw the map first. Then the next step gets easier to see.

That's what the workshop is built for. Not another script for getting them to answer. A clearer observation of yourself, so whatever you do next is informed. Learn more about it HERE.