Rebuilding Your Life After Kids Go No Contact: Therapy For Estranged Parents
- Megan Maysie
- Sep 11
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 22
The root of all human connection starts between mother and child at birth, extending from the intrinsic, instinctual love forged by the shared connection in the womb. This blueprint for human love between mother and child is imprinted in the life of the child. It forms the basis for every future interaction of the new arrival.
But the parents are equally bound to the new life they created: Their lives are built around the child, their hearts and souls are dedicated to the child’s future, and their identity, from the moment of birth, is intrinsically linked to another human life: that of their child.
Yet, things happen, and when a child makes the difficult decision to go no contact with their parent, for whatever their reasons may be, a significant chunk of the parent and their identity is ripped from them, leaving deep scars and dead tissue that take a long time to heal, but remains part of the parent that itches and throbs relentlessly.
While the connection will remain forever, a parent's life is often destroyed. Healing is a long process, with many hidden obstacles that the parent, blinded by the pain, is knocked down by. Parents never give up hope that their child will return. They spend hours, days, months, years glancing at their mail, their messages, their doors, just in case there's a tiny sign of hope.
But the child they knew has gone forever. Years have usually passed by before a reconciliation. The child has gone out and experienced new people, new things, and hopefully, the childhood lessons the parents taught will have led them to a life of success, perhaps even a veneer of happiness. They have built a new life, and are not the people they once were. Recognizable, but different.
But the love remains. It always will, even when hidden by anger and hate.
Rebuilding Your Life As An Estranged Parent: Therapy For Estranged Parents
For if and when your estranged child decides to walk through your door, keep it open. Your grown-up child will find a way to return when they are ready. But no parent will want to turn it into a blame session, even if there is a good reason to. Throwing your pain back at 'the source' is unproductive and will send them running.
The time for rational discussion will come later, once the relationship and its boundaries have been reset. But in the meantime, living every day in hope —putting your entire happiness on someone coming through the door —reopens the scars every single day, making it impossible to pursue a regular life, let alone find happiness.
When they are ready to make the decision to return, or at least reconnect in some small way — and it's always their decision — rebuilding your life as you wait not only helps you get stronger and happier, but it also means you will be better equipped to engage in a meaningful way.
In our article on rebuilding your life after trauma, and being cut off by a child is one of the most traumatic experiences a parent could face, we say that rebuilding takes three steps:
1. Make a conscious decision that you want to heal, you want a better life.
2. Awaken your Wabi Sabi: Find beauty in imperfection, and accept things as they are.
3. Accept that you deserve a better life: You do
These all apply to estranged parents, but there are aspects unique to this surging phenomenon that need particular attention.
Do You Want To Heal?
As a parent, your first priority will be to heal your relationship with your child. Your second priority will be to find a way to make sure your child is ok, that their life is happy, because being no contact means you spend many sleepless nights worrying about how they are. Or perhaps these two priorities vacillate between first and second place. It’s part of parenthood to have these concerns.
Then, maybe third, but likely further down the to-do list, will be your "want to heal myself" item. Until this finds its way to the top of the priority list in your heart and mind, all efforts will be wishy-washy and stand little chance of success. There will be some relief here and there by using some of the tools suggested in "How to Rebuild Your Life After Trauma," but sincerely putting your life, your wants and needs, after decades of putting your child's first, will be a tough mindset to overcome.
The three stages of building are not linear; they can all be worked on at the same time, and in any order- it's about ticking all three boxes to get to the top of the mountain, before getting to the easier slope after the ridge. Practising gratitude, learning to forgive, figuring out how to trust again, and the ten other tools we list for once you have accepted you deserve to have a better life —the "down-slope work" — can also be incorporated on the way up.
Any healing is good; even the tiniest thing that resonates should be explored and pursued until one day you decide, not that you can simply no longer live your life in its current form, but that you want to heal.
Wabi Sabi: Finding Beauty in Imperfection & The Transience Of Suffering
Estranged parents spend a vast amount of time ruminating, dissecting decades of parenting, and beating themselves up over being such a bad parent that their own child wants nothing to do with them. Yet, they usually couldn’t be more wrong about the latter.
The traditional Japanese concept, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び), is built on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It’s about finding beauty in the imperfections of nature and life and accepting the natural cycles of growth and decay.
Neither parents nor children are perfect, but by some mysterious twist of fate, they end up being perfect for each other. It may be that each has unique lessons to learn — perhaps they are lessons their soul sought to learn before descending to this life — and the other can teach them these profound, soulful lessons, or lead them to that path.
During this life, the connection between parent and child often feels important enough to be perfect, and is undoubtedly not transient. While the connection is permanent, the way they interact adapts and changes as they both get older. It becomes imperfect over a season, only to find traction in a new form as both grow emotionally and become wiser and more understanding. The old ways decay to make room for healthier, more emotionally intelligent ways to live.
Rather than being a static art form, parenting requires wabi sabi in motion, adapting to changes.
Do You Truly Believe You Deserve A Better Life?
Again, estranged parents carry not just the burden of guilt, but the undeserved stigma attached to parental estrangement. Many people offering therapy for estranged parents across the internet declare all estranged parents to be narcissistic abusers and publish ill-informed, cruel memes.
It's hard to believe in yourself when you feel like, despite your best intentions, huge sacrifices, vast tracts of time and money directed to your child, you have failed this child- the person you love more than life itself, and you still first have to trawl through loud-mouth trolls and bullies to find some guidance.
And, as with any trauma, your self-esteem has taken a knock, your identity has been shredded, and you carry a deep pain wherever you go. Yet, you do deserve a better life. You have immense value to offer the world, a unique personality and set of skills that will, in big ways or small, change the world for the better. If you try.
Once we accept that we have value, and this includes many aspects related to our parenting temperament or skills, things can start falling into place.
For myself, I loved to write as a child. My narcissistic mother did not like to see me that happy, but when I became a mother, I was determined to do better than her, and I did. But writing was never a path to providing for a family, and it fell by the wayside as corporations took over my days and my family took over my spare time.
As an estranged parent left reeling in confusion and pain, it took years to return to writing. Yet here I am, lost in my words as they connect to many others around the world. For me, it's at least as meaningful as parenthood. My life finally fell into place after I started thinking that perhaps, after all, I do deserve happiness and satisfaction for myself every now and then. It's a small thought that grows every time it's revisited.
Life is a gift; there's no price to pay outside of living our purpose: to grow and evolve, to contribute our unique state of being for the benefit of the world around us. And it is that purpose that makes a better, happier life.
Parents When Kids Go No Contact
The needs of your babies were always more important than yours, but when they grew up, you had to face the prospect of your needs and wants being just as important. It’s a foreign thing, and a scary thought.
While your estranged child may make a small move towards reconciliation, rely on your intuition to understand whether they are ready to engage with you productively. Especially when others are involved — if there are kinkeepers and people using your child as flying monkeys to serve their own purposes when kids go no contact— this is an intensely personal decision. Only you will know what feels right.
But, when you do meet, if you have embraced yourself and are some way towards building a new life, you will be in a far more stable position to converse productively. Love is at the centre of your relationship. It will take a whole lot of love and even more emotional intelligence to guide the relationship back to a steady path.
In the meantime, stay in distant contact- send birthday wishes electronically, find gentle ways to let them know that you still love them, and that your door is open.
Until they are ready, live your best life. You deserve it.
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