Living with Estrangement: The Complex Grief of Losing a Parent Who's Still Alive
There’s a heaviness I often avoid.
I wonder why I’m so hesitant to face the feelings that live at the root of my estrangement with my mother. But I think, in part, keeping those feelings locked away is my way of surviving the overwhelm—because to feel it all at once would be too much. Too loud. Too consuming.
Most days, life demands my full attention. Work, a marriage, being a stepmom, trying to stay healthy, managing bills—it all keeps spinning. So I tell myself, not now. I put the feelings on mute. I wait for some perfect stretch of time when everything else will be quiet enough to finally let it out. But that moment never seems to come. Life keeps life-ing, and the mute button stays on.
Still, the feelings leak through. Grief doesn’t stay politely tucked away. It finds cracks in the surface. Sometimes it’s a passing thought. Sometimes a sudden tightness in my chest. It’s quiet, but loud enough to derail the day.
Estrangement carries a grief that doesn’t fit in tidy categories. It’s confusing. Contradictory. Full of imbalance.
I’ve experienced the death of someone close, and yet… the grief from estrangement feels harder to live with.
Death—however heartbreaking—offers finality. There is loss, yes. Sometimes unfair or cruel loss. But death makes things explicit. It lets you begin to process. It marks a beginning to the end.
Estrangement is different. It’s grief that breathes. It’s living with the absence of someone who is still alive. And the part that rattles me most is knowing there will be another grief one day. Because estrangement doesn’t erase mortality. My mother will pass away, and that will be its own wave of emotion—one I won’t be able to prepare for.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. There are only two possible outcomes:
We reconcile and rebuild a “relationship.”
We don’t—and the last opportunity for words, connection, or closure disappears.
Even if I know, deep down, that remaining estranged is the healthiest choice, accepting the finality of it someday is another emotional mountain to climb. Because estrangement isn’t just about choosing distance—it’s living with the reality that the distance can become permanent.
Not all of it was bad. Certainly before I was old enough to recognize the dysfunction woven into our relationship, there were moments of connection—laughter, inside jokes, shared gossip, a feeling that we were close. But like a light switch, the light was lost to the dark. One minute, she was fun and engaging. The next, cruel and manipulative. A moment of laughter could turn into a barrage of criticism, passive-aggressive comments, silence, and sudden emotional withdrawal.
I still wrestle with the confusion: how can I feel so much anger and resentment toward her, and yet still ache for her love? For her approval? As firm as I am in my choice not to reconcile, the grief still finds me.
Making the decision to walk away was terrifying—but once I did, I felt powerful. It was a moment of clarity and self-respect. I finally chose me. I enforced a boundary I had long been too afraid to set.
But that empowered high doesn’t last forever. And when it fades, the thoughts I dread the most come rushing in. A tidal wave of sorrow over the relationship that never really was—and never will be.
There’s no tidy way to end something that’s still being lived. I didn’t write this to provide answers—I wrote it to give shape to the grief, the questions, and the strength it takes to choose yourself, especially when that choice goes unseen by others.
Estrangement is layered. It is valid to feel firm in your decision and still ache for what never was. You can honor your own boundary and mourn the kind of relationship you wish you had. None of that makes you weak or confused—it makes you human.
If you’re in this space too, I hope you remember—you’re not alone. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to grow. And you are allowed to keep becoming, even in the absence of the love you hoped for.
Thanks for being here. For reading. For allowing your truth to take up space.
