In an article in the Huffington Post, "Motherless by Choice" by Katie Naum....it appears that the child is making this decision.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katie-naum/motherless-by-choice_b_5417281.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1306580b=facebook)
That we are taking the first step to be motherless.
What most people see first is our lack of having a relationship with our parents AND not what precipitated this event.
When society at large looks at it being a "Choice" I feel that they are creating the stigma that follows us. Being estranged isn't something we do out of anger, but as a commenter to the article suggests, "we do so with deep sadness and for self-preservation."
Seeing that we have a choice to be motherless or not, suggest that we have a perfectly fine mother, but are choosing to toss her away. It doesn't suggest that due to the lack of mothering skills, we have no mother. We are not breaking the ties, for they were never wrapped around us in care and nurturing.
We need to start seeing these children as disconnected...instead of pretending there was a bond, a loving bond between parent and child. The only bond that was held in place was that of fear.
All we truly are disconnecting from is fear and all its dressings.
Taking with us the knowledge that we leave no love behind. Hence the deep sadness...and self preservation.
Katie Naum writes...
"There is no easy way to say, "I'm estranged from my mother." It's even harder to say, "I've cut my mother out of my life," clarifying that you are the one who has severed the bond. Say it to anyone, friend or stranger, and a certain light you hadn't even noticed fades from their eyes, every time. Smiles falter or grow forced. Mothers give so much to their children that a justification for estrangement must be staggering: some monstrous abuse that outweighs all the love and self-sacrifice inherent in parenting. Only someone selfish, heartless could cut off a mother who loved them -- right?"
How funny, we are labeled "selfish and heartless" for cutting ties with a mother. Yet few would label my mother the same for what she allowed in her marriage with a pedophile.
It was not my choice to be motherless. It was my mother's choice NoT to Mother.
It was not my choice to be fatherless. It was my father's choice to not be a father.
Until we re-frame the way we see things, the stigma (mark of disgrace) will be carried by the children. It will never be the child's responsibility to make a good parent.
When I hear of someone being estranged from their parent, I immediately know their parents were unable to parent. Parent in a way that sees the child and its needs.
As a mother, when my denial was broken, and I brought in the whole scope of my dysfunctional childhood, I also owned I drove the car to my parents home, with my children.
I then became estranged.
But, I cut the ties of dysfunctional behavior...not love.
I backed away from all that was harmful for the child.
It is what a mother does.
A child knows when the parent can see them.
And a child knows when they can't.
Estrangement is often to put off for years. Children will withstand any number of injustices, waiting for the love to arrive. What we endure....for love.
Estranged children have fully owned...no love lives there.
