Estrangement & Politics arrives next week
Let's dive into this one.
Hello there. This is a PRE-S (shoutout to Justine Sones for that nomenclature) to alert you that I’m publishing a two-part series beginning next week that will explore estrangement and politics.
Why? Do I just like to feel uncomfortable and hate things? Sort of. Sure, I’m timing this series near the November election because so many more people are panicking out loud about politics right now via social media and internet forums. But, I have been thinking for—oh, eight years or so—about political differences in families and not only how these differences can either correlate to or outright lead to estrangement, but also how arguing with someone who holds their political beliefs zealously mirrors the experience of estrangement. (Both experiences provoke the same surreal sense of “I feel like we live in two different realities!”)
I’ll explain all that in much more detail in next week’s essay. Make sure to subscribe to get those updates, and consider upgrading to help fund the time it takes me to research and organize a couple of essays that will be both timely and also wide-ranging.
Here’s what I’m asking you today: Do you have a story on how political beliefs within your family have influenced your estrangement? Or thoughts about how politics relates to estrangement in general? Send those thoughts to maggie at maggiefrankhsu dot com1. I will include them in the Part 2 piece I’m writing, which I’ll publish on/around October 29. If you prefer to remain anonymous, I will quote your email but otherwise keep your name and identifying details entirely out of it.
Want to share a story about estrangement and politics, and don’t care if you are anonymous or not? Post it to the comments of this Substack newsletter by clicking the “leave a comment” button.
After all that preamble, I’ll keep the rest of today’s post short.
When I started Estranged at the end of September, I had to fill out the “About” section. I quickly wrote up:
Essays, interviews, news, and reviews all about parent, child, and sibling estrangement with a focus on understanding, not blame.
I’ll be refining that tagline as I continue to publish on this topic and especially as I hear feedback from you. Meanwhile, I want to clarify that that “tagline” isn’t meant to be read as, “Estrangement is nobody’s fault.” Many of us are in this boat because the person we cut communication with was, bluntly, an asshole. Not just once, but over and over. They essentially wove their assholery into the very fabric of the relationship so that it no one could excise it without the fabric unraveling entirely. That is an entirely true and valid experience that many people have.
What I’m interested in exploring in this Substack, though, has a lot more to do with how we make our way through estrangement once it’s happened, whether we are the one who did the cutting off or whether we are the one who was cut off. What I see on the internet regarding estrangement is a limited conception of how to understand estrangement. Namely, that the way to understand estrangement is to adjudicate it, to make an argument for who is right and who, therefore, must be wrong.
I have created this space precisely because I don’t see enough conversation beyond this impulse to assign rightness and wrongness. (Kerala Taylor just published a great send-up of the immature but very natural impulse to declare rightness and wrongness in relationship. It’s a funny read!)
The more I talk to other people who have been estranged, the more I lurk in Reddit threads and Facebook groups, the more I see patterns repeating. It is these patterns I want to describe and get curious about for many reasons, but not least of which is because seeing my individual experience reflected back in many other people’s makes me feel less isolated.
It’s not that I don’t believe in blame, and especially in its more comprehensive cousin, accountability. I just think there’s a lot of other stuff to talk about as we continually flow between moving through and moving on from estrangement.
XO,
Maggie
The “at” stands for “@” and the “dot stands for “.” Do people still write their email addresses this way on the internet? Is it very 2007?
This topic has made me consider leaving my husband of 38 years more than once. He was a 2-time Obama voter until Trump came along. Like many of his blue-collar HS friends, he says Dem policies have swindled him out of a comfortable livelihood due to increasing regulations, fees, and taxes. He is convinced the Dems want to take away his guns, everyone’s money, and our land. He believes all of the fear mongering by Fox and his YouTube podcasters. I am an educational publishing professional with a bachelors degree. My friends are all Dems. In conversations with him and his pals, I am expected to articulate why people would in their right mind vote for Kamala. I mostly choose to disengage as the conversations are traumatizing. My daughter won’t speak to him because of his Trumpism, but he doesn’t much care. We both think the other is at best misguided. I had hoped things would improve after 2020. November such luck. I fear for our country and my marriage.