What about our good relationships?

How estrangement forged an unbreakable bond with my sister.

Eunice Brownlee is guest-posting here at Estranged this week. Eunice is a writer, activist, and certified WomanSpeak speaker and circle leader. Her Substack is Matters of Consequence.

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People who are estranged from parents know how lonely the decision can be. Other family members play “middleman,” passing on messages from our parents. Or they pressure us to “forgive and forget.” Although these efforts might be well-meaning, they cause even more strain, and force us to decide whether we need to go no-contact with meddling relatives, too.

It's less common, though, to hear about family relationships that are strengthened instead of fractured as a result of estrangement. But that’s (part of) what happened to me.

I’m the oldest of three, and my parents divorced when we were adults. Still, the divorce was traumatic: my dad went to jail following a two-week violent streak that almost ended our mother’s life. In the following months, our mother’s abusive tendencies exacerbated. As the eldest, I became the proxy for all the rage she felt for our father.

My relationship with my mom deteriorated. After the divorce was finalized, my mom actively prevented me from clearing my dad’s belongings from the house. My siblings finally insisted and were able to get the job done. It was a brutal week as my brother and sister were going through 30 years of crap while our mother interfered whenever she could. Plus, it was snowing heavily. I was doing what I could from 800 miles away, coordinating and paying for a storage unit, setting appointments to sell some things, and being a supportive ear to my siblings, who each called to vent about our mother. That’s when my sister, Erin, let it slip that Mom was planning to sell our childhood home and she had said explicitly that she didn’t want me to know about it. I came home three or four times each year. Did she really think I wouldn’t notice she didn’t live there anymore? That was the first time I went no-contact with my mother.

When I went no-contact, Erin understood and fully supported me, fiercely protecting my boundaries. My brother tried to act as a mediator between our mother and me, continually trying to force reconciliation.

Over the next 10 years, both Erin and I would flow in and out of periods of estrangement from each of our parents. I reconnected with my mom during a major life event when I just needed my mom and thought she would provide support. (I was wrong.)

Erin went no-contact with my dad after he faked a serious car accident and a major concussion.

I went no-contact again with my mom, then tried to rebuild that relationship again.

We both went no-contact with our mom following the fight we have now dubbed “Hiroshima.”

I went no-contact with our dad last year during a manic phase that was as bad as the one that led to his divorce from our mom.

With each event that has happened, the pattern was the same: the two of us sisters would support the others’ decision and our brother would pressure us to move on, just as our parents did. Our respective relationships with him grew more strained over time, but our relationship with each other grew stronger.

When my dad would send Erin gifts for birthdays or holidays in hopes of re-opening communication, she would call me to vent her rage, and I would validate it. When my mom would send me abusive texts and then gaslight me with her notorious “get over yourself” in response to me restating my boundaries, Erin would laugh with me at the utter ridiculousness of it all.

We’ve spent countless hours litigating our childhoods—her remembering bits and pieces of events that I had forgotten, me giving her more context of specific memories because she’s three years younger and wasn’t as aware of the dynamics. We’ve laughed, cried, and raged together, and that has brought us closer than ever.

The trauma of our parents’ divorce and their treatment of us in the years since have broken us as individuals. The divorce meant that the caregiver role my mom had historically provided was suddenly placed on us, because of our birth order and our gender. It was a burden neither of us consented to and both of us began to resent over time. To put ourselves back together, we have both invested in therapy. But nothing has given us more strength than just being able to talk to each other. Each of us has someone in her life who actually “gets it.” That’s a gift.

If I had a dollar for every “but she’s your mother,” I’ve heard over the last decade, I could take a very luxurious vacation to one of my dream destinations. Other relatives often reiterate my brother’s position: telling me I’m overreacting, or wondering if time has “healed all wounds,” at least enough that I could reconsider my position. The focus is always in getting me to change, rather than the people whose actions caused the rift.

I am now no-contact with both my parents. It has been easy on some days and hard on others. But I do know that Erin will support me, whatever I decide, just as I have for her.

My bond with my sister reminds me of the Japanese art of kintsugi, which is the process of mending broken pottery with gold. My sister is the gold that holds me together, and I am hers. And for that, I could not be more grateful.