Narrating Estrangement

Autoethnographies of Writing Of(f) Family

Lisa P. Z. Spinazola, David F. Purnell, Lisa P. Z. Spinazola, David F. Purnell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780367643379
  9780367643362
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000574517
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Research & Methodology in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The stories in Narrating Estrangement: Autoethnographies of Writing Of(f) Family demonstrate the pain, anguish, and even relief felt by those who contemplate estranging or who are estranged, whether by choice or circumstance. Despite the social assumptions persisting about the everlasting nature of family relationships, when people make the complicated and often difficult decision to disconnect from family members, they experience shame, stigma, and isolation because of social pressures to maintain those relationships at all costs.

Each contributor uses the act of storytelling and the autoethnographic mode of scholarship and writing to find clarity in their individual, unique, and complex situations. Several authors' explorations restore some of what they have lost through estrangement—such as a sense of identity, emotional health and well-being, and feelings of belonging—due to the breakdowns in social and family support systems meant to be unconditional and "permanent." The stories display the wide array of reasons why family members become estranged, delving into different types of estrangement, permanent and/or intermittent. In doing so, the writers in this book demonstrate that family relationships are neither easily categorized nor neatly ended—their impact on an individual's life continues and changes, even in and through estrangement.

This book adds to the ongoing scholarly conversations about family estrangement for students and researchers interested in autoethnography and qualitative inquiry, in a wide range of disciplines in the social sciences, healthcare, and communication studies.

Section 1 Estrangement due to lingering effects of childhood neglect, abuse, or abandonment

Chapter 1 Writing of, off, to, and from my mother Moving Forward, Word by Word

Lisa P. Z. Spinazola

DOI: 10.4324/9781003124016-3

It’s Christmas morning, 2019, and I’m struggling to open a can of whole kernel sweet corn, the final ingredient for the cornbread casserole dish my kids love. I pause mid-battle to add a new can opener to my Amazon cart. I return to the fight and carefully free the corn with a fork I’ve wedged between the partially serrated lid and the mangled can. I strain then fold the crisp, bright yellow kernels into a congealing blend of creamed corn, sour cream, and Krusteaz Honey Cornbread & Muffin Mix. I finish stirring, pour the grainy blend into a square cake pan, and place it in the preheated oven.

Next dish on the agenda—blanched green beans tossed in butter, toasted garlic, and soy sauce. I begin slicing cloves from two heads of garlic and add them to a stick of butter that’s slowly melting in a frying pan on the stove. Slice, slice, slice…rhythmic, careful slicing. Cooking is therapeutic for me, a mindfulness activity with a tasty outcome.

My ringing phone interrupts my trance. It’s my mother. My heart catches in my throat. I haven’t spoken to her in over a year. I freeze, fingers sticky with garlic, phone blaring an audio clip from “Wish I Knew You” by The Revivalists.

What do I say? What is she going to say? What if she wants to rehash the reasons I disconnected from her last year? But what if she wants to make amends?

Answer the damn phone, Lisa.

“Hello?”

A timid, soft voice answers, “Merry Christmas…”

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” I say, my voice sounding flatter than I intend.

“It’s been so long, and I didn’t want to go any longer without talking to you,” she offers.

“I’m glad you called, Mom.” I am glad she called. She had sent me a quick “I love you” email out of the blue on Thanksgiving, but never followed up. Her calling now means there might be a chance to reconnect, rebuild, or create something new. Or, this could mean I will have another chance to establish and maintain boundaries—to practice something I’ve struggled with, all my life.

“What are you doing? How are you? The kids?” she asks.

“We’re all good. Seth is sleeping. Vanessa and Bryan will be over in a couple hours, and I’m cooking up a feast,” I report.

“It’s so nice you’ve become such an enthusiastic chef. I always enjoyed cooking meals for you all. Living here in Mexico these four years, I just don’t cook that much anymore…,” she says trailing off.

“Do you miss it?” I ask.

“Not really,” she laughs, then says, “Well, I’m not going to keep you. I just wanted to reach out, to break the silence. I know we have things to talk about, but this isn’t the time. Today is for celebrating and being with people we love. I love you and want you to know this.”

We say our goodbyes and hang up. I feel confused and thrown for a loop. On the one hand, I feel relieved that there might be a joint path forward, but I also worry I’ll have to compromise the position I took when I made clear my desire to estrange from her. Rage, panic, fear, concern, and love swirl together and flow through me. The hope I used to feel—hope for a close loving relationship with my mother—the hope that was once readily accessible, does not make an appearance today. I don’t have time to fully process this moment right now as my home will be full and bustling in two hours and there’s too much to do.

I turn up the heat until the garlic bubbles and sizzles. Just then, my son emerges from his room and says, “Ma, it smells delicious in here.”

The way we once were

I always feel like I am under a microscope or magnifying glass when my mother and I are in each other’s company. Nothing gets past her, and everything I do is subject to her inspection and evaluation. She might not verbalize her disapproval, but a glance my way speaks volumes. My mother can be abrasive, controlling, demanding, intolerant, and manipulative…but she is my mother. I keep hoping if I show love for her, am there for her, value her, and respect her, I’ll get the same in return. If she needed someone to watch the house or pets when she traveled, I would volunteer. When she had surgery and needed help bathing, walking the dog, running errands, she relied on me. When her best friend died, I called every day, visited several times a week, and brought meals to share. I would show up for her hoping there would come a point when she’d do the same…or at the very least, no longer reprimand me and issue directives.

Instead of accepting who I was/am, she’s chastised and critiqued—what I wore, who I dated, who I married, how I mothered my children, how I did my hair, if I touched my face, how I spoke, who my friends were, and how I behaved around her friends. Our most painful clashes occurred over her assessment of my body and how much I weigh. I’ve repeatedly told her I have residual pain and trauma from years of forced diets and exercise; as well as her cruel, unrelenting comments about my weight. I would search for the right way to say how I felt and to ask for what I needed from her in a way I thought I’d be heard and understood. It was a continual struggle. Any hope I’d find in the advances we made would be shattered a short time later.

“Yes, Lisa, I hear you, you don’t want me to mention your weight, or to talk about diets.”

“Thank you, Mom, I would really appreciate it. It hurts my feelings when you do. It says to me you think I am unlovable, that how I look is tied to my worth and value.”

We’d go for weeks without an insulting or cruel observation about my weight or eating habits, and slowly I’d let my guard down. But inevitably she’d say something like, “I know I shouldn’t be bringing this up, weight and everything, but I saw my next-door neighbor and she looks wonderful. She’s lost forty pounds. I asked her how she did it. She told me it was easy. Here’s the link to the diet she followed.”

I recognize her comment is not about me per se. She acknowledges I’ve asked her not to talk about weight and diet around me. I set a boundary asking for what I need in our relationship (Black & Enns, 1997) and she violates it by saying what she wants to say anyway. I should have known—it was just a matter of time. No matter how I brace for it, or work to ignore it, or use new words to ask for what I need from her, I am left reeling. This is just one of the wounds she inflicted years ago; one she continues to claw and scrape at it until it bleeds again, becoming reinfected, tender to the touch, never having a chance to fully heal.

In my 40s and early-50s, exhausted by my attempts to feel accepted and supported by my mother, I found myself evaluating our relationship and contemplating estrangement (Carr et al., 2015). My contemplations were partly a result of an intense focus on my feelings as I journaled about interactions with my mother, presented my story at conferences, and began writing a co-authored journal article about difficult parent–child relationships with my good friend/colleague, Dave Purnell. After embarking on the task, we decided our ideas about family alienation might be better addressed through a collection of stories. By the time we pitched the idea of a full book to our publisher, my mother and I had been estranged for six months.

While this is not an autoethnography about childhood trauma, my memories of trauma, abuse, and neglect inform my contemplations of estrangement and the narratives I share with you. My recollections, memories, and stories are just that, mine. My mother, more than likely, will remember these moments differently (Palombo et al., 2018). Though I hoped to share this story with her, to get her input, I have not done so. It feels too risky in terms of upsetting the tenuous balance we recently achieved; although, the balance will most certainly be upset if she reads my chapter once published. My goal is to present a story that feels truthful for me and my experiences, and one that I can live with once told. To do so, I’ll weave in and out of childhood and adulthood as I explore my relationship with my mother, reconcile our periods of connection and estrangement, and contemplate how/if we move forward from here, from now.

Entangled

I started writing about our mother–daughter relationship eight years ago when I studied family communication as part of my master’s program. We were not yet estranged. We were however embroiled in seemingly endless misunderstandings and hurt feelings and I was writing to understand our dynamic, striving to make sense of the maladaptive communication patterns that continually trapped us like flies in a spider web. The more I learned about communication and the harder I tried to communicate clearly and effectively, the more entangled and stuck we became. I wrote to look for openings, ruptures in the pattern that might provide chances to escape the web, to do things differently. I continued writing to see how I might feel if I estranged from her—if I stopped struggling and cut myself free.

Five years ago, my mother and stepfather moved to Mexico, throwing our family into turmoil. Our relationship changed in several ways once she moved. Phone service was unreliable, and it took months for my mother to get connectivity issues ironed out. Emailing became our go-to. Typing out messages provided a chance to contemplate, write, reflect, and revise before pressing “send” or responding. Communication between us felt hopeful in that we could express our thoughts and feelings clearly and without interruption. However, reading typed black-and-white messages also meant that there was not much gray area, little room for subtle nuances, no way to massage a message that offended after having been sent. Eventually, there seemed to be a doubling down, a hardening of our positions. The distance between us made it seem like less was on the line, messaging with impunity, less accountability. What was at stake after all? She was there and I was here, and after she moved thousands of miles, a country away, my fears that our relationship was not a consideration or priority to her, felt validated.

Before she moved away, if she and I argued or if there was tension, we couldn’t avoid each other easily or for long as there were other moving parts—my siblings and their children (Agllias, 2018), birthdays, holidays, gatherings initiated for no reason other than to gather. When we clashed, we knew, inevitably, we’d be in each other’s presence, see each other’s faces, witness the impact of our words (Lanzoni, 2018), and feel the relief as tension released when we relinquished our positions. But now, a world away, if she rubs me the wrong way, or is unkind, or careless with her words, I can ignore her or delete her email. And, she can say whatever she wants, without repercussion, without having to face me, or be in the same room with me, witness my tears, or risk ruining a gathering with other family members.

Running from home

Mother–daughter relationships can be contentious and fraught with misunderstandings, tensions, and hurt (Tannen, 2006) as mother–daughter relationships are bound by high structural commitment (Vangelisti, 2007) and are considered nonvoluntary (Hess, 2000). Beyond the normal mother–daughter tensions, my relationship with my mother was fractured when she abandoned me at the age of 14. She left my two younger sisters and me in the care of our abusive, violent father. She explained that if she stayed any longer, she would kill herself. Knowing the stakes, I never begged her to stay. I forgave her for leaving. Hell, I would have left if I could. Instead, I picked up the slack and took over caring for our home and mothering my 11- and 8-year-old siblings.

Our father was overwhelmed as a single parent and a year later, he and our mother signed away their parental rights and sent us to live with my dad’s sister in Canada. We lived there for over three years and our mother never came to visit—not once. She explained that it would be too uncomfortable for her to visit his family and she’d see us when we came back to Florida for summers and Christmases. Maybe she was protecting us from having to say more goodbyes throughout the school year or maybe it just was too ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Content Warning
• Dedications
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Biographies of the authors
• Introduction
• Section 1 Estrangement due to lingering effects of childhood neglect, abuse, or abandonment
• Section 2 Estrangement due to family secrets, betrayal, or death
• Section 3 Estrangement resulting from the search for identity, belonging, or home
• Section 4 Estrangement initiated by another and out of our hands
• Conclusion
• Index