Family quarrels: when ties are broken

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Nashville musician Whit Hill doesn’t usually write songs about her mother, but there is a trace of her mother in every note she plays.

Correspondent Susan Spencer asked, “You described a kind of psychic attraction to her. What does that mean ?

“I remember saying to her when I was little, I said, ‘Mom, we are tied with a silver ring. There is a ring of love between us,” Hill replied.

That silver love band broke when Hill got pregnant at the age of 22: “She turned to me and said, ‘Take care of yourself. “And it was a stab in the heart. And I said, ‘No, I’m going to have this baby and it’s going to be okay, mom. It’s going to be fine. “And she said, ‘Well, then there can’t be any more between us.'”

“When she said those words, which must have been devastating, did you, for a second, think this was going to be the literal truth? Spencer asked.

“No.”

But he was. Hill’s mother cut off all contact with her daughter for four decades.

Spencer asked, “Did you make an effort to get in touch with her?

“I wrote to him regularly for many years,” Hill said.

Dozens of letters, like the one from 1985:

“Mom, the door is always open on my side. I miss you. Sometimes it’s not too painful anymore, but I’d be willing to make any adjustments if you say the word.”

All the letters went unanswered.

“When people asked you about your mother, what would you say?” “

Hill replied, “I would say, ‘It’s a sad story, but we were very close and I was disowned.'”

Jade Wu is a clinical psychologist at Duke University School of Medicine, who has written about these broken relationships.

“I think when a family member walks away it’s almost more painful than if they die,” she said. “It’s one of the deepest types of human wounds we can have. These are the things we regret on our deathbed. These are the things we spend sleepless nights thinking about. something that happens more often than you might think. “

New research from Cornell University sociologist of the family, Professor Karl Pillemer, opens our eyes to the prevalence of family estrangement. “It is a problem that affects everyone in our country and cuts across many divisions,” he said. “I was absolutely amazed to find that 27% of Americans say they are currently in a separation. That would translate to almost 70 million people.… It’s an extraordinary problem, almost at the epidemic level.”

Sometimes the problem becomes a spectacle, of the Royals in conflict, To famous hollywood stars, to the siblings of a congressman from Arizona, who last year campaigned against their own brother.

But most family estrangements go unrecognized by the outside world.

Pillemer said: “People are ready to talk about all kinds of things, but they really stick together if asked to talk about remoteness and families. they feel stigmatized when they tell someone that they haven’t seen their son for ten years. They imagine a cartoon bubble above the other person’s head saying, “What’s wrong with you? “And often it is.”

Pillemer hopes that his recent book, “Fault lines: fractured families and how to fix them” (Avery), will change all that.

Spencer asked, “What are the main causes?

“If someone can tell you the exact causes of a problem as complex as distance, they should probably win a Nobel Prize or the equivalent,” he replied. “A major risk factor for becoming estranged is widely divergent values on religion, on lifestyle, on other issues.”

Pat Wasilyw described his mother as having “a very different outlook than mine. It was just a different generation.”

Wasilyw will never forget the lunch she had with her mother in 1982. They started talking about unmarried couples living together: “I just said in a very conversational way: ‘I have several friends who lived together before. to get married, and they’re doing great. ‘And in the middle of this restaurant, she blew up as much as I’ve ever seen in my life. “

Her mother, who was known for such rages, stormed out of the restaurant. For Wasilyw, it was this: “I said, ‘I’ll never talk to you again.'”

“Did you mean it from then on, literally?” Spencer asked.

“I thought so. I was like, I’m not going to take this anymore.”

Such family breakdowns, Professor Pillemer said, appear to be on the rise in the United States. thicker than water – that’s something that’s changed, especially for a lot of young people, ”he said.

Psychologist Jade Wu said, “I think in America we feel we need more limits and more distance.”

And this distance is often a bridge too far. According to a recent CBS News poll, four in ten people who have had an argument with family members say they have never reconciled.

Yet Wu said, don’t give up hope, “You may feel like you will never approve of your son’s partner; you may never approve of your daughter’s career; you may never understand what transgender means, for example. is you need to hear their side of the story. And if you can listen empathetically, and even if you don’t immediately agree with it, but you can still say, “I hear you. I can see how much I’ve hurt you,” that’s a not huge towards healing. “

For Pat Wasyliw, the reconciliation came after a year of silence. Out of the blue, her mother called and apologized.

Spencer asked, “What did it mean to you to have reconciled with her before she died?”

“Oh, it was really important, it was really important,” she said. “I literally don’t know how I would have felt if I had never spoken to her again, then I found out that she was dead.”

But for Whit Hill, there was no happy ending. Four decades of disconnection ended without a hug, without an explanation… just the news last year that her mother had passed away.

“You’d think I wouldn’t care after all this time, right? I wish I hadn’t,” Hill said. “I wish I hadn’t cared, but I screamed and fell into my husband’s arms and cried.”

Wu said, “I think we are programmed to have very strong feelings for our family. These are the people who are closest to us; these are the ones who have seen us grow or lift us up. Remember that every family has conflict, but when there is conflict you want to put aside what is good and what is not, and you want to apologize, maybe over and over again. ”

For more information:

Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel and Robert Marston. Publisher: Carol Ross.

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