A few months ago, a rare thing happened: a proper national conversation kicked off. The word estrangement was suddenly bouncing around as people from all walks of life found themselves discussing Brooklyn Beckham’s public estrangement from his family after his explosive and highly unusual social media post denouncing his parents.
As someone in the business of chat, I can assure you this rarely happens anymore in the digital age. We don’t all watch the same TV at the same time and have these major shared moments of connection, beyond sports events, national anniversaries, Christmas and elections.
At first, I was so surprised that those who would never normally deign to bother themselves with such celebs were all in. From intellectual podcasts to news programmes – in-depth analysis was happening, and it was clear these were not all your usual Spice Girl or footie fans.
Putting aside the sheer power of brand Beckham and the family’s major position in British celebrity culture, it was then clear why this moment switched on so many people: it’s family. It’s feuds. It’s pain. The worst type in many ways. The rejection of parents by a child is the stuff of nightmares – or not, depending on how you feel by those who made you. Plus, it’s properly, properly taboo. It’s one thing to row with your folks and your siblings. It’s a whole other thing to totally stop talking to them altogether, indefinitely.
We might think we know about that or can imagine the impact, but as I’ve been learning, this form of estrangement is so overwhelming it can affect every waking thought – acting like the most stubborn and painful stone in the shoe. One you cannot remove.
Even the word estrangement, which originates from the French “estranger” and then the Latin “extraneare,” meaning to treat as a stranger or “not belonging to the family,” isn’t something we really engage with as a culture. Perhaps more of us are used to it in connection to a couple being estranged from one another. But it does conjure a feeling of something unsettling and that wasn’t meant to happen.
Yet it’s horribly common. A recent YouGov poll found 38 per cent of American adults were estranged from a family member. And according to UK estrangement charity Stand Alone, over a quarter of the British public know someone who is no longer in contact with a family member.
I have been speaking to the writer Shaheen Hashmat about the realities of estranging yourself from your entire family for my podcast Ready To Talk and it’s blown my mind. Truly. It’s one of the most quietly devastating things to happen to a person – on either side. The one estranging or being estranged. Since the podcast went out, I have received so many private messages from people whose kids won’t talk to them anymore and they have no idea why – but it’s ruining their lives. They are in invisible agony and feel shame, even if it’s misplaced.
I’ve also received many messages from people who feel like total outliers because they had to cut family ties as their relations were hurting them too much to live a normal life. They are aching too, but healing however best they can.
Shaheen knows her context is very dramatic and frightening. She was escaping forced marriage (which had happened to her sister already) and honour-based abuse. But to her point, the end result was the same. Total isolation from her parents and her siblings. And she has now bravely spoken in detail about becoming estranged and learning to live with it, because that was the part of this that really mattered to her. She has campaigned against forced marriage and honour-based abuse, but she also found people were too often focusing on those reasons and the drama of her escape from her family, when she was actually grappling with building a life outside of her kin, totally on her own. A life’s work.
I had no idea how relational we all are until someone told me, looking into my eyes, how she felt like a ghost without her many siblings and parents around her. A ghost. Shaheen called family estrangement the biggest break-up of her life. Remember how lost you felt after a break-up? Imagine that times a million, she says. So much of who we are and our sense of self derives from who we were around at key developmental stages. Without that, you can, as Shaheen did, become totally unmoored. Some years ago, she tried to take her own life. And yet, she did, as the UK estrangement charity is aptly called, finally learn to stand alone. Many years on, she is now thriving.
But Shaheen has had to work very hard to as she powerfully puts it, figure out who she is “under the rubble”. Thankfully, she’s got there, but it was a close-run thing. That’s the power of not being able to ever go home; of being totally alone.
Our conversation has made me consider how much who we are is deeply linked to those who made us – not just because of genetic traits, but because we exist in the spaces between our relations. That we can only be certain of the people around our family. If you don’t speak to them again, can you ever be that person again? And the more you think along these lines, the more you realise how vulnerable we are to family, and just how much we all need some form of clan.
We like to think we are independent – but very few of us really are. Our hearts lie with others and that’s usually, on balance, a good thing. But sometimes, it’s the most destructive thing of all.
Watching…. Last One Laughing – Prime Video
I can’t even describe the joy this second series is bringing me. Whoever figured out that watching people not laughing or trying not to is one of the funniest things is a genius. Thank you for the tears in our house – happy, all happy.
Reading…. Funny Weather, Art in an Emergency – Olivia Laing
A friend randomly picked this up for me and I’m happy she did. It’s a compendium of the author’s columns, profiles and thoughts about how art and creativity can help – in so many ways. I particularly love the profiles of the artists such as Derek Jarman and Georgia O’Keeffe. Who knew? I didn’t.
Listening…. Happy Place with Fearne Cotton – the Jimmy Carr episode
I inadvertently seem to be having a Jimmy Carr moment (he also hosts Last One Laughing). But when did he become a bit of a sage? Did I miss that? Weirdly, I don’t mind how little he gives of his own struggles in this wonderful conversation – despite some attempts by Fearne. But I am digging how much thinking and reading he’s done about how to live that this tired woman can lazily but happily benefit from it.
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