The mother she became

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, October 21st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: family estrangement.

We’re hearing more and more about adult children going “no contact” with their parents. Some children say it gives them a reprieve from family troubles or a difficult relationship.

MAST: But the trend has left many parents shattered.

Here’s WORLD’s Relations reporter Juliana Chan Erikson.

JULIANA CHAN ERIKSON: Deborah Satonick remembers when her daughter stopped speaking to her. It started in 2020 after COVID had sent thousands of college students back home. When her daughter came back, Satonick said she was different.

DEBORAH SATONICK: They had to study at home, and I saw some things that we didn't approve of, and I spoke freely about what we didn't approve of.

Satonick and her daughter already had a strained relationship. When she was at school, there were fewer phone calls, fewer visits. By Christmas, things got heated when her daughter brought home a boyfriend.

SATONICK: He came with Christmas gifts, and we had Christmas gifts for them, and he stood up and spoke for my daughter. He said that, you know, my daughter didn't believe in all this religion that we believed in…

Then he said something that set off Satonick’s husband.

SATONICK: My husband got up. I thought he almost would knock the table over. He got up and said, You don't know anything about love.

The blowup at Christmas with the boyfriend was the last straw. Her husband got up…

SATONICK: Then he took the Christmas presents, threw them across the table, Take them. We don't want them.

Her daughter walked out with her boyfriend. It would be the last time Satonick would see her for four years. Not long after, Satonick’s other daughter followed suit and also went no contact.

Family estrangement is not new. Paul Hokemeyer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in New York. He says he’s seen it for years. The adult children say walking away eases the pain, but Hokemeyer says it doesn’t resolve the source of the problem.

HOKEMEYER: I often see that the feelings that lie beneath the cutoff that cause the cutoffs-things like grief, anger, guilt, longing, fear, and hope continue to exert considerable influence long after the contact has stopped...

About 27 percent of American adults are cut off from at least one family member. Every therapist I spoke with said sometimes it makes sense to create distance in a family relationship, especially if sexual or physical abuse are involved. But Hokemeyer says in most cases, it should only be a last resort.

HOKEMEYER: Reconciliation is always a worthy hope, but it can't be forced or it can't be built on denial. It requires, like a confessional. It requires truth, an environment of safety, accountability, personal and relational accountability, and you know, real meaningful change.

For Deborah Satonick, meaningful change meant getting professional counseling. It also meant acknowledging some uncomfortable truths about herself. She realized she had built her identity around being a stellar mom.

SATONICK: My world revolved around my daughters, and that's good, they need that when they're little. But when they're older, it's almost not healthy.

She had quit a lucrative job in engineering to be home for her kids. Her world crumbled when both daughters grew up and stopped talking to her.

SATONICK: It was agony. I can't even begin to tell you. And it was not mutual.

She had been desperate to get back in touch. But every effort was rebuffed. Her daughters blocked text messages. Cards in the mail went unanswered. And they accepted Christmas gifts but only when delivered through another sibling. Then she realized something needed to change.

SATONICK: It was going to I'm either going to die or I'm going to live. It was a choice I had to make, and I almost did die because of the pain, but I chose to live, and I made a life for me.

She went back to work and decided to create a life outside her children. Then one day the family’s 16 year old dog Hershey was dying. She thought her daughters might want to know, so she called her son.

SATONICK: He calls me back, and they said they both want to come and say goodbye to the dog.

For the first time in four years, her daughters walked back into the house. Before they left, Satonick asked a serious question.

SATONICK: Clearly you don't want me in your life now. How about on my deathbed? And I must have struck a nerve with them, because my daughter said, Well, what exactly do you want from me? I said, I want a daughter. What do you think I want?

Satonick’s children declined to comment for this story. But Satonick says her kids started talking to her again, and she listened. She said she started being a different kind of mother.

SATONICK: It was 4 years of separation where we both changed, and we came together and learned how to navigate the new me and the new her.

Satonick says she’s still learning how to be a mother to adult children. But she says it helps to have a new outlook, a dying dog, and an abiding Christian faith to bring the family back together.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Juliana Chan Erikson.

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