No Contact, No Regrets
Grief, Guilt, & Liberation: A Year of Estrangement
It’s been almost a year since I went no-contact with my mother and slipped into this strange, top-secret, low-contact limbo with my father. As the eldest child, the designated peacekeeper, and lifelong people-pleaser, I can admit that the silence hasn’t been the relief I once fantasized it would be.
Instead, it’s been a very uneven process of unlearning and re-patterning, plus a metric shit ton of shadow work all woven through the tears, the rage, and the heartbreak of realizing that this kind of grief doesn’t come with casseroles or condolences. There’s a reason it’s called a living loss. I’ve had to grieve someone who still wakes up every day, who still exists in the world, but who, at least right now, is gone to me.
The decision to go no-contact wasn’t some impulsive fad “block and bless” moment. This had been simmering for years. Eventually last fall it all boiled over, and my whole mind, body, and soul took a long, slow synchronized breath and agreed, “Yeah…we’re done here.”
Let’s be real, no one grows up imagining they’ll go excommunicado with a parent. There’s no childhood fantasy where you picture learning to ride a bike, mastering cursive, and eventually blocking the woman who read you bedtime stories. I personally got there only after every boundary was bulldozed, every request dismissed, and every minor hurt compounded into this slow emotional erosion that eventually swept the ground out from underneath me. When I finally pulled the (metaphorical!) trigger and had the hard conversation, my adrenaline shakes gave way to a dizzying mix of relief and grief. I remember telling Mickey that it was like an immediate energy shift, almost like I had severed some ancient karmic thread.
After the initial “Holy shit. Did I really do that?” gave way to “Holy shit. I really did that!” I noticed myself changing in both subtle and seismic ways, depending on the day. Slowly, the background noise in my head began to quiet. The old rhetoric—“you’re too sensitive,” “you’re too much,” “you should be grateful”—started to fade. Without the constant drip of criticism, the weight of expectations, or the daily reminders that life is supposed to be hard, I realized how startlingly light I felt. The negative self-talk that once blasted at FULL VOLUME softened into a hum I could pretty much ignore. My limiting beliefs loosened their white-knuckled grip. And for the first time in a long while, I started trusting my own voice. I noticed I was offering compliments instead of apologies, laughing more, sleeping better, and breathing deeper.
And Mickey felt it too. Our home finally exhaled. It was like we’d been living in a pressure cooker for years, the lid rattling, steam hissing, and the tension building to a damn near explosive pitch until finally, one long, shuddering sigh released it all. Without the weight of those crushing expectations and judgments pressing down on us, we could finally stretch, breathe, and build something that actually felt like us. I have to be honest, it’s truly astonishing how quickly a person can expand when they’re no longer being told to shrink.
However, estrangement is never linear. The moment you feel some kind of stability, a new sense of normalcy, it finds a new way to test your boundaries. Last week, it found mine. My brother called in a late-night panic letting me know that my mom was currently en route to the hospital. Nothing life-threatening, but scary enough that my stomach dropped straight into my butthole. My brother lives hours away, my dad was out of state, and even though I’d drawn my line in the sand, I was still the closest one at forty-five minutes out. Hearing that she was driving herself to the hospital sent a freight train of guilt barreling through me.
Neither my brother nor my dad is what you’d exactly consider calm under pressure. For most of my life, I’ve been the fixer, mediator, and resident crisis manager. And while it feels insanely egotistical to admit, I legitimately worried about how they would fare without me holding everything together.
Luckily, she was okay. (Phew!) But my nervous system did not get the memo. Every cell in my body screamed at me to fix it, soothe it, take care of it all. I kept picturing her in a sterile hospital room, scared and alone, and it broke something open in me. I spiraled, flip-flopping between certainty and panic. One moment I was grounded in my choice and the next I was three seconds away from unblocking her number. As it turns out, boundaries aren’t just a mental exercise, they’re a full-body experience. I might as well have been on an actual roller coaster: my heart was racing, my stomach doing somersaults, my muscles tense and on high alert. Apparently, decades worth of old attachment patterns don’t retire that easily.
Mickey just wrapped me in a blanket and let me unravel. He’d gone no-contact with a parent just the year before, so he’d already navigated this exact brand of emotional fuckery himself. We tried distracting ourselves with a movie, but the poor guy had to pause every five minutes for another one of my outbursts: “Am I a horrible person? Is this normal? Why does this suck so much? Have you felt like this? Why am I so conflicted?!” And each time, he talked it out with me, breathed with me, and rode the wave until it passed. (If my Substack hasn’t already made it abundantly clear—I’m an external processor.)
The next morning, my brother updated me: no surgery required, no major danger, my dad had arrived at the hospital, and now they were home and resting. Relief hit, but my body still didn’t settle immediately and I started to spin out again. What do I do with this information now? Should I reach out? Did this qualify as the exception to my boundary?
Mickey looked at me and said, “If reaching out would make you feel better, do it. But you need to ask yourself why you want to.” And as soon as he said it, it was like an ice pick straight through my chest because I already knew. The truth was…I didn’t want to reach out out of love. I wanted to reach out because I was scared. Scared of what it meant if I didn’t. Scared of being seen as cruel. Scared of letting people down. Scared of getting in trouble, the way I used to whenever I wasn’t being the good kid, which in my family meant hyper-attuned, omniscient, and emotionally available 24/7.
And before I even finished processing that little epiphany, he followed it up with, “Take your own advice. You’re always talking about building new neural pathways. So take emotion out of it for a second and think about it logically. Sure, you could slide back into that old, well-worn trench BUT that means all your hard work and progress, all the healing, all the blood, sweat, and tears of forging that new neural pathway would be for jack-fucking-shit.”
By the gods, I swear I fell in love with him all over again right then. Not only is he supportive of my healing journey and listens when I ramble, but he used logic, my love of efficiency, and my own words against me. Clever little minx. Snapped me straight out of my spiral.
He was right. If I reached out without apology or accountability from her, I’d tumble right back into the same exhausting loops I’ve spent the past year unraveling. I’d be soothing someone who’s never learned to soothe me and the cost would be my peace. And let me tell ya, I’m finally at a place in my life where my peace is no longer negotiable. (Only took like 40 years.)
I’ve had to accept that I’m now the villain in her story. And in the beginning, that messed with my head more than I’d like to admit. I wanted so badly for her to see that going no-contact isn’t something I’m doing to her, it’s something I’m doing for me. It isn’t about punishment or resentment. It’s about choosing the version of myself that finally feels safe in her own skin, the version who doesn’t have to shrink or perform to be loved.
But then it hit me: if she understood that, then she’d also have to understand why I went no-contact in the first place. Which would require acknowledging her role and taking accountability. And that’s…not happening anytime soon. So honestly? As cliché as it sounds, if being the villain in her story is what it takes to be the hero in mine, then so be it. NO RAGRETS (channeling my inner Scottie P).
Estrangement is messy and this week reminded me of the paradox of wishing someone well while refusing to let them near your energy. Just because I’m not speaking to my mother doesn’t mean I want her to hurt, I just can’t keep hurting myself to make sure she doesn’t. I’m learning that, yes, I will still occasionally feel the panic, the guilt, the grief but I don’t have to abandon myself to soothe it.
And while I may never have a perfect relationship with my mother, I’m slowly learning to build a whole, fulfilling, honest one with myself. Some days I spiral, some days I rage, and some days I just sit there thinking, Wow, I am a totally different person now. Go me! Each tiny victory feels ridiculous and glorious all at once and that’s enough to keep me showing up.
Perhaps this year was really about discovering that I can thrive in my own skin, without molding myself into someone else’s version of me. This year I’ve wobbled through fear, guilt, and old patterns but I’ve also laughed louder, experienced more joy, uncovered my confidence, and started to trust that my worth doesn’t depend on anyone else. I don’t always get it right, and some days are still messy AF, but the biggest lesson of all? Just showing up for myself, day after day, is enough. So revolutionary enough, in fact, to make the initial fear, guilt, and heartbreak completely worth it.
Intentionally,
Shan