It’s not about therapists telling your adult child to step away. It’s not about your adult child being told you’re a narcissist or toxic. It’s not others hearing your adult child’s story and believing you are the monster, or worse, believing you were abusive.
Yes, some estrangement is due to physical or sexual abuse. Those are reasons I think we can all agree are valid for estrangement without question.
And it’s not necessarily about mental abuse. There is mental abuse, yes. But what I once thought qualified as mental abuse, I no longer fully believe it does.
I am talking about emotional and unhealthy behaviors that are happening that no one realizes are happening — including the person doing them.
I am talking about unhealthy behaviors that people believe are normal, or simply “this is who we are,” because they learned them, were taught them, or were shown them. And then they passed them down to their children, and their children passed them down, and so on, until someone in that bloodline not only recognizes it, but speaks about it throughout their life — and no one really understands or believes them, because the one speaking up appears abnormal to those still inside the same unhealthy system.
And I know I said you do forgive them, and I sincerely meant that.
Because you do.
When you become healthy-minded, you forgive them because you realize they didn’t know any better either.
You realize it wasn’t just one thing they did “back then” that you’re holding a grudge over. It was an entire system of unhealthy things that were said, done, and taught to you — even simply through watching your parents, because children are sponges.
But their brains also do something else.
At some point, a switch flips, and the brain begins rewiring itself around unhealthy patterns instead of healthy ones. And the amount of unhealthy that child absorbs becomes the beginning of their unhealthy journey.
Then as they grow and become exposed to the outside world — daycare, school, friendships, jobs, relationships — an unhealthy mind absorbs and processes life through unhealthy thinking, just as someone who is healthy-minded often cannot understand those of us who were not.
And even unhealthy people may not understand those who are even more unhealthy or toxic.
But the reason many adult children step away is because eventually they realize something.
Usually it appears sudden. Maybe they struggled for years. Maybe they disappeared for a while and came back. But the longer they are away from unhealthy environments, the healthier their mind becomes.
And when they return, they realize they cannot go back.
They cannot fix you either.
And they cannot stay.
Not because they do not love you.
But because they are protecting themselves.
And no, it is not selfish.
It is necessary to maintain a healthy mindset, because just like an addict who becomes sober, if you return to the environment that kept feeding the addiction, it can pull you back in.
But the part people do not understand is that this absolutely starts in childhood. And depending on how soon your child recognizes it and stops the cycle determines much of their path.
It continues as long as the majority of environments they live in remain unhealthy. And as they grow, it becomes worse — not for you, although I am sure some days it feels that way — but nothing compared to what the child internally goes through until they begin to heal.
And once they do, that is when all of this begins to uncover itself.
And they realize, as their mind rewires back to healthy, that not only have they forgiven you, but in some cases you are still doing the very things they now recognize as unhealthy.
And you are unaware, because to you it is normal.
Healing and rewiring your mind changes not only your thinking — it changes you.
And the part everyone misses is this:
You, the parent, are responsible for healing what you learned too.
And along the way, you begin looking back at your own childhood.
How did your parents talk to you?
How did they handle anger?
Did you spill milk and get yelled at with no apology?
Did they send you to your room because they were overwhelmed, not because you actually did something wrong?
Did they apologize, but then repeat the same behavior over and over every time they had a bad day?
You stop asking whether something was simply “right or wrong.”
You begin asking:
Was it healthy or unhealthy?
Because the unhealthy way…
that is what ignited the rewiring.
And when your adult child protects their own children, your grandchildren, they are not necessarily protecting them from you.
They are protecting them from what is unhealthy within the dynamic.
And the amount of things you discover had nothing to do with being evil or malicious.
They were simply unhealthy.
And you will begin to understand all of that as you reflect and heal yourself.
I know because I just lived through this — both as the adult child and with my own adult child.
And I promise you, it is not what many people online are posting about or assuming estrangement and alienation are.
It is actually much easier to understand and correct than I ever thought.
The healing part is challenging.
But I can honestly say my relationship with my daughter is healthy now.
And sometimes it is easier to go through something when you know someone else journaled the entire process, walked through the healing, put the pieces together, and rewired her own mind back to healthy…
And now wants to share that journey with others.
My main goal in life has always been to help people.
And now I want to walk people through healing — through all the wrong turns I took throughout the years, and how I now understand those moments as lessons I finally learned from.
For a long time, I thought I was simply journaling about how to cope.
But I now realize I was documenting the entire healing journey itself.
And now I believe I can help others begin their own.
Not to fix it for them.
But to walk beside them when they get stuck.
Shared from lived experience, not expert advice.
Healing Unlayered 
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