“I left home at 15 when my mother and stepdad divorced, and all hell broke loose with my mother without my stepdad as a buffer,” she says. As a result of her mother’s bullying behaviour, she made a conscious choice to cut off connection and to make Ireland home. “The latter is not the cause of all estrangements, but it is a dimension we can’t disregard and will inform the potential impact, both on individuals and the family collective,” says the author of Navigating Family Estrangement: Helping Adults Understand and Manage the Challenges of Family Estrangement. “I always found it hard to cut her off completely, but I knew in order to protect my own mental health I had to keep boundaries. Family estrangement can feel like a living loss, but Sarah is comfortable with the choice she made and “wouldn’t want it any other way”.

Source: The Irish Times April 01, 2026 06:30 UTC