Hello and welcome to Women’s Radio Station. I’m Dr Annette Greenwood, life coach and author. On today’s show, Dr Annette talks, I’m diving into a conversation about life after estrangement and how losing a child to estrangement in a peculiar complex loss and one my guest Sunday Gilchrist calls a living bereavement.

Has this ever happened to you? I can only imagine that for most parents you would never consider that the adult child might choose to not speak to them one day. But this is exactly what happened to Sunday way back in 2006 after a somewhat messy divorce and 20 years of marriage. Having to come to terms with her daughter’s exclusion out of her life has been an opening into a deeper understanding of herself and others and how humanity has still so much to learn around loss, change, consciousness, difference and conflict.

The shadow side of life and relationships. This sounds really deep and very emotional. So I think this interview is going to be somewhat very interesting.

And so I’d like to introduce everybody to the wonderful Sunday. Hello, Sunday. How are you? Hello, Annette.

I’m good. Thank you. And thank you for inviting me to do this.

I think it’s a really important sharing and conversation. 100 percent. I mean, I’ve not I’ve heard of things like this and had a similar experience, but nothing, nothing goes anywhere near the sort of thing that you’ve been talking about.

I mean, this has got to be one of the most emotive interviews I’ve ever done. And for most parents or grandparents listening to this who may be facing the same difficulties you’ve had, my heart goes out to them. So how are you feeling today? Because this must be really emotional experience.

And I guess my first question is, where would you like to begin with your journey and your story? Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Listening to you introducing that it did stir feelings inside my body. And one of the things that has been absolutely key for me has been learning how to manage my feelings. The feelings of grief, loss, sorrow and rejection.

I think where I’d like to start and it’s a really good question to ask me because one of the difficulties is that these family stories around upsets in family settings brings up its own particular problem of talking about others who are part of the family and who are very much still alive and may or may not hear, read or see me and others like me sharing this. Well, any sort of conflict within families. And it’s sort of like breaking through a taboo, you know, that invisible line of what is it okay to share.

And all those the questions around confidentiality. Am I breaching somebody else’s confidentiality and how, you know, now that I’m so many years into this, how that backdrop is always in the back of my mind as to how do I share this in a way that doesn’t bring blame, shame, criticism, judgment on myself or anybody else in my family. And over the years I’ve had this exploring to doing, sharing my story and my experience of what’s happened to me from a place of where I can talk about it without the feelings and the emotions that I felt when the things were happening.

Being present in my current telling of the story. And recently I read or heard somewhere that retelling your story without the emotion attached to it is what’s known as wisdom. And so that hearing that gave me some extra confidence and courage to keep on sharing what I’m sharing.

Because if I don’t share, if people don’t talk about these things that are sort of slightly forbidden in inverted commerce, people don’t get to know and it stays hidden. And what we know now is that abuse and shame, what they like the best to thrive is to be hidden away. Like you talked about the shadow side of experiences, you know, and the shadow side of life.

And unless we actually pull back the covers a little bit and brave ourselves enough to share it, it just remains hidden and people feel isolated as a result of that. So me talking about it is and has attracted lots of other people to me to think, oh, thank goodness, somebody’s talking about this in the public arena. So I suppose that’s my starting point, that how difficult it has been to overcome that sense of this is forbidden to talk about.

And I guess some did that just saying there about, you know, the grief, the loss, the forbidden, the shame, all those emotions that you’ve experienced and that part about it being forbidden to speak about as though you’ve done something wrong. When you started to share this and found that there were other people experiencing the same as you, did you kind of start to feel a little bit more enlightened by it because actually I’m not alone. Because no matter what you say is when you experience anything like mental health, depression, anxiety, you feel you’re the only person in this situation.

So I would imagine this is a similar experience, is it? It’s interesting you say that. I remember the first time I thought, well, it can’t just be only me. And that was when I was a young woman, I was experiencing postnatal depression and I couldn’t find anybody else who was talking about it.

And I’d be 23 at that time. And that’s when I realized, actually, my experience, I’m not the only one. I know I’m not the only one.

So that I think when I was 23, that’s when I started to think I’ve got to start speaking up. And that seemed to be my mission, like speaking up about stuff and asking those difficult questions that people would really quite not want to be asked. And I was quite shocked at the level of secrecy around postnatal, how it was hidden away and sort of shameful.

Women can’t cope with having babies and change and all that sort of stuff. And it’s trickled all through my life, through men’s, you know, the menopause. And so much of this stuff is just hidden away.

So I think I think I always had this sense that I am not alone. And that actually is what occurred. I suddenly had reached the point where I thought, I’m sure I’m not alone.

And I put a post up onto Facebook and said, I’m experiencing a bereavement and it’s not through a death and then explained what was going on. And as a result of that post on Facebook, social media, I got these people saying, me too, me too. And that’s how this community grew in the Facebook world of healing parents.

Yeah. And in that community, I know you’ve got, is it one and a half thousand members, something like that? Yeah. And it’s every day there’s somebody asking to come in.

And every day I’m having conversations with people who are experiencing this. There’s so many reasons why adult children leave the lives of their parents. And there’s so many, there’s a half a dozen reasons and I could drop them all off.

And maybe we get time to discuss that. And it’s I think for me, when I first started to share about estrangement, this was way back in 2016. And there were hardly any sort of places or groups or books or articles being to access at that point.

And since then, it’s absolutely exploded. And there’s more and more parents experiencing this with younger and younger adults. And I have a sort of view as to why that’s happening.

And but before I do that, I’d really like to talk about some of those uncomfortable things that I’ve experienced in my life. And you talked, you mentioned a little bit about blame and, you know, and to go back in my own family line, there was very much this thread of I was born in 1960. And my parents were born at the turn, more or less at the turn of the century, I was the last one of five children and brought up when smacking and anger.

And that was seen to be normal in many families and possibly still is, but it’s probably a bit more hidden these days. So, you know, I would get a clout from my dad and that way of being, I then manifested that with my own children. So in other words, I would in my temper, I would shout at them and I would hit them.

And that’s been a really difficult thing to say because there’s so much judgment around violence these days. And that family thread of what I would call abuse, because it is, for me, that is my definition of where you raise your voice or you hit anybody in any way, shape or form. That for me is abuse.

And I think maybe I’m the only one in my siblings who have grappled with this. And maybe not. I don’t know.

I can’t fully say that. And yet coming to terms with the abuse part of me and also the work that I had to do around my dad and me, that sort of really helped me to realize who I was. And as my marriage was falling apart, all of those parts of me that were scared and angry and used force and control came out big time.

So those are the sorts of things, you know, when it became clear that my children were backing off and backing out of my life, I became a chaser. So I would rock up at their doorway and bang on the door and demand. I was demanding.

And that, of course, just then a series of events of police being involved. At the very end, I was given a restraining order. I had to go to court.

I was not arrested. I was invited to interview and then I was charged with harassment. And that was such a thing to go through.

And there’s a part of me that understands why one of my daughters took that stand. And I was concerned around. I was concerned around her at this point because I was beginning to say that she was manifesting similar behaviors that I had manifested as a younger parent.

So there was some things that I did that I struggled with that, you know, when there was a time when I changed the locks on my door so that my daughters couldn’t get into my house. And one thing that is really uncomfortable for me to share publicly and I’m going to is that I did report my daughter to social services because I was worried about what she was, if she was doing the same to what I’d done to her as a child. And I’m actually, I feel like, really hot in this moment sharing this because it is extremely uncomfortable.

And the support that I’ve had from people around the actions that I’ve taken or not taken has been really useful for me. I’ve had a lot of wise women who have held me through this unknown uncharted territory in how to handle myself around being cut out of my children’s lives and my grandchildren’s lives. I did have contact with two of them for a number of years before that relationship changed and that daughter too chose to leave my life.

And so I am not blaming my adult children and to get to a place of not blaming myself has all been around self forgiveness and recognizing the humanness of myself and how when we go when I go into uncharted waters. That there’s no guidebook. There’s no, this is what you need to do.

This is what you need to not do. And there wasn’t any reference point that I was aware of at that time for me to follow. And interestingly, I’ve had lots of parents who’ve said to me, I’m so glad that you told me your story because I was going down that route too.

And because of your sharing, I chose not to. And I’m talking in particular around the fact that I was a chaser, you know, that I would think nothing of sending them emails, letters, even when they’d asked me to stop contacting them. I was still pushing to remain in contact with them.

And so many of the parents have been so grateful to me for saying, I’m so glad you shared that with me because I was off down that route and I’m glad I didn’t go. Sunday, I just want to honor what you just shared with everybody, not just with me, but anybody who’s listening all over the world, in fact, and you’re very brave and you might feel hot and sweaty. But you’re very, you’re very brave to have done it and to be so open and honest about what you did, how you’ve done it and how you’ve handled it.

And one of the things that comes to me is about that. That’s learned behavior, isn’t it? You’ve seen your parents do it and you’ve done it yourself. And we both grew up, I’m five years, probably older than you.

But we still grew up in a time when you went to school, you got the cane, you got the slipper, you got detention. And, you know, many, many times you’ve seen, you know, I’ve seen some of my school buddies stood at the front of the class and getting six of the best across the hand. I mean, and that’s the education system way back then.

So when you talk about it in your own home and you’re seeing it, you think it’s normal. You think that’s what should be happening. I mean, I’ve done a lot of work with offenders, ex-offenders and stuff, supporting them to come through the other side of stuff like this.

And without exception, there’s always something from the past where they say, well, my dad hit my mum or my mum did this. My mum used to throw things all over when she’d been drinking. I was like, oh, my God.

And I could see myself going down the same path. So I can honor what you’re saying there and how difficult this must be. And what I’d like to ask you is, so, you know, you’ve got this restraining order.

You’ve been to court, you’ve got a restraining order. How on earth must you have been feeling at this point, knowing that you’ve got a restraining order from your own children? It was tough. It was really tough.

And I saw the system. You know, there’s so much I’ve learned. I saw the patriarchal system.

I was in this courtroom and it was all women, the magistrate, my lawyer, solicitor, the prosecution solicitor. There wasn’t any of my family there. There was just a few people.

It was a local magistrate’s court. And even when I was being asked, do you consider yourself, you know, not consider yourself, how do you plead guilty or not guilty? There was a part of me that was going, and I’m not guilty. And I was so upset, I think, with the patriarchal structure of that courtroom that there were all those women who were mothers.

I think the judge actually, the magistrate, took pity on me because she said all of Gilchrist’s children aren’t speaking to her and it’s a very sad thing. And I mean, I was charged with unwanted emails. That was the charge.

And it seems so ridiculous. It was a year that I had no indirect or direct contact with just one of my daughters. And she was the one who I’d had contact with my grandchildren.

So I sort of, it was a terrible time. This was 2016 and the restraining order was for a year. And I had Stephen, my husband, who is not the father of my adult children, supporting me and a couple of other women who were supporting me at that time.

And yeah, the whole process of going into a building where one door shuts behind you before the next one opens, it took me into a shadow world of criminality that I thought, God, this is awful. And then having my fingerprints taken and my DNA taken. And some people wonder, it’s interesting because some people would possibly wonder, how could I actually forgive that? And yet, I have such a huge heart and I think, well, I can understand it.

I wasn’t listening to a very strong no. And it was nearly impossible for me because I love these people when I still do. And for me to lose contact with two grandchildren, four and two, you know, and I could make it very emotive and make it seem like my daughter did the wrong thing.

And yet that was all she knew to do at that time. That’s what I see. You know, that’s what I see.

And so, you know, it’s like it has been the most amazing and the most excruciatingly painful journey. And, you know, that wasn’t the only event that was painful, which the other the other events were babies being born that I didn’t get to see. That was really hard.

That was really, really hard. And I was very emotionally unwell for quite some time after my first grandchild was born because that was like another bereavement. And then there were weddings that I didn’t get to attend and, you know, and I’d find out.

And then there was all the complications with my extended family because they were still in contact and I wasn’t. And those conversations between those people were awkward because, you know, I was asking, have you seen my girls? And they’d either be, yes, or, you know, it was difficult. Yeah, it was so difficult.

And I learned to somehow I’ve learned how to detach whilst they were remaining connected. I saw I had a neediness around family that, you know, one time I thought I couldn’t survive without them in my life. And that’s very much not the case now.

And as I’ve worked through myself and explored healing and communication skills in particular and emotional management, I’m ready for reconciliation. And that there’s no way that I would have at that time, you know, like five years ago, I wouldn’t have been ready to reconcile because now I’m grounded, I’m solid and I can handle myself in stuff that comes at me. I mean, I’ve had five years of holding a space where people are very upset and sometimes that upset has fallen onto me.

And I’ve learned along the way how to stay present and stay kind and stay in communication with that person no matter. And this is I’m talking about online, not face to face. So the beauty of online, personal growth, communication skills discovery is that it’s on the screen.

You know, it’s it’s a little bit protected from the reality of somebody standing in front of you so angry, like my dad used to do. So angry that the shouting and this abusive energy coming off them, you know, and I don’t know where my girls are. I don’t know where my daughters are.

And they’re evolving. And recently, one did reach out last year and met with me for twice, two times and ended up with two really lovely conversations. And then she emailed me to say it was too difficult.

She couldn’t do it. And so she went again. And I was OK.

You know, it’s like we’re all on our journeys and I love her. I’m holding a space for her, you know, and it sounds maybe sounds a bit patronizing and I’m cheering her on, you know, because I think one of the most difficult. I work with so many parents and so many children because we’re all children of some parents who have got unfinished business with their parents.

Some people even go to their grave with unfinished business with their parents. And I think it’s something that we all can recognize that we’ve got something around our parents. And I consider myself to be really fortunate to have worked through my stuff with my dad and actually got to thank him for my childhood before he died and told him that I loved him and he cried.

And this would have been a big strong bully of a man, you know, and he said, I worried whether he’d have a nice childhood Sunday. And I said, Dad, I had a great childhood. And that felt so great because all that I could see that all his reactivity was just his history, his upbringing.

Same as mine was. Same as perhaps some of my daughters. I don’t know for sure.

But we’re all dealing with sort of like this hereditary patterns that run through families. Thank goodness I haven’t got a sexual, you know, some sort of sexual abuse pattern in my family. I have no idea how the women who deal with that really talk about that because mine is just hitting and shouting.

That’s all my abuse pattern is. And that’s bad enough to share in the public realm. But when it moves into sexual abuse, I really take my hats off to the women who have to deal with that in their family line.

You know, I just feel like a junior in the world of sharing family abuse patterns. Oh, Sunday. Are you OK? Are you OK? I was just taking a big breath.

Take a drink. Take a drink if you need to. It’s like there’s this whole thing, isn’t there, about almost demonising you for being a mother.

There’s the criminality essence of it where you’re being fingerprinted. No doubt you had photographic and all that business. And we’re talking about emails here, aren’t we? We’re not talking about you’ve actually gone out and done something horrendous.

You’ve not committed horrendous crime yet. You still tread in the eyes of the law as a criminal and you’re actually guilty of nothing other than loving your children. Yes, the behaviours around it, which is what you’re sharing here, the behaviours around that loving of your children.

And the difficulties you must have experienced when your first grandchild was born and all you want to do is actually go and pick them up and hug them. But you’ve not got the opportunity to do that. When you see other families, other parents and grandparents with their children, you think, oh goodness, that must have been really difficult and that must have done more than pull on your heartstrings.

And this how you refer to it as your abuse about hitting and shouting. Again, I just want to make this clear to people listening. And I know it’s not accepted now, but we both know it goes on behind closed doors.

We both know that that hitting and shouting still goes on. And I guess it’s at what level? If somebody stands on my foot, oh God, they’re going to know about it. That’s painful, isn’t it? I’m not going to go up both.

Thank you very much. That’s the best bruise I’ve had this year. It’s an automatic reaction, isn’t it? And when your children, particularly if you’re a mother who’s got post-natal depression and you are on your own at home, you’re living with those kids.

Maybe you’ve got a toddler, you’ve got a new baby, you’re breastfeeding. The demands on you as a mother are absolutely immense. And I know they try to deal with things differently now, don’t they? There’s a naughty step, there’s this, that and the other.

Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn’t. But just going back to being a new mother with post-natal depression and as you say, hidden away, it’s not allowed. It seems to be this thing around women, doesn’t it? Not allowed to talk about menopause, not allowed to talk about periods, not allowed to talk about PMT.

It’s as though we’re living in a completely parallel universe at times. Yet now we are seeing organizations, companies, I know of a few, where they’re actually supporting women in the menopause and supporting women through post-natal depression. And they’re really forward-thinking companies, but we still know there’s a big way to go with that yet.

So with your experiences and the online community you’ve got, and it feels to me like you almost need to be doing more than what you’re doing. I don’t mean giving more, but it almost seems like, my God, there’s something here, bigger, that’s going on. There’s something bigger, there’s something bigger at play.

So all these people who are coming to you, I’m guessing parents and grandparents alike, how is it that you’re helping them in what way? And I mean, just before I forget this, did you have help yourself to move on from, because I know you’ve done a lot of inner work, haven’t you? So were you working with somebody? Did you find somebody to help support you? Because on what must it be, one of the most extremely difficult journeys of your life? It is, it still is. It isn’t finished. In answer to your question, I was searching for books, articles, understanding.

I didn’t have anybody specifically, and I had a lot of healers around me at that time. Women who weren’t, who the first time, because I went in the wrong places, I think we do, we tend to go to family when we say I’ve got this stuff that’s going on in my life, and family either are there or they’re not there. And my family weren’t there, and I don’t hold any resentment or judgment or anything against that now, because actually that then allowed me to, okay, I need to find where I will get support.

So there was something inside of me that is a seeker, or it was a seeker, you know, like, where do I, and it was like I followed this sort of intuitive calling, like, go look for this, go visit that place, go have a treatment with that person, and then that person would tell me the next person to go to. So, we’re talking about people who were dealing with Reiki, acupuncture, massage therapists, people who were looking at the inner consciousness of who we are as human beings. So all of that altogether over, I started this sort of like inner journey in 2001.

So all of that material was sort of feeding into this painful episode of, and then I found somebody who was really exploring grief as a vehicle for transition. That was huge when Rose Diamond and the Silver Tent woman and her work, the Sitting with Death and Choosing Life program, sort of like, oh yeah, they sort of like gave me a language around what I already understood that gave me the language around it. They’re actually leaning into the grief instead of running away and feeling my feelings, how to process them healthily.

You know, I’d like go a bit nuts with the cushions and stuff and punch bags and stuff and had to get over, this isn’t very ladylike or very spiritual Sunday, beating the hell out of some cushions. You know, getting over the self judgments of myself, you know, and then I got really interested in sort of like the whole thing around a stranger. What is it? Who’s talking about it? Where’s the concepts around it? Why is it happening? What are these new words that I’m learning, such as flying monkeys and narcissism and there was a whole new language, which, by the way, I don’t use because I don’t think it’s healthy going down this labeling route.

And yet, so all of that, I found it really exciting and I’ve got a personality that really embraces a challenge. I’m very lucky in that I’ve got this, you know, okay, bring it on. If we’re going to have to deal with it, bring it on.

I have that sort of attitude and very much, I’ve got some leadership stuff in me, you know, in a way that me sharing my story has allowed people to see a path. You know, that bridge that Indiana Jones has to cross in the last, the, yes, and the one that’s throwing the sand on the invisible bridge so that others can see it. And then they’ve got a choice as to whether they, oh, you know, they’ve got choices because without information, we can’t make choices.

So for all of us, for me, speaking my voice, speaking my experience allows people then to see a path, even if it’s not the path they want to go on, you know. So that actually regurgitating, particularly elegant words, but regurgitating my experiences, my story, my findings, I’m going to do this, I’ll give you the results when I come back, you know, that for me has helped me to heal because other people have affirmed my journey for me in a way. And I’ve said, you know, it’s so great to come to a place where it’s nonjudgmental, where you get some information, where you throw these questions in Sunday that have me like seeing things from a different perspective.

And, you know, that’s really supported me in my healing. And I started this off saying that, you know, like going to family, I didn’t feel validated in my, it was almost like, you know, go away and sort it out yourself type thing. And the first time that somebody said to me, something that’s awful, what are you going through? I fell apart because I’ve not heard that.

I haven’t had anybody who’d up till then I’d had, well, you know, what have you done wrong? Because that’s one of the main things that parents get. Well, what did you do for them not to speak to you? Because it’s so unusual or it has been unusual that adult children don’t speak to their parents. But it’s becoming very common.

And to hear somebody validate you is like, okay, so I’m not isolated in this. I’m not alone in this, that people do have my back and do see that this is one of the most difficult things to deal with. You know, one of the hardest things that I got to do, but one of the most wonderful, I got to tell my four year old granddaughter, I got to say goodbye to her.

I got to say, I don’t think I’m going to see you by much. And remember me, remember Granny. She was four at the time.

Well, she just hugged me and that’s the last time I saw her and she’s now in her teens, almost in her teens. Oh, that’s so hard. I mean, I can absolutely, the empathy and the sensitivity around all this is difficult even for me as another woman.

Hearing what you’re saying, and I’ve not been experiencing what you have. But for anybody out there who is, they can’t help but have that compassion. And I bet somebody listening to this going, my God, this is me.

This is me. And I have no idea that there were so many other people out there going through what I’m going through. But you’ll have to forgive me for asking this question.

What is a flying monkey? It’s somebody who is supportive of the person who is doing the estranging, sort of a supporter, really. I once reached out to one of my daughter’s friends and she just said, well, you have to realise Sunday that not everybody wants to be in your life. So she wasn’t supporting my daughter and me to come together.

She was supporting. And I think there’s a lot worse things go on than that. People actually sabotage.

It’s very complex. But I think what I want to bring in here that, you know, I can tell my story and it can bring people into a place of division. And allying themselves to the person that they perceive to be the victim and persecuting the person that they seem to be the antagonist.

And I think that’s one of the most difficult things that I’ve accomplished is bringing compassion and empathy for these adult children who have chosen to exclude themselves from their parents’ lives. Most people would seem to choose one side or the other, depending on where you’re coming from. So it seems to me that I could tell that and people would empathise with me and perhaps feel a bit angry towards this daughter who chose to take her grandchild and herself out of my life.

And that is one of the problems. One of the main problems is that people don’t seem to be able to hold both sides of the coin and have empathy for this problem that is not theirs really, but they seem to want to choose a team. So you’re either on the parent side or you’re on the child side.

And there are some groups now who are coming together who are called estrangement groups who have both the estranged and the estranged E in them. And it’s very interesting talking to some other child, adult child, of which I have a few friends who are adult children who weren’t speaking to their parents. And the conversations that we have are really useful because both of us, if we’re in that level of awareness, can see both sides and have empathy for both sides and not make anybody wrong.

And I think that’s the hardest thing with any relationship conflict is that most people still choose sides in divorce, in this type of thing. Anywhere there’s any separation, it seems that you have to pick a side. And maybe you don’t.

Maybe there’s a way that you can actually hear somebody’s really painful story and not feel angry for them on their behalf towards the person that they feel hurt by. And that’s a massive piece of work in itself, one that I would encourage everybody to explore if you feel that you’ve got this vengeful part of you that wants to somehow ring up somebody and say, do you realize what your family is going through with you doing this? And where’s that coming from in you? Because that’s where our healing is, where we can see both sides not be involved and be useful rather than a flying monkey, for instance, or somebody who is taking signs. It’s not helpful.

No, no, and that it’s such a strength in what you’re doing, helping others to heal. And even by saying both can sit down and maybe, maybe there won’t be a way forward. Maybe if you and one of your daughters or whatever sat down together and she shared her reasons which you already know for doing what she’s done.

And why she finds it difficult to be able to speak to you and you can share from your perspective. It may be that it’s never resolved in a sense that actually can both hear each other and both respect why you’ve done what you’ve done and allow that to either maybe bring you together without any conflict and healing and growing. And because if it did happen suddenly where you both decided as adults that you wanted to make it work, it’s not going to be an easy ride, is it? It’s not.

There’s going to be painful stuff come up and there’s going to be things where it’s challenging. But I’m guessing, would you say the journey to the other side of that would be worth it if you were both in agreement or anybody else who might be experiencing what you are? Oh yeah, undoubtedly. I think there’s this, I mean, the umbilical cord is caught.

And like I said earlier, you know, I think there’s always this connection between a parent and a child. And there’s always this sort of desire to have a really healthy, I’m speaking from my point of view, so maybe it’s not true for everybody, but to have a healthy relationship and maybe some of those relationships are not available to be healthy. I don’t know, you know, there’s other factors to take into account, you know, some parents don’t do the work that I’ve done.

They don’t do the inner work. They aren’t in a place where they can hear their adult child. Some adult children don’t do their inner work and aren’t in a place where they can see their parents as just like another person.

There’s a lot of expectations. There’s a lot of assumptions. There’s a lot of conditioning around what a parent is, what a child is.

And about what a mother is and what a father is, you know, what are their roles, you know, and I know I talk a little bit about there comes a certain point where you aren’t a parent anymore. Adult children don’t need a parent. They need a mum and a dad.

And they don’t need a parent like they did when they were younger, and yet some of those parents go into such role identity, we can’t let go of that role. We always feel responsible for our adult children, and that can so get in the way of an adult to adult relationship. And there’s very little material to be accessed around how to have an adult relationship with your adult child.

It’s a book that’s burning away along with many around this topic area for me. Now, I’ve got one book going at the moment, but it’s more of my wisdom notes rather than anything around a stranger in particular. And if I had to have written a book around estrangement in the early days, it probably would be very different flavor to what it is now, whereas I think perhaps my pain would have been leaking out all over the pages.

Whereas now my healing is probably more likely to leak out over the pages. But I think, you know, what you say about coming together in a reconciliation conversation, it’s almost like a divorce. It is like it’s a divorce.

And there’s some weird stuff going around around parent, the children who are suing the parents for being born, etc. That’s the other extra. Yeah.

So there’s a lot of weird stuff going on, which is all around this artificial imagery, you know, AI and gender issues and all that sort of stuff. It’s all there’s reams of how to go no contact with your parents, how to like, you know, the great as a phrase called gray rocking, which you and I would probably go call sending somebody to Coventry. Shunning.

You know, there’s how to shun your parent. You know, it’s like what’s going on in social media world. But but that aside, you know, the the reconciliation process is, you know, I see for me, I see breaks in relationship as portals into increased intimacy and connection.

And I think that’s that is where my belief lies, that when there’s a rupture in a relationship, it’s it’s an invitation into deepening into connection. It seems we’ve always thought it the opposite way, that if there’s a rupture, you just leave it. It’s like you let it you let it die.

But actually, for me, it’s an opportunity into like, okay, so what’s going on here? What do we need to do? What’s wanted? What’s required? You know, what’s the problem? And that involves us being authentic, being vulnerable, getting past our fears, speaking our truth with each other. And that is really quite difficult for a lot of people, because we’ve got a lot of fear and even more so these days, it’s like, if we consider something to be toxic, which is a lovely new word that, you know, relationships are toxic. They’re supposed to be avoiding, which is which is increasing separation, not not encouraging connection and love and harmony.

And I’m all about love and harmony and like, coming closer together, even if it’s difficult to talk about. And it’s nice sometimes I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt there just something. Isn’t it at those times when you find it difficult to talk about these things? That is the time.

Yeah, and it’s about how do you handle your emotions when it’s difficult? How do you say to your partner or your child, right at this moment, I am scared to death, my stomach is churning, my heart’s in my mouth, and I’m worried that you’re going to be upset with what I’m going to say. And what a lovely invitation into telling you truth, setting the scene, and then explaining how you feel. And then the key thing for me in relationships is asking for what you want, which so many of us are great at saying what we don’t want.

But you can’t deliver on a don’t want, you can deliver on a want, you know, somebody says this is what I want. But we’re so not used to saying this is what I want or asking for what I want and because somebody says no one. Like Father Christmas, you might not get what you want.

Or they ask for a bike and they’ve got a doll, that kind of thing. And that lovely phrase we had as children, which I want never gets, you know. And then the parents used to say, what do you want, you know, when you’re in your restaurant or a cafe or ice cream or whatever.

And they say, what do you want? And then sometimes they’ll bark out this, what you ask for, you don’t get, you know, it’s really bizarre being a child, isn’t it? Absolutely. It’s just a little bit, a little mental note to myself there when you were talking about the reconciliation and the healing and things and sitting down and having conversations versus this. Some of the words that you’ve told me today I wasn’t aware of about these latest groups where it’s, you know, how to shun your parents and things.

I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the work of, it’s called Nonviolent Communication Sunday, have you heard of it? Is it Marshall B. Rosenberg? And there he is, or was, I mean, I think he’s passed over now, hasn’t he? But his work still continues. He’s there trying to do exactly what you’re talking about, where both parties are actually sat talking. And it may not be that they end up being together, but the journey and the healing of all that, it can’t help but have a deeper impact.

Because we’ve all got issues in our lives, haven’t we? We’re all human and we’ve all got things that have happened, whether it be childhood or, you know, I have. You know, most people I know have. And most people, when I was at school, wanted to throttle the parents.

Not one of them. You know, there’s always something, wasn’t there? But I get this, this kind of sense of the journey you’ve gone through. You’re connected to a source.

You’re connected to source inside. So you know that, and whether this scares people a little bit, where you’re talking about the godlike self because of that journey. And how you could be, you could be bitter.

You could be self blaming. You could be doing all that all the time, but there’s nothing to begin from that. Nothing at all.

So you’ve gone through this deep, deep healing journey, learning self love and forgiveness. So would you say that’s quite where you’re at now, where you’re connected to a source, an inner source that’s helping you reach out and do the work that you’re doing now in the world? Yeah, kind of. I sort of get it.

It’s difficult for me to actually own. I think it’s difficult for maybe it’s not for some. I do love myself and that’s easier for me to say these days.

I do know that I have a lot of wisdom. I do know that my heart is huge and that I want to serve the world. I do know that I’ve got a certain way that seems to resonate with a number of people.

I feel like I’ve found my purpose. I’m not searching for why am I here anymore. This feels like my journey.

And I suppose I still struggle a little bit with, you know, it’s sort of divinely given or even though I secretly might think that in my mind, you know, some of the stuff that I write is like when I look at it, you know, I think, where did that come from? And it does seem to just come out of my fingers like magic. You know, I have some people, artists and, you know, I’m sure that I’m not alone in that writers who just love to write, you know, just get this download and you just like write it. And then somebody goes, yeah, it’s great.

You know, it really touched me or oh my gosh, I’ve not thought of it like that. You know, and you think, yeah, somebody needed to read that. Somebody just needed that in that moment.

And you’re right. You know, I could have chosen to be bitter and angry and resentful and like carry it and vengeful. And I learned that, you know, somebody that got rattling around in my brain was, you know, like revenge or anger against somebody else is like serving them poison and you’re the one eating it, you know, because I was just destroying myself really by being like that.

And I did go through that phase where I was very angry and wanted to hurt. And that was an old pattern. And, you know, that’s gone now.

And I see so many other parents coming in like that, you know, and then they come into the environment, into the community and they can kind of turn it around, you know, realize that actually we’re harming and harming myself. I’m making myself poorly with all of this, you know, I’m getting whatever disease is because these poison cocktail of the emotions that we feel, if we don’t process them properly and move out of them, they get stuck in the body. There’s a lot of evidence around now that, you know, we’re giving ourselves illness by unresolved emotional stuff.

So I was determined I’ve got a long life to live. I’ve got lots to do. I don’t want to be carrying this bucket of poison around with me.

And that’s not to say that sometimes I do feel deeply sad and can really get into the, why did they do that? And I’m sure that they think the same about me. No. And it’s how do we get past that? Well, you did that.

And when I did that, you know, we could do that forever. And that really is like child playground stuff in adult bodies. And it’s like, how do you get beyond the child, the wounded child part of us and grow into being adult and recognize that that part of us that really got hurt is just the child part and actually we can get past it.

And I can, you know, and get past the fact. Most of the time now, I can get past the fact that I missed out on weddings that I haven’t had connection with my grandchildren, you know. And I think part of me is, is looking forward to the fact that I might get to be really active, a great grandma, you know, that my grandchildren might gravitate back and I might get to really be involved with my great grandchildren.

Who knows, you know, and I just have that as a vision. And I see my daughter’s always smiley faces on and waving at me and going, hi, Mum, good to see you. You know, I keep that as a vision rather than the memory of the painful stuff that I’ve experienced indirectly and directly because a lot of the time it’s imagination that runs the shop up in my brain if I’m not careful, if I can make things worse.

And I remember when, you know, I can bring it all out if I need to. But what’s the point? I’m just putting a load of poison in my body. I might as well, oh, yeah, that happened.

Move on into a more forward thinking. Have a look at the pictures from the past, photographs from the past. And it’s a process.

I’m seeing that so many people have to go through this grieving process of losing their children to estrangement. There’s anger, there’s bitterness, there’s blame, there’s throwing rocks, you know, and being very unpleasant, which makes it worse. So for people who are at the start and they feel their adult child pulling away, that is the point where you go inside and think, why is this bothering me? Why do I feel this need to reach out and be reassured that they’re not leaving me? Because it’s that fear in parents that actually makes the kids go.

It’s an amazing thing to have been through this process myself and to witness so many others going through it and seeing how we create estrangement through the fear of it. The fear of loss actually creates it. And it’s those difficult conversations.

Why do I fear my children leaving me is a really good question to ask ourselves. Why do I feel the loss, even if it hasn’t happened, you know? And for those, for anybody, whether it be parents or grandparents, that last five minutes of what you’ve said and they’re going through that, I can feel that. How do they contact you? How do they reach out and get the support that you’re offering? Whether it be, is it one-to-one or whether it’s in your online community? How do they do that? I’d like to make sure that people know they can contact you.

Yeah, thank you. So the fortunate name of having a name like Sunday, it’s very easy to find. There’s only a couple of us in the world called Sunday Gilchrist, which I found fascinating, but my first name is without the A in.

And it’s S-U-N-D-Y. And I am on Facebook. And I also have a website called Sunday Gilchrist.com or sublimerelationships.co.uk. Or a simple Sunday Gilchrist.gmail.com, an email.

And do you have a book out yet? Is there anything that you want to know? I was a bit in breath. I was waiting for you to say, I’m nearly finished it. Oh, yeah, it’s going to be out this year or next year.

It’s going to be out this year. So I just need to get it organized and get it blinking well up onto the platform. So that’s going to be Sunday’s Love Notes.

And that’s little bits of snippets of wisdom around seven topic areas. One, estrangements in there, just an healing and little sections of little bits of wisdom that I’ve generated over these years of doing this work. I’m a relationship coach by sort of like, that is my thing, but then there’s specialism of estrangement.

And I’d love to get people who are at the beginning of it. And just to an hour on a Zoom call with me could just like flick the switch a completely different way than going down into a full blown estrangement with your adult child. And I offer everybody a free one hour on Zoom.

And then if you wanted some one-to-one coaching after that, that’s available. It’s just nipping this in the bud before we go down into full-bodied estrangement, really. Just through the very fear of it.

Oh, absolutely. We have. We’ve got about 50 seconds left.

I can’t believe it. But in that time, I want to say what somebody’s just said there about contacting. And yeah, please do.

I mean, because what you’re doing is you’re coaching others into a relationship with themselves. And I think just in this latter part, I’d like to say a huge thank you to Sunday for being so open, for being so honest, for sharing what is a very difficult subject. So thank you so much for being with us today, Sunday.

Please, please check us out at Women’s Radio Station. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and what’s been a very powerful story. Thank you.