The Many Meanings of Family Estrangement

“Can you bring to mind a family member who you trust?” she asked. “Maybe a parent or grandparent? A sibling, perhaps?”

That night, like every night for the previous two weeks, I laid awake. But for once, I wasn’t panicking about the long, inky hours ahead; the utter loneliness of being awake while the world around me slept. Instead, I thought about the tale so many still told about family, a tale affirming biological belonging as the ultimate source of care and solace. But though I was not an orphan nor an only child, I had no family I would call as such.

That last statement could have been written by any woman of color fed up with life in America. The alienation that comes with being the first, the token, the “diversity”—that alienation is a second skin for most of us, as familiar as family. And for most of my friends of color, family is how they cope with a culture bent on erasing theirs. They live close or travel often for every birthday, anniversary, and funeral. They cook the foods of their elders.

I wish it was that simple, that static. It’s not. Estrangement, for me, has been an ever-shifting constellation of regrets and loyalties and, yes, joys. It wouldn’t be so painful if I didn’t remember the feeling of curling up with my mother after a nightmare; or my father and I singing along to the Eagles, our voices gloriously off-key. If I didn’t remember my brother putting his skinny 12-year-old body between me and our father during one of his rages.

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