Unsent Letters to Parents: What Goes Unsaid in Family Estrangement

Sep 14

When I was about three years old, my family made a permanent move from Canada (my birthplace) to Bolivia, with a built-in month-long stay in the Peruvian Amazon. For several weeks we lived in wooden huts, raised off the forest floor on tall stilts in anticipation of heavy rains.

My brother, a mere eighteen months older than me, had a green Scooby-Doo suitcase and was extremely upset about leaving home — all he had known in his short life. One day, I watched in distress as he announced he was going back to Canada with or without us. He turned his little back and set off into the jungle, the Scooby-Doo suitcase rattling behind him.

My dad looked at my mom and said, "Let him go. He'll be back sooner than you think." I wasn't so sure.

Why Family Estrangement Produces So Many Unsent Letters and Notes

We receive countless letters from sons and daughters who've gone "no contact" with the people who raised them — and just as many from parents to their estranged kids. Family estrangement, the process by which family members become strangers to one another, is still somewhat taboo. But according to a 2019 survey by sociologist Karl Pillemer, twenty-seven percent of Americans are currently estranged from a relative. If that isn't you, you likely know someone who has intentionally put distance between themselves and their family.

What follows is a small drawer of the unsent notes and letters that have come through the mailbox on this subject — from someone's father, someone's son, someone's mother, someone's daughter. What they all share is a felt absence, like a phantom limb on a recent amputee: a reminder that although the writer has learned to make do, there was once something there that felt essential.

An Unsent Note to "Dad"

The quotation marks are extremely telling. No one questions the decision to leave a toxic relationship — but when it comes to family, the general perception is that blood is thicker than water. I grew up hearing that when things fall apart, family is all we have. But is that true? Are we inexorably bound to the people who birthed us?

There's an assumption that a biological bond takes precedence over any other relationship in our lives — that being part of a process of reproduction should earn someone the title "Dad." What, then, do we call the person who conceived us and didn't show up for the rest? This writer says it best: "I guess you can't miss what you never had, dear 'father.'" And somehow, it still hurts so bad.

"I Failed You as a Father"

I felt so much sorrow reading this one. This writer offers us a glimpse of the other side of the playbook — left with a deep sense of failure after his daughter's estrangement, made worse by his own self-awareness. He's painfully aware of the disconnect between how he showed up for his kid and how a parent is expected to show up: "I was supposed to protect you."

At its core, parenting is a maintenance act. Like doing the dishes, we show up day after day for the little human we brought into the world, to make sure they're still alive and thriving (while they insist, day after day, that helmets are very uncool). We watch this part of ourselves take in the world, wide-eyed and innocent, and we feel we must protect it. Humanly, we fall short of our own image of what a protector should be. This writer's phrase, "this rubble we call childhood," breaks with the rose-colored narrative of our early years — a reminder that when everything is said and done, a parent is merely an ex-child doing their best to raise one.

A Mother's Unsent Letter: "What Was It Like to Be My Daughter?"

Bewilderment. This writer just hit a wall, and she's asking, where do we go from here? That's another way of asking: can we still save this love? She's living any mother's deepest fear — being rejected by her own child — and it shows in the immediacy of the writing. It has to be said quickly, unearthed quickly, to be looked at. The phrase "is that all there is?" reads like an anticipated mourning; she feels her daughter slipping away. What is lost when we entrust our children to a life, or a country, whose values may not be our own? Are we bound, then, to become strangers to our own offspring? She hopes for the best — to be understood, to remember a time when they spoke a shared language, even if it was just baby talk.

“Sorry for Party Rocking" — A Daughter's Unsent Note to Her Mother

It's giving defiance. I imagine this girl feeling the need to be perfect, feeling her mother's eyes scrutinize her clothes before school. She's having fun now — questioning the moral high ground she was taught to bow to. She's trying things for the first time, and to protect her freedom, she's become a stranger to her mother. I can see it unfold: the thread of texts reassuring Mom that she's studying, while she's actually out in the club scene. So relatable. We must rebel. We must become strangers before we come into ourselves. Sorry — not sorry — for party rocking.

Parents tend to feel a sense of ownership over their children. "My child" can be a bragging right, or an invocation that carries as much duty as power. To acknowledge a child's independence — to let them choose a partner, a passion, a pursuit — can feel like a rejection of your deepest self. It needn't be.

An old Chinese fable tells the story this way: Xua-Xua, who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, gave birth to a child on the banks of a river. It was pure magic — she looked at her child and could not understand. That tiny body had been part of her body, inside her, and now it was outside her, but undoubtedly it was still her. The child, Lig-Lig-Le, grew up and learned to walk on two feet, and Xua-Xua was terrified: she had to accept that this small body, though born inside her, was also somebody else — someone with their own needs and desires. The recognition forced her to ask: who was she? Who was her child?

The through-line in every one of these letters is the persistence with which family, however distanced, sticks. We may put oceans between each other, we may lose touch for years — but like a belly button, the mere existence of family reminds us we come from somewhere. In some vague, unintelligible way, we belong to a human community. Like Xua-Xua reckoned with Lig-Lig-Le, every parent will eventually have to let go, and every child will eventually have to rebel. So the cycle goes. We just have to get better at going through it.