Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. About 12 years ago, author Eamon Dolan broke up with his mother after years of both physical and emotional abuse. The story of cutting ties became the topic of his new book, The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement. It's part memoir, part research on society's views and cultural taboos around estrangement.

He writes, "There are four types of maltreatment, the umbrella term for the kinds of trauma families can inflict on their children. The two kinds we're most familiar with are physical abuse and sexual abuse, but the other two types are easier for survivors and society to dismiss. They are psychological abuse, along also called emotional abuse, and neglect. The latter is easily the most common and arguably the most harmful, and tragically the least recognized."

Dolan looks the root causes for emotional abuse, how silence perpetuates it, and how its long-term effects on the survivors, and why people decide to stay in abusive relationships or to leave. A review in the New York Times says the book, the Power of Parting, is an intellectual, rigorous manifesto. The Power of Parting is out today. Eamon Dolan is a Brooklyn-based author, photographer, and current vice president and executive editor at Simon & Schuster. This is his very first book. Welcome to All Of It.

Eamon Dolan: I'm delighted to be here. Thanks.

Alison Stewart: Congratulations on the book, by the way.

Eamon Dolan: Oh, thank you very much.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you estranged from a parent, a sibling, another relative, or have you gone an extended period of time without speaking to them? Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We want to hear your story. The decision to cut ties with a parent is complex. It's personal. It may not work for everyone, but from your research, how do you know when exiting a toxic relationship with a parent is right for you?

Eamon Dolan: I think the most important thing to ask yourself when you're considering whether to break ties with somebody is how they treat you in comparison to how everyone else treats you, particularly your friends. That question can really focus your attention. When you think that question through, that also helps you figure out what they would need to do to have a better relationship with you.

Then you can tell them-- you can call them rules, you can call them requests, whatever suits you, and whatever you think would get across to them, but you can tell them, "These are new standards for our relationship." Then you can determine whether or not they can follow those standards, those rules. If they can't, and many people who abuse their relatives cannot, then you should consider stepping away.

Alison Stewart: You set up those rules for your mother. How did you enforce those rules in your relationship with your mom?

Eamon Dolan: I had several rules, three big ones. One, she couldn't say anything mean, cruel in my presence. Another one was no tirades. As many abusers do, she had a habit of 45-minute harangues about our various shortcomings, my siblings and mine. Three, she couldn't play the mother card. Anytime she did one of those three things, I would say gently but firmly, "As we've discussed, that is a line you cannot cross. If you continue to do that, I'm going to have to put some distance between us." Consistency is really important. I did that again and again and again for two years.

Alison Stewart: Those lines were crossed?

Eamon Dolan: Yes, those lines were crossed a lot. She would get better at it briefly, but really only briefly, for a week or two at most. Then she would cross a line again. I would point that out to her, and she'd try to hold off, or she would-- There are lots of different kinds of reactions. Often, she would get aggressive about it. She would cross further. As I say, it took me two years and several hundred iterations, but a moment came when I said, "That's it."

Alison Stewart: Some people, Eamon, will know you from your New York Times opinion piece, I broke up with my mother. I don't regret the decision. In it, you said you expected to experience guilt or grief after making your decision, but you also felt liberated. First of all, when did the guilt start to subside?

Eamon Dolan: Hard to put a specific date on it. I would say probably about a year after the estrangement. I started to feel that not only I had done the right thing, the necessary thing, but that I had done a brave thing and a thing that other people in my life might take as an example.

Alison Stewart: Your siblings, for example?

Eamon Dolan: Yes, my sister, other people, relatives who she also mistreated, not as badly as she did myself and my sister, but that she also unfurled her rage at or her disdain.

Alison Stewart: Did you experience grief?

Eamon Dolan: Yes, I did. It was a different kind of grief than the one I was at that point more familiar with, and that most people are more familiar with. Grief, as you know, is usually about mourning something you loved, cared about, someone you loved or cared about, that you've lost one way or another. This kind of grief is different. This is a grief for something you never had.

Our society is so good at grief, I think. We sit Shiva, we have Facebook pages, we have obituaries, we have rollicking wakes. We have all sorts of ways to mark the passing of those we love. Society, the sympathy cards, we have just a whole grief industrial complex. We have nothing like that for this kind of grief. In fact, I would argue there's not enough sympathy for it. Not only are there no rituals for it, but there is no instinct or little instinct, not enough instinct, towards sympathy.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Eamon Dolan, The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement. It's his new book. We'd love for you to call in if you want to share your story. If you've gone a long period of time without speaking to someone, a parent, a sibling, another relative, perhaps you're estranged from them. Our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You may call in. You can join us on air, or you can text to us at that number. What was something new you wanted to add to the conversation around estrangement with your book?

Eamon Dolan: Among other things, I want to change how we think about family. We have this ingrained notion supported by everything from every institution, from religion, to the law, to pop psychology, to TV shows, that tells us blood is thicker than water, that we need to stick with our family under all circumstances, and that somehow the genetic relationship is a special one. I strongly believe not only that that's not the case, but that we should choose our families.

When we reach adulthood, our genetic relatives can be in our family. My sister is one of my closest friends. I'm so lucky to have her. She's in my family because she treats me well, with respect, with love, with empathy. We, as a species, have a remarkable capacity to make family out of strangers. If you think of the phrase band of brothers in the military or monasteries and convents or fraternities, sports teams, kibbutzim, so many institutions that weave family out of total strangers, we can do this. You can do this. Anybody can do this and should do it.

Alison Stewart: You write quite a bit about therapy and how it has its blind spots, often offering reconciliation as an outcome. First of all, why do you think that is?

Eamon Dolan: I think that psychology and psychiatry and related professions have a couple of hopes that are impossible to fulfill. One is that they are hard sciences, that they're like biology or physics, and you can measure stuff and put it in categories and boxes and deal with it that way.

The other is they're kind of hidebound. There are fads and trends and stuff like that, but change happens very slowly. This isn't just me saying it either. Judith Herman, who wrote the book Trauma and Recovery, is one of the outstanding experts in this field. She made this point 30 years ago in that marvelous book that old texts in the psychiatric and psychological realms read like they're brand new. It's partially because the people who write them are so smart, but partially because the ideas get buried and then crop up again decades later. Indeed, Judith Herman's book reads like it was written two years ago, and it's, whatever, 30-something years old.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Let's talk to Amy. She's calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Amy. Thanks for taking the time to call All Of It. You're on the air.

Amy: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear your story.

Amy: I made the decision to be estranged from my family-- from actually literally every single person I was related to. The longest duration was I was estranged from my mother for 17 years, and I was estranged from my father, they were always divorced most of my life, for 14 years. What may be unique, or maybe not unique, about the reasons that I had for doing that was they did not actually abuse me, but I had been sexually abused by a man that my mother was involved with for many years, an uncle on my father's side, and my pediatrician.

I was going through what they call the emergency stage of healing and recovery. I was in college and needed to drop out because I couldn't function. I quickly realized that being around my parents, being around any family, being in any relationship with them, any interaction, even though their phone was very triggering for me. I started to doubt if anyone in my family could be trusted because I was getting flashbacks every day and night. Eventually, many, many-- obviously, it was almost two decades of estrangement from my mother, I did a tremendous amount of healing.

During that time, I never went into any addictive behavior or avoidant behavior. I actually faced it head on because I felt like I wasn't going to let it win. I wanted to deal with this trauma and get it out of me, out of my system, out of my body and my mind and my life. I felt like they were potentially going to interfere with that. I also did a tremendous amount of healing work so that when I became a parent myself, I no longer was afraid of them. I no longer felt resentment and anger towards them. I wanted to have a relationship on my own terms, but I felt like I didn't want the estrangement to pass to the next generation.

Alison Stewart: Amy, I'm going to dive in there. Thank you so much for sharing your story. What stood out to you about what Amy talked about? What really stood out in her answer?

Eamon Dolan: So many things. First of all, thank you, Amy, so much for sharing that story. I'm so sorry for what you endured. I really admire you for how far you've come. I would say that to any survivor, by the way, anyone who grows up in inhumane conditions and retains their humanity, as you clearly have, Amy, we're heroes. We shouldn't feel shame. We should feel so proud, and I hope you're proud. It sounds like you are.

Another thing that stands out for me is the similarity, in broad terms, between your story and the stories of a lot of survivors I spoke with. Particularly in the case of sexual abuse, their parents didn't necessarily commit the abuse themselves, but they stood by. They were ignorant in one way or another. One of a parent's most important duties, possibly the most important, is to protect their children, and your parents did not protect you. Something else that sticks out for me is how smart you were to step away. We need to be in a position of safety before we can do any other healing, and you did that for yourself. Those are just three of the things among several.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Eamon Dolan. He wrote The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement. We'll have more of your calls, and we'll talk more with Eamon after the break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Eamon Dolan. He's written a book called The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement. It's part memoir, part research. Here's a question for you. This is a text we got. It says, "I separated from my mother in 2020 after years of distance. She agreed to see a therapist I paid for who told her my boundaries and social limits. The hardest part is asking my other family members to respect and support my boundaries with her, such as not making me feel guilty or forcing us together. How have you handled getting other family members to understand the boundaries without making her look like the bad guy?"

Eamon Dolan: I was very lucky in this regard. It wasn't easy, but I will say to my very happy surprise, my family was respectful of my situation. What I said to them-- I didn't over-explain with a couple of exceptions. I talked a lot about it with my sister, for example, and she was very supportive from the get-go. With other relatives, I said very little. Again, gently, politely, I said, "I'm not speaking with my mother right now, so I can't come to any event where she is also in attendance." They were bemused.

I think our family was avoidant and non-confrontational enough that nobody said, "What? What the hell?" Basically, I also think in my case, they had some inkling of why I was doing this, but I held my ground. Indeed, in the seven years or so between when we estranged and when she died, I think only once or twice did I find myself at a family event with her.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Susan from Riverhead, Long Island. Hi, Susan. Thank you so much for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Susan: Hi. I'm so glad to be a part of this conversation today. I appreciate this so much. My mother is actually still alive. She's 92 years old, and I'm 65. I've had a very difficult, difficult life experience. My mother has borderline personality disorder and dementia now. Very similar to one of the other callers, my mother didn't believe things that happened to me abuse-wise in the family and called me whore at nine years old because of it.

Eamon Dolan: I'm sorry.

Susan: I realize now that she has her own issues. The funny thing, it's not funny, but I'm the primary caregiver. I don't live with her. I pay an aide. I'm her health care proxy, but I am in a 12-step recovery program that I realized that through that, I was able to separate the trauma that happened to me, knowing that I didn't deserve it. I've been able to release myself from the pain that she cost me in my life. I'm just walking through the process of doing the right thing by her as my mother and the rest of my life. I also have grieved the relationship that I wished I would have had with my mother, and I never will. I think I've come to terms with that in her lifetime.

Alison Stewart: Susan, thank you so much for calling in. You suggest that individuals who are in your situation take some time and write down the transgressions that have happened. What are some things that people might find useful from this exercise?

Eamon Dolan: First of all, it'll help focus them on the need for change. We often forget things. One of the little-understood effects of child abuse is how it harms your memory. We often have to do some work on our own with a therapist or just taking time, journaling is really good for this, to call up exactly what happened to us, exactly what was done to us. That can give us some really useful energy that we're going to need for the task ahead-- for the task of saving ourselves.

Alison Stewart: One of the psychologists you talk about said, "During this process, you may start to feel anxious or guilty, so you will need to refer back to your reasons on a regular basis to stay focused and avoid emotional reasoning." Why is it important to avoid emotional reasoning?

Eamon Dolan: Our emotions can betray us in these circumstances. Our abusers know how to push our buttons because they installed the buttons. It is really important to find ways not to distance ourselves from the experience but to get perspective on the experience. Emotions, particularly guilt and grief, can cloud our understanding of the truth of our situation and hamper us from doing the thinking and ultimately the feeling that we need to do to save ourselves.

Alison Stewart: We got this text. It says, "Estrangement does not have the makings of 'straightforward grief.' It's far more complex and complicated, and closure can be elusive." What do you think of that?

Eamon Dolan: I think that's true. I was very fortunate in this regard as well, perversely, I would say, because my mother's abuse was so extreme and so clear. I think in a lot of cases, I was beaten, I was psychologically abused in a whole bunch of ways, and I was neglected. I missed sexual abuse, fortunately, but I had three barrels of the four barrels of abuse poured on me. In that sense, it was relatively easy for me to find closure.

When my mother died, I felt joy. I felt a freedom I hadn't even felt years before when I estranged from her. This, Susan may find this one day, oftentimes the best thing they ever do for you is die. I have not looked back. Aside from that period that we talked about before, where the guilt and the grief were strong, I have not looked back. A lot of people do look back, though. It's very hard for a lot of people. I get that. I spend a lot of time in the book talking about how to handle that over the course of time.

Alison Stewart: We had a caller who had a question, and it was about, if you do this when you're younger and you get estranged from your family when you're younger, they may see it as a way to resolve a complicated issue rather than deal with it. How would you respond to that?

Eamon Dolan: That's a possibility, I will grant. It is one of the reasons that a myth I seek to explode in the book, that estrangement automatically equals no contact, which is the hashtag you see nowadays. It can. It did for me, and I was very happy about that, but estrangement is on a spectrum. The main thing that characterizes estrangement, in my opinion, is that you're doing what you need to do to take care of yourself. If you see them once a year, if you text them only, restrict yourself to texts, however you choose to do it.

The other thing about estrangement is if they change, you can change. If they mend their ways, you can come back. That does happen. It doesn't happen often, but there's nothing wrong. If my mother had ever sent me a note saying, "I'm sorry. Let's talk," I would have, but she didn't.

Alison Stewart: Where does forgiveness fall in this equation?

Eamon Dolan: I believe everyone has the right to do whatever they want in this regard. I do believe that forgiveness in our society is a cudgel that is held over people who estrange. So many times I've heard from well-meaning people, basically, "Can't you just forgive and forget? Can't you just let it be in the past?" I believe that forgiveness, when it's applied that way, is a tool of oppression. Why aren't they saying to the abuser, "What can you do to earn the survivor's forgiveness?" That doesn't really come up. Again, if you-- my dad did not abuse us directly. He was an enabler. He essentially absented himself. I have for him what I would call partial forgiveness and compassion because I know he was abused as well.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement. It is by Eamon Dolan. Thank you for sharing your story and sharing your research with us, and congratulations on the book.

Eamon Dolan: My pleasure. It was an honor to talk with you.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here tomorrow.