My DD hasn’t spoken to me since early August 2025

[KJCP]

For years I would have said my daughter ( now late 40s) and I had a good relationship. She would ring me several times a week, send videos, ask my opinion about clothes she had bought, have a moan about work, friends etc and on Mothers Day would send the loveliest messages in cards. When she got married three years ago, she and her husband asked me and my husband ( her father) to go on a safari holiday with them ( at our expense!) but we were pleased to and had an enjoyable time. Then in July 2024 she was getting stressed about work and decided to see a therapist using the company’s health insurance scheme. The result was she was told to “set boundaries”. I was told in a text that my anxieties (???) were affecting her. I needed to address these “ anxieties” or she would cut all ties with me. Since neither I nor my husband had any idea what she was talking about, she cut off contact with me. ( she has sent the odd photo of holidays to her father but never to me) To say I am upset is an understatement. As my husband says we can’t force her to contact us but is this how my life will be? Has anyone had the same experience and has anyone any advice?

You're not helping the reputation of estranged parents here. Aggressive and angry, unstable, lashing out. But I'm sure your child is the angry one and you've done nothing wrong! Maybe, just maybe, therapy is a good idea.

Parents have to put in the work to make their kids wants to be around them. You don’t owe your mum because she gave birth to you. That’s a very selfish reason to have a kid. So you know there’s always someone who owes you. Good relationships are not transactional.

Surely you at least at for examples but I’m pretty sure she would have already shared them. Gransnet is full of Mum’s who children don’t contacr but it isn’t in any way their fault. Maybe post on there.

And when your own children cut you off? You’ll accept that as entirely your fault? Cue “they won’t, because I’m a good/superb mother” … but so was I, maybe so was the OP, and yet …

have you ever thought your self belief, certainty and black and white thinking, come back to you in a few years when your kids put you in a box that allows them to cut you off, justifying it with “she forced her views on me/she never saw how complex life is/she didn’t allow me to have a different view from hers/she insisted she was always right/she never accepted my life could be different from hers/her complacancy meant she never heard my concerns/we can’t have an open conversation/I don’t share my views with her” or 101 other unpredictable reasons 21st century adults have for cutting off a parent.

Since neither I nor my husband had any idea what she was talking about

Did you not ask?

I am an adult who has estranged myself from my family. This decision never comes lightly. There is more to this story than I think you are consciously aware off. If you are sincere about wanting to understand, this will require you to actively listen to your daughter. Have you considered therapy yourself?

Unstable? lol. Yes I’m angry. Yes I find the smugness of some posters infuriating. But that is as reasonable as posters saying “they didn’t do it lightly” “you’re only giving half the story” “no one cuts off a parent without good reason”.

it’s incredible that I’m not supposed to be angry.

and for what it’s worth, I cut my dad out of my life for twenty years. Bet you didn’t expect that,huh?

This! The adult children don’t rewrite history. Their history is not their parents’ history - you aren’t in their shoes growing up, you don’t know how they feel and they can do a very good job at hiding it from you if they feel too scared to tell you.

If my child comes to me as an adult and tells me all my failings I plan to say, “Yes, I’m so sorry, I definitely know I wasn’t perfect, I always loved you and always will, but sometimes I was a sh*t mum I totally admit that. What can I do now to help repair our relationship? You can tell me anything and I’ll take it on board.”

I fully accept that I won’t do everything right and that a relationship is a two-way thing. I certainly won’t be here on mumsnet complaining that I gave him the best childhood ever and he wasn’t grateful for it.

This is so so fascinating and insightful! Thank you for sharing it. I've always wondered why this happens sometimes.

@KJCP I’m sorry to hear this OP. I have no advice really but I have my story which involves me being very low contact with my mum. She could have written the same exact post than you have. For me was the fact that my mum made very clear that because I was not the daughter she raised. I had “changed” and not in a good way. Which is true. I have changed. I’m 40 and no longer the same person I was in my teens,20s or even 30s. All because I have different views and want different things and the path in life I took is also different. The low contact is for my own sanity. I can’t cope with it all. Did you ask her what she meant with your anxieties?

My DB would say I'd changed it. But his childhood experience was completely different to mine, despite it looking similar.

He got the support & attention, opportunities. I was ignored & to this day, my DP's still don't bother much when I visit but are all over DB, like the king is staying!! There's even family heirlooms, 200 years old, being passed to him, thungs I never even knew about until recently.

But DB would tell you I am being ridiculous & making it up. Being there doesn't always mean you live the same life. Sometimes you just need permission to say it.

If my children cut me off I think I probably would accept that as entirely my fault. I brought them up, I made mistakes, lots of them, don't all parents? If they felt that they were unable to forgive me for one or more of those I would feel awful, ask for forgiveness and hope that one day they could forgive me. Owning up to your mistakes and failings is hard but it is necessary if you want to have a honest relationship with mutual respect.

Are people saying here that an adult cannot cut their parents off ? If they do then it will happen to them too in later life.
My father has been given many chances and at the age of 80 he is still damaging to me , my husband and adult children and their wives / husbands.
He cannot be trusted at any family event and has had so many affairs and treated my mum so badly , is it not ok to cut him off?
OP did something happen when they were on honeymoon , are you aware of any anxieties?

Let me guess - you're American.

This was an absolutely fascinating read thank you. This is exactly what would happen if I went no contact with my extremely narcissistic father who has verbally and emotionally abused me my entire life. It’s part the reason I stay low contact instead because I’m so terrified of the backlash. Cutting off a parent is a huge decision and usually the result of really complex issues. I suspect the OP will cut and run but I hope they read this thread and reflect on what their child has told them rather than their own emotional reaction.

Just another angle- is it possible that she is a victim of domestic violence from her DH who is making her cut off contact?

It happened to my mother..my sibling couldn’t accept my mother stepping in when her parenting failed to safeguard a homeless GC of 12…my mothers favourite child rejected her and caused her enormous harm (when she had done so much for her and set her up in life - house, financial support, mediation and more). Then it happened to a friend, she challenged her daughter about something (an assumption she wouldn’t go to a celebration) and was unceremoniously dumped (again this ‘child’ had had her family home bought for her, cars and income etc..) no explanation nothing just silence.
Incalculably cruel, I’m a child of domestic violence and was treated poorly but cannot imagine in my 2 direct witnessed circumstances being so incredibly cruel. It is a huge wound to give a parent. I just remembered it happened to a colleague too who died distressed without reconciliation..in that case her daughter simply sided with the divorced Dad who had been cruel to her mother.
I suppose what I’m saying is that it can happen to Mothers who’ve been great, exceptional even....it did to my own Mum …ironically my sister is now estranged from 1 of her daughters too.
Beware the examples you set

@APatternGrammar - thank you for posting the link. It's really interesting.

@MadameTwoSwords - I honestly think people who cut off their parents have it coming to them in later life.

What a thoughtless, insensitive thing to say. What about people who have been sexually abused, physically abused or mentally tortured by their parents/care givers. Are they just meant to 'suck it up'?

@BallerinaFall - please ignore the judgemental poster who quoted you. People very rarely cut contact with their parents for no reason.

I don't think either of my parents would claim we ever had a great relationship but they won't admit to and own their mistakes. I am now NC with one and LC with the other. A simple acknowledgement of the problems or an apology would have gone a long way, but it's easier for them to paint me as the villain.

I didn't go NC as a result of therapy, but therapy was the first time my parents' mistakes felt acknowledged and that someone other than friends agreed I hadn't been treated well by them. It gave me permission to feel the way I feel rather than being told by them I'm wrong for feeling my childhood wasn't happy because of them.

If I explained events, I don't think anyone on this thread would disagree they caused significant issues in my life. My point is that I just went along with life with them in it until I realised I didn't have to put their feelings above mine, when they had never done the same.

Becoming a mother myself brought about a further change in my perception. I couldn't imagine behaving to my DC as they did to me.

You might not agree with your DD's reasons OP, but I don't believe you have no clue what they are.

With all due respect you do sound angry and combative. Do you think your dad would have understood why you cut him off for 20 years? In the same way that you can’t understand why the same has been done to you? Can you not see the pattern? It is time for you to break the cycle. You won’t achieve that by being angry at your children. You will achieve it by listening to them, apologising, and admitting you did things wrong. How would you feel if your dad had done that instead of accepting your estrangement? I hope you manage to sort things out, sending you hope and strength.

People who are deeply hurt themselves have a responsibility to break generational trauma if they have children rather than expecting children to also shoulder the burden of their pain.

I am extremely low contact with my dad, I long for the day I can either go no contact or, to put it bluntly, that he dies. It will mean I can stop living my life on eggshells wondering when the next tirade of verbal abuse will come my way and crush my confidence once again, whilst he maintains an extremely polished exterior which means anyone who has never seen this side to him simply does not believe it.

I have a daughter and if me, my husband, or anyone else in her life ever spoke to her in the way my father has spoken to me, I’d be making sure she protected her own wellbeing by limiting her contact with that person. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy making sure I can be different, but I know I won’t always get it right, and I’ll be sure to be open to listening and learning from her in the future to maintain a relationship.

Children don’t ask to be born, they don’t owe us for providing them with life.

My friend started therapy to come to terms with a terminal health diagnosis. What happened though was she was encouraged to delve into her childhood and decided her parents, both already deceased had been disgraceful people. Prior to this, she had loved her deceased mum and her deceased dad was her favourite person in the world. She spent sessions exploring this and then died herself, never having come to terms with her illness and much less happy than before she started therapy. It was very very sad to watch.

Op the fact you have ‘no idea’ leads me to believe you have done very little or no reflection whatsoever. As parents we all make mistakes, pass our trauma on inadvertently etc but to not even take the time to examine why she might feel so upset strikes me as indifference.

At no point in your post can I hear any genuine sadness that she is absent. The exclamation mark that you were expected to pay for the safari trip is also rather telling.

This is not the therapist, but your dd deciding your decision to not even try to engage with her on this has probably tipped the balance.

I know that in some cases, cutting off parents is justified. But there definitely seems to be a trend recently of people going down rabbit holes on tiktok or going to ‘therapists’ and deciding that their parents are disgraceful and monstrous due to vague, pretty standard parenting misdemeanours and then cutting them off and using a load of therapy speak to justify it.

I could list a load of times that I think my parents have been knobheads over the years. They could list ten times more for me should the urge ever take them.

Regression was big in psychoanalysis, where there is a belief in repressed memories - I started studying in the 90s when the memory wars were in full swing and lots of people were doing sodium thiopental work. But before that, hypnosis was massive. Both are very discredited now (although I am just listening to a podcast on iplayer about a so called therapist doing this more recently - turns out she had no psychology degrees, training or accreditation - so it is not completely unknown) but if anyone in therapy suggests this, you should be very very wary. There is some research going on using LSD for people with PTSD which is really promising, but it is done in a very very strict circumstances.

Anyway, yes, it was an awful thing and broke many families. And coming on the back of the 'ritual satanic abuse' panic of the late 80s and early 90s and some very under trained, under supervised therapists (its still not a protected title, although it really needs to be) it was a perfect storm.

I worked with one family many many years ago who had been told that their child had definitely been satanically abused when very young, because they had found her masturbating. She was young and they were naive and did not know that sometimes children will do this as they start to explore their bodies. Anyway, the poor family had been in and out of therapy for years. I asked them how this had all come about and the whole story came out. But that they had wracked their brains because the so called abuse had happened when she was so young, she was never away from them - literally no one had access to this child. By the time I saw them, the whole family was traumatized by their journey through the psychological services systems. I was furious on their behalf.

And before anyone comes from me - I have worked with traumatized people for over 20 years, including many abused before they had words to describe or conceptualize what happened to them. I know the difference in terms of what they look like. In this case, this poor family had been royally screwed by an inept therapist.