Willow & Teak

Family Estrangement

Support for the full spectrum of family experience -- from conflict and distance to grief and the complicated space of not knowing what comes next.

You don't have to be estranged to struggle with family.

Family relationships can be a source of both connection and pain. Whether you are navigating conflict, communication challenges, changing family roles, reconciliation efforts, or estrangement, therapy offers a space to explore these relationships with greater clarity, compassion, and intention.

Many people come to this work somewhere in the middle -- not fully estranged, not fully okay. They are trying to figure out how much contact feels sustainable, what they actually want from a relationship, or how to grieve a connection that still technically exists. All of that belongs here.

What this looks like in therapy

Estrangement is rarely a single moment. It tends to be an accumulation -- of unrepaired ruptures, of roles that stopped fitting, of conversations that never happened. Narrative therapy offers a framework for making sense of that accumulation without reducing it to blame or pathology.

The work is not about deciding whether contact is right or wrong. It is about helping you understand the story you have been living in, the costs and meanings you have attached to it, and what you actually want your relationship with your family to look like -- including what it means if reconciliation is not possible or not chosen.

Upcoming Event
Family Estrangement -- The Both/And
July 16, 2026 -- Glastonbury Public Library -- Glastonbury, CT

A community talk on the emotional complexity of family estrangement. This is not a talk about how to reconcile or how to cut ties. It is a conversation about how to hold both the grief and the clarity, the love and the limits, at the same time.

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Both/And: The Gritty Truth About Family Estrangement

A downloadable guide exploring the emotional complexity of estrangement -- the grief, the relief, the ambiguity, and the question of what comes next. Written for people in the middle of it, or trying to understand someone who is.

Both/And: The Gritty Truth About Family Estrangement
PDF -- Free Download
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This work is for you wherever you are in the process.

Whether you are considering estrangement, already estranged, or somewhere in the complicated middle -- you do not have to navigate it alone.

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