70: When Your Child Cuts You Off: Boundaries, Grief, and Clean Apologies

Quinn gets real about estrangement: when a child requests no contact, how do you keep loving without self-erasure? In this intimate conversation, Quinn shares their experience with an adult son who cut contact in November 2023, the grief of “losing someone who’s still alive,” and the radical shift from controlling outcomes to controlling self: nervous system care, boundaries, honest self-inventory, and clean apologies grounded in Pete Walker’s framework.

Key takeaways

• Two truths can coexist: “I can love you and block you.” Boundaries are love when they protect everyone’s nervous systems.
• Control the controllables: your home’s safety, your emotional regulation, your integrity, your consistency for the kids who are present.
• Own your part—without self-erasure: apologize for your missteps, not for your values (e.g., leaving a religion or a marriage).
• Clean apology framework (Pete Walker–style):
  1. Name the harm specifically → 2) Take full responsibility → 3) Express real empathy → 4) Offer repair → 5) Commit to change.
• No “but” in the apology. Anything after “but” deletes the apology.
• Grief is not a problem to fix. It’s a process to honor while you keep living a life you’re proud of.
• Pour love somewhere safe: if direct contact isn’t available, journal letters you may never send—offerings without hooks, guilt, or demands.

Action steps

• Write a one-page self-inventory: “What I did,” “Impact it had,” “How I’ll do it differently now.”
• Draft one clean apology (even if unsent). Keep it under 150 words. Remove every “but.”
• Create a nervous system boundary plan: What messages/emails you’ll read, when you’ll pause, and who you’ll call for support.
• Start a love ledger (journal) for the estranged child—write monthly from a grounded state only.
• Build a present-kid ritual (weekly breakfast walk, game night, study date) to anchor the family you do have access to.

Gentle reminder
Estrangement is complex. Get therapy or group support if you can. Protect your safety. You don’t owe access to anyone who is actively harming you—even if you love them.

CTA
If this episode helped, share it with a mama in the thick of it. Rate/review to get this message to more post-divorce women.

PostDivorceGlowUp.com

Email: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

Transcript

0:49

Hello my friends. I am deep in my feelings today, and so I decided to take you along with me yesterday. I went out with a girlfriend. To a coffee shop and we were just talking about our lives and we're just getting to know each other. And as I develop new friendships, probably like you, you don't want to trauma dump. You wanna walk someone gently into your life and figure at what level. Of intimacy, you can coexist comfortably with each other. And we started talking about our children and I mentioned my oldest son has no contact with me. And what a challenge that is for me because I love him so much and I want to help him. And I know that the reason that he has expressed that he doesn't want contact with me or his father or his siblings is because of his healing journey of complex PTSD as a result of the way he was raised. And how I have to sit with that discomfort, and as I shared it with this friend, we've been developing our friendship over a few months, and so I felt safe enough to cry. But it wasn't like a silent tear down my cheek kind of cry. I was feeling it like deep in my chest kind of cry, and she was sitting across from me and she came over to my side and just held me and let me cry about that loss. But I know that for a lot of us post-divorce. Our relationships with our children changes, and in my case, the relationship with my children has changed in so many good ways. And what's interesting is that the son that has requested no contact. He was raised in a home where I was married to his father the entire time he had gone to college over the period of time when I was in the process of divorcing his father. So it's not directly connected to the divorce, but rather to a lot of other issues of growing up in an unhealthy home with the marriage that I had. But I know that for many of you, estrangement from a child, may be the result of the divorce because divorce changes our family dynamics in ways that some of us could have never imagined. and for some of us, that includes the heartbreak of a child saying. I don't want contact with you right now and maybe ever again. So today I want to talk to you about facing that fear head on and talking about what you can control when your kids pull away and what you can't control. So just a little bit of background on my story. At the time of the divorce, my son was going to college in Utah and he was going through his own personal spiritual deconstruction after I left Mormonism. And remember, we're in the middle of COVID, so lots of isolation, lots of time on his own, but He was also attending a private Mormon University, Brigham Young University, on a full scholarship. He was going to be studying physics. He's a very bright kid and while that isolation that he was living through could be seen as something very negative, and I think it definitely was not great for his mental health, but it gave him space and time to really consider his life and the religion. so that was in 2021 and it was a couple years later in November of 2023 when I received a text. Telling me that he no longer wanted me in his life, at the time I had enough self-awareness that I was able to apologize. I was able to see my part in his pain to some degree, even though I still blamed. A lot of his pain and a lot of my actions on being in the marriage that I was being in, the religion that I was coming from, the birth family that I did. So it's like I was still shifting a lot of responsibility for the things that I had done and how I had shown up onto other people and circumstances of my life rather than from a truly authentic place of. Being able to look in the mirror and see the painful truth of my actions and how they impacted my son. In the two years since he's made that request, he has reached out a few times, but it hasn't been in an effort to reconcile. Rather it's been in an effort to attack me, and it has been incredibly painful to watch that and know that me reaching back out or trying to support is exactly the wrong thing for what he's going through. I have had to grieve this relationship knowing he's alive out there somewhere, but taking on the responsibility for how he was raised, what he's going through my part of it, and grieving someone who is still alive. A common fear among a lot of divorced women is that we're going to lose our children's love. And in some respects, that is the reality that I'm living through. But when we live in fear of losing, we tend to grasp too hard. We tend to control the narratives too much and end up creating the very problem that we're trying to avoid, which is our children wanting space from us. our kids get to go through phases. They get to be upset, they get to be depressed, they get to be angry. Those. Feelings of a child, they fit into the category of our life of things we cannot control and that we shouldn't be trying to control. So many of us have these codependent tendencies where we want to make other people feel better so that we can feel better. I want my son to be healthy and strong and be dealing with his life in a way that I approve of, so that. I can look like a good mom, for instance, instead of allowing our children to have the path that they're going to have and having us there as a support to many of us, and I know I learned this. Day in and day out within my religious training as a Mormon mom, that so much of my responsibility was to teach and control and, and make my children do certain things. Make sure that there were. Carrots and sticks in place to guide my children along a certain path. And so when I stepped off the path, it has taken some time for my children to regain their footing in their lives. And I have let them learn how to walk and stumble and fall and realize that I don't have all the answers for my kids, whereas within Mormonism, it very much. And I think in, in a lot of hierarchical religions and views of family, the parents have the answers and it became really clear to me very quickly post-divorce that. The best way through for me in regards to the relationships with my children was to be very transparent that I probably did not have all of the answers for them or even for me, and allowing them to be angry or depressed or withdrawn. and seeing that not as a problem to be fixed, but simply as a part of the journey. Another thing that I learned is that I had to grow in my capacity to love without conditions within my, my past. Mormon religion, focus of life. Love comes with conditions. It, it happens within the church and it happens within the family but I have learned post-divorce that even when contact is cut, even when I miss this child so much and want to help and support and love and share, I can. Still love him. My love can remain steady even when he attacks me. Now, that doesn't mean that I give him full access to attacking me. There have been periods of time when he has sent something hurtful to me and. I've had to block him because I knew that my nervous system, if he was going to continue to send something like that, my nervous system was not available because it really impacted my nervous system and how I showed up for the children that are in my home right now. So he gets to send whatever he wants to send, but that does not mean that I don't get to set boundaries. I want to be clear that loving your estranged children, does not mean that they get to abuse you. Love gets to be how you set boundaries. That can be love because allowing abusive or poor behavior from other people is not doing them any favors. But I take actions of setting boundaries and protecting myself, not telling him, not writing back and saying, I'm going to block you now. I simply. Quietly block him for the periods of time that my nervous system is not available for communication and I let it be okay, and I can still love him. I can be hurt and I can love him. It's, it's those paradoxes that we have to live in as adults. I can love this person and disagree with them. I can love this person and be hurt by them. I can love this person and not give them access to me right now. You don't get to control their actions, the emails, the texts, how they speak to you, But you do get to control your own actions and your own heart, I think the most important thing that I have done in this process is working on being the healthiest, most grounded version of myself. I've created a stable home for my other children. I've learned to manage my emotions and allowed my children to have their difficult emotions as well. And I keep showing up for the kids who are present. As we learn to control the things that we can control, I think it opens a door to be really honest about our past, had my son continue to simply cut off contact with his dad, which he had done before he cut off contact with me. I don't think I would've had the opportunity for the same kind of growth that I've been able to have since he cut me off, because before that I could blame his dad. The religion, my family of origin. I could place all the blame for the challenges that my son was having or the way I showed up. I could blame it on all of those other things rather than looking at myself and really taking stock of what is my role? What could I have changed? How did I show up that I am sorry about knowing what I know now and who I am now. It has been the dark night of the soul for me several times over these past couple of years. And remember, I'm still in it. There is no. Imminent reconciliation. This is the work of being alive and being a mother. I chose to be a mother. I could control that to some extent, and I could control how I mother, but how my children turn out and what they think of my mothering. That is not something I get to control, but creating a loving, safe, stable home from my perspective is something I can control. Whether or not my children feel the same way is not something I can control. the most important thing you can do is to get very honest. If your child is giving you feedback about your parenting, The only person that gets to vote on whether you're a good mom is you. If you like the way that you are momming, then just keep on momming. But if you're getting feedback that it is hurting other people, I encourage you to take that into consideration. I'm encouraging you to grow up, to be the mom, to be the parent, to be a person who has. Or is facing her own traumas and learning to heal so that you can be that example for your children. Now, anytime I do communicate with my son, there have been a couple of situations where I have communicated with my son. I think it's important for me to continue to take responsibility for my own actions and to not guilt him into doing anything or showing up any other way. So he sent the no contact request November, 2023, but the Christmas Of 2022. I had offered to fly him home for Christmas to spend just a couple of days with us, and he ended up messaging me. I think it might have been the morning of the flight and telling me he wasn't going to come, that he had felt pressured because. His siblings wanted him to come. I sent him a little video clip of when I told the kids that he was going to come and they were so excited, but he didn't really want to come. It did not feel emotionally safe for him to come, and so he didn't come and he texted me that morning and said, I'm not coming. And as I had to sit with the sadness that I was not going to see my son and the disappointment, I had to clean that up first. Before I could message him and thank him and do it without trying to guilt him or shame him, or trying to get something from him. So notice as you communicate or try to communicate with an estranged child to clean up your own motivations First. So that it really is coming from I love you, I support you, and you have appropriate boundaries set. If the feelings are not mutual, but that you're not trying to control through a back door, it's so important that. Your focus is on you tending to your own healing, whether it's therapy, journaling, coaching, building your own support circle. It's interesting how we can get into these stories of blaming other people, other people in our child's life. Maybe there's a significant other that you feel has turned them against you, or maybe it's your ex that you feel like is. Controlling the situation, but to jump out of your story and redirect your energy into healing yourself and being okay within yourself. Pouring that energy into friendships, your own purpose-driven projects, your life into hobbies, the love you have for your child. It's not going to go anywhere. You can cultivate it and have it be a beautiful part of your life and still heal and still grow. I can still be a good mom. Whether my son believes I am or not, I have to remind myself. He doesn't even know me. He knows the mom that he grew up with and she doesn't even exist anymore. And the fact is, I don't know him. I knew the, the Mormon boy who went on a Mormon mission and went to Brigham Young University. You know, that's the boy that I raised. That's the boy that I know. I don't know. My son right now, and I hope that at some point he and I get to know each other. I don't know if we ever will. I hope so, because I think he's an amazing human and I bet he is Growing in ways that I would love to explore with him. So I hold that space of possibility that maybe that's available to me at some point, and it may not be. I think it's important as we talk about owning our part in our children's pain to reflect on how to offer. An actual apology, and I think that few people do this better than Jeff Walker's. Work on C-P-T-S-D. He has a framework for apologizing that is very simple and very powerful because it really boils down to owning your mistake directly without excuses and making amends clearly. So I wanna walk you through this framework. So first you acknowledge. What you did wrong, you say exactly what you did or didn't do. That caused your child harm. Now, I'm not telling you to apologize for things that you are not sorry for. Like if my son came at me and was like, you're going to hell because you left Mormonism, I would be like, sorry, not sorry dude. That's not gonna happen. I am not sorry. Or if my child was upset that I left their dad, not sorry about that. But I do wanna apologize for things that in my introspection, I feel like I did. Misstep I could have done better. I did something that I think would was now and with my current perspective, I think I did something wrong. So the first step is to acknowledge the wrong but no vague. I'm sorry you felt hurt. None of that bullshit. You say exactly what you did or didn't do that caused harm. And then you take full responsibility, no excuses, no blame shifting or long explanations. You own it completely. And that can be so uncomfortable, especially if you feel like, well, I showed up in this way because I was married to this person, or I had my own trauma when I was a child, or I was in this circumstance. None of that. This is not the time for that. It is time for you to be. 100% responsible for your actions. And then the third step is to express genuine remorse to show that you understand the impact that it had on the other person. They need to be able to feel that you get it, that you understand the harm that you did. I'm not asking you to fake it. Like if you cannot understand the impact you've had on this other person that caused harm, don't pretend. Don't pretend. This is a framework for when you have enough self-awareness that you can do this. The fourth step is to offer amends or repair. It can be asking what you can do to make it right or offering a clear action of how you see you can make it right to restore trust, because it's not just about words. It's about I am willing to take this action to restore the trust. And then you committing to change. Share how you are different or how you will do things different for instance, saying, this is how I'm going to make sure that never happens again. So Pete Walker explains that you need to just keep it short and clean. Don't get into your stories. Don't ever say, but, so it's not, I'm sorry. I'm sorry this happened to you, but don't do that at the end of an apology. It erases everything that came before it. Just allow yourself to sit in the discomfort of your child's pain. The goal is reconnection and trust. It's not defending yourself. It's not to tell your child your side of the story. The goal is reconnection and trust. It is not your child's job to make you feel better. That is your job. And the truth is you can't make your child feel better. That is their job. I want to give you just a few examples because I recently did this with my son, when he first asked for no contact, I replied with a text telling him that I was going to support him in any way that I could. My door was always open, that kind of thing. And then we had a couple years apart from each other at this point, and he recently sent a message to me and it was more neutral. It wasn't as angry and. I sat with that and I decided I was ready to do some of this Pete Walker work on an apology where I got to express my understanding of the things that I had done I saw now from the work that I have done, that I was not a safe mother for him. That his father was not a safe person for him either, and that the home we had built was not a safe place. I apologized for several things, but I'm just going to read through a few examples of showing you how I tried to do this. Not that this was done perfectly. This was my attempt, and from my view, it was successful in that I was able to own a lot of the responsibility for things I did, and after I sent it. He did not respond, which may not look like a win to you, but in the past when he has sent something and I've responded, he has come back with an attack. And so for him to receive my response And not send back an attack. For me that was a win. So here are a couple of the things that I said. I'm sorry for isolating you through homeschooling the dozens of moves. The fear I taught you to carry about the world outside. You needed friends, community, and support. Instead, you got cut off, shut away, and detached. We taught you to distrust others When it was actually your dad, the cult, and me who should not have been trusted. So notice I'm not letting his dad or the cult off the hook, but I'm also placing me in that position of I was a part of those decisions that hurt you. went on to say, I'm sorry I undermined your self trust. I steered you toward myths, OC cult, and people outside of yourself when I should have been helping you hear and honor your own inner voice. And this is very specific to a situation we had when he was. Talking to me about wanting to hear that, that deep part of himself, and I kept staring him to scriptures and prophets and things outside of himself rather than honoring him for looking inside of him himself. Another apology was, I'm sorry I didn't make space for your anger, your rightful healthy anger. I didn't model how to express rage safely or with dignity. Instead, I made you feel powerless. That wasn't just a parenting mistake, it was a betrayal. And I used these big words in my apology with. You know, I remember the situation and that haunts me. or this was a betrayal because this is how I felt in. My recognition of my part, so I only want you to use words that feel true to you in how you communicate with your child, and I also reiterated that I have not at this point earned his trust. Yeah, and I understand he may never want a relationship with me, but I wanted him to know. I'm always glad to hear from him, even if what he has to say is angry or painful. I'm in a place in my journey that I can handle it. I'm here for it. I can sit with it. I can look at his pain in the face, and I can hold a space within myself for it. Now, if you are not at that point in your healing journey, set some fucking boundaries. Don't allow people to have access to your nervous system that constantly set you off. You are the most important person in your life. We've gotta get you centered and grounded and healing. Before. This can take place. Okay. And yesterday as I was sitting with my friend, she offered another suggestion on something I can do. She loves to journal and she finds a lot of personal growth in her journaling. So she said, what about getting a journal? And you can start writing letters to your son as if they will someday be read, but. Also knowing that they may not be, he may never read these letters from you. His birthday is coming up next month and I really wanna send him a birthday package, and I wanna spoil my boy and I wanna hear about his life. And so when I have all of this love that I want to pour into him and there is not. A healthy available space for that to happen. I want to pour it somewhere. And so her suggestion of a journal is something that I think I'm gonna do so that I can express all of this love, have somewhere to pour it out of me. But she did give me kind of a warning, this caveat of make sure you are right. That you are in this grounded place, that you're making this offering of love to your son, not from a place that has, you know, the hooks in it, the the passive aggression or the shame, or the guilt, but truly an offering of I love you. I'm making this offering to you, even if it's just energetic, even if it is just writing in a journal to my son, and words that he may never hear, may never read, but to really focus on my parts, what is the part that I can control, and if I cannot get to a place of being non-reactive. Open, non-resistant to what is, then I need to step back. But if I can sink into that place of I just love you and you don't need to do anything for me, and I just love you, that's the place where I can pour out onto the page the things that I want his soul to know. So. That's what I'm going through this week. I hope you guys are doing well. I'll talk to you next week.