The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement

by Eamon Dolan

Overview

A myth-shattering, inspiring book that combines research, reportage, and memoir to explore the growing phenomenon of estrangement from toxic relatives—showing it not as a tragedy, but as an empowering and effective solution to the heartbreak of family abuse.

After decades of enduring his mother’s physical and psychological torment, after years of trying in vain to set boundaries, Eamon Dolan took a radical step: he cut his mother out of his life. No more phone calls, no more visits, no more contact. Parting with his abuser gave him immediate relief and set him on a path toward freedom, confidence, and joy like none he had ever felt before.

In The Power of Parting, Dolan has written the book he wishes he’d had when he was struggling to free himself from his mother’s abuse. In the process, he discovered how widespread estrangement really is. At least 27 percent of Americans are estranged from a parent, sibling, or other family member. He also learned why so much stigma surrounds this common—and often lifesaving—phenomenon. Even among therapists—the professionals who would seem most attuned to the pain relatives can inflict—there’s a bias toward reconciliation, when millions of their patients need instead to escape their abusers’ grip. Estrangement, Dolan realized, should be understood and embraced, not shrouded in shame.

Drawing on his own suffering and healing, as well as experts’ advice and the testimony of other courageous survivors, Dolan first explains why abuse is much different and more prevalent than we may think, how it harms us in childhood and beyond, and why limiting or eliminating contact might be our best possible choice. Then, he walks readers through the steps of a successful, positive estrangement: how to take crucial time for yourself; how to make sure no one can gaslight you into minimizing or forgetting; how to set rules for your abuser and—if they can’t or won’t respect your limits—how to end a toxic relationship. He also offers valuable counsel on how to ease the guilt and grief that often accompany parting, and how to break the cycle of abuse that was likely passed down to you through many generations.

With a convincing blend of clarity and empathy, Dolan encourages others to do what he ultimately did for himself: determine whether the people in your life treat you with the care and concern you deserve—and part ways with them if they don’t.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593714126
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Eamon Dolan has worked as an editor at HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and Penguin Press. He is currently Vice President & Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster. He’s also a professional photographer whose work has been shown at the International Center of Photography and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Society: The Root of Abuse

When Oscar's mom and I were expecting him, bellies swelled everywhere we looked. When he was born, the world became awash in babies and their paraphernalia. Of course, the birth rate hadn't suddenly skyrocketed. Rather, we had become more alert to others in our situation, and we all gravitated toward each other.

Something similar happened when I started talking about my estrangement and this book. Many friends and colleagues who had never mentioned their struggles began to reveal them to me. If someone had grown up without the tensions that can produce estrangement, they were rarely more than one degree of separation from them-maybe an old friend or their spouse's family. As we saw earlier, the chances are at least one in four that anyone you meet will be estranged from a family member. It was astounding and comforting to find such a large community of fellow travelers-and heartbreaking to think that I'd been denied that comfort for five decades.

Conspiracies of Silence

What denies us that comfort is silence. What causes this silence is an intricate web of ignorance, avoidance, and shame that permeates our society. It begins where the abuse itself begins-at home. Children lack knowledge of the world at large that might tell them their home life is aberrant. They think that however they live is normal, and whatever they get is what they deserve. Those who get love believe they deserve it, and those who get beaten, harassed, raped, or neglected believe they deserve it. Until my late teens, it didn't occur to me that multiple beatings per week were unusual. When I learned that they were, it took me a couple more decades to realize that they weren't my fault.

At first, the sense that everything at home was normal ensured my silence, then the sense that I was abnormal shamed me into silence.

The communities in which we grow up almost always shirk their responsibility for preventing abuse. When I was young, the institutions that could have protected me from abuse-church, family, and school-enabled it instead. The educational system failed to teach us what maltreatment was, and it didn't address visible signs of abuse and neglect like the welts on my arms or the clothes I wore several days in a row. Nowadays, most states require teachers, doctors, social workers, and others who deal regularly with children to tell authorities when they spot such signs-an improvement over the schools of my youth. Some states even expand the ranks of "mandated reporters" to include hairdressers and photographers. But most maltreatment leaves no bruises or scars, except permanent internal ones.

Beneath this inattention is a host of traditions and memes that we rarely examine critically. Take "Spare the rod and spoil the child." I heard that motto hundreds of times in my youth, and I never questioned it. Its roots reach back to the Old Testament, which commands the faithful: "Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod they will not die. Punish them with the rod and save them from death."

Even those who blanch at that command would endorse advice against "airing your dirty laundry in public"-that is, sharing your private business with outsiders. This has the patina of reason to it; outsiders can't understand all the nuances of our family, team, company, or faith, so how can they judge us fairly? But it's really no more rational-or ethical-than the Mafia's omertà or Hollywood's infamous nondisclosure agreements. All these codes of silence are essentially the same. They prevent victims and other would-be truth-tellers from speaking out, they protect toxic power structures, and they guarantee that abuse will be passed down through generations.

Judith Herman, MD, a pioneer in the study of trauma, points out that, for victims, "the complicity and silence of bystanders-friends, relatives, and neighbors, not to mention officials of the law-feel like a profound betrayal, for this is what isolates them and abandons them to their fates." My own family was full of bystanders. My father was the eldest of eleven children, and my mother was the second eldest of five, so we had a bevy of aunts and uncles and more cousins than we could count. None of them warned us that my uncle Sean was a violent alcoholic, but his short fuse and the beer cans filling the back of his car hinted that we should steer clear.

One time, he and my aunt Mary arrived late to a family gathering. Another of my relatives, spotting the fresh cast on her arm, joked, "Ah, Mary! Did Sean do that to you?"

Aunt Mary's mute glance made clear the answer was no joke. After a few suspenseful seconds, everyone in the room picked up the conversations that had been interrupted by the late arrivals, and nothing more was said about the cast. In any abusive environment, silence is the most infectious and deadly disease.

During my work on this book, I've come to realize that the same mechanisms of abuse work at every level of human interaction. They can operate one-on-one, among siblings, spouses, or parents and their kids; they can lurk within a wider circle that includes other relatives and neighbors; and they can underpin entire nations. Silence is the most pervasive mechanism of abuse, as it's the only one shared by abusers, victims, and witnesses. For survivors, tormentors, and society as a whole, it's the default setting.

Codes of silence are bedrock among institutions as diverse as law enforcement (the so-called "blue wall of silence") and street gangs ("snitches get stitches"). Silence is built into the world's smallest institution-the family-and its largest-the Catholic Church. When I was young, the Church absolved our tormentors while it taught us to "turn the other cheek" and to "honor thy father and mother" without making any exceptions to those fiats. As Rebecca Solnit observes in a 2022 New York Times essay, "Christianity pays more attention [than other religions] to forgiveness from victims, and its traditions of penance and confession tend to focus on making things right with God rather than with those they've harmed." Judith Herman reminds us that these traditions put particular pressure to forgive upon "subordinated groups, whose justified resentment might make those in power uncomfortable." One of the largest subordinated groups is, of course, children.

Family: The Nuclear Option

Other core tenets of Christianity have also harmed innumerable children. In his book Spare the Child, Rutgers historian Philip Greven points to Christianity's "widely held conviction that the child enters the world with a distorted or wayward will. It is therefore [considered] the responsibility of parents to break" that will. Donald Capps, a professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary, explains that "parents have taken this injunction to break the child's will as a mandate to inflict severe physical punishment." This is especially true among Evangelical Christians, propelled in part by the perennial bestseller Dare to Discipline by James Dobson, a psychologist and influential Christian activist and broadcaster. Dobson's book argues that corporal punishment is the duty of all good parents and offers them guidance on the most effective ways to carry out that duty. He comes a little too close to home for my taste when he advises parents to use a wooden spoon for disciplinary purposes.

The impact of Christianity on families extends far beyond those who believe in the divinity of Jesus. Starting about 1,700 years ago, the Catholic Church engineered a gradual but massive cultural pivot toward the "nuclear family"-a father, mother, and their children-as our species' core unit and away from the traditional or "extended" family-a multigenerational web of cousins, in-laws, and other relatives that shared duties and resources. This shift would ultimately decouple Western societies from the family structure for which humans are wired and the one that's better on balance for most children and parents.

In his book The WEIRDest People in the World, Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich explodes the notion that the nuclear family is natural or normal. It is, instead, an outlier, the product of a series of edicts issued by the Church to counter arranged marriages and unions it deemed incestuous. Originally, Church fathers prohibited marriage between first cousins, a sensible policy given the likelihood of genetic anomalies in the offspring of closely related parents. But over the next few centuries, the Church's prohibitions became much more difficult to justify in practical terms. For instance, widows were forbidden to marry their brothers-in-law, a practice that helped to keep assets within the family and maintain social ties. Sixth cousins (who are pretty much strangers in genetic terms) had to give the Church all their property if they wed, an injunction meant to fray this slender family bond. And the Church encouraged, sometimes required, newlyweds to create their own households apart from their families of origin.

There are several theological, historical, and material reasons why the Church took such a consistent hard line, and its long-term effects are profound, including the rise of individualism, the growth of innovation, and the spread of colonialism. For our purposes, the most significant impact was the erosion of clan- and tribe-based family units, which were the norm among our species until medieval times, from hunter-gatherer cultures to Imperial Rome. An analysis of 1,200 preindustrial societies showed that only 8 percent featured nuclear families; the vast majority of societies were built upon extended families. These structures were buttressed and enhanced by various kinds of marital alliances between cousins, in-laws, stepsiblings, et al. that allowed many relatives to retain and grow shared assets, both practical and emotional, over generations. When the Church banned those traditional alliances, the extended family lost its foundation, and the Church gained wealth as many families' resources, which they could no longer hold on to through inheritance or marriage, passed into its coffers. As a result, our species' need for "cooperative" kinship arrangements, where several people pool their resources and share the rigors of child-rearing, was permanently undermined.

Starting with the Protestant Reformation in the early sixteenth century, the dominance of Catholicism waned. But the family dynamic it had bequeathed to Western societies was well established and would eventually become the perceived foundation of civilization itself. From evolutionary biologists to anthropologists to economists, mainstream academics have touted the nuclear family as the "traditional" or "natural" form, despite abundant evidence that it's not. Rebecca Sear at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine attributes this bias to the fact that these academic disciplines grew dramatically in the years following World War II when the nuclear family was at its zenith, promoted by popular culture and subsidized by governments eager to remove women from the workforces they'd entered during the war.

Among social conservatives, a staunch "family values" ethos has simultaneously taken root. The powerful activist group Family Research Council, founded by James Dobson (author of Dare to Discipline), lobbies vigorously for government policy and funding that promotes the "traditional" nuclear family-a straight married couple and their children, with the husband as breadwinner and the wife as homemaker-while discouraging other arrangements, including gay marriage, cohabitation, and divorce. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for reshaping American life along radically conservative lines, sounds a similar note, asserting that "families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society." And popular conservative thinker William Bennett joins this chorus with his contention that "if we have stronger families, we will have stronger schools, stronger churches, and stronger communities with less poverty and less crime." In fact, the opposite is true-stronger social institutions, less poverty, and less crime beget stronger families, not vice versa.

David Brooks shows in a 2020 Atlantic piece that "the shift from bigger and interconnected extended families to smaller and detached nuclear families ultimately led to a system that liberates the rich and ravages the working class and the poor." In America, the nuclear family, which so many still consider society's bedrock, had a remarkably fleeting heyday-Brooks calls it a "blip"-from 1950 to 1965. During that period, "conditions in the wider society were ideal for family stability. The postwar period was a high-water mark of church attendance, unionization, social trust, and mass prosperity-all things that correlate with family cohesion." Since then, those conditions have all declined, and "America now has two entirely different family regimes. Among the highly educated, family patterns are almost as stable as they were in the 1950s; among the less fortunate, family life is often utter chaos. There's a reason for that divide: Affluent people have the resources to effectively buy extended family to shore themselves up." Brooks is referring here to the nannies, tutors, therapists, coaches, and other professionals that wealthier families can hire to take on many of the duties of raising their children. Poorer families can't afford such necessities, and the public sector provides scant support for them. So those families are more likely to fall apart than are richer ones, and "the children in those families become more isolated and traumatized."

When those children grow up, the chances are slim that they'll find relief from their trauma, even among the professions that are, in theory, devoted to healing trauma.

Therapy's Blind Spots

Many survivors of family abuse turn to therapy for help, only to find a focus on reconciliation that's precisely the opposite of the distance they need to put between themselves and their abusers.

While therapists are taught a range of techniques for fostering reconciliation among family members, they learn little about how to help their patients move away from toxic relatives. My therapist told me that "no one discussed estrangement" in any of her undergraduate courses or her graduate training. Fortunately for me, she saw past this gap in her education and helped me figure out how to separate from my abuser. But the gap is all too common. Therapist Elizabeth Heaney found in her own training an almost adversarial attitude toward estrangement. It was "talked about as if the person had given up on the true goal of an ongoing relationship with family, no matter how dysfunctional that relationship might seem." She said, "I never heard any validation that opting out of a family relationship might be a smart move or a healthy choice." But after years of treating patients, "it's a choice I've come to respect and honor."

Wisdom like Heaney's and my therapist's is still rare in the profession. As the Cornell professor Karl Pillemer notes, "There is no evidence-based therapy or treatment for individuals coping with or trying to resolve estrangements." This is an appalling void, given that roughly sixty-eight million Americans are currently estranged from at least one relative. Also appalling is the dearth of research into preventing abuse. The American Medical Association concludes that "research in this area is limited" and "there are no accurate tools for predicting a child's individual risk for maltreatment."

Editorial Reviews

01/20/2025

Dolan, a VP and executive editor at Simon & Schuster, aims in this levelheaded debut guide to walk readers through the process of ceasing communication with or otherwise “stepping away from” an abusive relative. Drawing on his own decision to cut ties with his physically and emotionally abusive mother 12 years ago—and from interviews with other victims—he outlines the challenges of familial estrangement in a society where underfunded social services are ill-equipped to recognize psychological abuse; where “an army of cultural forces,” including TV shows and movies, glorify the family unit; and where social taboos frame “abandoning” one’s parents as selfish and extreme. Exploring both “partial and total separation,” Dolan recommends taking a short break from the abusive family member to get more comfortable with the idea, then making rules that the abuser must follow in order to remain in touch. If the rules are broken, it can lead to reduced contact or complete estrangement, though Dolan takes care to note that estrangement is best viewed as on a “continuum” and even total separation need not be permanent. Dolan acknowledges the deep grief that can result from cutting family members out of one’s life but makes a strong case for its value as a form of self-care that offers victims greater agency and self-knowledge. The result is a smart and sensitive primer on a tricky and little-discussed issue. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

This is a brave book that takes on the painful experience of estrangement and instead of framing and pathologizing it as mere ego and stubbornness, it is infused with humanity and reality. Eamon Dolan not only vulnerably shares his story, he provides both the science and the human pain of estrangement and ultimately the actionable paths forward for adult children of abusive family systems. The Power of Parting reminds us that sometimes individuation, healing, resolution, and ending intergenerational cycles require giving ourselves permission to release ourselves from those who harmed us, even if they are family.” —Ramani Durvasula, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and New York Times bestselling author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People

“This isn’t just a book—it’s a manifesto for self-liberation, a permission slip to heal, and an indispensable guide for all of us who have endured abuse in the name of family. Through a brilliant blend of research, reportage, and deeply personal storytelling, Dolan shatters the myth that family ties must be unbreakable and dares us to see estrangement not as a failure, but as a radical act of self-respect and empowerment. The Power of Parting is a courageous and necessary book that challenges us to reimagine what love, loyalty, and resilience truly mean.” —Lara Love Hardin, New York Times bestselling author of The Many Lives of Mama Love

"We don't choose our family members, but we can choose how we want to be treated. Moving beyond societal guilt, secrecy, and taboos around estrangement, The Power of Parting provides concrete guidance on how to move forward when 'working things out' proves too difficult, too painful, or simply impossible. For anyone who has felt trapped by the deep wounds that relatives can inflict, this brave and groundbreaking book offers invaluable clarity, empathy, healing—and ultimately, freedom." —Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and cohost of the Dear Therapists podcast

“Dolan makes a persuasive case for eliminating contact with family members whose abusive behavior can’t be redeemed. . . An intellectually rigorous manifesto, a green light for reasonable limits that sometimes, with gleeful blunt force, flares red.” —The New York Times Book Review

"From the family abuse he endured and the estrangement he achieved, Eamon Dolan has made a work of art that will console, inspire, and save many people. His writing is beautiful, his story and the stories of other survivors are riveting, and his guidance is clear and compelling. This wonderful book will help any survivor overcome the toxic legacy of abuse and find the rich, rewarding life they deserve." —David Sheff, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Boy

“Dolan acknowledges the deep grief that can result from cutting family members out of one’s life but makes a strong case for its value as a form of self-care that offers victims greater agency and self-knowledge. The result is a smart and sensitive primer on a tricky and little-discussed issue.” —Publishers Weekly

“It’s a difficult subject, but Dolan faces it with courage and optimism. His willingness to openly share his story will give readers in similar positions a path through their pain.” —Booklist

“This much-needed addition to the literature around estrangement is well researched, tightly structured, and eminently practical. . . [A] valuable tool for adult survivors.” —Kirkus Books

“Dolan’s personal history of abuse is worthy of a Charles Dickens novel . . . Dolan’s book [is] informative, comprehensive, and illuminating, as it thoroughly explores abuse and how to respond to it.” —Psychology Today

“Genuine and heartfelt…The Power of Parting, addresses the deep emotional scars of child maltreatment and fiercely drives home the fact that we cannot condone child abuse in any form. The elegantly written and well-researched words of Eamon Dolan speak to the immense power of child advocacy and the responsibility of all to protect our children (and our adult inner child) from harm. I love this book.” —Karyl McBride, Ph.D., author of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

"The Power of Parting is a profoundly empowering book for anyone who feels the need to distance themselves from their family. Dolan tackles this deeply personal issue with sensitivity and clarity, offering validation and hope to those navigating the complex emotions of estrangement. A must-read for any survivor who values understanding, growth, and healing.” —Whitney Goodman, LMFT, author of Toxic Positivity

“In a world where it’s expected to prioritize and honor family relationships no matter the amount of harm caused; Dolan offers an alternative path: estrangement. With deep compassion, he reminds us that the goal in life isn’t always reconciliation or a path forward together, but rather one of peace and freedom. A gift that can come on the other side of limited or no contact with a person who is unwilling or unable to change.” —Vienna Pharaon, author of The Origins of You

"I've never seen such clarity and compassion offered to people who struggle with toxic family members. Whether you choose to stay connected or take your distance, this book will guide you in understanding what's happening and deciding what's best for you.” —Lundy Bancroft, author of Why Does He Do That?

“In this clear-eyed, practical, and compassionate book, Eamon Dolan floods light into the dark house of family suffering and gives other survivors an invaluable gift: permission to heal.” —Julie L. Hall, author of The Narcissist in Your Life

“The Power of Parting is a compassionate and empowering guide for anyone dealing with chronic stress from toxic family members. In this groundbreaking book, Eamon Dolan provides the tools and encouragement to navigate the often painful but necessary journey of setting firm boundaries and prioritizing personal well-being. Dolan offers validation and clarity during the process of distancing from toxic family members. His practical advice, drawn from real-life experiences, brings hope for those striving to create a healthier and more authentic life. This book is not just about creating clear boundaries; it’s about healing, self-discovery, and the courage to choose yourself. A must-read for anyone seeking freedom from unhealthy family dynamics.” —Stephanie Moulton Sarkis PhD, psychotherapist and author of Healing from Toxic Relationships: 10 Essential Steps to Recover from Gaslighting, Narcissism, and Emotional Abuse

From the Publisher

2025-03-04
A white male survivor of childhood abuse provides an alternative look at estrangement.

When Dolan was a child, his mother regularly physically abused him and his siblings with a wooden spoon. She also “had other weapons in her arsenal, like berating us in public or dialing the water heater down to its lowest setting” or serving them barely edible food. The author uses his experience as an example of how the current emphasis of approaching estrangement through the lens of future forgiveness marginalizes and harms survivors, whose experience of childhood abuse Dolan compares to the suffering of “enslaved people, concentration camp survivors, and others who have endured the worst harm their fellow humans could inflict.” In addition to summarizing the lifelong mental consequences of surviving childhood psychological abuse, he offers a system for deciding whether to consider estrangement as a viable option for parting with abusers, explores the “spectrum” of approaches to estrangement, and describes ways to leave the door open for abusers willing to undergo significant personal healing and change. He also explores the nonexistence of rituals for processing estrangement-related grief, calling this lack of options “another instance of the de facto conspiracy our culture has constructed to ignore and compound survivors’ pain,” and encourages survivors to make use of treatments like inner-child work and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, even if they sound “nutty.” This much-needed addition to the literature around estrangement is well researched, tightly structured, and eminently practical. At times, Dolan’s zealousness and insistence on his own marginalization undermine his message and break the journalistic tone. Overall, though, this is a valuable tool for adult survivors.

A practical approach to healthy estrangement.

Kirkus Reviews