How to deal with family issues as a grown adult?

Hi pink,

Thanks for your important question about family relationships, abuse, and family estrangement.  Before I start responding I'll say that there's no correct way to deal with family relationships and history.  Every family is unique, as are each of its members.  Whether this is comforting or confusing probably depends a bit on how you're feeling in your relationships with your family members.

The dynamic you've described, that a member or members of the younger generation decide to end communication with other family members because of a belief that ending communication will benefit their mental health, communication skills, and boundaries, is a fairly new dynamic in American history.  While fairly new, it's also something that more and more people are deciding to do.  There's even been some research about it, and there are psychologists and therapists now specializing in working with people who either decide to limit their family relationships, or are on the other end of the dynamic and have been affected by a family member who no longer wants to talk to them.  It's fairly new, historically, because it's a relatively new idea that families are expected to be places of emotional support (over places of financial support and filial obligation).  And, societally, we are no longer expected to take care of aging parents in the way previous generations were, no matter what might have happened earlier in their lives.  

There are still many cultures in which people are expected to honor parents no matter what, and to support them as they age.  So people's responses to your query will probably respond greatly based on the age, race, religion, ethnicity, and language of the reader.  And of course, some people will identify with the young generation in this story, who appear to be you and your sister.  But others will identify with your mother, who you state in your query pretended everything was ok and failed to give you the emotional support you needed.

So no one can tell you what is the right or wrong thing to do.  But I can tell you that not communicating with your parents until they are able to work on their issues, as you wrote, is probably setting up an unrealistic expectation.  It's unrealistic because, talking to them or not, you can't force your mom or dad to go to therapy or to "work on" family stuff in another way.  When you decide to establish different communication with family you should be doing it for your own reasons, but not because you expect or to force someone else to take an action that you believe is right.  What will you do during this time?  Why is it important to you to have distance from your family while you see a therapist?  What do you imagine will be different if you ever decide to return to your family?  

I hope this is helpful.

Gabrielle