What Brooklyn Beckham needs to know about the reality of family estrangement at Christmas
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Unless you have a “perfect” relationship with your family – whatever that might mean – Christmas can make you feel like a failure. Adverts abound, showing glowing scenes of familial “togetherness” around tables groaning with festive fayre. Films tell us saccharine stories in which relatives are reunited and differences put aside against a backdrop of fresh snow and carols sung by winsome, pink-cheeked children.
Take Home Alone: not only does missing his family make former brat Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) realise he actually loves them after all, but the subplot involves an old man reconciling with his adult son just in time for 25 December. It’s a Christmas miracle!
For the estimated 12 million in the UK affected by family estrangement – including, it seems, the Beckhams – this time of year can feel even more loaded. The default assumption is that people will be spending Christmas with family. For those who aren’t, there can be a huge amount of stigma and shame attached. Questions about where friends and colleagues are heading for their holidays may feel like small talk, “but it creates this awkwardness, and a lack of understanding of what to do, how to answer appropriately for the social context”, says Dr Becca Bland, a coach and researcher who is a leading expert on family estrangement. She has been voluntarily estranged from her own parents, who were both addicts, since her mid-twenties.
One survey of 800 estranged UK adults revealed that, unsurprisingly, the holidays are the hardest time of the year. “There are so many images of happy families all around at Christmas,” says Dr Lucy Blake, an academic, author and speaker specialising in family estrangement.
There’s traditional media and then there’s social media, which has played a much bigger role in exacerbating the chasm between expectation and lived reality over the past decade. “There’s a trend of families wearing matching pyjamas and things like that – it’s very easy, and human nature, to think that if you haven’t got those experiences, you’re the only one,” Blake adds. “Assuming that everyone else is united, and that you’re alone in being alone, is a really common thing.”
Clearly, this isn’t the case: estrangement affects a huge number of people, with no regard for social status. For instance, it’s highly doubtful that Brooklyn Beckham will be spending Christmas with his parents this year. Even the royals can’t escape the sadness of family separation. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are “unlikely” to reconcile with their sick fathers, according to reports, and, for the seventh year running, Harry will not spend time at Sandringham with the rest of the royal family this Christmas.
The holidays have the knack of reopening old wounds for those who didn’t choose estrangement. “It doesn’t have the same social understanding, or rituals, as loss through death,” says Sheri McGregor, a coach and the author of Done with the Crying: Help and Healing for Mothers of Estranged Adult Children. She began researching and writing on the topic of estrangement after one of her adult children cut himself off from the family in his twenties. “Instead of being able to say why you’re hurting and receiving empathy and care, there’s a fear of being judged or misunderstood, which can be profoundly isolating.”
McGregor highlights the double grief that Christmas can trigger for grandparents, too. “They miss time with grandchildren, and also wonder what the kids are being told,” she says. “Many grandparents feel genuine happiness for friends who share photos and holiday plans, yet they mourn the togetherness and years they’re missing.” That emotional duality can be exhausting.
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Spending time with people you feel safe with, and engaging in hobbies that bring joy, can help at this time of year (Getty)
Added pressure can come from well-meaning friends or relatives who urge parents or children to “fix” a situation they don’t fully understand. “Comments like ‘Just apologise, she’ll come around’, or ‘Never stop trying’, can leave parents feeling even more alone,” warns McGregor.
“It’s still taboo to be estranged,” explains Anesce Dremen, an American writer and MFA student who ran away from her abusive family when she was still a teenager to pursue further education. She cites a recent op-ed in The New York Times, which counselled that life is “too short” not to reconcile with your family. “That puts a lot of us who are estranged in danger, either of reconciling with a family that could physically or emotionally harm us, or of being at odds with society,” she says.
Indeed, as tempting as it may be to get swept away by the messages pumped out by popular culture, Christmas could be the worst time to bury the hatchet with estranged loved ones, cautions Bland. “Emotions are heightened and they become this lever that drives us to ‘forgive and forget’,” she says. “But if there’s trauma involved, you can’t just forgive and forget; people need to go through the hard process and be able to actually listen to each other and sit in the difficulty.” Turning up in a festive mood and expecting Christmas to magically heal deep wounds is “highly unrealistic and a bit dangerous”, she adds, because the work required to achieve a real reconciliation hasn’t been done. “And then what happens? Come January, all the problems that were there before are still there.”
Everyone I speak to remembers their first Christmas estranged as if it were seared onto their brain. For Dremen, it was particularly notable as she missed her train, through no fault of her own, and consequently endured Christmas alone in a freezing Wisconsin college dorm room rather than with friends as planned. “I spent the rest of that day sobbing,” she recalls. “That was really, really hard – at the time, I didn’t even know what the word ‘estrangement’ meant. I just knew that I was alone.”
On the outside, I looked like the same capable person I’d always been. On the inside, I was miserable
Bland spent her first Christmas away from her parents with her university boyfriend and his family. She remembers feeling like the “Christmas pet”, along with a huge amount of shame. “Their family Christmas was also a bit awkward, though,” she says. “I think we romanticise things massively in the run-up to Christmas. But the reality is, for most people, they can be quite forced affairs, because we don’t spend time with each other that much during the year.”
However, this proved more tolerable than future festivities, where the opposite dynamic was at play. “It’s actually been harder when I’ve gone to Christmases where people have really loved being around each other, because there’s a kind of joyfulness about family that I haven’t ever experienced,” she admits. Her own family Christmases were usually marred by alcohol, arguments and upset.
Keeping busy to the point of exhaustion was the name of the game for McGregor, as she went into overdrive that first Christmas without her son. “On the outside, I looked like the same capable person I’d always been,” she recalls. “On the inside, I was miserable. I threw myself into making everything perfect – cooking, decorating, staying busy – because the moment I stopped, my mind slipped into dark alleys of pain and shock.”
For those who are recently estranged from their family, or for whom this is their first Christmas apart, the good news is, it gets better. “The first holiday was really hard,” says Natalie Schlimmer, who has been estranged from her brother for the past four years, “but I’ve found ways to make new traditions, and coping skills, that are helping me create my own holiday magic.”
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Stay off social media to avoid ‘Best Christmas ever!’ posts (Getty)
So how to get through the festive period, and Christmas Day itself, with your sanity intact?
Coping strategies will be different for everyone, advises Blake, depending on their personality type and what feels right this year. “Try to think ahead to what could give you any sense of peace and joy, or momentary reprieve from grief and anger,” she says. “Think of what gives you a feeling of safety and strength, and try to lean into those people and routines.”
For some, that could be as simple as spending time with characters they love by reading a favourite book. For others, it could involve taking the opportunity to travel, to spend time with friends, or to create new traditions.
For example, Samantha Check, a coach specialising in adult-child estrangement who has been no-contact with her mother and family for eight years, is leaning into making new memories. “Enjoyment and happiness is sharing it with good friends who have made it a tradition to share it with us, my husband and daughter, plus new additions, and chosen family,” she explains. “So much so that I absolutely enjoy it and look forward to it. The aim here is to make it the new norm. A yearly highlight has been the Christmas cocktail and a different trifle recipe to try.”
I’ve found ways to make new traditions that are helping me create my own holiday magic
That may still be too painful a prospect to consider, though, for those who are recently estranged. A lot of people choose to volunteer or help the homeless on Christmas Day itself, or to work if that provides a feeling of purpose.
However, those who have years of estrangement under their belts do warn that isolation can feel quite daunting. “If you can, and it feels possible to spend Christmas with other people, that can be helpful,” recommends Bland; Blake urges people to “gather their troops”, those who make them feel safe and loved, whether it be a partner, an old friend, a religious community or a neighbour, and plan some stretches of time with them during the holiday.
Dremen voluntarily secluded herself during previous Christmases, but has opened herself up to spending it with others in recent years. “I feel like there are benefits to choosing to be with community,” she says. Either way, she emphasises the importance of self-care: what are some of the hobbies you enjoy? What are some of the new traditions you’d like to introduce? Which are you ready to release? “I started writing a letter on really difficult holidays, and so that’s become an annual tradition,” says Dremen. Similarly, McGregor’s tip is to make a “help yourself” list by writing down simple things that reliably comfort you: favourite foods, films, walks, music or hobbies. “Turn to your list whenever you feel down, bored, or have unscheduled time,” is her advice.
It might seem obvious, but staying off social media is probably for the best. We all know that what we see online is a highly curated and filtered version of reality. Still, being inundated with snaps and reels of blissfully happy families and “BestChristmasEver!” hashtags is only going to torture those suffering from the absence of such relationships; now could be the ideal time for a digital detox.
At the end of the day, it’s only 24 hours; whether good or bad, it will soon be over. “There’s absolutely no shame in just letting the day pass,” says Bland. “By all means, just watch Netflix and be on your own if you want.”
