Estrangement is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.
If you’ve ever considered estrangement you know that the space between knowing and doing is deep, wide, and lonely.
I’m here for you in that in-between space.
The work of estrangement requires healthy self-regard.
If you’ve ever found yourself moving between what you believe, what your family expects, what your culture tells you, and what you know from your own experience, you already know the difficulty of this work.
Estrangement is a decision of weight and consequence. It asks more of us than logic alone, but it also asks us not to let our emotions make the decision for us.
Discernment requires an intentional way of attending to ourselves: developing what I call the art of self-regard—the capacity to attend to our own experience with enough attention and brutal honesty to discern what comes next.
This is the work I am interested in: developing the inner capacity to make a decision that is not simply reactive or prescribed, but deeply considered and authentic.
Namaste
I am an emerging essayist, editor, and spiritual director in formation. My passion for this work grew out of my own experience of estrangement from my parents, first my father and later my mother. And from my personality struggles with in-decision.
I spent years in the space between knowing and doing. I know what it is to live with a decision before making it, to question what you know, to ask everyone else, and to wonder whether you can trust yourself enough to make an authentic grounded decision for the benefit of all involved.
Along my path, I used writing, yoga philosophy, and contemplative practices, to help me navigate the liminal space of indecision and loneliness. Now I am a student of spiritual formation and am interested in the ways these practices can deepen our capacity to pay attention—to ourselves, to our lives, and most importantly to help us connect and hear the sound of the genuine.
This work is personal for me, but it is not prescriptive. I am not here to tell you whether to estrange. I am interested in helping create the conditions in which you can discern that decision for yourself. I believe that self-regard is the missing piece to making that decision.
Read More About My Philosophy
Writing & Conversations
No Contact: Writers on Estrangement
[A Sister’s Salve]
[Short description]
Read the essay
Stories on Sunday — Hippocampus Magazine
A panel conversation with Jenny Bartoy, the editor of No Contact: Writers on Estrangement and a Nicole Graev Lipson, a fellow contributor and author of Mothers and Other Fictional Characters.
Watch the conversation