An Estrangement Mystery

Proxy with Yowei Shaw

Yowei Shaw

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 589 Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

An Emotions Beat episode about the reasons that keep going missing.

In family estrangement, there's a strange pattern that shows up again and again: adult children say they've explained why they need distance, while parents say they have no idea what went wrong.

So where do the reasons go?

In part 2 of our estrangement series, reporter Kim Nederveen Pieterse talks with two therapists who work on opposite sides of family estrangement: Becca Bland, who is estranged from her own parents and now helps families navigate this, and Joshua Coleman, who became an expert on estranged parents after reconciling with his own daughter. Together, they unpack the explanations estranged families reach for — narcissistic parents, oversensitive kids, broken communication — and what it takes for a parent to stop defending their version of events long enough to hear their child's pain.

From the episode:

— Becca Bland — follow her work with families and people surviving estrangement: www.beccabland.com

— Joshua Coleman — read New Rules of Estrangement, subscribe to his newsletter Family Troubles, and learn more: www.drjoshuacoleman.com

— Kim Nederveen Pieterse — listen to more of her reporting: www.kimnp.org

New to Proxy? Try Bisexual Wife Guy for a classic case, or Brian Can't Stop Fact-Checking His Mother-in-Law for another story about family, love, and trying to be heard.

For episode liner notes, show gossip, and dispatches from the emotions beat, get our free newsletter File Under Feelings at proxyhq.org.

Proxy is an independent show, supported mostly by listeners. Paid members get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, live Proxy hangs, and the satisfaction of keeping emotional investigative journalism alive 🍏

Visit — proxypodcast.com

Get in touch — proxythepod@gmail.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello?
0:05.2	Hey, babe.
0:06.4	Hey.
0:07.3	You're on a roll.
0:09.2	Two weeks in a row on the pod.
0:11.8	Well, you know, it's fundraiser time and duty calls.
0:15.9	Say who you are to listeners who aren't familiar.
0:19.0	My name is Kyle.
0:20.5	I am your husband.
0:22.0	I mix the podcast and do other things like process your feelings about the podcast.
0:28.4	You also make spreadsheets for the show.
0:30.7	Seems like in whatever group endeavor, somehow I'm the least bad at spreadsheets.
0:37.3	Before the episode starts, can you give a quick campaign update?
0:41.1	Where are we at, baby?
0:42.5	I actually just took a quick peek a little while ago.
0:46.5	Okay.
0:47.1	We're at just under 650, I believe.
0:50.6	So how many more is that in the last week?
0:52.9	I think we got 90 more people. That's awesome.
0:56.1	Okay, so we're at 650 paying Patreon members. Thank you to everyone who signed up during the
1:02.8	drive and who signed up before. Kyle crunched the numbers and with the support of some recent
1:08.4	grants, we need to get to 1,500 paying Patreon members to cover the
	...

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