Thank you for joining us for episode 496 of Live Happy Now.

As we move into the holiday season, we hear a lot about how it's a time for gathering with family and other loved ones.

But what do you do when that's not the case?

I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm talking with Gina Mofa, a licensed clinical social worker

who specializes in grief and loss, trauma, and painful life transitions. She's here today to

talk about estrangement and how it can affect us, especially during the holiday season.

Gina explains what leads to estrangement, why the incidents of estrangement are growing,

and offer self-care practices to help navigate the holidays and beyond. Let's have a listen.

Gina, welcome back to Live Happy Now. Hi, Paula. I'm so happy to be here with you. It's like at least

my yearly reunion with you. I love it. I know. It's like our

holiday conversation. It's like what deep topic we get into during the most festive time of the

year? We were speaking about grief last year and it led off the air to talk about estrangement.

And it's something that's been in my mind since then. And so I guess to start,

let's talk about really what we mean by estrangement because I've had people say like, oh,

I'm estranged from my family too and it's like really they just had a fight over a sweater or

something. So it's not the same. So tell us what we mean by a strangement.

Estrangement is a type of severing. I mean, it is a loss, a severing of

relationships. And let's be honest, when we estrange from people, it's usually a last-ditch

effort to maintain our sense of safety or emotional stability. It's like a last-ditch effort

to put an end to something that is an emotionally

untenable situation with someone in our lives. And, you know, most of the time, it's not just a fight

that it doesn't come from a fight that's recent. It's usually incredibly historical and a lot of

...