Oprah and Experts: Setting Boundaries with Toxic Family Members

The Oprah Podcast

Harpo

Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Oprah Podcast on estranged families going #NoContact reached more than five million viewers and listeners and sparked widespread conversation across social media and online opinion platforms. In this episode, Oprah addresses some of the alternative points of view raised on Social Media. She invites the experts back for a discussion exploring new questions and additional ways of coping with this painful and sensitive issue. After award winning journalist Jemele Hill saw the original episode, she was inspired to share with Oprah her own family estrangement story for the first time publicly. Oprah also speaks to a woman who cut off contact with her sister and a married couple seeking advice for repair with their estranged parents. BUY THE BOOKS! 'Rules of Estrangement' by Dr. Joshua Coleman: 'Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents' by Dr. Lindsay Gibson⁠: ⁠'The Balancing Act' by Nedra Glover Tawwab: 00:00:00 - Recap of No Contact 00:00:00 - Welcome Tania, critic of Oprah 00:08:20 - Oprah wants to know how to do better 00:12:30 - Welcome Dr. Joshua Coleman, Dr. Lindsay Gibson, Nedra Glover Tawwab 00:19:14 - Welcome Jemele Hill who is no contact with her father 00:28:18 - One-third of gen-z go to therapy 00:32:35 - How individualism relates to estrangement 00:39:50 - How to stop judging your own need for emotional safety 00:43:20 - Working towards reconciliation Additional Resources: 'Uphill' by Jemele Hill: Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	So now Oprah is shocked by the aftermath of estrangement after being one of the biggest voices pushing it for decades.
0:06.0	Oprah, the biggest plot twist in the entire family estrangement crisis, while everyone is applauding her for finally discussing estrangement.
0:13.0	Very few look at the irony and the contradiction. Oprah was one of the strongest voices pushing the normalization of family cutoffs and not by accident publicly, repeatedly,
0:22.3	and openly.
0:23.1	I don't feel that I contributed to the culture of estrangement in the way that you're saying.
0:33.0	Hi, everybody.
0:34.1	I'm happy to be here with you on the Oprah podcast in gorgeous New York City.
0:38.5	So right before Thanksgiving, we did an episode about the growing number of Americans
0:43.9	choosing to go now contact with their parent or their adult child.
0:48.4	And it reached over 5 million of you. Thank you so much.
0:52.0	And millions more reacted on social media. I did not fully
0:55.6	appreciate this issue would hit such a raw nerve, and then in the middle of Thanksgiving with my own
1:01.9	family, my phone is blowing up with comments and articles and debates online, and I wanted to show you
1:06.9	just a few of the most reposted moments from that no contact episode. So you didn't
1:14.9	grow up in a world where you thought about, you know, removing yourself or distancing yourself
1:19.5	from your parents. Where did the idea even come from? I don't think there was one moment.
1:24.0	I think it was very incremental. Do you miss the contact with them? I love my life. I'm just not being walked all over, actually. So it's, I know peace for the first time. There's always been estrangements, right? Forever there's been estrangements. But it's new the way we think about family. I do understand she is my mother. However, it's like we just, we don't have that relationship,
1:45.3	you know, and so it's just like she was never there for me. It's such a thin line between like
1:51.0	what's appropriate and what's gone too far. Because as therapists, we do see our clients
1:58.1	suffering. I am estranged for my 30-year-old son by choice.
2:02.3	When a mother decides to go no contact with her child,
2:05.7	she's demonized.
	...

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