CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - I Asked For Space and They Sued Me

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of child abuse and domestic violence.In this Q&A episode, answers a question from a woman whose parents responded to her request for space by suing her for access to her children. In the second question, from a man whose mother stayed with an abusive partner and is still with him today. He asks what to make of a parent who chose someone else over her kids.Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles.Have a question for Whitney? Send a voice memo or email to [e-mail] the Family Cyclebreakers Club: https://callinghome.coFollow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhitFollow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmftOrder Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity: https://sitwithwhit.com/toxic-positivitySign up for updates on Whitney's new book: https://cmnyyv4kpyt.typeform.com/to/PHMzjy0oThis podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I am your host, Whitney Goodman. Today we have a Q&A episode, which means I'm going to be answering two caller questions. The first question comes from someone whose parents are suing her for access to her children, their grandchildren, and she's dealing with some ambiguous loss and lack of support from people in her community. The second question comes from someone who is dealing with the aftermath of their parents. parent choosing an abusive step-parent and partner over them. I'm going to get into both of those questions. Just a reminder that this month inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club, we are talking about becoming your own person while staying close to your family. And we now have monthly memberships

for as low as 2499 a month to join the community and get access to unlimited support groups, all the worksheets, articles, videos, scripts, courses, everything that I have. ever created. We have 45 plus different topics to help you improve your adult family relationships and break patterns of generational dysfunction in your family. As always, if you are watching or listening to this episode, wherever you are, please don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us a review or comment. It really helps other people find the show. All right, let's go ahead and get into that first question. This question was a voicemail and I am going to play it for you now. Hi Whitney, this is Rachel, and I am calling because I really love your podcast and I've listened to it for many years and I'm still struggling through experience.

The past two years, my parents have been suing me for time with my kids and it's, I mean, you can imagine it's been absolute hell. It was brought on because I asked for space after, you know, my whole life being abused by them and then the past 10 years working incredibly hard. abating them to treat me the way that, you know, in a respectful way. And then I asked for space and instead of space, I got a lawsuit. And so I don't feel like I had to, I don't feel like I chose a arrangement. I feel like I had to do it because I was, the year before, I had to go no contact. I was in the ER about three times with panic attacks because of the trauma and the stress that they kind of brought on me.

and then after I asked for space, they started sending threat letters about court. So I had to go, I had to send a few of the sisters, and I had to go no contact per our lawyer's advice. And it was obviously the right place, but I definitely would see the all right judgment from people not understanding the situation. But the reason why I'm calling is because I've had several friends since, during this time, who have lost family members and my parents and, you know, they're grieving. and it's been really hard on me to see the way that they receive support from our community and, like, the way that people are worried about them and, like, worried about their kids, losing their grandparent. And I lost my parents, I didn't expectably, you know, like, they're alive, but they're dead to me against my will, really. And they're also, like, my kids lost their grandparents unexpectedly because of all this.

And I just, it's just really hard on me to see all the love and support when, like, I've been met with, like, a lot of hurtful comments, like, well, aren't you going to reconcile with them? And just people not understanding, like, the severe abuse that I've endured. And that it's totally fine for me to walk away and it's been better for me. So I would love to hear your thoughts on this as I'm, because I'm sure I'm going to keep encountering people, you know, losing family members. And I do want to do that for my friends, but I just, I didn't dare any support when I was going through this. And I'm still going through this. They're still appealing the lawsuit two and a half years later. I would just love to hear some advice from you.

Thanks. Thank you so much for calling in and for asking that question. I'm very sorry to hear the experience that you've been having with your parents. I want to say it's questions like these are exactly why I started the Family Cycle Breakers Club at Calling Home, because I do feel like it's something that I noticed. A lot of people weren't getting the right support for or the people around them didn't understand it because this is an ambiguous loss. That's a term coined by Pauline Boss.

I've talked about it a lot on the show here and I've done a lot of content on it. And that is what happens when there is a loss that is like disenfranchised grief. It's not a traditional death. but the person is no longer in your life, they're no longer accessible to you. You've had to mourn their loss in much of a way like you would a death. The thing that happens here that I want to explain why people around you might not get this type of loss is because they feel like what you're going through is reversible. It's something that you could change. You could get your parents back in your life if you just forgave them or started talking.

to them again or, you know, drop the, they drop the lawsuit, whatever it is. They don't see the permanence, I think, in the same way that people view death. And so we often have these scripts for how we handle those types of loss. When someone dies, we have a script, a cultural and societal script for handling that. I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm going to offer you food. There are funerals. There's services. You know, there's all this stuff that we do as a way to mourn and celebrate and offer support. When we're talking about the type of loss that you're dealing with, people don't have those scripts.

They don't know how to sort of instinctually show up for you in the same way because they're like, you know, at sea without a paddle. They're like, what do I do here? Do I say, I'm sorry that you're going through this. How do I offer you help? What does this feel like for you? They just don't have the guidebook or the map to figure it out. Now, that doesn't make it hurt any less for you. And I understand why you are making the comparison, you know, to the people around you and feeling like, guys, I've lost something too. I don't have

my parents around me. My kids have lost their grandparents. And while yes, they're alive, I'm dealing with this loss in a very similar way. I think. you said, like, they are dead to me. This has been a really difficult loss. And so I, the first thing I would advise is that, like, you got to get around people who get it. And because the people around you may not understand unless they are explicitly open to hearing about this and to learning about it. And so maybe you do have friends in your life that you can say to them, like, hey, this has felt like a death to me. This has been a huge loss. And I need your help. You cannot. trust or rely on those scripts in this type of grieving and this type of loss because they just,

I think they're starting to form more culturally, but they're not there yet. People are not learning this stuff like from childhood on repeat on how to show up for someone when they're grieving in this way. So sometimes you need to be open to teaching people, showing them, communicating it to them that you need that type of support. And in the meantime time, you know, joining a support group, getting a therapist, finding people in the best way that you can, which is why we have these kind of groups at calling home, to talk to people who get it so that you can see that you're not alone and you're not the only person that is dealing with this. In addition to finding people that can support you, I think that there's some other things

that you can do when dealing with this ambiguous loss that can be helpful to you. So I want to encourage you not to pressure yourself to go towards forgiveness, reconciliation, or closure if you're not ready for that, especially for this caller, you are in the thick of it. You're still dealing with litigation, you know, talking to your parents that it's not the same finality as someone who has passed, whether you had a good relationship with them or not. I also think you need to remember that you're going to have mixed emotions about this, especially because it's still going on. This is a very prolonged type of grief. It's very complicated and it requires a specific type of approach. You can also find a therapist that works

with this and I think you need to find a therapist that, again, doesn't pressure you into that forgiveness, reconciliation or closure unless that's what you are looking for. And a therapist that can validate non-traditional grief experiences like this and can hold a lot of space for those mixed emotions. Ambiguous loss by Pauline Boss is also a great book to check out. She is a renowned therapist and researcher that introduces the concept of ambiguous loss, a type of grief that arises when a loved one is physically present, but emotionally or mentally absent, or when they are physically absent but emotionally present. And unlike more traditional forms of loss, ambiguous loss often lacks closure, making it particularly challenging to

process. This book has a lot of tools to cope to help you reframe the experience and to build resilience. So I highly recommend that book. And we will link that in the show notes as well. We also have a ton of resources for complicated grief. We covered that for an entire month inside the Family Cycle Breakers Club by Calling Home. So if you're someone looking for more resources on this, our strange adult child group is also a great resource. All right, let's go ahead and get to that second caller question. I am going to play it for you now. Hi, Whitney. My name is Michael. I would like to speak about both my mom and my dad, but I guess for this voicemail, I'll focus on one. I guess the biggest one is that I've always kind of dealt with and I'm assuming we'll continue to deal with

for the rest of my life. It's kind of the relationship with my mom. So we, you know, are kind of like, you know, contact. You haven't seen each other. You have a very close. complicated relationship. Pretty much her and my dad got divorced when I was nine months. So I grew up already in her, you know, divorced household bouncing between two houses. My grandparents, I feel like were mainly like the ones that were like really stable and helped us kind of like, you know, grow and like figure things out. But my mom, she ended up remarrying. She got with her now husband who was insanely abusive, like physically, verbally, everything. He's essentially like isolated her over the years. where there's like a whole story that I could say about like what's happened between them. But right now they're essentially living in South Carolina with my brother who has Asperger's. My sister moved out a few years ago. She had a baby. She's living with her girlfriend.

I'm living in Florida. I live on my own now. And I've just, you know, been trying to like figure out like life as a person now, as an adult, as a, you know, a growing person. You know, kind of like just getting over some things. And I'm already in therapy. I talked to a therapist who's, you know, chatted so many times about this. And we still do whenever I have little episodes and moments.

But, yeah, her relationship and I is not great because, you know, she chose him over me at the end of the day, which, you know, it is always going to be, like, a tough toe to swallow. But she's very toxic. She used to beat me. She, yeah, she was never really present. She was never really around. There's so many things.

But, yeah, I just kind of want to. to see I guess like your take I'm sure you've pretty you've probably spoken on similar situations but yeah I kind of wanted to see like a year take on like mothers and you know like women you know like choosing like their husbands you know like over like their children and like neglecting the child and just pretty much like abandoning them because like my mom really hasn't been around in my life like the last like I probably say like 10 years or so She like pops in and out here and there. But like over the last, I'd probably like since COVID since 2020.

Like I really. All right. Their voicemail got cut off at the end there. But I think we have a lot to work with. So first of all, the abuse that you endured, anyone that can relate to this caller is not okay at the hands of either parent. It's also extremely painful to feel like your parent is choosing a. romantic partner over you and over your safety. And I always say that this is such a tricky subject

to talk about because I think there are power dynamics at play. And there's a researcher, Dr. Emma Katz, she has a great substack that I've read some of her stuff on here before, who talks a lot about coercive control and mothers who are in abusive relationships with children and not demonizing those mothers and a lot of the dynamics that are at play there. And And so I always feel like I'm kind of walking the line here when I talk about these topics. But today I'm going to speak exclusively to the child in this situation and the adult children who lived through this situation. I think we can have empathy for the partner that is being abused while also recognizing

that children need and deserve protection from adults. And they are completely at the mercy of how those adults manage those relationships. Okay. So if you were an adult who grew up in a home where your parent was choosing their abusive partner over you, then this message is for you. There was a series that was happening a long time ago on TikTok that was called like Pick Me Parents or something. And it was super insightful. And it was particularly about mothers who will prioritize their male partners over their children. And when you are one of those children, you learn that you come second to your parents.

parents to your mother's love life, that she is prioritizing male attention and male favor over your needs and your safety. And yes, we can say a lot about, you know, why women have to make these choices, but at the end of the day, that is extremely harmful and difficult for a child to go through. And even as an adult, to see your parents say, no, I'm going to stay with this abusive person. I'm going to live with them. I'm going to continue. to expose you to them is very hurtful because they are still repeating the same behavior. And this is where I really want parents who are listening to listen and take this in. Here is sort of where the road splits.

I know a lot of adults who as children were exposed to violence in their homes, okay? And they still go on to have good relationships with their parents in adulthood. And there's a reason for this, okay? Those parents in their child's adulthood often go on to make different decisions. They apologize. They recognize how difficult it was for their child to be in that environment. They change their behavior. They try to learn how to not enter these types of relational dynamics again.

And they no longer stay with these abusive partners. And those parents, even though their children may have in. adored abuse when they were children living with this parent, go on to forgive them, to have great relationships with them, and to stay connected. When the parent cannot recognize what the child's endured in childhood, and they also cannot change their behavior in the present, this is where we start to have problems. And this is what this adult is speaking to. It's like they are still living together in South Carolina. They still have this type of relationship. My parent has really chosen this partner over me and they are still continuing to make that

choice every day. This is when I say it's not about what happened. It's about what is continuing to happen in the relationship. And I really think that if this mother could say, you know what, this is not good for you to be exposed to this. I could understand why you don't want me to be with this person. Then I really think that these two would have a shot, right, at having a relationship. And these are both adults. This adult child can decide they do not want to have this type of

relationship with their mother when she's in this type of relationship. And they can say, I want my mother to be happy and healthy and to be treated well. And I don't think I want to be exposed to this type of dynamic. I believe also, don't quote me on this, but I think this caller was also saying that they were abused by their parents. And so there is a lot of old wounds that are being continuously opened up in this relationship that have not been taken care of. And I think that if there could be repair in the present, there could probably be a lot forgiven in the past. But for you as the adult child who has been exposed to this and who is still dealing with a parent who has made this decision, I think you really have to grieve not being protected. by your parent. Parents are supposed to keep their children safe. I actually think that is the number

one job of a parent. And so when your parent not only doesn't keep you safe, but also puts you in harm's way and harms you, you have got a trifecta of stuff here to deal with when it comes to your parent. And when your parent continues to double down on that by saying, yeah, I harmed you, I put you in harm's way, and I was neglectful, and I'm not sorry for it. And I'm going to keep doing it. How do you have a relationship with a parent like that? That is very different from a parent who says, I did not have the resources to keep you safe. I can see that I failed at my most important job. And now today I'm going to do whatever it takes to make sure that you and I have a safe relationship where we are not exposing ourselves or one another to physical, emotional,

or sexual violence, we are going to make this relationship a safe place to be. Okay. If you have a parent that is not acknowledging the need for that, then it is very difficult to have a relationship. And so you are grieving the fact that your parent is not safe. They are actually dangerous. And that's a completely different thing. You know, you'll hear lately this has been like the best.

battle cry of the estranged parents and their therapists that are in cahoots with them and their other content creators of like, you know, not all relationships are safe. We need to be able to have disagreement. That is not what we're talking about here. If you are, and you guys know that, if you are in a relationship where your parent did not provide you with any safety and they actively put you in harm's way, we're not talking about like political. beliefs and like snowflake energy. That's not what's going on here. We are talking about a parent that was actively dangerous. And if anybody else was doing what that parent was doing, they'd be in jail. Well, maybe not because crazier things have happened these days where those people don't even

end up in jail. But they should. It is a problem. Okay. So I'm going off in a tangent here. Excuse me, but this really fires me up when people act like we're talking about like I like apples. and you like oranges, and so I cut you off because I didn't feel like you were a safe space for me. That's not what's going on here. When you are grieving a parent who was not safe, you are having a different experience because your parent is supposed to be your first felt sense of safety in this world, literally from the moment that you come out of the womb. For any of you that have had children, you know that feeling, especially mothers who have

given birth to a baby that knows their scent and their voice and the sound of their heartbeat, that that baby can go from screaming to completely feeling safe once they put that baby with you. So that's something, right? That counts for something, that your parent can be like your only source of home and safety. And then you start to learn throughout your life as you get older, like, ooh, this person is supposed to feel safe, they kind of feel safe, but they're only what Patrick Tien often calls half safe, which half safe is still not safe, right? Especially for a young child. And so you

continuously learn over time that like, oh my gosh, this is the only person around me that is supposed to and able to keep me safe. I'm a child. I can't put a roof over my head. I can't afford food. I can't get a job. I can't go live on the street. Like, I can't get myself places. I have to rely on this person for safety, and they're bringing unsafe people around me. They are treating me poorly. They are hurting me. So then my brain has to make sense of how is this person supposed to be both safe and very dangerous to me at the same time?

Your brain, in order to handle that, will create such an elaborate fantasy of your parent, that they can become the safe person that you are trying to create, right? And you will do anything in your power to make it feel like they are safe. And then like this caller when you get to adulthood and you're like, oh my gosh, they're not safe at all. I actually think I'm in danger when I'm around them or when I'm around their partner or the people that they associate with or when I get in a car with them, like, I am not safe. And that makes me feel very uncomfortable mentally, emotionally, in my body. I am constantly on alert when I'm around them.

It's very hard to relax around people like that. And it's very hard to be around people who are very unsafe and dangerous who are trying to act like they are safe people for you. And like they're people that you should be able to be. be around and be calm and be relaxed. All right. I hope that's helpful for anyone that is dealing with a situation like this. As always, we have so many resources for you inside the family cycle breakers club at calling home.com. That is where you get full access and where you can actually work with me. I facilitate like 50% of our groups at calling home. I'm facilitating the estranged

adult child group, the group for adults who have a difficult, distant, or a meshed relationship with a parent. I facilitate, did I just say the in-law? group, the estranged adult child group, and our monthly topic group, which this month is about differentiation and individuation, becoming your own person while still being attached to your family or becoming your own person away from your family if you have to become estranged. We'd love to see you there. You can now join for the low monthly fee of 2499 a month, and you can find out more at calling home.com. Thank you so much for the questions. Thank you for trusting me with your questions. Thanks for listening to the show. And I will see you all next week

on Tuesday. Don't forget to like, subscribe, leave us review or comment on this episode. Thank you so much and have a great rest of your day. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Colling Home or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Colley Holmes Terms of Service linked in the show notes below.