CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Unfollowing Mom with Harriet Shearsmith

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Whitney shares an interview with Harriet Shearsmith, author of "Unfollowing Mum: Break Unhealthy Patterns and be the Parent You Wish You’d Had" and host of the Unfollowing Mum podcast. Harriet opens up about her journey from being completely enmeshed with her mother who lived with Harriet, her husband and three children to eventually becoming estranged after asking her mom to find her own home. They discuss the challenges of recognizing abuse in your own family system, the societal guilt of cutting contact with a parent, cycle breaking with your own children, and how to repair when you make mistakes with your own children. Harriet's new book: https://amzn.to/43vKLFO Harriet's website: https://harrietshearsmith.com/ Harriet's Instagram: @harrietshearsmith  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] Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. 00:00 Introduction to Harriet Shearsmith and her work 01:43 Harriet's story 15:19 The societal guilt of questioning your parent's behavior 26:07 The difficulty of defining abuse 44:14 Raising children who know their worth Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. I'm so excited to share an interview with you today that I recorded back in January. So please bear with me because we did not have the fancy camera equipment and lighting that we have today. But it's a really good interview. I had Harriet Shearsmith on the podcast. She is an acclaimed author, podcaster, an advocate for breaking unhealthy family patterns. And she's best known as the host of the unfollowing mom podcast and the author of the transformative book, Unfollowing Mom, It's Okay to Let Go of Unhealthy Patterns with Your Parents. Harriet has become a trusted voice for individuals seeking to heal from the emotional complexities of parenthification and reclaim their personal power. I love Harriet's mission because she's trying to help others realize it's okay to prioritize their well-being and embrace the freedom of living authentically, whether that's through her book, podcast, or speaking engagements, she provides a much-needed space for dialogue, reflection,

and growth around family relationships. In this episode, we are talking about parentification, estrangement, people who had difficult relationships with their parents, and how hard it is to break some of those patterns in adulthood. I really hope you enjoy this episode, and let's go ahead and get to that interview with Harriet. Well, first, I wanted to hear a little bit about how you got in to this work, because I know that this was not your original career path, correct? Yeah, completely. This was not my original career path at all.

And I think in, I think it was 2020, it could have been 20, yeah, 2020, I was going to say separated them, but gosh, that sounds like such a weird word, but it is a separation. I became estranged from my mum, and it took me, it took me a good year. I'd been creating content online for around 10 years at that point, and I built a successful career doing it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd built a wonderful platform, talking a lot about motherhood and lifestyle and all of those different things that we see so frequently. And the one thing I really didn't feel like I could talk about was my estrangement from my And what had happened to give kind of a brief overview, which knowing me will probably not be very brief at all, but I, I'd always grown up with it being just me and my mum. My parents separated when I was four. And there was, to some degree, alienation from my dad, but also my dad was very absent. And he was very disinterested. Any effort that he did put in, I think, was made more difficult by my mum.

and it just was a toxic environment, something that I was completely unaware of, totally enmeshed with my mum and totally codependent with her. And I never actually moved out of my family home. So I'd been with my partner for over a decade. We'd got kids. We were married. We were paying the mortgage on everything. And we said, look, we need something to show for what we're doing. We were paying for this house as if it's ours. and my mum was living with us at the time, and we also need a bit of family space, which was me kind of finally trying to pull away a little bit. And the options that we discussed as a family were that we buy a separate house and go separate ways. You see

mum every so often as a normal family would do, or normal, because everybody's set of is different. Or I can buy the house that we're living in at the minute and build an annex. And we'll opted to build the annex, which was a huge mistake for us. And from the minute that the annex was started to be built, everything just became so much more apparent to me how toxic my relationship with my mum was. Nothing was good enough. Everything was a problem. And it really was because she was losing that control over me as I was pulling more and more for my autonomy. And to just be an adult who was, you know, married woman, a mum of three and able to do all of my own things. And So after about, I think it was about six months, so maybe a bit longer of my mum living in

the annex, we realised that this was just not working and we'd gone and spoken to mum and or I'd gone and spoke to mum and said this isn't working. We always kind of had the backup plan and I'm going to need you to move out of the annex and you will be in exactly the same financial position you would have been in if you sold the house to a stranger. We are just going to make this right and we'll be able to have this lovely relationship that you see everywhere that's you know you have your house i have mine we'll all feel happier and the answer was no and eventually it developed into a really difficult legal battle and we completely cut contact in 2020 what i found was usually when i was going through any kind of big life change i would talk about it with my

online community. And this felt so raw and so taboo and so wrong, as if I was doing something wrong. And now when I reflect on it and I think back and I speak to people who've been in similar situations to me, it's so sad to feel that you're doing something wrong, simply wanting to have your own home and wanting to have your own family unit. I mean, that is the natural progression of things. So it was really difficult to make peace with that. And eventually after about a year, I was getting constant questions from people saying, you know, where is your mum? She's not in the annex anymore. You never mention her. And I started to talk about it. And what happened was that my community very much changed and evolved. And I discovered that there are so many people

out there who either living with dysfunctional family or they've grown up in a toxic environment or they are estranged from their family. And eventually I created my second platform, Unfollowing Mum. I created my own podcast, Unfollowing Mum, where we talk about estrangement, generational trauma, all these kind of things. And I wrote a book about how to parent when you didn't have a healthy blueprint.

Because one of the biggest fears for me was, you know, parenting and not knowing whether or not I was repeating cycles, whether or not I was passing this trauma onto my children. And what did that look like? How did I break those things? And then I trained as a coach and I am now a trainee therapist. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me and with the people that are listening.

I want to go back a little bit in some of the things that you mentioned because I think so many people can relate to your story that it sounds like everything was kind of, manageable until you decided to do something for yourself or to separate in some way. Would you say that's accurate? I think since I first had my children. So by the time I eventually separated from my mom and cut her out of my life. My eldest was nine at the time, I think. Yeah, he was nine. And from the minute I had him, I started to really open my eyes and think, this is not a normal, healthy relationship. You know, this is not how I would want my child to feel. But very much squash that

down. I felt so guilty questioning anything about my mom, you know, growing up an early child, I just felt like, okay, no, I have to be a good daughter. Yes, my mom's got flaws, but I have to be a good daughter. And it was almost like every time I got to the next parenting stage myself, the harder that became to just ignore the cracks. And when the really big cracks started to happen was when I wanted my own space. And I think what was driving me to finally want my own space was the realization that these cracks were not something you could just kind of paint over. These were huge things.

That just was so unhealthy. And the more I tried to squash those feelings down and the more I tried to ignore how difficult my mum's behavior was, how toxic she could be, that was when I started to create bigger cracks because the more you squash it, the more you ignore it, the more you think, okay, no, I just, I know I have no boundaries here, but it doesn't matter. It's just my mum. It's the way we are. That was when things started to go really wrong. And then, you know, once we decided to build the annex and she could really see that that was it for me, I was pushing to say, I need my own space, I need my own autonomy. And she'd finally kind of lost that control.

that was when things got really nasty. Yeah. So you mentioned that when she moved into the annex, which for the American listeners, I assume is like a guest house or like an in-law suite kind of thing? Yeah, it is. So it's just like a separate house.

It's got its own kitchen, own bathroom. Although interestingly, one of the conditions of her moving into the annex was that she would still be able to come over and have dinner with us every night. Wow. And I would cook every day.

Okay. Okay. So she was still very much a part of, your daily life at this point. Yeah. And so what was the process of you realizing like this still isn't working, this amount of distance? I think when I first agreed, you know, to the annex, I feel like I'd almost tricked myself into thinking, okay, this is going to be a solve all solution. When I talk about the kind of toxic behavior, it would be things like we'd all be around the dinner table and mum would make racist or homophobic comments. We would call her out

on it and she would do it again just to see if she could get a bit more of a rise or it'd be, oh, you know, that's my opinion. I'm allowed to do that. If we went out as a family, I'd be getting phone call saying, where are you? Why are you not home? Why was I not included? And those kind of things, I think in my, well, I know, in my mind, I thought, okay, well, when we build this annex, you know, it's going to be like a totally separate house, it'll be fine. Yeah. And actually, it wasn't at all. It was just, it was six feet from the door, you know, so it didn't work at all. And it was never going to work. But again, it goes back to that wanting to be the good daughter, wanting to, you know, fulfill that role and feeling

obligated to continue to put her first. And what it looked like for me, I think, was starting to realize that's what I'd been doing, was that every time, you know, she'd tell me I was selfish or spoiled, I wasn't. These were over very normal things. And the more I would say to people, oh, well, no, I'm building my mum and annex, but actually I still have to cook dinner for her. She wants me to buy her a new car. I'm not allowed to just, you know, go out and do whatever I want. I'm expected to ring her and let her know what time I'll be home. Certain things like this, people would look at you and go, what? That's not, no. And I'd be like, no, no, no, we're just, we're just really close. And the more people started to say to me, hang on a minute, are you happy with that? The more I started to realize

I've never actually asked myself that question. Is that what I really want? Or is this what I'm telling myself I should want? Yeah, that's so powerful. I also, I want to highlight like this part of your story that you're talking about how looking back, maybe you realized, oh, it was never going to work. But you kind of had to go through those steps of saying, maybe if I try it. You know, this. Maybe if I do that, it will be okay. And I feel like that's such a valuable part of the process. It's so easy to look at people's situations now and say, I get these comments on my post a lot all the time. Like, well, they should just go no contact. They should just end the relationship. And while for some people, I think that is the best option, there is also this

path that you have to walk to get to that place in order for it to feel like the right decision for you. And that includes a lot of these small steps. back or adjustments of saying like, what would it be like to do this? And then realizing that maybe it's not the right thing. And it sounds like you allowed yourself to work through that process. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, initially when I asked my mom to move out of the annex and to find herself her own property, it was never my intention to cut contact. My intentions in that moment were to say, okay, I will see you kind of on what I termed at the time, an infrequent basis, which would have been maybe once a week. And even as I say that now, I think,

infrequent really once a week. And, you know, I work with clients now who are estranged or who are navigating these difficult family dynamics. And almost all of them have had this process the same as me, where they look back and they think, oh my goodness, the answer is so obvious. I just, I should have cut contact. But actually, in reality, it is a process and it's something that takes time. It's something that you, I often say to people, you are working against a lifetime of conditioning. Absolutely. So important. It is. And it's so easy to sit there with the now knowledge and almost beat yourself up for it and say, well, I should have done this or I should have done that. I could have done this. But actually, all those shoulds are just scolding yourself.

because you didn't know then that this was where you were going to be. And it was my mum's refusal to move out. I remember her saying to me at the time, I'm not going to be paid off like some prostitute. And I remember thinking, what, you know, what reality are we in here that she thinks that's what I'm trying to do? People would throw their parent out and give them nothing in a lot of circumstances, especially after the way you've treated me.

And yet I'm here saying, I want to put you back in exactly. exactly the same position you'd be in. If you'd sold to a stranger, I want to do right by you, and I'm still jumping through all of these hoops, and you won't leave. But what are you here for? You know, when I think about the annex, the windows of it back straight onto our garden, you know, it's so close in proximity. If my child were saying to me, hey, this isn't working and I need a bit more space, let's save our relationship by having a bit more space. I would would jump at it. I would really want to do that. And I think that's the difficult thing to wrap your

head around sometimes is that you might not react the way they react and you've got to remember that you're different people. And that can be quite difficult to navigate, I think, is to accept that these are totally different reactions and hoping for the reaction that you would give from your parent is always going to be a difficult thing. Yeah, that's so true. And, you know, I think I think you and I come up probably against a lot of the same rhetoric, you know, when talking about these things publicly that you just mentioned, you know, someone saying like, oh, I can't believe you would throw, kick your mother out, right? But you're walking us through this, this long journey of actually not wanting to have to get to that point maybe if the relationship

had been better. And so I think that's what's so important to talk about is that like there are a lot of people who are estranged who are actually quite family oriented. They would like to live with their parent. They would like to see them every week. It just isn't possible given the context of the relationship and the status. It's not a lack of desire to be that way as a person. It's not saying, like, I just want to be cruel and kick my mother out, but more of like, look at all the things I did before I got to this place that this was my only option. And I think that's also something that you and I talk about a lot publicly that we're so aligned on is how long this type of decision takes, you know, that it sounds like that was also true for you personally, that

you walked a very long path before saying this is what I have to do. Yeah, absolutely. And I think I share quite a lot online that it took me from the point where I first started to recognize there were cracks in our relationship and started to reflect on things a decade to finally say no more. I mean, that is, you know, I'm in my mid-30s now. That's a chunk of my life and a significant one. And it takes an awfully long time to unpick all of this conditioning. And I'd worked with, I'd worked with life coaches before. I'd worked with therapists before. And almost always, when they started to pick at the relationship with my mom or started to reflect to me some of the holes there, I would dismiss it immediately. It would be a

no-go zone because I wasn't really ready to acknowledge how toxic that relationship was for me. And when I look back now, you know, there are so many relationships that had been sabotaged because of the relationship with my mom, so many friendships that ended because of the relationship with my mom and the way that impacted my behavior. This was a really long process that took a long time. And I think it's so important for people to realize that no one cuts contact with a parent for funsies. No one cuts contact and goes, you know, I just don't want that extra support network. Our parents are, yeah, I mean, our parents are there as our support network. They don't stop being our support network when we reach adulthood, which for me over here is

18. You don't walk out of the door at 18 and go, right, that's it. I'm an adult. No thanks anymore. It's not the reality of relationships. It's not the reality of a dynamic. So if we are still going to be support networks for our children all the way through their adulthood, and I mean emotionally, then why on earth would somebody turn that away in a world that's really difficult at the best of times it can be really hard you know romantic relationships job troubles having your own children i would love to have spent this christmas that's passed or coming into the new year any of these things my birthday with my mom and had you know that lovely family dinner out i'd love to watch her baking with her grandkids but that's not the reality that i'm faced with yeah it's it's so true and i'm glad that you

that personally how long it took you. I mean, that's been my experience working with this population is that, and I like to just repeat this, as many times as I can and have as many people say it because I think the idea that this happens overnight or frivolously is such a bad message that is being perpetuated out there that is not in line with any reality that I have witnessed as a therapist. It's not in line with what anyone has told me. And I imagine that not only for you personally, but professionally, that's not something that you've encountered, it sounds like. No, not at all. It's not something I've ever encountered. And what I often say to people when they come to my content or when they speak to me and they say, well, my sibling or my friend cut

their parent off because of an event that happened and it was this one event. Okay. So, So imagine that's the straw that broke the camels back. Right. Because there will be so many things that led up to that, that nobody is cutting contact over one singular event that's happened one time. There will be so many things behind that that has made them finally go, you know what, this relationship's not safe, and I'm done. I'm tapping out there.

Yeah. Black Friday is here at IKEA, and the clock is taking on savings you won't want to miss. Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-haves to cozy at-home essentials, all the little and big things you need to make this season shine. But don't wait. Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last. Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca.com slash Black Friday. Ikea. Bring home to life. It's also so wild to me when people act like they know everything that goes on in someone else's house. Yeah. Like when someone says, oh, my, you know, my friend's son cut her off after she was the best mother provided everything. I'm like, have we not seen enough crime documentaries at this point or stories of people? I mean, they're coming out every day of like the most beautiful family who is like a murderer or something that this shouldn't be so far-fetched for us to imagine. I mean, if you've been a therapist for even a year, you realize that everybody.

is hiding, you know, something to some degree in their homes. Some are much more than others, but we don't know what happens in anyone's marriage, family. I mean, even influencers that are online acting like they're telling us everything. We hear these crazy stories come out that I try to tell everyone, like, don't respond that way, you know, to people of like, oh my gosh, she was the best mother. She could have been a wonderful mother, but you don't know. everything that was going on, which kind of brings me to like my next thing I wanted to discuss with you is, you know, you are a content creator on a topic that is deeply personal to you. And I'd love to hear like what that's like for you to be sharing this and kind of some of the feedback that

you get. Yeah, I get asked this quite a lot. And actually, I think I've very much made my piece with my decision and feel very confident in my decision and being able to, and I've educated myself a lot on this topic. I've gone into it professionally. I've trained, you know, I've done so much work that I actually feel very comfortable and confident in almost not needing to defend my corner because I know that this was the right decision for me. I know that my mum's behaviour was absolutely unacceptable. And I now know through work that I've done, through training that I've done, that my mum was incredibly abusive growing up. And, you know, that encompassed all manner of abuse, things that people don't talk about, that people don't know about that's not discussed

you. My mum was covertly sexually abusive. My mom parentified me a lot as a child. My mom was physically abusive. And interestingly, if ever I say to somebody and they say, well, what could your mum possibly have done that was so bad? What do you determine as abuse? And I say, well, actually, my mum was covertly sexually abusive and physically abusive as well as emotionally. Then it's, oh, okay, that's fine. Right. That's okay. And I think that's also a really interesting dynamic that we almost have this societal idea of what constitutes abuse and what constitutes an acceptable level of abuse before you can cut somebody off. And I can say by far for me, really coming to terms with my mum's emotional abuse and coming to an understanding of what that meant,

what I experienced and how that shaped me as a person and how I've had to unpick that to get where I am now, that's been by far the most difficult part and something that I have had to really, really work on. But sharing online, I feel particularly in creating the unfollowing mum community, and I'm sure this will resonate with you as well, there is so much power in community healing and being able to share lived experiences. And one of the things that I'd noticed the most about estrangement and about talking about toxic family is that we almost always are tricked into thinking it's just us. Everyone else has family problems, but actually no one else has got this awful family dynamic where they feel completely and utterly worthless just by

spending an afternoon with mum. And it must just be us, right? And actually, reality is it's so much more common and you think no one else has had to cut contact with the parent unless there's been something super extreme that doesn't happen but that's not true it happens so frequently so i've found a real healing and a real support in the community that i've created and if anything now when people do come at me i see it as an opportunity to either educate or to just take that opinion and say okay well that's for you to go away and work on because that's nothing about me. So true. I love a couple of things that you said that the first thing about like you having worked through this and done what you needed to do before coming to

the internet I think is such an important thing for anybody listening to know. And I am a strong believer in that as well that if I'm ever going to share anything personal about myself on the internet, I need to be ready that no matter what anybody says back to me, It's not going to throw me off, you know, what I've, the work I've done for myself. Because I think sometimes when you come to share too quickly and you may have, especially online, all these estranged parents or other people who have perpetrated certain things that you've been a victim of yelling at you and you're not ready for that, it's not good. And so I'm glad that you brought that up because it is very important for anyone that does want

to share and kind of be in community in that way. The other thing I want to touch on that you just brought up was like this line in the sand about abuse. This is something that gets, oh my gosh, if I had a dollar, I would quit my job. Yeah. Everybody had been free therapy. Gosh, like, well, what really is abuse? Define abuse, especially with emotional abuse. What do you think, what do you make of that question, you know, when people talk to you about that? I think that's such an Interesting question because everybody, regardless of who you are speaking to, has a totally different bar for what they would consider to be abusive behavior. What they would consider to be an abuse of themselves is also so, so different to what they would consider abuse of their children. Abuse of their loved ones. Abuse of a stranger, everybody has such a different bar and such a different idea. I think that, you know, the things that we all tend to agree on will include physical abuse and sexual abuse. and we tend to say, okay, if somebody hits you, and again, that, I suppose that one could be a bit of a dicey one as well, but if there is a level of, yeah, that one's a bit of a dicey one as well, but we categorise things. And I had somebody say to me not so long ago, look, abuse is its own kettle of fish. I would say if there's been sexual or physical abuse, then absolutely you have to cut them off.

But if there's only been emotional abuse, I think that's in its own different field. And you can definitely work through. that. And I just thought it was so interesting to hear if it's only been emotional abuse. And through the podcast and, you know, working with people like yourself, speaking to different people and speaking to, I will quite often interview anonymous people. We want to share their story, but do not want to share it publicly. And I love those lived experience stories. A time and time again, they will say, I didn't know that this was abuse because I just thought this was normal. to me, abuse is someone putting hands on you in whatever way that might look, someone hurting you physically, not someone absolutely tearing apart your self-worth, unless it's a partner, in which

case, well, then we might change our views slightly. And it's just so fascinating to me how different we all view abuse. And for an awfully long time, I wouldn't have considered what I experienced abuse. And I had to get really comfortable really quickly with thinking about it as abuse and acknowledging that it was abused and acknowledging that all the parentification that I grew up was abusive, acknowledging that, you know, all of the experiences I had with my mom were the kind of things that are parental abuse. And yet, even now, to some degree, it can still feel a little bit uncomfortable sometimes of, is that really worthy of abuse? was it? Well, yeah, it was. But there's that narrative that we have that abuse has to look a

certain way before we can really consider it abuse, otherwise you're just being a bit too sensitive. It's so true. And I find that the definition of abuse is constantly evolving, right? Because we are constantly learning the impact of things. And I've heard some people refer to that as like concept creep or that the definition is expanding too much. And now everything is abuse and everything is trauma. And I think, okay, of course, sometimes we have some of that. Right. But the other part that I think is actually happening is that we're learning what this stuff actually does to people. And there's a lot of data on emotional abuse being just as harmful as physical abuse, if not more in certain studies when abuse is done over time consistently

by someone that you're supposed to have an attachment to like a parent, that we know that it impacts the brain. It impacts our functioning. It impacts our physical health. So once we have all this information, we have to call it what it is. You know, and I don't think that that's necessarily everybody calling everything trauma or everything abuse. It's just us learning more about what something is and what it causes. And you brought up like you coming to terms with it being abuse and how difficult that is. I don't think anyone wants to say my parent, the person that I was supposed to trust the most who was supposed to love me protecting her was abusive. That's not a fun thing. to have to say. I mean, I wonder if for you, like, if you can help us understand, did that

did that help you in some ways? Was it difficult for you in other ways? Yeah, it was really difficult in some ways and still is at times. And I think I really resonate to what you just said there about, you know, calling everything trauma, calling everything abuse, because I quite often get that comment and I'll get, oh, everyone wants to be a victim now. And that one always interests me, because have you ever actually been a victim? Because no one wants to be. No one wants to be, especially not of a parent's abuse, because that's your safe space. And what it creates is this undercurrent of distrust with everyone and everything, because if you couldn't trust that, then what's safe?

And I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that it's difficult. to call things abuse, but incredibly important when it is abuse, to actually acknowledge it for what it is. And in some ways, being able to look back and say, okay, actually, that was abuse. And now I can take that and learn more about myself and I can understand it and I can unpick it and I can see where it's left me now and why I do the things that I do. Now I can look at that and say, okay, so I survived that. I can kind of move forward through this. And in some ways that has been really helpful for me to be able to label it, acknowledge it, be able to say it was wrong and this is why I behave the way that I do here. This is why this is a trigger for me.

This is why this is this. That's been quite empowering in being able to actually do that, sit down with it, work on myself and move forward. And I think there's an attitude sometimes that if you consider yourself someone who has experienced abuse, then you are trying to to be a victim and that means you are trying to stay in the past when actually it couldn't be further from the truth. I often get comments of, oh, stop going on about toxic parents. Get over it. Your parents did their best. And you think, okay, well, for a start, you have no idea whether my parent did their best or not. That's something that we say to Mike us more comfortable because nobody wants to believe that parents don't do their best, which really should give you an indicator

that no child wants to believe that their parent didn't do their best and was abusive. So no one's out here making that up for fun. But also because, you know, we have this attitude that if, or many people have this attitude, that if you're wanting to kind of stay or you're wanting to talk about being abused and you're wanting to talk about those experiences, then it's because you don't want to face your own problems, you don't want to look at your own behavior when actually being able to acknowledge those things can help you to do that. It can help you to look at your own behavior. It can help you to examine

who you are and how you tick and what makes you you and move forward and change behaviors. You know, talking about it is a way of moving forward and of healing and learning about it and sharing your story with others so that they can feel like what they're going through isn't something that they have to stay stuck in. And to me, and the ability to talk about it in this way actually also shows an immense amount of healing around this topic. It's really the people actually, I think that you mentioned you were like this before that are going to therapy and maybe knowing something's kind of problem and being like, oh, I don't want to go there. They're denying that it exists, saying it's not a big deal when other people who love and care about them are

saying, I think this might be a problem, that is a sign to me that there's not a lot of healing going on there. But I think there is that deep conditioning, right, especially in older generations of like, you move on, pull up your bootstraps, get over it, keep it moving. And a lot of younger people, you know, and I don't even consider myself that young anymore, but a lot of younger people are saying, like, I just don't want to. I just don't want to live like that anymore. You know, I don't, I don't want to have these types of relationships. I'd, I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about, like, do you think that a lot of estranged parents out there can improve, can heal, can repair things? You know, what is your outlook and

your experience? Yeah. The coach and trainee therapist in me. immediately wants to go, yes, of course they can, Whitney. Thank you for asking me that question. Because I think a part of our jobs is to feel that everybody can heal and everybody can do better and everybody can change. And I do think there is an element of that. I do. Don't get me wrong. I think there has to be a willingness to do that. There has to be a willingness to be introspective to look out where your flaws are because we all have them. And this is another comment that I get so often of nobody's perfect. And I wholeheartedly agree. Nobody is. Nobody's asking for perfection. What they're asking for is accountability. What they're asking for. Exactly. They're asking for

accountability. They're asking for acknowledgement of mistakes. You know, when I sit with my teenager and I say to him, dude, I am so sorry that I lost my temper with you then. And I really shouted, I was like a banshee and you rolled your eyes at me and oh, it drove me bonkers. I'm really sorry, that wasn't cool, that was not acceptable behavior from me. Do you want to talk about it? And he grunts and goes, no, fine. That's, that's the accountability there, is acknowledging that you've made that mistake, not not doing it, because parenting is hard. Being a parent can be so overwhelming, so triggering in so many ways. So do I think that estranged parents can evolve, can change? Yes, absolutely. I think there is a creator on TikTok called Fired Mum, who more or less everybody has come across and has seen. I actually think that's quite interesting because she started off very aggressive, very, you know, I've done nothing wrong. Everything is my child's fault. This is awful. Woe is me. And over time, slowly she has started to lose that messaging and she has started to be a little bit more introspective, a little bit more, oh, okay, maybe I did do this wrong. And actually, maybe I

I was really interested. I saw a video pop up the other day and thought, who is this woman? That doesn't sound like her. But she had started to talk about, okay, actually, no, maybe I need to educate myself a bit here. And I was quite shocked by that because I thought, okay, if there's an example of someone who's not going to change their behavior, that fits it. And yet, it sounds like she is choosing to start looking at things. And again, you might see those times when people do choose to look at things and then go, that's too hard. I don't want to be faced with the reality of what I've done. I don't want to be faced with the reality of my behavior. The consequences of my choices as a parent, I'm just going to go back to pulling the blinkers on and saying it's my kid's fault. And I think it's really important for us to say, yes, people can change, but also not to sit there as a strange children going, well, if people can change my parent will change because they have to want to. they have to be the ones that make that choice to change their behavior yeah absolutely and you know i i i think what you're saying here is so important that they have to choose it and i think it also

has to have this motivation from within that like i want to do better for myself not necessarily just to get my child back into my life and that's something that you know at calling home in our groups it's been very important to me because we look at all types of adult family relationships that we have adults in our group that are maybe on the receiving end of estrangement from a sibling and they are also choosing to become estranged from a parent. Like we have people that are on all sides of this issue. They're not the only ones initiating an estrangement. And so we often have parents or people in the group that are trying to,

get back into someone's life and sometimes their motivation I think is how can I like contort myself to appear as if I have you know I'm doing all the things that they want and almost like they're moving down this list of like how can I do everything that this person wants me to do and I think it could work in the short term but in the long term it's not very effective right and so if instead we look at this as like I really need to look at those painful parts of myself And if I do that, this will benefit me. It might not bring every relationship back. And there are certainly some estranged adult children, especially those that have been

victims of abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, primarily. I think that I hear that they're like, no matter what my parent did, I can never go back because I can't trust that that level of change is possible. And I get that. And I would still tell that parent, whether your child comes back to you or not, do the work because your life is only going to get better because of it. And repair on their end doesn't necessarily ensure forgiveness. Yeah. You know, I think that's a big part of it. Yeah, I think so. And I think it's really important to realize that forgiveness and repair are not, you know, they're not going to go

hand in hand. They are not the same thing. You might have an adult child who says, you know what, I forgive you for everything that you did because that's what I choose to do, but I do not want a relationship with you. And you may well find that you have a repair in a relationship, but there is no forgiveness there and there is no acceptance of what happened. And this is when we see this kind of almost revolving door of we're estranged for a few years and then things come back together and then we're estranged again and I remember why I didn't want you in my life. And it's just really important that when we kind of embark on that journey to heal, to look at our own generational trauma, to look at the cycles that we've continued, because I think it's important to notice as

well, and I talk about this in the book, that unfortunately, as much as we want to be cycle breakers, and we have this idea that a cycle breaker is someone who breaks all the cycles, who ends it, who's done, tick the box, you know, we fixed it all for our entire lineage. That's not the reality. And there will be cycles that we will. will continue that our own children want to break. Because society evolves. What's acceptable, what we're educated in evolves. So there will be things that our adult children will come to us and say,

that wasn't cool. And we'll go, I didn't know. And I am so sorry. And we'll just hope that we can look ourselves in the face and go, you know what, actually I didn't realize that I was doing that and that was hurting you. And for that, I'm sorry. And that's the difference, I think, between somebody who wants to be a cycle breaker and who is a cycle breaker and somebody who just chooses

to put the blinkers on and continue as they are. Yes, absolutely. I, you know, so many people who are angered by the things that I say will tell me, you know, they almost fantasize about the day that my children cut me off and don't speak to me anymore. And I get emails about this and blah, I'm like, you know, the difference here is exactly what you're saying that I know, I know that my children, my kids, you know, my three-year-old now can tell me like, I don't like when you did that. That made me angry. You didn't say thank you. You know, we'll call me out on things even that that becomes normal in your relationship for your child to tell you when they don't like things or when things upset you and for you to take accountability and apologize.

You know, you talked about this with your teenage son, that there is an understanding that you and I are both saying, I know my kids are going to be unhappy with parts of my parenting. I know there are going to be things that I did that were not great or perfect moments when I was stressed when I was going through my own thing and I wasn't showing up in the best way. And when that happens, because I know it's going to happen, will I have the capacity to look at my child and say, you're right? That was a really hard time for our family. I messed up here. I messed up there. I apologize. I take responsibility. Here's how I'm going to fix it. You have that ingrained and that's the cycle breaking. It's not being perfect. It's not, you know, not doing anything wrong, especially because I

think there are a lot of parents and maybe there are even some parents listening now who say, I did so much better than my parents. Yes. And my kids are still upset with me. They still think I was bad. And that is, that's true for my, you know, my own parents and for me that we're all doing hopefully better than the generation before us. And that doesn't absolve you of this accountability. And so trying to be perfect, trying to only be better than what came before you can also get you in trouble, I think. You know, I'm sure it sounds like you're doing things very differently than your own mother and your kids will still probably have things to say. Absolutely. And they say them loudly you know two two of them are one of them is a teenager one of them is not far off and

they say loudly and they will tell me you know you lower your tone and i'm like yes okay and it's really difficult that can also be quite triggering as a cycle breaker because you're thinking who is this small human saying to me you behave yourself and you change your attitude towards me and don't speak to me like that mom and you think my goodness if I'd have done that I would have had a slap you know any of these things and you think how lucky are you and you don't even realize that you're lucky and you're so privileged to have me as a mum taking this when actually it could be so much worse and that's the pitfall that we fall into of getting stuck in that thought process of you're so lucky you've got me because I had this okay yes yes sure that is lucky that they have a voice that they have a voice that

feel empowered to use that voice and at the same time, you've hurt them. And they're telling you. So set that aside, what are you going to do about this? And it might be that you have to say, do you know what right now? I just need to go away and calm down because right now I can't do the whole listening to you and saying I'm really sorry because I want to throttle you. And I'm going to have to just take a few minutes away. And my son actually made me smile the other day. We'd had a conversation and he had been awful with me. It was that kind of teenage, literally hands in pockets shrugging, going, and what? And I thought, oh, good Lord, I could throttle him. I was enraged. And you can feel the heat bubble up and I was thinking, no, I'm going to walk away. So I walked away for a few

minutes. And I came back and I said to him, okay, downstairs now. And he looked at me and he just went, fine, and stomped downstairs. And I sat him down and I said, Tim, look, let's just talk this out. And we did. And he said to me yesterday, do you remember that thing that we talked about a couple of weeks ago? And I went, yeah, you're doing it right now. And I went, oh, okay. Because what I was doing was not letting him finish his sentence. And he was getting enraged. But his way to deal with that was to stop communicating, to get really cocky, to, you know, kind of shut me out and just the big bravado of a teenager. because he didn't know how to communicate that that was making him angry.

And as soon as he said that to me, that thing that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, you are doing it now. I could see where he was at and I could see his point of view. And I stopped and took a step back and went, okay, thank you for telling me. Give me a minute.

And I had a minute. And then we could communicate. And that, reflecting on that, that's huge for me. And it does always make me laugh when people say, I hope your children do to you what you've done to them because I often will reply

with, if I treat them the way my mom treated me, I hope they do too, because that's the adult I'm raising, who knows their worth and has boundaries and doesn't have to wait until they're in their 30s to say no more. I hope truly that if I make them feel even a shred the way my mom made me feel for so, so long, that they feel empowered to say you are not safe to be in my life, because that's the goal to raise adults that can do them. Yeah. Thank you for walking us through, like, that beautiful example of showing that you mess up as a parent. I mean, I do all the time. And to be able to, I'm sure this is a structure that you have built over your son's life of practicing this.

But to show that you can make mistakes, you can repair in the moment, you can both give each other's space to cool down, to come back, to negotiate what's going on, and to learn. from one another. I think sometimes people have this false belief that, especially as a cycle breaker, you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself to do all these things differently and to raise kids that don't have any of these quote unquote, like, difficult behaviors. And you're still seeing that in your child because it's developmentally appropriate and giving yourself the space to be like, wow, look, we just like negotiated that. And now we're closer because we gave each other the space and the ability to share when we were upset. So I think that's an amazing example for people to hear and kind of see how they can implement that in their own life. So thank you.

But I think that is a perfect note to kind of end our conversation on because it's such a great example of how this work comes to life. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about, I know you just released a book, but what is next for you, where people can find you. Please tell us everything. Yeah, absolutely. So my book is unfollowing mom, break unhealthy patterns and be the parent you'd wished you'd had. And when I say that, what I mean is that parent that can respect you as an individual that can see you for you and allow you to flourish and to grow. And I hope that that's the parent that everybody really wants to be. And I'm immensely proud of that. You can find

that everywhere. It is actually coming out in the US next, oh, this year, this year now. Amazing. So it is. It should be, we're looking at. I believe April May time, so by the time this goes out, that might already, that might already be out there, which is amazing, amazing to have it go out, you know, across the Atlantic as well. So I'm really excited for that. I also have my podcast on following mum, which is going to continue through 2025. If anyone does want to come and talk to me on that, they are always more than welcome. You know, we do anonymous lived experience stories as well so that people can share their experiences without having to put their name to it. And I think that feel really healing and liberating to talk through with people. And then I am going to be, you know, growing and expanding the unfollowing mum community. I'll also be on Instagram at Harriet Shearsmith. And on TikTok, it's Harriet Shearsmith. So I will be on there. Thank you so much. And congrats on the book coming to the US as well. We will link everything in the show notes. So definitely go there if you'd like to check out all of her offerings. But thank you so much again for

being here with me today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Yeah, of course. 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 Collingholm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Calling Home's terms of service linked in the show notes below. I don't know.