Laura Kennedy

speaker

254 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 30 Jul

Laura Kennedy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Women's Podcast · Best of The Women's Podcast: Grieving an estranged parent · 30 Jul 2026 podcast

And there's an enormous process of grief that happens when you decide to

sort of leave someone cut them loose in that way so that they drift away and you know your sort of relationships your relationship ceases and you no longer have any kind of present articulation in the other person's story that's really difficult but it's

I think the cost of not doing it sometimes is so high that you lose yourself in sort of attempting to maintain the relationship.

And that's too high a cost, I think.

Yes, yeah, yeah, I have.

Because I come from a vast maladjusted family.

So, you know, my father is not the only family member that I sort of don't have a relationship with.

And I think even saying that, a lot of the time the presumption will be, well, what's wrong with you?

You know, so yes, I've certainly had people say that, but I think...

one of the difficulties of estrangement is trying to manage and realizing that you need to carry and sort of help other people process their picture of what relationships look like.

Because if, you know, if you decide not to maintain a relationship with, say, a parent who is perhaps behaving in ways that are pretty objectively narcissistic or, you know, abusive or damaging or whatever else,

It's easier to, I think, try to encourage you to mash puzzle pieces together that don't fit than it is to examine the idea that one person's limited experience of what that relationship is is not universal and that there are so many people who, in theory, are owed a particular kind of respect from, say, somebody in their family, a particular kind of dignified treatment, and they don't receive it.

And there are a lot of people who don't give that to people that they should give it to.

And so, yes, a lot of people will say you need to, you should, it's very important, that's your brother, that's your uncle, that's your father, whatever else, but

I think it comes from a lack of understanding that there is no universe with this particular person in which you can recreate the kind of relationship that say they have with their parent.

And there are unfortunately some people who are so deep in

a series of choices that they're not retrievable and they don't wish to be retrieved.

And so the relationship can exist, but it can only exist on their terms in a very specific way.

And that might be irreparably harmful to you.

And that's not, those are not acceptable terms.

Showing 221–240 of 254 · page 12 of 13