Family - reconnecting
Whether you are estranged from your family, haven't seen them in a long time or have never met them - you may be interested in exploring reconnecting with them. In this page we have collected lots of guides and resources to help you work out whether you want to find and pursue a relationship with a family member(s) and what to be aware of.
People can be apart from their families for a whole host of reasons. You may wish to fully reconnect. You may never wish to never have anything to do with them again. You might want something in-between. Your relationship may end up being very strong or it might fall through entirely - or again, it could end somewhere in between.
Top three tips:
If you choose to connect, do this because you want to. Don't do it for anyone else.
Be prepared for any outcome and make sure you have a social/support network who can support you.
Remember to always put your safety first and foremost.
Siblings Together is a UK based charity that promotes positive contact between brothers and sisters separated in foster care, kinship care, residential care, or adoption. We are the only UK-based organisation focused on this need, and are widely acknowledged as the leading independent voice on issues of sibling contact in care. Webpage: About Us - Siblings Together
FamilyConnect helps adults who have been adopted or in care find answers to questions about their origins. Finding out about your background and family members can help you understand inherited health risks, make important life choices and understand more about why you were separated from your birth family. Lots of people aren’t aware of their legal rights when accessing their birth and care records, or what they can expect to receive and how to go about searching for information in the first place. Webpage: FamilyConnect
How to Re-Establish Contact With an Estranged Family Member
Estrangement looks different in every family. For some, there’s a clear before and after when all contact ends. For others, one person might distance themselves from the other without ever explicitly stating that they’re doing it or why. But one thing the majority of estrangement cases have in common (...) is that the estrangement is usually initiated by the adult children.
Website: Good Housekeeping
How to Rekindle a Relationship With Estranged Family Members
Regardless of how long you've been separated from family, there may come a time when you think about rekindling the relationship. The mere thought of resuming contact might stir up a lot of uncomfortable emotions though—such as fear, sadness, anger, or hurt. But the thought of having a relationship once again might also make you happy at the same time.
When it comes to reconnecting, however, you might not know where to start. How do you reach out? What do you say? And how can you establish a healthy relationship this time?
These strategies can help you make attempts to rekindle the relationship with an estranged family member.
Website: VeryWellFamily
How I Reconnected With My Family After 8 Long Years
Today I’m sharing with you an update on recent life events and something that I thought would never happen – reconnecting with my family after eight long years.
For years I felt stifled and not able to speak about my past. I hid my past and listened to people that said to lie about it. It made me feel awful, ashamed. It should have been a red flag to not have people like that in my life and I now know differently. I buried a piece of myself and gave my control over to people that didn’t deserve it. I allowed them to control my life.
The thing was I was starving for love. I felt unloved, I felt not good enough and by accepting someone else’s version of what they thought of me, I bought into that version too.
Website: So Much Better with Age
What does the research say?
Estrangement doesn’t necessarily last forever for all relationships in all families. A research project between the University of Cambridge and the estrangement charity, Stand Alone, found that estrangement from fathers was the most common, and that it tends to last an average of almost eight years. Estrangement between brothers tends to last seven and a half years, while between sisters it averages seven years. Estrangement between mothers and their adult children averages five and a half years. This is not to say you should have a relationship with the family members you have no/little contact with though. That is a decision only you can make - whatever you think is best and safest for you.