Nora Rivas

“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus”
― Joshua Coleman, Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict

“Not everything happens for a reason. You didn’t get estranged because you were supposed to be taught some purposeful lesson in order to become stronger, wiser, whatever. God didn’t deliver this nightmare to teach you how to become better at suffering. You were probably pretty good at it before you became estranged. You became estranged because bad things happen to good people. And even if you made monstrously terrible decisions with your children, nothing makes you deserving of a life without them in it. If your kids are unable to see you as worthy of love, acceptance, and forgiveness, then you have to find redemption in that small crack in the continuum of catastrophe, as Walter Benjamin put it. And guard it with your life.”
― Joshua Coleman, Rules of Estrangement: Why Adult Children Cut Ties and How to Heal the Conflict