My Parental Estrangement Story
Also, can we all cut Mama Llama a break, please?
My three-year-old daughter selected Llama Llama for me to read during bedtime last week.
We hadn’t read the board book in quite some time. And, as I read the classic children’s story, sadness and anger for little Llama and for Mama Llama started to bubble up, likely due to my already-stirred emotions surrounding parental estrangement, this month’s focus on
.My thoughts swirled with questions: Where’s Llama Llama’s dad? Did he die? How? Did he walk out on them? Did Mama Llama have enough and kick Dada Llama to the curb? What’s the larger story here?
Of course, after I tucked my two little suns into bed, all cozy-wozy, and unable to shake my concerns for these fictional characters, I Googled: “What happened to Llama Llama’s dad?”
As with anything, the Internet delivered.
Online, parents wondered the same, and their conversations sent me. I found this thread on Reddit, and it is everything. Here is one of the gold-star comments that made me LOL:
Like these Redditors, I, too, was disappointed to learn that Anna Dewdney, the author of the series, never acknowledges the absence of Llama Llama’s father. Obviously, this was a deliberate choice made by Dewdney to normalize single-parent households. She wanted to depict an oft-overlooked family dynamic, so that young readers could feel seen—a valid and admirable endeavor.
Sadly, Dewdney passed away in her home in Vermont at the age of 50 back in 2016 due to brain cancer, leaving behind her husband and two children. She also left behind 70 titles for her Llama Llama fans. All have earned New York Times’ bestseller spots. And, in January of 2018, Netflix turned the popular series into an animated television show, casting Jennifer Garner as the voice of Mama Llama.
Dewdney, rhyming sorceress, wrote in a 2013 essay in The Wall Street Journal:
“When we read a book with children, then children – no matter how stressed, no matter how challenged – are drawn out of themselves to bond with other human beings, and to see and feel the experiences of others. I believe that it is this moment that makes us human. In this sense, reading makes us human.”
***
As I mentioned at the top, this newsletter has been covering the topic of parental estrangement for the month of February.
The subject is a difficult one to traverse because of its divergent nature: the child is the one who makes the decision to cut ties with one (or both) of the two humans who assisted in their creation. Our culture tends to view the offspring as being rash or rebellious or disloyal. But what many misconstrue is that the child has usually undergone some sort of trauma or abuse from their caretaker(s) and thus has made a very difficult choice to estrange, albeit a necessary one.
On the other hand, when the tables are flipped and the parent estranges the child, we see our society say that the child “had it comin’ to ‘em.” “The child was never x, always y.” Or, they left their parent(s) “no other option.”
As a former public school teacher and now parent, my heart hurts when I hear these statements. If we only sought to understand one another first, then I think we would all feel less alone and more empowered by our choices.
Without a doubt, the decision to estrange from either party is not fun—not ideal—but likely is the best option if the relationship is causing physical harm or psychological damage to the estranging party.
***
I must have been 7 or 8 the first time I asked my mother to divorce my father.
I suppose I had just learned about “divorce”—likely from a friend at school and thought, This would solve all our problems. What I didn’t understand is that it would have increased all our problems, at least, for a long, long while.
My mother and father were both high school drop-outs, who earned their GEDs after I was born. From the outset, they struggled financially, and, for most of my life, they lived paycheck to paycheck, relying on the government for food and healthcare.
My dad has always been a volatile person, and my mother a terrified one, legitimately worried about her own safety and the safety of her children (and for good reason, too. See my essays Snake Night, The Road Trip, and Barbacoa.)
My mom ended up staying in the marriage because she feared the alternative, which would have likely included years of stalking, harassment, and maybe even worse. She couldn’t see a way out because, in her mind, there wasn’t one.
I wonder if Mama Llama felt this way and acted swiftly. I wonder if, early on, Mama Llama saw an escape route and took it.
Growing up, Mom used to sit with us in our rooms just to physically be out of my father’s sight—out of range. She used to lay in our beds with us until we fell asleep, using us as a protective shield and a source of love. She used to keep silent when our father was “disciplining” us because she knew that if she spoke up, the tirade would be worse—cataclysmic.
She made the best choice that she could—not the ideal one.
Isn’t that how it so often goes in life—in parenting?
We make the best choices we can in any given moment, and we ache for the ideal most of the time, rarely giving ourselves grace for the real. And, when we chase the ideal, we are often left feeling depleted, burnt out, or still unhappy. It’s impossible to attain perfection—no matter how much time and energy we pour into the pursuit.
I learned this truth the hard way whenever I became a mom.
I read books, articles, and blogs about breastfeeding, baby-led weaning, and optimal sleep habits. I listened to podcasts about how to deal with my child’s emotional dysregulation while also dealing with my own. I kept a digital diary of my child’s pees and poos, feeds, and sleeps.
I nearly drove myself mad with this data-driven approach of raising a human.
When our second child arrived, I learned to loosen my grip, to ease up my hold, and adopt a healthier approach, one that was led by the heart and followed by the mind—the way that we humans have been nurturing our offspring for centuries.
I can’t imagine my mother doing any of the ridiculous things that I mentioned above for any of her five children. She was already in over her head dealing with other more powerful external forces: my father’s erratic behavior and an ongoing, unreliable financial situation. Plus, she didn’t have the influence of social media pushing her to question her every move and didn’t have access to the wealth of information and resources that we have today.
I’m sure my mother considered the repercussions of our unstable and dysfunctional household, but I also think that she believed that if she loved us enough, her love would suffice and erase or lessen the pain that we endured during our time at home.
And, to some extent, she was right.
***
When my fourteen-year-old brother took his own life on May 9, 2015, our world imploded.
I can vividly recall my mom’s phone call that Saturday morning, the day before her holiday: Mother’s Day. I can clearly remember losing all sense of control over my body, leaving my body, falling on the couch in our tiny NYC apartment, sobbing in the Uber on the way to LaGuardia airport, and eventually meeting the vacant looks on the faces of my parents and my three surviving sisters at the hotel located in the small beach town of Pawleys Island, South Carolina.
We were like the fish in coolers on the piers down the road: lifeless, cold, gutted. Our wide, glassy eyes told the story of our shock: How could this happen? Why did this happen?
There was no way my family could stay in their abode that night or any future nights. The three-bedroom condominium was no longer a home but rather a graveyard of my brother’s existence, of my parents’ identities, and of my sisters’ innocence.
After a short intermission, they relocated to a two-bedroom apartment, and the abrupt downsizing had us all discombobulated and mournful and angry.
How could this happen? Why did this happen?
The cracks in the foundation of our family structure that had been accumulating over my twenty-seven years of life had become unignorable and rapidly started to disintegrate the bedrock.
The end that we had all been patiently waiting for had finally arrived and under circumstances that we could have never imagined or planned for.
It was both tragic and triumphant.
***
2015 was the worst year of my life; 2017 and 2018 were the runners-up.
In the summer of 2017, my father did something—an unforgivable act—that blew our family unit into smithereens. I wish I could elucidate how my mother became invincible that day—a dormant superpower that had been in-waiting for thirty-two years.
But, I can’t—not today.
I can tell you this, now, dear Reader, that it all had to go up in flames in order to be born anew.
***
I recently re-read my dad’s last texts and emails sent in the summer of 2018.
As I opened each message, I noticed a drop in blood pressure and a constricting stomach. Darkness began to invade my periphery, and I acknowledged Nausea’s entrance, an old childhood friend of mine. My body chameleonized into trauma-response, and I raced to reparent my inner child, to mother myself, a practice I’d learned through somatic therapy.
I put my hand over my rapidly-beating heart and whispered to myself, “You’re safe, Katrina. You’re okay.”
I was reminded by my “Sent” folder that, on May 3, 2018, I had forwarded a couple of his emails to the deputy sheriff to justify my request for a wellness check. He had tried to kill himself, to “join Preston.”
My memory fails in recalling if this was the second or third time that my dad had attempted that year. At the time, I was teaching eighth grade English in Queens, New York, and, in a state of panic, after the receipt of my dad’s alarming email, I asked a co-worker to escort my homeroom class at dismissal, so that I could contact authorities.
I thought I was too late.
It turns out I wasn’t, and my father reminded me in a retaliatory email that if he really wanted to off himself, he would do it and there was “nothing that [I] or anyone else could do about it.” He then proceeded to tell me that I was a “disappointment,” a “disgrace,” and to never contact him again (though he continued to contact me after this particularly scathing message).
Shortly thereafter, I forwarded dozens of texts sent by my father to the family court judge that handled my mother’s and sisters’ request for an order of protection or “no-contact order.” The judge granted their pleas and mentioned during the session that if I wanted to, I could press charges for harassment against my dad in New York state.
Her off-the-cuff comment passed along by my mother illuminated an outsider’s perspective of our “situation”—of my “situation.” The Honor’s moment of empathy nudged me to take pause and consider the viability of being the sole child left in communication with my father: Was it worth it to take the abuse?
I never pressed charges.
Not too long after the court date, I was called into my principal’s office one afternoon, shaking in my boots like one of the middle schoolers that I taught, wondering what I had done wrong, why I was “in trouble.” Apparently, due to my recent and impromptu requests for classroom coverage and the staff gossip about my recurring panic attacks, she wanted to discuss my mental well-being.
I had done nothing wrong even though every neuron in my brain shouted the contrary.
After I explained to her my “situation,” she gently recommended that I block my father—even for a short time—to give myself a chance to rest and reset. She encouraged a “mental health day” to do something that brought joy and levity for 24 hours. “And, no marking!” she joked. It was clear to her (and other caring colleagues) that my father’s attacks were taking a serious toll, and they were gravely concerned.
I exited the room feeling astounded by the love and melancholic about my circumstances. I took the next day off and wandered the Conservatory Garden in Central Park.
2018 was also the year that Erik and I decided to start a family.
I had spent the previous three years climbing my way out of complete and total devastation—Preston’s untimely and eviscerating death—readying myself for our next life chapter. My inability to conceive was indisputably connected to the amount of stress and grief I had been experiencing, and I recall falling apart nightly believing the myth that I was too broken to do the thing that my body was designed to do.
Today, as I write this essay, I look back solemnly and remember that awful feeling of hopelessness, of desperation, and I also remember how that experience helped me gain some minor understanding of how my brother made the choice that he did.
I started to consider my principal’s counsel.
My father’s messages had been unpredictable—a reflection of his condition, his bipolar disorder. Sometimes, they were short and harmless, even offering an “I love you” as a salutation. Other times, they were long and abrasive, regurgitating the most acrimonious and murderous things. They either came like an AK-47, showering a thousand bullets, causing massacre. Or, they were one deliberate shot: straight to the heart; bullseye.
His behavior was nothing new. Our family had spent nearly thirty years tiptoeing in our own home, careful not to awaken the beast, careful not to step the wrong way or the “right” way.
I decided to block all communication from my father later that month, and, in October of 2019, I emailed him to let him know that I was pregnant. I wanted him to hear the news directly from me, and I reiterated that I did not wish to resume contact and expressed that I needed to protect myself and my baby from the stress that his words and actions brought into our lives. After pressing “Send,” I felt a tidal wave of grief and anger and then a bombora of relief and calm.
Months later, on February 16, 2020, I was in my third trimester, in the home stretch, when my dad sent an email to my newly-created email address that commanded me not to name the baby after Preston. He waxed that his son’s name had already been dragged through the mud enough—had already been disgraced enough.
Sporadically, over the last five years, my dad has cropped up online via direct messages on LinkedIn, Instagram, or X. When I’d open each letter, I’d wince and stare at that familiar face on the screen, reverting back to little Katrina, heart racing, body icing. His words always sounded so casual, so harmless, even fatherly, but I knew better.
When you’ve been burned by a narcissist time after time after time, you learn your lesson—eventually. It’s better to delete, block, and move on, except you don’t “move on,” not really. You have to keep reminding yourself that this is your new normal. You have to keep reminding yourself how tranquil your day-to-day life is now and how you’re not constantly having to worry about whether or not your dad is alive today or not. You have to keep telling yourself that cutting off your relationship with the man whom you share DNA with is for the best for you and for your family.
Six years and two kids later, I don’t regret my decision.
Six years and two kids later, I still have nightmares about him.
Six years and two kids later, I thank my past self for helping—for potentially saving—my present self. She protected me; she protected my now expanded family, and I’m forever grateful to her.
***
People criticize Mama Llama’s parenting and complain that she should have been more patient with her child, that she should have been more responsive to her child’s needs, but I think that Mama Llama did the best she could given her circumstances as a single mother. And though my mother wasn’t technically a single mother, in a lot of ways, she was.
It’s easy for us to criticize others, to insert our own opinions, particularly surrounding parent-child relationships. What’s not easy for us is to look at ourselves in the mirror.
I wonder how often my dad did that over the years.
I wonder how often he does it now.
I’m a fan of Dewdney’s books, not only because she presents a realistic portrait of an unorthodox family structure, but because she offers a real, honest, and human portrait of life.
Similar to my own mother, Mama Llama likely knew her best was not her ideal, and it doesn’t help her circumstance for the outside world to pass judgment on her or her situation without knowing the full details, without knowing the whole truth.
I long for a culture that doesn’t lead with ridicule. I dream of a society where people take good, long, hard looks at themselves in the mirror before holding the mirror up to others who already feel the weight of their situation. If we would conduct ourselves in this way, then we would be better able to help others see the gifts of their imperfection, to see the beauty in their hardships.
***
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Now, take a deep breath and enjoy this compilation of rappers reading Llama Llama Red Pajama:
You should be really proud of yourself for writing and publishing this, Katrina. I hope letting this story hit the air has helped dissipate some of the grief and tension that holding it in has probably caused you over the years.
This is such tough stuff to talk about, to do, to stay true to your decision and you are right, even when it's been decided it's still there in the background. I'm so glad you took care of yourself by making the decision to remove your father from your life.
I have a sticky note on my computer monitor that says "I will never leave you." When I first heard that quote it felt like I finally realized for the very first time in my life that I was a good person. I'll bet you can relate.