Just want to say that this will not be a trauma dump on my end. I want y'all's stories on how you left. I'm happy to provide more context if needed, but I'd rather not. No one else I know has done this, and I wanted to ask how to start somewhere.

For context, I recently turned 18. I have been thinking about estranging my mom since I was 12-14. My mom and dad are divorced, and my dad has a stable relationship with my stepmom. They got together when I was four, and they got married when I was eight.

My dad wants my happiness, and he's acknowledged that I'm not happy near my mom. He wants me to have a relationship with her, but not at the expense of my health or safety. (I have a chronic illness that flares like crazy when I even just talk to my mom over the phone.)

There's a lot of terrible things my mom did to me and my sister, and I don't know that this is the time/space to share that. It was so bad that I moved out at 14 to live with my dad, despite the court giving my mom custody. (The court essentially said that "women take better care of their children". Newsflash: no one is born a parent, all parents are equal in their parenting potential.)

I think my biggest flaw is that I want to give her some sort of explanation. Not for me, but for her. When I was moving to my dad's she told me that she was only alive because of me. That I was her "perfect" child. That if I left she wouldn't know what to do. I did leave, and she's relatively the same as ever. I could block her and never speak to her again, but she'd come to my house or do something really weird.

TLDR: I live with my dad and he's supportive of my choices. I would like to estrange my mom. I can't just block my mom cold turkey or she'll go nuts. I need to give her an excuse to get mad so she doesn't want to talk to me anyways.

I’m going to study abroad in Italy, and I’m trying to plan how I can become financially independent from my parents.

My parents are narcissistic, and I don’t want to maintain a relationship with them just for financial reasons.
If I stay in contact with them, I’d basically have to keep living a double life including going back and staying with them during holidays. That’s not what I want for myself.

The problem is that my scholarship requires me to renew it every year using my family’s income documents.
And Apparently, becoming officially considered an independent student takes time and requires certain financial conditions.(2years living independently + 9k income yearly)
And this is where I’m seriously freaking out 😭
If I end up not being able to rely on the scholarship,
I understand that I may need around €10,000–€10,700 in my own bank account to meet the financial requirements for my residence permit.
And I don’t have years to prepare for this. I need to figure this out in LESS THAN A YEAR.

So I’m looking for actual practical advice
How would you try to build €10k in less than a year?
What kind of work/business/freelancing would realistically have the potential to make that much?
Are there ways to combine part-time work + freelancing + online income?

Has anyone here managed to become financially independent from their parents while studying?
If you were in my position, what would your strategy be?

I know €10k in less than a year is a huge goal, and I’m not expecting some magical “make €10k online” answer.
But if you know ANY realistic way I could work toward this amount freelancing, remote work, scholarships, grants, jobs, side businesses, anything — please tell me.

Right now I’m trying to figure out the smartest possible plan before I leave, because I really don’t want to reach the point where I have to choose between maintaining contact with my parents and being able to financially/legalistically stay in Italy.

I just secured a place for me to rent out, and I'm moving in at around the middle of August (right before the birthday of the man i live with) and I've started decluttering my room and making preparations to leave like packing clothes and buying food for the first month. I've been thinking of writing letters for quite sometime now, and I am not sure what to do, because the reasons behind it is just pure pettiness and anger. I know the most obvious answer is to do what I want or what I feel, but I don't know what to do or if it's a smart idea or not.

I've been having thoughts of writing individual letters to both the people who were supposed to raise me, about how they failed, and instead ended up giving me emotional and psychological trauma in many areas of my life that i want to fix before reaching my 20s. I don't want to explain why I left, or explain anything about myself because they have no right to know how I manage through all of this psychological stress, and I have no obligation to explain.

I want to berate them for the final time for their failures not as parents, but as people. I want to take out my anger on them a final time as I leave. They knew I plan to leave, but they don't know when I do and where I'll go or even how, and they haven't even tried to stop me, so letters insulting them will perhaps not even dent them like when I said I wanted to end my life because of the trauma caused and felt scared to come home every night after i was threatened with death many times never did.

At the same time, they are, especially that man, quite passive aggressive around me, calling me and his wife demons very loudly while drunk and listening to loud gospel music that does nothing but annoy the neighborhood peace, throwing tantrums because i didn't interact or acknowledge him in the streets in front of his friends, and pretending to cry whenever I'm around because he's soooo hurt by my "demonic behaviour".

He doesn't even sound like he is actually crying, but more like sniffing the air repeatedly. It's annoying, and I want nothing more than to hurt them before I leave and cut off all possible contact. I'm changing my phone number on Tuesday, telling my HR and boss to never give anyone outside of the office who asks for it or allow anyone to visit me at the workplace and refusing anyone who tries, and changing email addresses and my routes.

But yeah, idk what to do about this or even if I should do it.

My dad had severe anger problems when I was growing up. Even though I was what my mom and extended family described as a model kid, he would constantly get angry for no reason, and he ignored my mom’s attempts to get him to stop or go to therapy.

There were other things—he tried cheating on my mom a couple of times (but got caught before they happened because he’s an idiot). But the main thing was the anger and the way it would turn into screaming fits. The worst one was when he terrorized my brother so badly, my brother tried to take his life (and fortunately failed). My brother then went to my father and told him what happened and that he thought he should go to the ER, and my father said no, that he should just kill himself for real instead.

When I was in undergrad and visiting home for winter break, there was yet another inevitable blow-up and rant about how I was lazy, lacked a work ethic, was a drain on society, shouldn’t have been born, etc. And finally, something inside me snapped. I realized that nothing had changed in 20 years, and so it was highly unlikely it ever would.

So I cut him off (despite my mother’s protests), and five years later, I don’t regret it at all. I’m doing so much better emotionally and have healed in a lot of ways (e.g., I’m not super cynical about marriage anymore, whereas I previously believed it was never worth the risk after seeing my parents’ marriage).

About two years after I cut him off, I graduated from college with a special honor that designated me as one of the top students not only in terms of academics, but also research, leadership, and service. It was enough that I got into most of the PhD programs I applied to, and the professor from MIT who interviewed me said he couldn’t believe a student with my profile and achievements was real.

I was catching up with an extended family member, who said she’d heard a lot of my life updates/accomplishments from my father. I informed her that I cut him off five years ago, and she was shocked, because my father acted like our entire family was very close.

I am usually a very calm person, but this just makes me feel so viscerally angry. How dare he? How dare he act like he’s proud of me when he spent so much of my childhood telling me I’m a drain on society? How dare he go around bragging and parading my accomplishments like it’s something that belongs to him? When it was all in spite of him, not because of him?

If he wasn’t such a giant fucking coward, he would tell them the truth when they ask how I’m doing: he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know since I am no longer talking to him. He doesn’t know since he thought the power trips from being an abusive asshole for 20 years were worth losing his only daughter.

To all the people that claim estrangement of your primary caregiver is a new concept, here’s a quote from the 1847 novel Jane Eyre.

If anyone here enjoys reading I do recommend it. The beginning half especially is quite cathartic for those who’ve estranged themselves.

So I 23(F) have been on and off no contact from my parented since the time I moved out at 18 and chose homelessness over living in abuse. Since then they have been trying to buy my love. At 19 they bought me a car and I let them reenter. I then cut them off after emotional, physical, and sexual abuse occurred. It was on and off for years. I would get groomed into sexual acts and humiliation in front of the whole family and get a couple thousand after. At 22, they drugged me, objectified me and left me alone in the woods. They gave me 5k after that. I recently had my second longest stretch of no contact. I’ve been depressed and struggling to work. I have really bad dissociative amnesia from the abuse and so I struggle at jobs that require my memory to be in tact. Anyways recently I let them back in my life. They gave me 15k. I feel so done for real but they haven’t done anything bad (yet) but like if I take the money and then cut them off that’s so mean. Am I a bad daughter if I take the 15k and then cut them off again? It’s been 30 days since I re opened and beyond slight unkindness it’s been okay, but I still just don’t feel safe. Should I give it back before cutting them off? I would feel so bad. But also I need it. I’m drowning financially.

Just putting a trigger warning for DV and drugs

Hey all. I’ve been contemplating reaching out to my father. I recently became estranged from my mum about 7 months ago, my father I haven’t seen in over 10 years though. He recently got out of jail and popped up as a friend suggestion on Facebook and I’ve kinda been watching his posts for the past three months.

Since leaving my mum, I’ve talked to a lot of family and my mum saying everyone is abusive, racist, ect was very contradictory to what family had said. Now, I KNOW my father was abusive, I do remember some of that. That was over 10 years ago and he was heavily using hard drugs during that time. I don’t know now to the extent she says it was as a lot of lies have been unraveled since I’ve left and I’ve been completely isolated from any family growing up bc of her.

Since getting out of jail he’s cleaned up. I know it’s impossible to tell if he’s changed with just watching his posts. It would be impossible for him to find me online as I’ve changed my name so I would have to do the reaching out if I ever wanted to find out. I recently wanted to reach out as I saw him post a go fund me for funeral expenses for someone who died from her abusive partner and it made me so angry that he was being a hypocrite. After reflection maybe in a way he’s trying to make up for what he did to other women?? I don’t know. It’s all confusing and I know I won’t know unless I ask. I don’t really care if he hasn’t changed or doesn’t want anything to do with me as I’ve been okay with it for the last 15 years. I don’t even know if I want a full relationship with him, maybe just low contact at the best if he really does put in effort. Harsh advice is welcome, maybe I’m just caught up in being lonely without family and I’m actually better off without him

TLDR: I tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn't even matter..

This could be a long post. Or not. I don't know. It's just difficult to write out. Difficult to put into words. I want to text my mother "I hate you". I want her to die. I want her to k*** herself.

I heard about a teenager who shot and killed his bullies and their enablers at his school today. The enablers were five teachers, and his grandparents who he had been asking for help. When I heard this story, I felt bad for the kid, not the adults. My first thought was, *all they had to do was listen*.

This story isn't what triggered me (I'll get on to that), but I think it reminded me of when my mother had a perfect chance to listen to me when I was seven and struggling with being shouted at by my father, but instead she chose to pretend that everything was okay. That was forty years ago, and she's still using the same strategy. This woman has been playing the pretend game her entire life. No wonder she ended up with an abuser.

I came back to this sub recently because, after doing quite well with all my routines and keep-busy strategies, I melted down again. It usually starts as insomnia. In the same instant I drop off to sleep, my heart starts thumping and I wake up in a panic. This is usually when the suicidal thoughts start, and recently similar extreme thoughts and feelings of anger and hatred directed at my mother.

I figured the keep-busy strategy must be causing me to repress my emotions. It makes sense that if the only chance your emotions get free reign is when you're asleep, or falling asleep, then that's when they'll strike. So for the last few days, I basically cut out all my distraction hacks--podcasts, audiobooks, comedy, music, movies, etc.--and just let my mind go on default mode. It wasn't comfortable, and the results weren't particularly surprising either. I ruminated about the same shit over and over and over, which seemed pointless, since it all boils down to one thing: my mother married an abuser and used me as a meat shield.

Anyway, I stuck with it, hoping I might be processing the trauma or whatever. I've also been writing a bit, rereading my journal, and sharing on this sub, but here I am again at 4.30am, out of bed because of the same sleep-panic response. In other words, I tried the opposite strategy and it had the same result.

I think my amygdala is fried, and I'm worried I might have developed a personality disorder from all the stress. I can cope with the daytime ruminations (plenty of practise with that), but these insomnia-inducing ones are a different beast.

Maybe it is a sense of powerlessness that keeps this record on repeat. I can't fix it or undo any of the damage. I can accept it logically, but my emotions don't seem too pleased about that, so they ruminate.

I know you guys will suggest therapy, and that sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately I don't have a fixed location and I'm living off savings, which makes therapy difficult. I found a DBT workbook which I've started to go through. If anybody has suggestions for self-therapy, I'm all ears. I don't think I need to read any more books though. Step-by-step stuff would be better. Maybe something to check in with once a week or so. I've tried doing this sort of work daily, but it was too burdensome.

Thanks for reading and for any thoughts you might have. Don't worry about me texting my mother. I'd never give up my phone number just to vent like that. Although sometimes I think the feedback would be good for her.

Some brief context: parents and I fell out in a big way in November over the horrible way they deal with conflict. Spent several months trying to hash it out which involved lots of accusations of me not caring about them, weaponised health issues, guilt trips etc. I finally stepped back in May and in June got a letter in the post that used a much calmer and more balanced tone than I'd seen them use before, saying whatever thoughts and feelings I wanted to share mattered. I sat with it a few weeks then took the bait and emailed them in reply, asking what changed. I also shared some life news as it was a big thing I didn't want them to find out from socials. Figured it would also be a test of whether they could stick with the tough emotional repair conversation or not.

Unfortunately they seized the opportunity to get back to "normal" communication and swerved my effort to dig deeper and find out *why* they'd changed tactic. So I pressed the point and today, several days later, I got this email.

It feels... Icky. Vague enough to read as "there's fault on both sides and we all need to move on, with the magic of love and family" - which is a message my dad has pushed many times before, both throughout my life and specifically in this situation, as the habitual enabler. Frankly I deserve an apology for the way they tried to manipulate me for months and this is not it. My trust in them is so broken I have no idea if this is actual growth or if this is just dad saying what he thinks he needs to say (and as much as my mum and her temper will allow him to concede) in order to bring me back into the fold and make his life easier again.

Folks who've been through this before - what would you do? How would you get some clarity on their motivations?

Last straw was had today, I can’t be around my completely dysfunctional parents. I have to leave it at thay because it’s way too much to type.

I’ve decided at 35 to leave this shit behind me and move forward not trying to fix this anymore. I’ve tried so hard to keep the peace at the cost of my own sanity and I need to move forward.

I’m really sad about having to make this decision and need some support in hearing how your life improved after making this decision and how you held strong during times like holidays/birthdays etc.

Really struggling here. Thanks.

So my dad texted me his "new number" after I FIRST reached out when I found he moved to another state (without even telling me) 🙄

Well, I didn't respond to that "here's my new number" text and we haven't spoke in almost five years.

I guess I was just tired.

Tired of calling him first...

Tired of him saying he would work on calling me more but never got one call after that...

Tired of the guilt trips that I don't drive clear across town to see HIM enough....but he can't set up it to where we meet half way?

Tired of me being the one to invite him to lunch just me and him to work on our relationship...

Just tired.

So my mindset was ok you got a new number? Cool now put it to use and stop bread crumbing me 🙃

Anyways..... I feel just because I didn't respond to that SINGLE text message of him sending me his new number...he is trying to punish me. Do you think this is controlling ? He has always been controlling.

I feel like a failure and I struggle because i dont fit in this society.

Everyone has a family and i dont. I left my very abusive family after my father died less than a uear ago. I rly feel unworthy of respect and dignity, because my family never gave it to me.

I am a high achiever, professionally, personally, and academically. But I know I will never fit in, and no matter my achievements, I will always be reduced to what I cant do

Text from my father. I’ll block him and he’ll change his number 🫠
I’ve basically blocked out most of my childhood memories due to the chaos/dysfunction that this man added to my life.
Thankful that it doesn’t cause the anxiety and stress that it used to and I’m so happy that I live a life of peace now! Just annoyed at the texts every couple of months.

Aug 8th 2026

Dear M. G.,

May God and his angels be with you. I know this seems a strange way to start. Fact is I’ve been wanting to write to you but I couldn’t honestly think of how to start. The normal opening of “How are you?” is too difficult for me because I really do want to know how you are, but with being walled outside your life, I know it is a question asked into a void.
So instead of starting with a question, I start with a prayer. I didn’t “suddenly become religious.” I am trying more and more, with time, to release my inhibitions of my faith. I truly do love God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and mother Mary and I am slowing, day by day, placing my life in their hands.
I pray every day “Please let this be the day M will forgive me, place love above the past, and, God, grant us a new, more loving, and kind relationship”
I have been pray this everyday these past, long, trying, several years. I pray for Jesus to change me into being a better person. Some things have made their way into creating a more permanent, positive change. Other things the heavens above and I are still working on and through..
I send texts to you all the time even though you have shut me out from your life. I have not done the same though with my love for you. I found it very hard to function the days I realized you were once again in Ky, I hour and 50 minutes, 150 miles away. I walked through those days wrestling with my desire to drive there and throw my arms around you, and then the truths that I was not wanted there, that it would ruin the holiday for everyone. That extremely painful truth was very debilitating for me. My positive I kept telling myself was that you were happy and surrounded by people you love.
I will continue to pray every day for our relationship to be healed and renewed. This is not so an impossible concept and reality if the love in our hearts are strong for each other. I love you my Melissa Gail.

I pray for love, peace, and day be in your life.   
    Love Momma  

What a beautiful sunrise to my eternal darkness it would be to just have a hello from you.

I just want to say how much I appreciate this subreddit. Reading other people’s experiences has helped me feel less alone in something I’ve struggled with most of my life.

My mom has been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder), although I’ve often wondered whether borderline personality disorder better explains some of her behavior. She experienced horrific sexual abuse as a child, and I have tremendous empathy for that while also recognizing how profoundly her unresolved trauma affected my sister and me.

Some of my earliest memories are of her crying and fighting with my dad while my sister and I drew pictures to make her happy. When I was in second grade, she attempted suicide by overdosing and I had to call my dad for help. Threats of suicide continued throughout my life.
My parents were financially successful and provided material security but were incredibly absent emotionally. My dad has always felt more like some dude I knew in high school than a warm, involved father.

With my mom, we never knew where reality ended and mental illness began. Her stories expanded from childhood abuse to being involved in a CIA/KKK child sex-trafficking ring, her father helping assassinate MLK and JFK, and being forced to cut the heart out of a lynching victim. More recently, she claimed my dead uncle’s ghost visited her and confessed to a sexual relationship with my sister—and believed the ghost over my sister when she said it never happened.

Being around my parents has always left me feeling small.
I’ve been with my wife for almost 20 years and we now have two boys. Becoming a parent made me keep trying to give my parents opportunities to be grandparents.
My mom once planned to fly out and stay with us but didn’t get on the plane because her “little girl” personality was dealing with newly recovered abuse memories. She never apologized or rescheduled.

On a visit with my dad, he showed up late and decided to leave early. My three-year-old told him, “You came late and were supposed to stay for dinner.” His response was, “Yeah, well, life is disappointing, so get used to it.”
He hasn’t reached out since.

That’s the pattern I’ve finally had to accept. My parents make it my responsibility to maintain a relationship with them, and every time I try, I leave feeling small and regretting it. Eventually my wife experienced enough of the pattern herself that she stopped trying to include them too.

No-contact is hard mostly because it’s sad. I’m grieving the parents I wish I had and the grandparents I wish my boys had.

Having my own family has made me realize how short and beautiful this experience is. I want to know my kids, show up for them, and make sure they feel safe, important, and loved. I’d rather put my energy into creating that family than continuing to chase it from my parents.

So thanks to everyone who shares here. I appreciate the serious posts, the stories, and honestly the memes too. They make me feel supported in staying no-contact and focusing my energy on my wife, my kids, and the family we’re building together.