My father was an immigrant from Italy and had very set ideas around permitted activities for young women. I lived in a middle class family community and I was the only one in my social group who had such restrictions that prevented me from freely participating in American teenage life. I rebelled including having a "jail break" young marriage.

Over the years my father I would have periods of reconciliation, and then I inevitably would again do something that didn't fit his set of rules and I would again be banished. I used to joke about living in exile, but actually it was painful and shameful be have been excluded. It was hard on my mother, my siblings, and member of the extended family as my father expected loyalty to him when I was cut-off.

I worked very hard in my own therapy to have empathy for my father and his perspective on life that was formed in a different place and a different time. I kept at it through out our lives---trying to balance my desire for connect while holding on to my own sense of self. By the time my father actually asked for forgiveness for his harshness and cruelty, I had already long forgiven him. By the time his life ended, our relationship was in a much better healed place.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the work of Murray Bowen, Relational-Cultural Theory and years of individual therapy. I have been a psychotherapist for more than 35 years, and I believe I do a very good job helping people who are struggling with this family pain. I offer field tested strategies that balance pragmatic hope and radical acceptance. I walked miles in those shoes of estrangement and cut-off and sometimes was knocked to my knees on the journey to repair but got up and kept walking.