The Estranged Heart

The Estranged Heart

Support and community for navigating the emotional storms of parent and adult child estrangement and repairing and transforming relationships with one another in healthy and productive ways.

  1. 1 day ago

    EP271: Why Can't You Just Let It Go?

    In this episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed explores one of the most common and often most painful questions in complicated family relationships: Why can't you just let it go? After a recent conversation about the decades-long history between Kreed and her sibling Kreed examines why remembering and naming relational history isn't necessarily the same thing as holding a grudge. For someone who grew up cast as the “problem child,” being told in adulthood to stop rehashing the past can recreate the very family dynamic that caused harm in the first place: your reaction becomes the problem while the context behind your reaction disappears. Kreed also brings this conversation directly into parent–adult child estrangement. When an adult child continues talking about the past, are they refusing to move forward or are they trying to determine whether the relationship they're being invited back into actually understands what went wrong? And importantly, when does healthy processing become unhealthy rumination? Takeaways: Silence is not necessarily evidence of healing, and talking about the past is not necessarily evidence of being stuck. There is an important difference between processing the past and prosecuting the past. Healing doesn't require erasing relational history. The goal is integration: understanding what happened without allowing it to run the present. The wound doesn't have to disappear from your story. It just needs to stop running your story. RESOURCES & SUPPORT Facebook Support Group (facilitated by Kreed) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/estrangedmotherssupportgroup One-on-One Services Private coaching Consulting Mediation services Connect with Kreed: Website: theestrangedheart.com Email: hello@theestrangedheart.com Support the work: Buy Me a Coffee (donation platform) Disclaimer: Kreed Revere is not a licensed therapist. Nothing in this podcast should be considered or taken as therapy. If you need therapeutic support, please seek out a therapist near you.

  2. 23 Aug

    EP270: The Grace We Give

    In this episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed shares a deeply moving letter originally published by Dr. Joshua Coleman, written by an estranged mother reflecting on her relationship with the mother who abandoned her and the daughter from whom she is now estranged. At the heart of the letter is a question that reaches far beyond estrangement: Can we tell the full truth about how someone hurt us without reducing that person to the harm they caused? This episode explores the difference between understanding and excusing, and what it means to hold accountability, impact, context, boundaries, and humanity at the same time. Why understanding is not exoneration and context does not erase impact How curiosity can help us see the person behind the behavior without denying our own lived experience Why someone else's suffering does not have to be required for our suffering to be legitimate The difference between accountability and reducing another person to a verdict How multiple truths can coexist: You hurt me. You had your own wounds. Both matter. The difficult question at the center of the episode: Am I asking for a kind of humanity that I am unwilling to extend to someone else? RESOURCES & SUPPORT Facebook Support Group (facilitated by Kreed) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/estrangedmotherssupportgroup One-on-One Services Private coaching Consulting Mediation services Connect with Kreed: Website: theestrangedheart.com Email: hello@theestrangedheart.com Support the work: Buy Me a Coffee (donation platform) Disclaimer: Kreed Revere is not a licensed therapist. Nothing in this podcast should be considered or taken as therapy. If you need therapeutic support, please seek out a therapist near you.

  3. 9 Aug

    EP266: Did They Really Know?

    In this episode of The Estranged Heart, Kreed walks through why "knowing better" quietly conflates two different things:  awareness that something was missing and access to a practiced alternative and why that gap matters more than intent does. "You knew better. You just didn't do better." It's one of the sharpest sentences an adult child can hand a parent and it sounds airtight. In this episode, Kreed takes it apart, along with a second claim making the rounds in parenting content: that some parents raise children out of obligation instead of desire. This one applies whether you're the parent trying to understand what you did or didn't have access to, or the adult child trying to understand why "and they loved me" and "and they harmed me" haven't felt like they could sit in the same sentence. Key Takeaways: "Knowing better" and "having access to better" are not the same thing.  Harm doesn't require intent to be real, and it isn't the same claim as abuse.  Regulation - not love, not intention - determines whether Both/And is possible.  RESOURCES & SUPPORT Facebook Support Group (facilitated by Kreed) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/estrangedmotherssupportgroup One-on-One Services Private coaching Consulting Mediation services Connect with Kreed: Website: theestrangedheart.com Email: hello@theestrangedheart.com Support the work: Buy Me a Coffee (donation platform) Disclaimer: Kreed Revere is not a licensed therapist. Nothing in this podcast should be considered or taken as therapy. If you need therapeutic support, please seek out a therapist near you.

  4. 26 Jul

    EP265: One Relationship. Two Experiences.

    In this episode of The Estranged Heart Podcast, Kreed explores one of the most painful and perplexing questions estranged parents ask: How can my adult child remember our relationship so differently than I do? She introduces a perspective - that there was never just one relationship. There were always two: the relationship the parent experienced and the relationship the child experienced. Rather than asking whose memories are "right," Kreed invites listeners to consider a different question: What was it like to be my child inside the relationship I remember? Through a relational lens, she explains why parents often remember the relationship through their intentions, sacrifices, and responsibilities, while adult children remember it through their emotional experience, sense of safety, and whether they felt truly seen. This episode challenges the assumption that shared events create shared experiences and explores how curiosity - not certainty - can become the first step toward greater understanding and, when possible, reconciliation. In this episode, you will learn: Why parents and adult children often carry two very different experiences of the same relationship. The difference between remembering events and remembering emotional experiences. Why understanding another person's reality does not require abandoning your own. Takeaways 1. There was never just one relationship. Parents and children often experience the same family through entirely different emotional realities. Both perspectives can be genuine without being identical. 2. Intentions and experiences are different kinds of truth.A parent's loving intentions do not automatically determine how their child experienced the relationship.  RESOURCES & SUPPORT Facebook Support Group (facilitated by Kreed) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/estrangedmotherssupportgroup One-on-One Services Private coaching Consulting Mediation services Connect with Kreed: Website: theestrangedheart.com Email: hello@theestrangedheart.com Support the work: Buy Me a Coffee (donation platform) Disclaimer: Kreed Revere is not a licensed therapist. Nothing in this podcast should be considered or taken as therapy. If you need therapeutic support, please seek out a therapist near you. In this episode, you'll learn:Key Takeaways

  5. 19 Jul

    EP264: Hard Truths Require Soft Landings

    In this episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed discusses the difference between measuring a moment and measuring a pattern, why safety and comfort aren't the same thing, what repair actually sounds like, and Kreed's answer to the parents who ask if any of this just amounts to walking on eggshells.A viral claim says adult children who won't tolerate "difficult conversations" are setting themselves up for a lonely life. Kreed pushes back on the premise and makes the case that the real question was never whether hard truths get said, but whether the relationship is strong enough to hold them. KEY TAKE AWAYS Challenge isn't the problem. Shame paired with challenge is. Most adult children aren't asking for relationships free of disagreement. They're asking that hard truths stop arriving bundled with contempt, dismissal, or a demand for compliance. Repair predicts outcomes more than conflict does. Two people can say the exact same hurtful thing. The one who gets curious about the impact instead of defending the intent is the one building a relationship that can survive being wrong. Safety and comfort are not the same word. Growth requires discomfort. It doesn't require unsafety. Confusing the two means fighting the wrong battle -  trying to convince someone that life is hard, instead of asking whether the relationship stays intact while they move through something hard together. RESOURCES & SUPPORT Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms of Adult Children (facilitated by Kreed) - https://www.facebook.com/groups/estrangedmotherssupportgroup One-on-One Services Private coaching Consulting Mediation services Connect with Kreed: Website: theestrangedheart.com Email: hello@theestrangedheart.com Support the work: Buy Me a Coffee (donation platform)

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Support and community for navigating the emotional storms of parent and adult child estrangement and repairing and transforming relationships with one another in healthy and productive ways.

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