I always think of this photo of Bud and me from our oldest sister’s wedding, circa 1962. That little girl adored her big brother. She never could have imagined what the future held: that he would break her heart. Photo: BWhetstone collection.
Recently, I wrote about the death of my estranged brother, Bud, and the miserable family history that led to our falling out six years ago. He had left me and my daughter and son out of his listed family members in his obituary, and I was fine with it. I expected it. I described what happened to my relationship with him and my family and was pondering losing an estranged sibling and just noticing how it felt. At the end of the article, I wondered what would happen to all the antiques he had been so determined to possess after our mother died that had caused our final falling out.
Since writing that piece, though, something unexpected has happened.
I noticed that I feel relief. I feel free.
A couple of days after I wrote and posted the article about my brother, I noticed a different feeling in my body. I felt lighter. Unburdened, as if a dark cloud that had been hovering over me for years had suddenly disappeared. I didn’t even realize how much that cloud had weighed on me until it was gone.
As I guided my clients in practicing self-awareness, I sat for a moment to notice what was happening in my mind and body as I felt this shift. The feeling felt like a release of stress, a new sense of safety. I sat for a moment and asked myself why I felt this way. What had happened? What had changed? The answer came quickly.
“Your brother died; he can’t hurt you anymore.”
Wow. Of course. I hadn’t realized how his living nearby, in the same neighborhood, had been weighing on me. That dark energy had been sitting there and looming in the background of my daily life. I was vaguely aware of it, and I had just gotten used to it.
Our bodies constantly scan for danger, numerous times every second. It tries to keep us alive and prevent suffering. I can see now that my soul was on guard because my brother still lived near. He could still sue me or make my life miserable.
With his death, my soul let that little bit of nervous energy go.
Have you ever felt relief when a former friend or loved one passed away? I’m not talking about the relief felt when a suffering loved one’s painful physical battle has finally ended. I am talking about when someone who hurt you has finally drawn their last breath. When you finally realize the threat is over, and they cannot hurt you anymore.
To state the obvious, most of us want a loving, supportive family, but I realized at some point in my life that Whetstones couldn’t provide that. I ended my relationship with Bud after years of his verbal and emotional abuse, being a witness to him sexually demeaning and abusing women who served him in shops and restaurants in ways that were beyond the pale, and his unwillingness to change.
When our mother died in 2020, and he said he would take all of her things, I set a boundary for the first time in my life. He responded by going into scorched-earth mode, with legal demands, subpoenas, and court filings. He was an attorney and used friends who were attorneys to help him for free.
As he prepared to come after me, he called every member of our family, who quickly aligned with him or were silent. No one defended me or called to ask what was going on.
During those awful days, I accepted what I was dealing with and resigned from the family.
As I said, it’s been six years, and I haven’t missed any of them; for me, that’s pretty good confirmation that it was the right decision. It is sad for me that things couldn’t be different. I loved some of those people so much that I couldn’t imagine losing them, but I always remember that the way to end suffering is to recognize what you can’t change and accept it.
The ending had been coming for a long time. Years before the grand finale of hatefulness and rejection, some in my family had already shifted from warm to cold. I will always wonder why; no one ever said. I have long not wanted to pursue people who left me in the dust without explanation. Just to be certain I wasn’t imagining things, though, I made a few attempts to connect before I gave up and got the cold shoulder, so I let them go and never heard from them again.
Free from my family, I feel free to be myself and to write about them, our stories, and the many lessons learned. They have taught me so much about families, humans, relationships, and so much more. Maybe I can help someone else who has struggled with an impossible family. I’ve heard similar stories of familial shamelessness from my clients for over 25 years, so I know there is an energy cord of hurt and sadness that millions of us who have suffered at the hands of our families have tapped into since the beginning of time—we are not alone in our woundedness, and we never will be.
The fear that follows you
I have some of my mother’s belongings that I don’t want and never wanted. Old paintings, rugs—that kind of stuff. She had given them to me over about 10 years before she died because she was afraid Bud would take them. For many decades, he had a history of shopping in her home, especially when they downsized. He either “borrowed” something and never returned it, or got to the goodies first, took what he wanted, and left the leftovers for his siblings, and my mother would call me in a rage. Sometimes he would sell their things, and when I asked about where that certain table was, he’d say, “Oh, I sold it,” or “Oh, I gave it to a friend.”
My mother never stopped raging that he sold her beautiful Lexus without telling her, but that was the kind of thing he would commonly do.
When I moved from Texas to Arkansas in 2012, one reason was to be near her and help, and I was there to assist with the downsizing. She’d shove things in my arms, asking me to take them so he wouldn’t get them. Although I was accused of manipulating her to get her to give me these things, I ignored it and carried on protecting her from the invasive family blob of greed, Bud. I kept most of it in storage, out of sight so Bud wouldn’t see it, intending to divide it all among my family one day after our mother passed away.
After our falling out and the family siding with Bud in his legal pursuit of me, I decided to sell what I had, but I realized I couldn’t. After Bud and my sister M’s lawsuit and all the family ugliness, I was afraid to list them on any online marketplace because I feared my brother or his wife would see it and come after me again in another dreadful legal action.
So, the things have stayed in storage for over 15 years.
Free to shop: Kroger and other worries.
First trip to Kroger after realizing Bud could not be there. Photo: Selfie.
Bud and his wife shopped at the same Kroger store I did.
Every time I went there, I thought I might run into one or both of them. I wondered if they had gotten new cars I wouldn’t recognize in the parking lot. I was relieved when I sold my very trademark red Jeep and got a completely different car, because I knew they wouldn’t recognize me as I drove around town. At Kroger, I scanned the aisles so I could avoid them if I saw them.
I didn’t obsess about it. It was a low-level awareness, a reminder to stay alert. I went about my business. But the thought was there, that dark cloud lurking in the background.
Every time I wrote about them, I kept thinking he or my sister M would feel provoked and come after me again in a potential libel suit, even though everything I write about is absolutely true. I knew what he was capable of; he was already a proven source of bullying and making my life hell.
Even though he was out of my life, he was still in my life, and that’s not freedom.
When your body knows the threat is gone
When I learned Bud had died, I was surprised at how little I felt emotionally. Clearly, I had detached and disengaged. At first, I thought, “Oh, look, I feel nothing; it’s going to be okay.”
Then I felt relief, and suddenly I realized I could sell my mother’s things. I could write whatever I wanted about my experiences. I could walk into the grocery store without wondering whether he would be there.
He could never threaten me again.
And I felt the change in my body.
I felt peace.
When distance is the only way to feel safe
Recently, someone told me she was considering leaving Arkansas because she wanted to get away from estranged family members who lived nearby.
She didn’t want to run into them around town. She didn’t want to worry about unexpected encounters. She didn’t want others asking about them or saying they’d seen them somewhere. She wanted to live somewhere she could go about her business without wondering whether the next person walking through the door would be a mutual acquaintance or someone who had hurt her.
She wanted peace.
I understood her desire in a way I hadn’t before.
People sometimes criticize those who cut off family members, calling them unforgiving, immature, stubborn, or unwilling to work things out.
But they may not understand what it’s like to live with the anticipation of another attack or barb in a chance encounter or family email. To have an unexpected run-in and brace for a snide remark or passive-aggressive verbal jab aimed straight at their heart.
They don’t see the mental calculations behind ordinary decisions.
Should I attend that event? What if they’re there?
Should I post this article? What if they read it?
Should I sell this furniture? What if they accuse me of something?
Should I move to another city, so I never have to worry about seeing them again?
And when people say, “Why do you let them have so much power over you?” they may be missing the point.
Sometimes the concern isn’t simply about hurt feelings or a person’s inability to let go of the past. Sometimes the person remains a threat. We can try to talk our soul and brain out of logging it as such, but your brain cannot be fooled, and the soul holds the truth. It won’t let us run from the truth.
Not every cloud has disappeared
My brother wasn’t the only bully in my family.
My older sister M, who once admitted she dedicated herself to making my life miserable when I was four, is still alive 64 years later and lives in California.
When Bud and M joined forces against me over our mother’s estate, she infamously reported me to my professional licensing board. She went to a lot of time and trouble to make her case, some evil souls can be relentless, but the board found that I had done nothing unethical, but the experience showed me how far she was willing to go, and I know she would do it again.
When they sued me and forced my husband and me to come in for a deposition, she had planned to ask me the questions herself, and though she is a licensed lawyer in California, Bud got her a special allowance in Arkansas so she could legally grill me.
I wasn’t about to participate, even if it meant jail time for contempt of court. As my childhood terrorist-in-chief and my nemesis through our adult lives, I knew I would be retraumatized. Eventually, they found another lawyer to read the questions, but she wrote them all in her distinctive handwriting.
Pages and pages of questions, revealing the many hours she had spent developing a case meant to take me down. I will never forget or forgive her for that.
I’ve noticed some of her friends follow my writing, and I suspect they report to her when I write about life with the Whetstones, or perhaps she follows me herself under an anonymous moniker. At 74, I believe she could and would try to hurt me again if she feels so moved.
So, yes, there is still a cloud out there.
At least M lives far away, and I won’t be seeing her at Kroger.
And I won’t stop writing about my experiences because she might not like what I have to say. I spent too many years accommodating the feelings and demands of people who showed zero concern for mine. I kept the Whetstones’ cruelty and selfishness a secret for a long time.
I’m not doing that anymore.
Relief is not the same as celebrating someone’s death
We have strong cultural expectations about how we’re supposed to feel when someone dies, especially a family member.
“Don’t speak ill of the dead!”
I ask, “Why not?”
Isn’t life for the living? What if we were harmed?
Our culture says we are supposed to be sad. Or at least, pretend to be sad. Focus on the good times, but when you have been abused by your family, that’s asking too much. If my revealing the ugly truth about my family makes you uncomfortable, there are plenty of articles out there about how to grow flowers and other innocuous subjects. Block or stop following me. Brutal truths and realizations aren’t for everyone.
And if we feel relief when a person who harmed us dies?
For the traditionally minded, that might seem shameful. Perhaps you can’t imagine your family doing the awful things other families have, so you prefer to live in a see-no-evil world where everyone is like you. Must be nice.
Feeling relief after someone who harmed you dies does not necessarily mean you wished them dead or took pleasure in their suffering. I would never wish my family dead or want any human to suffer. I am simply glad I don’t have to think about what’s lurking out there anymore. Our chapter in the Bud and Becky story is closed.
Dr. Becky Whetstone is America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®. She specializes in marriages in crisis, couples on the brink, and people who need intensive marriage work, but she also works with individuals and couples not in crisis who want a more aggressive approach to therapy and healing. She created the marriage crisis management intervention and wrote the book “I (Think) I Want Out: What to Do When One of You Wants to End Your Marriage.”
She founded Relationship University, an educational support community that teaches adults the relationship skills our culture and families should have taught us, but didn’t. She also trains therapists in marriage crisis management.
Work with me: If your marriage is in serious trouble or you are in crisis, click here to work with me. For individual therapy or non-crisis couples therapy, click here.
Becky is an Amazon affiliate. If you purchase her book through the link, she may earn a small fee at no extra cost to you.
