Earlier this year, editor-turned-author Eamon Dolan published The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement, combining research, reportage and his own experience to explore the knotty issue of parental estrangement. And people who are appalled by her decision “don’t have the context of the relationship beforehand – he wasn’t really a great dad. According to Dr Becca Bland PhD, a coach and researcher who is a leading expert on family estrangement, while each estrangement is unique, there are certain themes that repeatedly come up. “We see this in the US right now; it’s a very divided nation in terms of values,” she says to this last point. “That stigma is really strong,” says Dr Lucy Blake, an academic specialising in family estrangement and the author of Home Truths: The Facts and Fictions of Family Life.