Don’t Judge My Estrangement From Family — It Saved My Life
When it comes to understanding the deeply personal pain of being estranged from family members, the stigma is as severe as public knowledge is shallow.
Because I’m a standup comedian and therefore, by default, kind of a monster, I jokingly compare the broad spectrum of families to The Cosby Show. On television, the Huxtables were the perfect multi-brown family. Off-screen, the family’s persona was ruled by a narcissistic rapist who used that family-friendly image to wreak havoc on the lives of dozens (and dozens) of women. In other words, the only family anyone should be passing judgment on is their own — everyone else’s is an exercise in speculation.
But thanks to Hollywood, daytime television, holiday marketing, social media, and deeply ingrained cultural norms, we have a very fixed idea of what family should look like. As a result, many “non-traditional”—non-binary, non-nuclear families—have trouble legitimizing themselves on the public stage. Non-biological children of adoptive parents, a category in which single sex couples often exist, for example…
