The Estranged Heart

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 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

• 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?

  
  

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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.

What happens when a formerly estranged mother says, “My biggest regret is how I parented my children,” and lets that sentence stand without defending herself?

When Kreed shared that reflection in a short video, hundreds of thousands of people watched. Many adult children responded with something that stayed with her: relief. Some parents responded by asking why children expect perfection from people who loved them and tried their best.

In this episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed explores the gap between those responses. What can we hear when we stop treating accountability as a demand for perfection? How does defending our intentions get in the way of understanding our impact? And what happens when we focus so closely on an adult child’s tone that we miss what they are trying to tell us?

• A parent can acknowledge harmful behavior without claiming they never loved their child or got anything right.

• Pausing before defending can help us hear the concern beneath a difficult delivery while still maintaining boundaries around harmful behavior.

• Accountability begins with what we are willing to examine and change; it does not guarantee forgiveness, access, or reconciliation.

  
  

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed explores the space between understanding how we were raised and taking responsibility for how we relate today. Drawing on her perspective as a reconciled mother, reconciled adult child, and estrangement and reconciliation coach, she considers what a parent may feel at risk of losing when they become curious about their impact.

Where did we learn what a parent deserves, what a respectful child does, and who gets the final say? And what happens when our adult children question beliefs we have treated as facts for most of our lives?

This conversation includes:

• Why a concern about behavior can feel like a threat to a parent’s whole identity.

• Loyalty to our own parents, grief about our upbringing, and the expectation that our children will follow the rules we followed.

• How repeated dismissal can make an adult child more guarded.

• Why curiosity requires more than asking questions - it needs room to affect our choices.
  

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed explores why compassion can feel like taking sides in family estrangement. After an estranged parent criticized her direct approach, an adult child responded that the directness was precisely what helped her. Those two reactions opened a larger conversation about grief, validation, accountability, and what happens when recognizing one person’s suffering feels like dismissing another’s.

Takeaways:

• Compassion is not agreement

• Acknowledging a parent’s grief does not make an adult child responsible for it

• Meaningful support can combine tenderness with difficult questions.

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 fifth anniversary episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed reflects on five years of The Estranged Heart - reconciliation cases, the grief of death before reconciliation, and the people whose lives have changed even while their relationships remain estranged. 

This episode introduces the Questioning Estrangement podcast, a new podcast co-hosted with Kreed and Kelly Rhyne, LCSW, debuting November 5. The Estranged Heart podcast continues.

Kreed closes this episode with a letter to estranged people and those who support them personally and professionally.

Content note: Discussion of death, unresolved relationships, and grief.

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 the final mini episode closing The Estranged Heart podcast's fifth year, Kreed considers questions that seek understanding, questions that seek confirmation, and the influences that shape parents' explanations of estrangement. She draws on her experience as a reconciled mother and adult child while examining the limits of applying one family's story to another.

We can ask a question while having very little room for an unexpected answer. What helps us recognize that in ourselves?

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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.

When a parent hears a specific concern as “I'm a terrible mother,” the conversation can shift toward defending an entire identity. What happens to the original concern then?

In the fourth of five mini episodes closing The Estranged Heart  podcast's fifth year, Kreed reflects on shame as one possible barrier to examining our impact. Drawing on patterns she encounters in her work and her willingness to name her own controlling parenting, she considers how parents can stay specific, seek appropriate support, and make room for their adult child's experience.

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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.

“But I'm her mother.” What does that sentence hold and what happens when the relationship no longer provides the place a parent expected?

In the third of five mini episodes closing The Estranged Heart podcast's fifth year, Kreed explores the distinction between role and relationship. She considers how being needed, consulted, or included can become tied to a parent's sense of self, and how those expectations can affect estrangement or reconciliation.

The reflection includes her Manager → Consultant → Mentor → Witness framework, the messages parents absorb about being a good mother or father, and small ways to make room for identity beyond the parenting role.

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 the second of five mini episodes closing The Estranged Heart  podcast's fifth year, Kreed reflects on participation, belonging, imagined futures, and the grief that may remain after reconciliation. She considers how parents can find support for their loss while respecting what the current relationship with their adult child can hold.

Some losses in estrangement arrive through missed milestones. Others appear in an ordinary moment when there is something you would have shared with your child.

The episode also makes room for the protective distance that can sit beneath “I don't care,” without assuming that every parent's statement means the same thing.

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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 mini episode of The Estranged Heart podcast, Kreed reflects on her own controlling parenting and the quieter forms of pressure she notices in her work. She explores how the history of parental authority can remain present in adult relationships, why control over contact is only part of the story, and what parents can practice during estrangement or reconciliation.

Control can be loud. It can also arrive through advice, concern, and gentle persistence.

TAKEAWAYS

• You can feel disappointed and still let their answer stand.

• Insight does not require an announcement to your kid. 

• The existence of parental authority is not the whole concern. How we use authority matters.

• The same exchange can mean different things to the people in it.

• Each individual act may feel like helping. Taken together, they may make the relationship costly unless your child changes course.

🎧Listen wherever you get your podcasts (ie: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)

📱 Follow The Estranged Heart: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube

RESOURCES & SUPPORT

Facebook Support Group for Estranged Moms (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: [email protected]

• 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.