“Ich bin allein, und freue mich meines Lebens in dieser Einsamkeit, die mir in diesem Paradiese gewährt wird.”
“I am alone and rejoice in my life, in this solitude that is granted to me in this paradise.”
– Goethe, Werther
Many people live with estrangement — though it’s often hidden, quiet, or unnamed.
Some have chosen it — walking away from families or relationships that were distorted, unsafe, or built on denial. Others have had it forced upon them — by systems, governments, prisons, ideologies, or silence.
Political prisoners, for example, live in a form of estrangement that is not just emotional but spatial and existential. Political estrangement can be a form of punishment — used to isolate, silence, and sever people from their relationships, communities, and identities. Their families, too, grieve in invisible ways.
Estrangement can take many forms:
- A parent who longs for contact with a child who no longer speaks to them
- A queer teenager forced to leave their family home
- A political prisoner cut off from society
- A daughter who can no longer stay in contact with her parents for her own emotional safety
- A person who has left a religious community they once called home
Estrangement exists on a spectrum — from personal ruptures to political exile. As feminist thinkers like Carol Hanisch and Susie Orbach remind us, the personal is political. Whether it’s a private rupture within a family or the public silencing of dissent, the emotional and relational consequences often echo each other — a sense of being unseen, unmoored, and quietly longing for something emotionally and morally whole.
Whether in the personal or political realm, the act of upholding your values — refusing to stay silent, complicit, or small — can lead to estrangement. Sometimes, separation is the cost of staying true to yourself. Of remaining emotionally and morally whole.
