As featured in Woman’s World Magazine – Tania Khazaal, family estrangement expert, discusses the hard truth about what your daughter really means when she says she needs “space” or is “protecting her peace” – from someone who said those exact words to her own mother.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:
This guidance is for parents navigating estrangement where there was love, but also hurt, miscommunication, and emotional distance over time. If your adult child experienced abuse, ongoing harm, or serious safety concerns in your home, this work may not be the right place to begin and support from a qualified professional would be more appropriate first. I do not support abusive or harmful behavior in any form. My work focuses on helping parents rebuild connection in situations where relationships became strained, not dangerous.
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Key Takeaways: Why Adult Daughters Seek Distance
- Self-Preservation over Punishment: Estrangement is rarely about “hating” a parent; it is a self-protection mechanism used to escape unacknowledged emotional pain and create space to breathe.
- The “Validation Gap”: Modern therapy culture often creates an emotional echo chamber for adult children, validating their pain without providing perspective on the parent’s own history or pain.
- The Danger of “But”: The most common barrier to reconciliation is “acknowledgment with justification.” Adding a “but” after an apology (e.g., “I’m sorry, but…”) signals to a daughter that your intentions matter more than her hurt.
- The Acknowledgment Framework: Real connection begins when a parent can validate a daughter’s reality without requiring proof, defending their own actions, or correcting her memory.
- Shift from Victim to Witness: Healing often requires the adult child to view the parent as a “human story” rather than a villain, and the parent to view the daughter’s distance as a cry for safety rather than a personal attack.
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I’m going to tell you something that you need to hear.
Your daughter doesn’t hate you.
I know it feels like she does. I know the silence, the distance, the way she pulls away from every attempt you make to connect – it all screams rejection. But hatred? That’s not what’s happening.
I know this because I was that daughter. After being forced out of my family home, I told my dad, “I don’t care to have a relationship with her,” meaning my mom. I said the words parents fear most. I built walls so high, I convinced myself they were permanent.
And I was wrong.
Recently, Woman’s World Magazine featured my story about reconciliation – how I went from complete estrangement to having my mom back in my life, my sister as my best friend and helping me build my business, and even helping my husband heal his relationship with his mother. But what I want to talk about here isn’t just the happy ending. It’s the brutal, uncomfortable truth about what your daughter is actually experiencing when she says she hates you.
When Your Daughter Says She Hates You, Here’s What She Actually Means
Let me dispel a common misconception: what looks like hatred is almost always something else entirely. It’s self-protection. It’s accumulated pain that was never acknowledged. It’s grief for the relationship she wanted but never got.
In my own story, the pain built quietly over years. Small moments that seemed insignificant in isolation but devastating when stacked together: no birthday cake while my sister got one nine days later, always being the one whose perspective didn’t matter in family conflicts, working at 14 to buy my own things while feeling like a burden.
Each moment whispered the same message: you matter less.
And here’s what most parents don’t understand: your daughter isn’t trying to punish you. She’s trying to stop hurting herself. Estrangement isn’t about making you suffer – it’s about creating enough distance that she can finally breathe without the weight of unacknowledged pain crushing her chest.
Why Therapy Made It Worse (And What That Means For You)
This might be controversial, but someone needs to say it: modern therapy culture has made parent-adult child estrangement worse.
I sat in therapy sessions where my feelings were validated – which felt good at first. But here’s what nobody tells you: validation without perspective creates an emotional echo chamber. Every session reinforced the same narrative: you were wronged, your feelings are valid, your mother failed you.
What therapy never asked was: “What was your mother’s story? What pain was she carrying? What resources did she have access to?”
According to research from Purdue University’s Within-Family Differences Study, 38% of American adults are currently estranged from their mother. But here’s the part that matters: 61.8% of estrangements aren’t complete cut-offs – they’re quiet withdrawals, emotional distance that looks like a tenuous connection on the surface but feels hollow underneath.
And a lot of that distance gets reinforced in therapy rooms where only one perspective gets explored.
What “I’m Protecting My Peace” Really Means (The Translation You Need)
Your daughter probably uses phrases like:
“I’m protecting my peace”
“I’m doing this for my healing”
“You’re not respecting my boundaries”
“I need space”
I used every single one of these. And here’s what I was actually saying underneath:
“I’m protecting my peace” = “Being around you hurts, and I don’t know how to be near you without that pain overwhelming me.”
“I’m doing this for my healing” = “I’ve convinced myself that distance is the only way I can stop feeling this pain.”
“You’re not respecting my boundaries” = “You keep trying to fix things before acknowledging that I was hurt.”
“I need space” = “I don’t have the capacity to hold both my pain and your defensiveness at the same time.”
None of this is hatred. It’s pain looking for somewhere to go.
The One Thing Parents Do That Makes Everything Worse
From my work with thousands of students, I can tell you the exact moment reconciliation becomes impossible: it’s when you try to acknowledge pain and justify your actions in the same breath.
It sounds like this:
“I know I hurt you, BUT I was doing my best.”
“I understand you’re in pain, BUT you don’t know what I was going through.”
“I’m sorry you felt that way, BUT that’s not what I meant.”
Every time you add “but” after an acknowledgment, your daughter hears: “Your pain matters less than my explanation.”
And that’s exactly what created the distance in the first place.
The Acknowledgment Framework That Actually Works
In my Woman’s World feature, I shared what I call the Acknowledgment Without Justification Framework. It’s three steps that feel impossible at first but change everything:
Step 1: Acknowledge The Pain Without Explaining It Away
Say: “I hear that I hurt you. I understand my actions caused you pain.”
Don’t say: “I hear that I hurt you, but I was trying to protect you / doing my best / going through a lot.”
The moment you defend, you’ve lost her. Acknowledgment means letting her pain exist without making it about your intentions.
Step 2: Validate Her Reality Without Requiring Proof
Say: “Your feelings are real. I acknowledge you experienced hurt.”
Don’t say: “Well, I don’t remember it that way” or “That’s not how it happened” or “You’re being too sensitive.”
Her experience is her experience. It doesn’t have to match your memory to be valid. The second you challenge her reality, you’re telling her she can’t trust her own perception – which is exactly what created the wound.
Step 3: Create Space Without Defending
Say: “Thank you for telling me. I’m listening.”
Then stop talking. Don’t explain. Don’t justify. Don’t share your side yet. Just let her pain exist without trying to fix it, minimize it, or counter it with your own.
This is the hardest part. Every instinct in you wants to defend yourself, to make her understand you weren’t trying to hurt her. But that’s not what she needs right now.
She needs to know her pain matters more than your comfort.
The Question That Changed My Entire Relationship With My Mother
For years, I saw my mother through the lens of my pain. Every memory was filtered through what she didn’t give me, what she failed to do, how she hurt me.
Then I asked one question that broke everything open: “What’s my mom’s story?”
Not my story about her. Her actual story.
I learned she was the second youngest of sixteen children. Her father died when she was three. She grew up in poverty, neglect, displaced by war. When her family came to Canada, they lived in a house with no heat, surviving on almost nothing. She was abused, hurt, and never given the emotional tools to process any of it.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
The birthday cake she didn’t buy me? She was surviving on scraps as a child. To her, giving me food and shelter was abundance.
The emotional validation I never got? No one validated her. She didn’t know that was even something parents were supposed to do.
The broken promises? She was doing the absolute best she could with the emotional capacity she’d been given.
I’m not saying this made the pain go away. I’m not saying it erased what I went through. But it did something critical: it allowed me to see my mother as a human being who was also wounded, rather than a villain who failed me on purpose.
And that shift – from victim to witness – is what made healing possible.
The Truth Your Daughter Can’t Admit Yet (But Needs You To Know)
Here’s what I couldn’t say to my mom when I was in the thick of my pain:
I still love you. I’m just terrified of being hurt again.
I don’t actually want you out of my life. I want you to see my pain without defending yourself.
I’m not trying to punish you. I’m trying to protect the parts of me that feel too fragile to risk.
I wish you would just listen instead of explaining why you did what you did.
I’m exhausted from having to choose between protecting myself and loving you.
Your daughter can’t say these things because she doesn’t have the language yet. She might not even know this is what she’s feeling. But I promise you – underneath the anger, the distance, the “I don’t care anymore” – this is the truth.
What Healing Actually Looks Like (Not What Instagram Tells You)
Let me tell you what healing didn’t look like for me:
It wasn’t my mother apologizing perfectly and me forgiving her in a tearful embrace.
It wasn’t therapy giving me permission to cut her off forever.
It wasn’t me “setting boundaries” and her respecting them without question.
Here’s what it actually looked like:
I had to stop waiting for her to change and start accepting her exactly as she was.
I had to grieve the mother I wanted and learn to receive the love she was capable of giving.
I had to develop the capacity to sit with someone who triggered me without being triggered.
I had to see her story, not just mine.
And you know what? That’s not the narrative therapy culture sells. Therapy culture says: “Protect your peace. Cut off toxic people. You don’t owe anyone anything.”
But real healing – the kind that actually transforms relationships – requires you to stay in the room with discomfort long enough to see the humanity on the other side.
If You’re Ready To Stop Waiting And Start Healing
Twelve years ago, I believed reconciliation with my mother was impossible.
It didn’t happen because my mom became a different person. It happened because I learned how to see her differently.
If you’re sitting here thinking “my adult daughter hates me,” I want you to know: she probably doesn’t. She’s in pain. And that pain is looking for acknowledgment, not explanation. Validation, not defense. Space to exist, not immediate resolution.
You can’t control whether she chooses to heal. But you can control how you show up. You can stop defending and start listening. You can acknowledge without justifying. You can hold her pain without making it about your intentions.
And sometimes, that shift is exactly what opens the door.
Take The First Step: Get The Table Method (Free)
Healing doesn’t start with grand gestures or perfect apologies. It starts with creating small, consistent moments of safety.
That’s why I created The Table Method – a simple, 6-step practice that uses the ritual of shared meals to rebuild connection without pressure, force, or awkward conversations you’re not ready for.
Inside, you’ll learn:
– How to create rhythm and safety through one shared practice
– When and how to gather without triggering your daughter’s defenses
– How to be present without being pushy
– How consistency rebuilds trust when words can’t
– How to navigate challenges without creating more distance
This isn’t about fixing everything overnight. It’s about creating the conditions where healing becomes possible. One meal, one moment, one table at a time.
Download The Table Method free at https://taniakhazaal.com/free-guide/
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About Tania Khazaal
I’m Tania Khazaal, and I’m not here to sugarcoat estrangement or sell you easy answers.
I was the daughter who walked away. The one who said “I don’t care to have a relationship with her.” The one who spent two years completely estranged, at one point living in my car. I know what it’s like to believe reconciliation is impossible.
But I also know what it’s like on the other side. Today, my relationship with my mother is healed. My sister is my best friend. I’ve even helped my husband reconcile with his estranged mother.
Now, as Founder of The Renewal Collective and a family estrangement expert featured in Woman’s World Magazine, WFLA Bloom Tampa Bay, Yahoo News, and other major outlets, I help parents understand what their adult children are actually thinking – not just through theory, but through lived experience on both sides.
My work isn’t about taking sides. It’s about seeing the full story – the daughter’s pain and the mother’s wounds – and creating space for both to exist. Because that’s the only way real healing happens.
Ready to take the first safe step toward repair? Get The Reconnect Starter Kit. This foundational guide provides the clarity and emotional safety you need before deeper repair work can begin.
Because healing your relationship with your daughter starts with understanding what she’s actually thinking. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.