Every time Brown Eyed Girl plays on the radio, it's like someone is violently squeezing my lungs between their fists, and I can feel tears prickle my cheeks. I'm immediately reminded of my dad – the man I idolised for most of my life but who I chose to cut off for 12 years.
For a few minutes, I allow myself to remember a happier time, when he spun me around on the dance floor to this song at a family wedding, and stroppy teenage eye rolls turned into an uncontrolled fit of giggles.
I love my dad very much. And, yes, there's a big part of me that feels like I'm betraying him by writing this article. But few people talk about family estrangement when it's not a sensational story about a celebrity cutting ties with their famous family. So, as people pick their sides today in the Brooklyn Beckham family rift, I know all too well that cutting off a family member is unbelievably hard for all parties involved.
My decision to cut my dad out of my life
Four years after that night on the dance floor, my parents divorced. My father left my mum for a younger woman, who lived in Rome, became a father figure to her two daughters from a previous marriage, and moved to Italy permanently.
Even today, I can't shake the sense of bewilderment at how our family fractured. I was an only child, so I'd always been daddy’s little girl. When I was younger, I'd leveraged that gravitas to get the dog I always wanted; as a teenager, I would have done anything to make him proud. We shared a love of books – I introduced him to Margaret Atwood, and he gave me his well-thumbed copy of Heart of Darkness. We'd have father-daughter cinema trips, which inevitably involved a jumbo bucket of popcorn and a horror movie.
It's memories like these that I desperately wanted to preserve when my father left our family home. Divorce is an ugly affair, but it revealed a side to my dad that I'd never seen before and that threatened to destroy our past and future relationship completely. I struggled in the aftermath. My mum arranged for counselling for me, and I ended up on a course of antidepressants, but ultimately, what saved my mental health was the decision to put our relationship on ice.
That's not to say that any of this was easy. I desperately missed my dad – the version of him I'd known and loved my whole life. I cried every birthday. I agonised over who would walk me down the aisle if I ever got married. I felt a stab of jealousy, wondering if my dad would drive his girlfriend's daughter to her friend's house – then sit in a nearby coffee shop reading until she was ready to leave, like he used to do when I was younger. But by freezing time, I was able to cling to happier memories like a life raft when I needed them, rather than be angry and fearful all the time.
During those 12 years, I only contacted him once – when my mum was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I'm not sure what I expected. The hospital had encouraged me to do so as the prognosis looked bleak at the time, and maybe deep down a part of me really wanted my dad to be the one to reassure me that everything was going to be OK. For a while, he sent emails with words of support, but then other family obligations got in the way. You could say that was the moment I grew up and realised I was strong enough to stand on my own feet.
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How it stopped our relationship becoming toxic
Ultimately, I just couldn't reconcile myself to my dad's choices. I know that, had I tried to squeeze myself into the spaces in his new life, all those feelings would have come to a head at some point, and the relationship wouldn't have been salvageable.
“The difficulty with parent-child interactions is that there often isn't any space for breath or reflection,” says Jordan Vyas-Lee, psychotherapist and co-founder of the Kove clinic. “Once any relationship has become toxic, neither party is able to empathise, forgive or shift for the benefit of the other. It's the reason that relationships break down.
“Getting out of a relationship is, at this stage, often the only way forward,” he continues. “Time and space can allow for personal growth and new perspectives on the issues of old, so parent and child may be able to look more logically and empathically at each other."
There is also a healthy way to approach setting boundaries. "Our relationships are governed by innate, emotional parts of the brain so setting a break can be very emotive," Jordan says. "Try to use neutral language in communicating a new boundary and give a clear reason for a break in a relationship that doesn't cast blame. You might cite the need to gain personal space or some time to reflect. As hard as it might be, try to indicate to the other person that there isn't an irreconcilable rejection taking place that will last forever."
While I didn't completely reconcile with my father, I did eventually re-establish regular contact with him and I take comfort from the fact that I was able to be there for him when it mattered most. I was the one who sat my dad down and gently told him that the doctors had diagnosed him with terminal cancer, holding his hand as we sobbed together. I used all my annual leave on trips to Rome, where we'd sit in the hospice reminiscing about the time before he moved there – all memories I'd treasured over the years. It helped to heal something in both of us.
The real struggle came when he died. I'd spent so many years grieving for my dad when he moved to Italy to be with his new family that I struggled to do the same when he actually passed away. I also didn't feel like I had the right to public displays of emotion because of the self-imposed time we'd spent apart. Some of my friends assumed he had died many years ago; others that I hadn't known my dad at all.
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In many ways, the funeral announcement confirmed my feelings of displacement and confusion. “He also had a daughter in the UK”, it read near the end, as if I had just been a fleeting chapter in his life. Perhaps that's what I'd become in other people's eyes.
And yet, do I feel guilty for my decision to be estranged from my dad? Always. Do I regret it? No. The more I became sucked into his life in Italy the year before he died, the more effort I had to put into protecting myself – and my new relationship with my dad - from toxic behaviour. It was physically and mentally exhausting – and there would be no perfect Hollywood ending.
Deep down, I knew I had made the right decision 12 years earlier. Parent-child relationships can be wonderful, but they are not sacrosanct. I've learnt that sometimes the only peace you can make with a situation is to accept reality, the fragility of your own mental health and that you're not going to see eye-to-eye, no matter how much you love the other person.
All that's left is to move forward in a way that feels right for you – and there shouldn't be any judgment about that choice.
When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year.
You can call them free on 116 123 or email them at jo@samaritans.org. Whoever you are and whatever you’re facing, they won’t judge you or tell you what to do. They’re here to listen so you don’t have to face it alone.
For more from Fiona Embleton, Glamour's Associate Beauty Director, follow her on @fiembleton.
