In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, renowned self-help author and podcast host Mel Robbins argued that "Life is Too Short To Fight With Your Family." Her article, promoting themes of acceptance and forgiveness, has sparked significant discussion. However, not everyone agrees with her perspective, including a family therapist who has lived through the complex reality of family estrangement.
A Personal and Professional Rebuttal
As a family therapist and social worker with over five years of experience working with children and families in foster care, the author was intrigued by Robbins' piece. Upon reading it, she found the advice to be overly simplistic and potentially shaming. Robbins suggested that people let relationships disintegrate through "neglect, busyness and an unwillingness to move past the things that bother us," and that not everything has to be "darkly serious."
The therapist argues this view ignores critical reasons why individuals might need to distance themselves from family, such as enduring physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological abuse. She emphasizes that family ties do not obligate anyone to tolerate harm. Furthermore, she finds the media's framing of family estrangement as a mere "trend," as recently discussed on Oprah's podcast, to be dismissive of profound personal struggles.
A Five-Year Journey to Self-Preservation
The author's rebuttal is rooted in her own life story. As a Korean American immigrant from a deeply enmeshed, religious family, her identity was strictly controlled. Filial piety was paramount, and her worth was conditional on obedience to her patriarchal father and their faith. After decades of religious trauma, she revealed to her parents at age 25 that she no longer attended church.
Her father's fury and attempt to disown her, coupled with the inseparable nature of her parents' marriage, led to an impasse. The breaking point came when her father told her never to return home. This time, she listened. For five years, she maintained no contact—no visits, texts, or calls. While lonely as the family outcast in the States, this solitude was preferable to the profound loneliness she felt in their presence.
"I cut contact not to punish them, but as a way to center myself and my needs ― something that felt impossible in my traditional, immigrant family," she writes. That period became a dedicated time for healing.
The Path to Reconciliation on New Terms
Healing was an intensive process. She continued therapy, joined Co-Dependents Anonymous, engaged in somatic therapy and psychodrama, and explored various psychedelic-assisted therapies. After five years of work, she reached a place where she could renegotiate the relationship with her parents, but on her own terms. She invited them into her world, instead of contorting herself to fit into theirs.
Reconciliation was not a storybook moment. It involved accepting limitations and, in her parents' familiar style, moving forward by pretending past conflicts never happened. A pivotal test was her wedding, where she set clear boundaries: her parents were to attend simply as her parents, not as a pastor and his wife, with no prayers, evangelizing, or shaming allowed. They respected her conditions.
Today, she maintains a boundaried relationship with them. They respect her "nos," and she chooses to participate, free from the old feeling of being trapped. "It's not the happily ever after I wished for as a child, but this is the best that we both can do," she concludes.
Her final message is a direct counter to Robbins' premise: "So no, Mel Robbins, I don’t think life is too short to fight with your family. If anything, life is too short not to fight for what you need." She asserts that sometimes, creating distance is the necessary fight for self-preservation and the foundation for any future, healthier connection.
