Coping with estrangement: Carrying your ember forward

by Sheri McGregor, M.A.
During that early daze of coping with estrangement, I felt hollowed out and exhausted. One dismal day seemed to blur into the next. Mornings meant purposefully firing up and getting through. Nights were too quiet to drown out all my dreadful thoughts. Even in sleep, I dreamed about my son, and woke up fretful and sad. One of the things that helped was an all-consuming activity that kept me busy—body and soul: making bread.

New to breadmaking, I didn’t start the activity as some grand healing plan. I just needed something to do with my hands, mind, and heart. The act of mixing, kneading, waiting, and baking somehow invoked trust that everything would turn out okay again. A feeling of home and hearth wafted in on the scent of activated yeast and freshly baked bread, wrapping me in warmth and bolstering my confidence. Regardless of my son’s actions, I was who I’d always been—a good parent, a loving mother, wife, and friend.

Looking back, I can see that breadmaking was a way to carry an ember and nurture a life I loved. Breadmaking helped me hold close and keep my identity going, no matter how the estrangement threatened to extinguish me, or whatever the uncertain future might hold.

The history of fire

While we may take fire for granted because it arrives with the strike of a match or the turning of a knob on a cooking range, a flame wasn’t always instant or guaranteed. Fire was a precious commodity. It was protected and preserved.

In some Indigenous traditions and among nomadic peoples across cultures, live embers were carried in fire pots or wrapped in ash and tucked into bark or a hollow bone for transport. That way they wouldn’t lose the precious fire. At the next stop, the embers were fanned, and the fire was revived. In ancient households, “banking” coals under ash was common, so the fire would stay alive and could be revived instead of created from scratch.

That’s what bread-making felt like, to me, during that difficult time: a daily ritual that kept the ember safe and the home fire burning. The bread brought the rest of the family together to share and kept my kitchen as a hub of warmth, to preserve  the fire, so to speak, of my nurturer identity.

Coping with estrangement: Throwaway fire … and family

Unlike ancient civilizations, most people today expect instant warmth. Flip a switch and there’s light. Turn a knob and flame leaps to life.

Convenience is beneficial but also shapes our expectations. When everything is quick and easy, do we imagine that comfort, clarity, and relationships should be as simple? When connection is on tap, does preserving our historical fire seem necessary or even wanted? In a culture where almost everything is replaceable, do even people get caught in that mindset?

New opinions, new distractions, and social circles are all available at a click. Does that mean the warmth of long-held connections get taken for granted, and the people who love us and share our history are mistaken for throwaways? Perhaps the strong, long-burning loyalty that once built families and communities can look old-fashioned in a world of instant alternatives.

Our brains adapt to that rhythm. We know from neuroscience that novelty triggers dopamine, a quick hit that’s a “reward.” But deep attachment is built through safety, familiarity, and trust built over time. The steady fire of strong relationships isn’t about excitement every minute. Rather, healthy relationships are continuous and caring.

When novelty becomes habitual and expected, the capacity for patience can shrink. Today, many adult children aren’t encouraged to work through discomfort or repair the ruptures that relationships may bring. In a culture that rewards reinvention and spark-chasing, some are even praised for walking away rather than tending to connections that hold depth and history. New sparks are celebrated. Embers are forgotten. And parents are left coping with estrangement while still holding the warmth of what once was.

The “chosen” family concept that’s talked about can be a valuable gift in this world. Finding dear souls along the way who feel like family is a genuine blessing. This isn’t a dismissal of those relationships, because they matter, too. But replacing long-held bonds because someone rewrites history or because a disagreement arises is something else entirely.

When estrangement happens, the pain is emotionally explosive. The distress hits our nervous system and stirs ancient instincts, the body remembering what it means to be cut off from the tribe, from warmth, from belonging. That’s the way we’re wired from ancient times: for belonging. Separation registers as threat. We don’t “get over it.” We recover slowly, the way the body warms after cold.

Healing from that kind of loss takes more than a flipped switch. Recovery involves endurance and growth, more like an old hearth fire. Think banked coals, gradual, growing warmth that requires feeding and tending, and the slow, honest return of strength and trust.

For me, breadmaking felt a lot like that, even though I didn’t have the words at the time to understand the ritual as richly as I do now.  I only knew that it helped—much like the father I wrote about in Beyond Done, who took up a project to ease his emotions.

Years later, while working on Rumination Remedies, my breadmaking period came back to me. The hobby wasn’t only about the final product. It was sensory grounding that involved touch, movement, smell, and so on. Breadmaking was full-body, sensory experience that interrupted my looping sorrowful thoughts and settled my nervous system when my mind wanted to spin.

For me, breadmaking was a way to carry my ember forward, a survival instinct that helped me stay present in the moment and in a season when so much felt uncertain. Later, during my research for the workbook on rumination, and with the benefit of perspective, I more fully understood why it helped: the sensory grounding, the rhythm, and the moment-by-moment tasks that kept me present rather than focused on the pain. But neuroscience is only part of the explanation for why it helped. Breadmaking helped my heart speak.

We don’t always begin with knowledge, but when we have it, we can support ourselves with intention. Even so, the brain and body are intricately connected in ways science is only beginning to understand. Look to whatever brings you joy and nourishes your soul. That’s where your heart speaks, carrying the embers of what’s meaningful in who you still are.

We explore these sorts of ideas more deeply in membership events. You’re welcome to join us. Or, members can watch many of the events on replay.

Related:

Why estrangement happens: Puzzling it out

Carrying the Fire

Fire Pot