When Cutting Ties Is the Best Thing a Child Can Do

THE POWER OF PARTING: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement, by Eamon Dolan

It was sometime during the bottomless scroll of quarantine that I started seeing the phrase “no contact” — not referring to social-distance measures but a drastic way to end relationships with nettlesome exes or even one’s parents. I found it even more chilling than the now canonical term “ghosting.”

With ghosts at least there’s a faint outline, perhaps a Casperish friendliness, the humorous possibility that they might reappear with a “Boo!” or get busted by a proton pack.

But “no contact”? Ever again? It seemed so punitive, so final, so cold.

And yet maybe the healthiest thing you could do for yourself, urges Eamon Dolan in his persuasive new book, “The Power of Parting.” This byline piqued my interest immediately. Dolan is not your typical self-help author, a clinician or celebrity — other than in the hothouse world of Manhattan publishing, where he has edited big best sellers including “Fast Food Nation” and Mary L. Trump’s tell-all about her Uncle Donald.

Indeed, he looked for professional writers to take on this subject before deciding with trepidation to do it himself, consulting psychologists, the thin research on estrangement (most of which focuses on reconciliation) and fellow survivors of ghastly upbringings.

Dolan’s childhood in the Bronx was Dickensian. His father, the eldest of 11, worked long hours at the phone company and was hardly around. He died at 63, “from cigarettes and, I now realize, sadness,” Dolan writes.

His mother, Teresa, emerges as a classic villain. “You only have one mother,” she’d tell him, and he’d mutter, “Thank God!”