Losing family members via estrangement is hard, and it comes with it's own kind of grief. It's not a grief everyone understands, and it's made more difficult by the fact that the people you are grieving are still very much alive. It can also be the choice to keep you and your own family (partner, kids, etc) safe in their lives and identities as well. When we choose estrangement, we have chosen (in my opinion) the last resort for safety in a family that either requires us to betray ourselves to stay in relationship, or choose ourselves in order to feel free. We choose estrangement when it becomes clear repair is not possible. You may have tried and tried to meet family members in the middle, but it's difficult to do when only one party is trying to understand the other. I come from a large and complicated family of origin, and was an outsider from the start. My dad's side of the family in particular is a difficult group of people to be in relationship with if you want the basis of relationship to be something other than compliance and control. Their version of love involves both, and after decades of fraught relationship and self-betrayal on my part, we are finally estranged. It's not not painful; I wish all the time I had family and siblings who loved me as I am and not however they keep wishing I would be. And also, I am the happiest and freest I've ever been to be myself and live my life on my own terms. The grief of estrangement is a practice in holding the both/and, and I've expanded my capacity to do so since choosing myself and the family I created over the judgment and pain in the family I grew up in.