Relating to Macy’s Tale of family discord

When Beth Macy told our Journalism class about divisions

within her family about politics and returning to her home-
town to find everything changed, I knew what she meant.

The Herald interviewed Macy, an American journalist, non-fiction writer,
and Democratic candidate for Congress, who recently published a book
called Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America.
I got to thinking about my own experiences having severed ties with
family over politics and religion and asked her if she had given up trying to
connect with her family. I told her about the severed ties between my dad
and uncle. I am not sure who is, and to what extent anybody is at fault.
“This book grew out of a newspaper piece that I wrote for The New York

Times,” Macy said.” It was about my mom’s deathbed. . . . It was the Satur-
day after the election when Biden was elected.

“And we’re sitting there, mom’s had a stroke, she’s literally dying, and I’m
sitting there with my evangelical sister that’s probably like your uncle. And
we had never really talked about politics before. And the hospice nurse’s
phone rings and she goes, ‘ah, they’re calling it for Biden.’
“And my sister, who had never spoken about politics before. ‘No! You
wait. It’s fraudulent. He won’t win.’ And literally, I’m not exaggerating.

“Our mother is laying in bed not needing anything like this. Any mo-
ment, it could be her last. Are you kidding?”

Macy went on to recount how she wrote an Op-Ed in the New York
Times about that moment in late 2020.
“What’s even left of my family after this?” she asked. “Because mom was
the glue. My mom was hilarious and spicy, funny, really hard-working and

took no guff. And very much like this family, you know, she was just every-
thing. And so I wrote this piece, and hundreds of people wrote in, similar

stories, like your dad’s and mine.”
More questions than answers
I have been asking my own questions: At what point do you let a person
(even someone you love) share opinions that hurt both you and feel
harmful to those around you? How far do you go to try and maintain
relationships that seem to drain more out of you than they even come close
to fixing? At what point do you throw in the towel and say for my personal
wellbeing I can’t maintain a relationship with this person anymore?
And I believe that if anybody were to come to this conclusion - that’s
okay. However, before saying something you’ll regret or severing a tie that
can’t be repaired, you should deeply consider the implications (good or bad)
of your actions (well or ill-intentioned) before letting go of a relationship
that can’t be won back.
My family is no stranger to disagreements.

Over the years religion has been a substantially divisive topic, the pan-
demic didn’t make it better as my parents are both doctors and felt strongly

(with strong evidence) that vaccines were a good choice that saved countless
lives and not receiving them could cause detrimental effects to an individual
and those they come in contact with.
An interview with a student aligns with ample published research
I asked one student and one adult about their experiences regarding the
growing divides within their relationships. They agreed to speak as long as
their identities remained hidden.
“Most of my close relationships do have the same views but when I see
someone I don’t know as well post something... that I am like oh, I don’t
agree with that, I didn’t know that that’s what they thought. It makes me
think about them differently and it makes me kind of create an opinion
about a person that I didn’t really know very well rather than being able to
talk to them and get to know them. It just like immediately puts them in a
box in my head.”
I asked if they ever thought about not having a relationship with a person
Relating to Macy’s tale of family discord
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who had different views than they had.
“I think for certain things that I feel very strongly about,” they said it
would not work. “But I also know that a lot of people make up their minds

about things based on what their parents tell them or whatever their house-
hold is. So you can’t really judge them too hard because you know that

might be all that they know... but I think when you get to a certain age, or
when you get to the point when you have the ability to research your own

information and kind of form your own opinion, that’s when it would be-
come more like - they’re not going to change their minds so I’m not going

to be able to get close with them.”
An adult voice echoes the student I interviewed
The second interviewee had a similar experience to the relationships
described in articles I read in The Guardian, on the Huffington Post and in
Time magazine.
“My parents at the moment and most of my siblings and their families are
just not really part of my family’s life,” they said. “Which is a bummer and
it’s not solely about that (politics) but there are certain beliefs and attitudes
and I would say their refusal to reckon or admit some of the very immoral
things that Trump and his administration have done [is part of it].”

Time’s article, “How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in Ameri-
ca,” published in 2024, provides alarming statistics about growing fractions

in relationships.

“People in my family have become more brazen,” they said in my inter-
view, “and okay with saying things that are extremely prejudiced or not

having problems with certain prejudiced policies being enacted.”
Another survey done by the Cornell Family Reconciliation Project and

found in the Huffington Post in 2024 found that over one-quarter of Amer-
icans were estranged from a family member and that in the years since Don-
ald Trump first took office in 2016 Americans are “increasingly subscribing

to a kind of political tribalism.” My interview echoed that issue.

“The president or members of his party making just flat out bigoted state-
ments and things like that,” they said, “that has resulted in a situation where

I don’t want my children hearing their support for certain things.”
The Pew Research Center published a report in 2025 showing a growing
“rudeness” issue in the U.S. and Americans are not only being less polite
in private but also in public. We are getting more comfortable saying and
doing things that can be hurtful to those we care about.
“Because of their unwillingness not to conceal those attitudes around my

kids,” my interviewee continued, “who I don’t want hearing that stuff or be-
lieving that it is okay to talk about other kinds of people that way or believe

certain things about people just because they’re different from them.”
A poll from YouGov in 2025 in The Guardian confirms much of what I
have experienced and discovered through interviews like the following:
“We just don’t spend time together anymore,” my interviewee said. “Many
of my family members seem almost like entirely different people to me,
since becoming full supporters of Trump. So it’s really sad and it’s really
upsetting but I just don’t want those beliefs normalized for my own kids.”
For me - it is still worth fighting for that relationship, just as it is worth
ignoring something I believe to be ignorant that a friend posted online.
But I also feel strongly that if for anyone it is too detrimental to maintain
a relationship simply for the sake of maintaining it and feels it would be
best to simply try and let go and move on - that is perfectly fine too.
There are solutions that offer hope
Beth Macy and I had a very good discussion regarding ways to deal with
family and friends who have conflicting beliefs.
There are a lot of things you can do when encroaching on sensitive topics

- you could start an argument, respectfully disagree: change the subject, pre-
tend you didn’t hear them, ask politely to discuss something else and if that

is not an option or what they said or asked was inappropriate or offensive, it

is okay to tell them that.
Macy said that bonding over shared family hobbies such as fishing, pizza
and card games, worked for her.
Some tips for getting through holidays with family
The article “6 Tips for Thanksgiving with a Difficult Family,” published in

2019 by Psychology Today, offers tips on ways to get through family gather-
ings without biting your family members head off.

As Macy also suggested, the article’s number one way to deal with your
relatives on Thanksgiving is to search for things you have in common. There
is more to life than politics, find something non-political.
The one space in which my family gets along best is on a court or field
playing sports. I have the fondest memories of me, my parents, aunts,
uncles, siblings and cousins playing kickball, basketball and football - and
at least then our arguments were limited to who is the GOAT- Lebron or
Jordan (which, too, can get heated).
Recommendation two recommends the buddy system. Ask a buddy to
help you invite a disagreeable family member help with a task like dishes.

The third tip suggests engaging in “socially acceptable avoidance” like run-
ning a 5k, volunteering at a soup kitchen or checking your neighbor’s cats.

Tip five might be the best: Invite a close friend who can put up with your
family while also pressuring your family to be on their best behavior.
The weird thing about family for me is that we assume our families will
always love us, it is easy to say and do things that hurt the people we love.
But at the same time - those are the relationships that I seem to hold on to
the most. Like maybe they said something that I would never get over if it
were a friend, but somehow family is different. This is why I believe family
estrangements and even ones with friends or colleagues are such a big topic,
because we as humans value our relationships. We are persistent and try to
forge ahead even when we’ve been hurt. We don’t want to let go.