The Parent Files, Part 3: I’d Still Give You My Kidney
The Love That Survives Being Hated
The Hook That Stops Everything
Your phone buzzes at 12:45 AM. Unknown number. Same area code as your daughter. Your body knows before your brain—something’s wrong.
“Is this Emma Morrison’s mother?”
Yes.
“She’s at Riverside General. Car accident. She’s stable but—she needs surgery. You’re listed as her emergency contact.”
She hasn’t spoken to you in three years. Blocked your number twenty-seven months ago. Told the family you were dead to her. But apparently, when the nurse asked for next of kin at consciousness’s edge, your name escaped. The only name that came when everything else fell away.
You’re already putting on shoes. Grabbing keys. The drive is ninety minutes. You’ll make it in seventy.
Because here’s what estrangement can’t kill: the biological programming that makes you her mother. The cellular recognition that would know her blood type in the dark. The kidney that would leap from your body to hers without question.
She hates you. You’d still die for her.
Both things are true at 85 miles per hour on an empty highway.
The Organ Donor Test Nobody Talks About
Let’s play a game. The estranged child you haven’t seen in years needs an organ. Kidney. Liver lobe. Bone marrow. Something that would hurt you to give but wouldn’t kill you. Do you do it?
Of course you do. The question is insulting. You’d be wheeled into surgery before they finished explaining the risks.
Now the harder question: Would anyone else in their life do the same?
- The therapist who validates their trauma narrative twice a week?
- The partner who “protects” them from you?
- The friend group that hearts their TikTok’s about surviving toxic parents?
- The found family they chose over the one they were born into.
They all love your child in their way. But would they give a kidney? Would they sit through apheresis for stem cells? Would they crack their chest for a heart that matches?
No. They’d send thoughts and prayers. Start a GoFundMe. Share posts about organ donation awareness.
You’d be on the table, counting backward from ten.
The Biology That Doesn’t Read Estrangement
Your body knows your child in ways the world never will. You carry them at levels deeper than law:
In Your Cells: Fetal cells cross the placenta during pregnancy and take up permanent residence. You literally carry their DNA forever. Scientists have found Y-chromosomes in mothers’ brains fifty years after giving birth to sons. Your estranged child lives in your hippocampus. They hate you from inside your own neurons.
In Your Bones: Pregnancy changes bone density, calcium distribution, the very architecture of your skeleton. Your hip width, rib position, spine curvature—all permanently altered. Your bones remember carrying them even if they don’t remember being carried.
In Your Brain: Neuroplasticity during pregnancy and early parenting permanently rewires regions for hypervigilance, threat detection, emotional regulation. Your amygdala is forever tuned to their frequency. No contact doesn’t reach the limbic system.
In Your Blood: Their blood type might not match yours, but your body remembers manufacturing theirs from scratch. Every nutrient they needed came through you first. The anemia you developed giving them iron. The gestational diabetes from feeding their growth. Your blood sugar still spikes when you’re stressed about them.
That is your person.
Reflection Check-In #1
If they needed an organ tomorrow, what would be your first thought?
⬜ A) “How fast can we schedule surgery?”
This immediate yes is parental love at its purest. Also consider: would giving an organ change anything between you? prepare for it not to
⬜ B) “Would they even accept it from me?”
This fear is real – rejection of your body after rejection of your love. Consider writing them a medical history document they can access without contact
⬜ C) “I’d give it anonymously so they wouldn’t refuse”
The lengths we go to save someone who won’t speak to us. This impulse shows love transcends recognition
⬜ D) “My body is too damaged from the stress to help”
The cruel irony – estrangement may have made you unable to save them. Focus on what health improvements you can make, just in case
⬜ E) “They have other family who matches”
Let yourself feel the pain of being backup to people who became primary. You’re still on the list, even if not first
⬜ F) “I’d give anything but they’d never ask”
This suspended readiness is exhausting. Consider donating blood regularly – let your body help someone’s child while waiting
⬜ G) Other:
Whatever your first thought, it reveals how you hold love and boundaries. Both can coexist
3 AM and Your Nervous System Still Tracks Them
Three years of no contact. One thousand ninety-five days of silence. But at 3 AM, your body jolts awake with the certainty something’s wrong. Not a dream. Not anxiety. That specific parental knowing that transcends distance and anger.
You check their Instagram from your fake account. Nothing new. Twitter—last post 14 hours ago, seemed fine. LinkedIn shows they’re still at the same job. The digital breadcrumbs that prove they’re alive but not whether they’re okay.
Your body knows things it can’t know:
- The stress headaches they get before presentations
- The way they sleep on their left side when anxious
- The specific cough that means bronchitis incoming
- The menstrual cycle you unconsciously still track
- The seasonal depression that hits every November
You wake at 3 AM because somewhere, they’re not sleeping either. The estrangement doesn’t sever the invisible umbilical cord that transmits distress signals across any distance.
The Medical History They Don’t Know They Need
You carry information that could save their life. Medical history they’ve never asked about. Genetic predispositions they’re walking around ignorant of. The family medical tree they cut themselves from but still grow on.
What You Know That They Don’t:
- Your mother’s breast cancer at 47 (BRCA2 positive)
- Your father’s early onset Alzheimer’s at 62
- The aunt who died of an aneurysm at 34
- The thyroid condition that runs in the women
- The addiction genetics on both sides
- The mental health history they’re probably repeating
- The medication allergies discovered the hard way
You’ve tried to send this information. Registered letters returned. Emails bounced. Messages through relatives ignored. So, you keep it updated in a document titled “For Emma – Medical” that sits in your Google Drive, shared to an email address they haven’t used in years.
One day they’ll need to know their grandfather’s blood pressure medications. Their grandmother’s autoimmune markers. The depression that claimed two uncles. The kidney disease that took three aunts.
You’ll be dead by then. The information will die with you. Their anger will have cost them years of preventative care.
The Physical Symptoms of Loving the Estranged
Your body keeps the score of this specific grief:
The Chest Thing: That permanent tight feeling. Not quite pain, not quite pressure. The sensation of holding your breath for three years. Your doctor says it’s stress. You know it’s the physical space where love with nowhere to go accumulates.
The Sleep Distortion: You wake at times that correspond to their old schedule. 6:47 AM when they’d leave for school. 3:30 PM when they’d get home. 10 PM when you’d check they were in bed. Your circadian rhythm is permanently set to a child who no longer exists in your time zone.
The Autoimmune Flare: Your body attacking itself mirrors the relationship—internal systems that should recognize each other as family instead treating each other as threats. The inflammation that started during estrangement. The joints that ache with undelivered hugs.
The Digestive Grief: Unable to swallow the reality. The constant nausea of rejection. The IBS that started when they left. Your gut, that second brain, knowing something is fundamentally wrong with the ecosystem.
The Hair Loss: Telogen effluvium, the doctor calls it. Stress-induced shedding. Your hair falling out in clumps, like your body is trying to physically release what your heart cannot.
Reflection Check-In #2
What physical symptom of grief do you carry most heavily?
⬜ A) The chest tightness that never fully releases
This is your body holding love. Try gentle chest-opening stretches. Breathe into the space that hurts. It’s trying to stay open
⬜ B) The sleep that comes in broken pieces
Your body is on permanent vigil. Consider a weighted blanket – sometimes physical pressure helps when emotional pressure is too much
⬜ C) The digestive system that rebels against reality
Grief lives in the gut. Bland foods, probiotics, and accepting that some days your body can’t digest what your life has become
⬜ D) The immune system that fights everything, including you
Your body is confused about what’s threat and what’s family. Gentle movement and anti-inflammatory foods might help sort signals
⬜ E) The pain that moves around without source
Wandering pain is looking for home. Try naming it when it arrives: “Hello, grief in my shoulder. Hello, loss in my hip.”
⬜ F) The fatigue that sleep doesn’t cure
This exhaustion is bone-deep loss. Rest without guilt. Your body is doing the hard work of loving against resistance
⬜ G) Other:
Your body’s specific response deserves recognition. Consider keeping a symptom journal – patterns might emerge that help
The Emergency Contact Paradox
They haven’t spoken to you in three years but you’re still the emergency contact on:
- Their apartment lease
- Their employer’s HR forms
- Their doctor’s office records
- Their gym membership
- Their grad school application
You know because you’ve been called:
- When they didn’t show up for work for three days (they were fine, just depressed)
- When the apartment flooded (you handled it without them knowing)
- When their insurance lapsed (you paid the gap month)
- When they were exposed to COVID at work (you didn’t sleep for ten days)
Each call is a devastation and a relief. Devastation that strangers have more access than you. Relief that somewhere, in some official document, you still exist as their person.
The last call was from their dentist. Missed three appointments. They wanted to know if everything was okay. You wanted to say: “I haven’t known if everything’s okay for 1,095 days.”
Instead: “I’ll let them know.”
You can’t let them know. But you paid the missed appointment fees.
What You Do That They’ll Never Know
Love doesn’t announce itself. It works night shifts. It operates in shadows. It moves money silently, prays without witness, protects without credit.
The Secret Operations of Estranged Love:
You keep their health insurance active by claiming they’re a dependent. Tax fraud? Technically. Love crime? Absolutely.
You have Google alerts for their name. Their company. Their address. Any combination that might signal danger or success you’ll never celebrate.
You drive by their apartment at irregular intervals. Not stalking. Checking. The difference matters to no one but you.
You’ve befriended their building’s security guard. Carl. He texts you if anything seems off. He thinks you’re a concerned aunt. Close enough.
You donate to their nonprofit employer monthly. Anonymous. It’s the only way to contribute to their life that can’t be refused.
You’ve maintained friendships with people you don’t like because they might mention your child in passing. These crumbs sustain you.
The Found Family That Would Never
They post about their “chosen family” constantly. The friends who “get” them. The partner who “sees” them. The community that “holds space” for their trauma. Beautiful. Progressive. Healing.
But let’s be real about what chosen family won’t do:
- Co-sign loans for their education
- Sit in emergency rooms at 3 AM
- Store childhood possessions they might want someday
- Remember they’re allergic to sulfa drugs
- Know their blood type without checking
- Feel their pain in phantom limbs
- Wake up knowing something’s wrong
- Die for them without thinking
Chosen family is beautiful until it’s tested. Blood family has already been tested. Failed, apparently, but tested. You failed their emotional needs but would succeed at giving organs. The paradox of parental love.
Reflection Check-In #3
How do you track their well-being from afar?
⬜ A) Social media from fake accounts
This is digital vigil. Set limits – check weekly, not daily. The constant monitoring exhausts without informing
⬜ B) Through mutual contacts who don’t know they’re reporting
Information gathering through intermediaries is natural but draining. Consider whether these relationships serve you beyond intelligence
⬜ C) Public records and Google searches
The detective work of love. Set specific times for this – don’t let searching become a full-time job
⬜ D) Drive-by’s and location checks
The geography of grief. If you must do this, vary your routes and times. Don’t let patterns become prison
⬜ E) I force myself not to check at all
This restraint is also love. Honor the difficulty of not knowing. Consider checking only on significant dates
⬜ F) Through remaining family members
Family intelligence networks are complicated. Be clear about what information helps versus hurts
⬜ G) Other:
However you track them, notice if it brings comfort or chaos. Adjust accordingly
The Dreams Where Everything Is Different
Every parent of an estranged child knows these dreams. The reconciliation dreams. The alternate timeline dreams. The dreams where they never left.
The Classic Variations:
The Surprise Return: They show up at your door. Casual. Like nothing happened. “Hi Mom.” You wake up checking the doorbell camera.
The Medical Emergency: You’re allowed to love them because they’re unconscious. Holding their hand in the hospital while they can’t pull away. You wake grieving the grief.
The Time Travel: They’re seven again. Before the anger. Before the therapy. Before the language for leaving existed. You’re pushing them on swings. You wake up tasting rust.
The Text Message: Your phone buzzes. Their name. “I’m sorry. Can we talk?” You wake up checking your phone for an hour.
The Accidental Meeting: Grocery store. Coffee shop. Somewhere mundane. Eyes meet. They don’t leave. You both cry. You wake up avoiding that location.
The cruelest dreams are the ordinary ones. Where you’re just having dinner. Laughing about something stupid. Being normal. Being family.
The Will They’ll Contest But Still Inherit
Your will is a love letter to someone who won’t read it. Everything goes to them anyway. The house they won’t visit. The jewelry they won’t wear. The money they won’t thank you for. The letters they might finally read.
Your lawyer suggests conditions. Requirements. Stipulations that might force contact. You refuse. Love doesn’t leverage death. If your final act can be unconditioned love, maybe that’s enough.
What You’re Really Leaving:
- The medical records they’ll need at 40
- The family photos they’ll want at 50
- The recipes they’ll crave at 60
- The genealogy they’ll search at 70
- The answers to questions they haven’t asked yet
- The grandmother’s ring that skipped their generation
- The father’s watch they never saw you wear
- The family burial plot with space beside you
They’ll inherit everything except the conversation. All the assets, none of the answers. The stuff without the stories.
When Other People’s Children Come Home
Your friend’s daughter visits every Sunday. Brings grandchildren. Stays for dinner. You smile. Say how lovely. Die a little.
Your sister’s son calls her daily. Asks advice. Shares victories. Needs his mother. You congratulate her. Celebrate their bond. Decompose quietly.
The holidays are a special hell. Facebook fills with reunions. Instagram stories of family gatherings. LinkedIn posts thanking parents for support. You scroll through other people’s children coming home while yours has made you homeless in their heart.
The worst are the prodigal returns. The friend whose estranged child came back after five years. The cousin whose daughter apologized after therapy revealed the truth. The neighbor whose son realized after becoming a parent himself.
You want their joy but also their formula. What did they do? What did they say? What magic combination of patience and persistence opened the door?
They don’t know. It just happened. One day the phone rang. One day the wall fell. One day the child remembered they had a mother.
You wait for one day.
Reflection Check-In #4
What would you need to hear to begin healing (not reconciling, just healing)?
⬜ A) “I know you loved me the best way you knew how”
This acknowledgment may never come. Consider writing it to yourself from your highest self. Sometimes we need to give what we need to receive
⬜ B) “The estrangement isn’t entirely your fault”
Fault is a heavy word. Consider replacing it with “responsibility” – it can be shared without being equal
⬜ C) “I’m okay, even if we’re not”
Their well-being matters more than relationship. If you knew they were thriving, what would change? Chase that feeling
⬜ D) “I remember some good times too”
Their memory might be protecting them by forgetting. You can hold the good memories for both of you
⬜ E) “I don’t hate you, I just can’t be near you”
Distance doesn’t always mean hatred. Sometimes it means inability. This distinction might soften something
⬜ F) “Thank you for what you did give, even if it wasn’t enough”
Partial credit for partial success. You gave what you had. It wasn’t enough but it was something
⬜ G) Other:
Whatever words would help, consider that healing might come from different sources. Not all medicine comes from the wound’s creator
The Birthday Physics
Their birthday approaches like weather systems—visible on radar, inevitable, devastating. Your body starts grieving two weeks before. The date carved in your bones from the first one, when they were purple and screaming and yours.
This year they’ll be 29. You know because your body knows. Because time is measured from their existence. Because every year is counted from the moment they split you open and crawled into the light.
What You Do on Their Birthday:
Buy a cake. Don’t eat it.
Write a card. Don’t send it.
Transfer money to their account. Watch it get transferred back.
Look at photos from birthdays when they still let you love them.
Calculate how many birthdays you have left versus how many they’ve been gone.
Text “Happy Birthday. I love you.” to the blocked number that might as well be a grave.
Light a candle. Make a wish that sounds like a prayer that sounds like begging.
The Last Time You Touched Them
You remember it perfectly because you didn’t know it was the last time. If you had, you’d have held on longer. Memorized the feeling. Traced their face. Breathed them in.
It was casual. A quick hug goodbye. Maybe a shoulder squeeze. A hand on their arm. Something forgettable that became everything.
Now you measure time from that last touch. Three years, four months, seventeen days since you felt your child’s physical form. Since your body confirmed their existence through contact.
Sometimes you see mothers with adult children at stores. The casual touches. The unconscious affection. The way they straighten collars, brush lint, squeeze shoulders. They don’t know they’re rich. They don’t know they’re walking through gold mines complaining about the dust.
Your hands ache with emptiness. Phantom limb syndrome for a child who amputated themselves from your life.
The Universal Donor
Here’s what makes you different from their chosen family, their therapist, their partner, their friends:
You would give without receiving. Love without reciprocation. Sacrifice without acknowledgment. Die without thanks.
Your love doesn’t need consent. Doesn’t require participation. Doesn’t demand return on investment. It just is. Cellular. Automatic. Unconditional in the realest, most terrible way.
They could commit crimes—you’d visit them in prison.
They could fall ill—you’d become their nurse.
They could fail completely—you’d catch them without mentioning the fall.
They could succeed beyond measure—you’d celebrate from afar.
This is the terrible freedom of parental love: it doesn’t need to be wanted to exist.
What This Is Really About
This isn’t about martyrdom. You’re not a saint for loving someone who rejects you. You’re not special for maintaining connection to someone who cut the cord.
This is about the biological reality of parental love that transcends the social construct of estrangement.
This is about bodies that remember creating other bodies.
This is about love that operates below consciousness, beyond choice, before thought.
This is about the terrible beautiful burden of permanent connection to someone who’s chosen disconnection.
You’d still give the kidney. Still donate the marrow. Still offer the liver lobe. Not because you’re good. Not because you’re evolved. But because the body that made them would recognize them in any emergency room, any crisis, any need.
Estrangement is a social concept. Biology doesn’t read the paperwork.
The Line That Lives Rent-Free
Your child could call at 3 AM after five years of silence and say one word—“Mom?”—and you’d be in the car before they finished the question.
Not because you’re weak. Not because you have no boundaries. Not because you’re codependent.
Because love that survives hatred isn’t pathological. It’s parental.
The kidney is still theirs if they need it.
The bone marrow is already earmarked.
The liver lobe has their name on it.
The heart—well, they’ve already broken that, but it still beats for them.
This is the receipt for a love that doesn’t transact.
The documentation of a donation that doesn’t wait to be asked.
The proof of life for a relationship they’ve declared dead.
You’d still give the kidney.
Even if they’d throw it away just to prove they don’t need anything from you.
Even then.
Especially then.
Because that’s what makes you the parent and them the child: you’d give organs to someone who won’t give you words.
Frequently Asked Questions – I’d Still Give You My Kidney
- Is it normal to still love a child who has cut you off? Yes. Parental love operates at biological levels deeper than social choices. Your brain is permanently rewired by parenthood, your body carries their DNA in your cells, and your nervous system remains attuned to them regardless of contact. This isn’t weakness or codependence – it’s the biological reality of creating another human. The love persists because it exists at cellular levels estrangement can’t reach.
- Why would a parent give an organ to an estranged child? Because parental love isn’t transactional. The same biological drive that made you protect them as infants doesn’t shut off when they reject you as adults. Your body recognizes them as “yours” at levels below conscious thought. Most parents would give organs without hesitation because the imperative to save your child overrides the pain of rejection.
- Do estranged children ever list their parents as emergency contacts? Surprisingly often, yes. Many estranged children still list parents as emergency contacts on medical forms, leases, and employment documents. This suggests that even in estrangement, some part of them knows who would show up in crisis. Parents often discover they’re still emergency contacts only when called by hospitals or employers.
- How do parents track estranged children’s wellbeing? Common methods include social media monitoring from fake accounts, Google alerts for their name, maintaining relationships with people who might mention them, driving by their residence, checking public records, and staying connected to extended family who might share information. While this can feel like necessary vigilance, it’s important to set boundaries on checking to avoid obsession.
- Can you love someone who hates you? Yes. Love and being loved are separate experiences. Parental love especially can persist without reciprocation, acknowledgment, or even acceptance. This one-directional love is painful but real. It’s not pathological to maintain love for someone who’s rejected you – it’s human, especially when that someone is your child. The challenge is learning to hold that love without letting it destroy you.
End Note: If you’re reading this at 3 AM, worried about a child who won’t let you love them, know this: Your biological drive to protect them isn’t pathology. Your body’s refusal to accept estrangement isn’t weakness. Your dreams of reconciliation aren’t delusion.
You’re simply a parent in a world that’s forgotten parent means permanent.
The kidney is still theirs. The love is still real. The door is still open.
Even if they never walk through it.
