Estranged: Finding Hope When Your Family Falls Apart

By Julie Plagens

Book Overview

In Estranged: Finding Hope When Your Family Falls Apart, Julie Plagens shares about her life as a child of well-known restauranteur parents who also owned the first nightclub in Texas. After ten years in the entertainment business, her parents made a public conversion to Christianity and went into full-time ministry. Unfortunately, the hardships of maintaining a perfect image as a Christian family became too heavy of a burden due to anger and unforgiveness. After a life-altering health diagnosis (Crohn's disease), Julie, her husband, and their two children walked away from the family to find healing. This is the amazing story of how God knitted a Christian family back together through a series of miracles that can only be explained by divine intervention after seven years of estrangement.

This book is written for families who are struggling to get along in a healthy manner all the way to those who are experiencing a full-blown family estrangement. Julie gives her story from the perspective of an estranged adult child but also gives tips for parents and adult children who are struggling to find a connection between the two generations. Julie's mother, Joanne Ventura, wrote the Afterword to help parents who are struggling with the rejection of their adult children.

Estranged is unique in that it not only gives personal stories from both sides of the estrangement (which is rare), but it also gives tips to help families move toward hope and healing, even if there is never reconciliation. Up until now, there has never been a book written about family estrangement from a Christian point of view, although many families of faith struggle to get along.

This is a must-read for anyone dealing with shame, anger, guilt, rejection, and unforgiveness. You can find hope when your family falls apart.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FHC2X93T
• ISBN13: 9798223943792
• Release Date: February 2019
• Publisher: Julie Plagens
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Very very useful! If they don't get this book back in stock, go find it somewhere else!

This book gave me the tools I needed to actually begin to solve my estrangement! (Hopefully forever.) (Get also, "Done With The Crying" to help when things are not healed or to go more in depth) This author really made me mad as I was reading because SHE actually DID the estranging! That part was painfully hard to read because I was in the thick of estrangement. & I feel there is NO excuse for inflicting the kind of pain estrangement causes, especially among believers. Shame on us for tolerating this craziness. Anyway, forgiveness is also Christian & you need to find that place in order to heal & move on. But this little gem of a book gives so much more hope than other books I've read. I get it. The reality is there is very little hope of reconciliation. But Julie Plagens gives hope. (& It has worked for our family so far)