A couple of years ago, at a family lunch, my sister walked into the room with my mother on speaker-phone. Apropos of nothing, my mother started picking through family members with venom. One was ‘lazy’, another was ‘awful’, my aunt was ‘well, she’s fine’.

And then it came to me. I, according to my mother, was the ‘bitch who’s always hated’ her.

A withering verdict which stung, though it was not wholly unexpected.

My mother hadn’t known she was on speaker-phone. But at that moment, something within me snapped. I became calm and resolute. I didn’t need her in my life any more.

I stood up, announced my departure and went home, where I went through all channels of communication – email, phone, social media – and blocked her. We haven’t spoken since.

Everyone around me was supportive of my decision, saying it was justified or even overdue.

I didn’t explain my actions to my mother. She would never apologise, accept responsibility or acknowledge what she’d done, so it didn’t seem like a worthwhile, fruitful or pleasant conversation to have.

From what I heard, she didn’t even acknowledge she’d been cut off for months, and when she did, she never asked anyone why. No one, it seemed, was requesting an explanation, so I didn’t provide one.

In recent years, family estrangement has been in the spotlight – with high-profile examples such as the Beckhams, Ramsays and, of course, the Royal Family impacted by it.

While it can feel like it’s on the rise, experts I’ve spoken to have said this isn’t necessarily the case – it’s just that such painful fallouts are no longer taboo and we’re speaking about them more openly.

But estrangement is not necessarily the easy path, as I’ve found to my cost, and it can be tiring to uphold barriers when it would just be easier to see my mother.

Looking back, I don’t think of my childhood as an unhappy one. We lived in a large house in Richmond, Surrey, and I always had everything I needed. Christmases were spent in Barbados. My dad came to every netball game and tennis match I played in, my mother came to every play, and I lived on a road where I could call at friends’ houses and play in the woodland behind our house.

My parents both worked so they had a nanny to help with childcare. My mother was often whizzing around as she started a consultancy firm, and with work-life balance being less of a priority in the 1990s, she was usually running out of the door when I was waking up, or returning after bedtime in Max Mara power-suits. My parents split when I was six, and shortly after we moved to my stepfather’s house. I’d spend alternate weekends with my father, and we’d go out for dinner on Wednesdays, catching up over Pizza Express and dough balls.

I didn’t really question what was going on, went where I was told, and my young brain mainly focused on more manageable matters, like the excitement I felt when I was allowed a pet rabbit.

As I grew up, I became used to my mother’s explosive bouts of shrieking. I desperately wanted to defend myself, and to make her understand what she was saying wasn’t true. And when that didn’t work, I’d hurl insults back at her.

Most days were calm but it wasn’t unusual to find me barricaded in my bedroom as my mother screamed and banged on the door until my stepfather negotiated her away.

The sparks that lit these bonfires were rarely significant – an item of clothing she didn’t like, a request to see a friend she’d decided was ‘bad news’, or any mention of my father.

My mother’s two other children, my half-siblings, were born when I was nine and 11 in 1998 and 2000. My sister found a quiet lane to escape my mother’s ire – always toeing the line and knowing when to shrink away.

My brother, however, exists in a similar hot seat to mine. Due to our age gap, I wasn’t around to see what set her off, and her reasons for taking against him have remained a family mystery.

We also weren’t the only ones at the receiving end of tirades or hateful conspiracy theories – it could equally be directed at a cleaner, neighbour or stranger. In my mother’s eyes, anyone could be out to offend, upset or steal.

I’ve spent years trying to piece together my mother’s childhood and understand what triggers her. There’s nothing I can pinpoint. For a long time I clung to the fun or loving moments with my mum. She’s the only person I’ve consistently laughed with until I’ve cried – often while everyone else stands around in confusion.

We once even went on holiday together when I was 21, navigating Thailand, Cambodia and Laos with surprisingly little drama.

Our relationship was always better when there was distance between us, so when I moved to New York for university to study Comparative Literature in 2007 the months when I was away were always the best.

We’d text and speak during the day about university and life – we’d even go periods without a fight until she was bolstered by wine, and a late-night email filled with expletives would arrive.

When they did, I’d quietly pore over the words, trying to understand if my actions justified her rage – but friends were quick to confirm that the picture my mother painted of me was far from the reality they knew.

Sometimes it was about the fact that I smoked, other times my decision to work in fashion. Usually it came down to money in some way; that I’d never be able to support myself, or an assumption that I had plans to live off my stepfather.

Sometimes gifts would arrive after the fights, but only if I hadn’t fought back. A parcel of clothes, new towels or sheets because she’d ‘thought of me’, and that would be the best I could hope for in terms of an apology.

One night, a few years into my first job, my mother was staying with me in my flat in New York. She found a condom packet in my bedroom and flew into a rage – screaming that I was a whore.

I locked myself in my room and filmed her screams as she tried to bang the door down, and then showed my co-workers the following day. The look on their faces as they listened to the bangs, crashes and unending expletives, made me realise that my situation was dire.

Whenever I flew home to see her, I experienced panic before I got on the flight. From when I was about 12, my mother had always quietly tried to change my diet whenever she thought I’d gained weight. While at university I’d often forget my size, but I’d always find myself in front of a mirror the day before seeing her. Had I gained weight? Lost weight? Was my dye job terrible? My hair too blonde? Too short?

She’d always stare long enough at the body part in question to make her thoughts clear.

It was in my 20s that I started to cut contact with her – albeit temporarily – whenever things became too much. It became a circuit-breaker used as a last resort. Once back in touch, we’d pretend nothing had happened. Once I moved back to London in 2018 and married two years later aged 31, my outlook shifted.

While my husband’s never seen how bad it can be, he once witnessed the fallout when I spoke favourably about a relative my mother loathes. She started shouting about their various ‘betrayals’, and when I left the kitchen to sit with my husband in the living room, she followed me in and continued her tirade.

Seeing this behaviour in our house felt so alien, highlighting how out of place it was in my new life. Our newborn daughter was upstairs and my husband had to step in to calm my mother down so she didn’t wake her up. It was almost a relief that she’d finally revealed herself, providing evidence for the stories I’d told him.

With a new family and a new centre of gravity, I felt stronger. I knew what I wanted my family to look like, and how I wanted us to treat each other. While she was generally on her best behaviour, I couldn’t shake the fact that I was always just one wrong comment away from a hellish meltdown.

From then on, we only saw each other a few times per year, and texted once or twice a week.

Over coffee one day, I told her that I wanted to start a business. As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew what she was thinking and exactly what would come back to haunt me as a midnight text after a few glasses of wine. Where would I get the money from? Probably some idiot who fell for my scams!

It was always at night and usually after a drink when the worst thoughts would come out – and I would dread opening messages she sent that late.

The alcohol would serve as a kind of psychedelic truth serum, distorting everything and everyone until situations were unrecognisable. It would fuel her conspiracy theories and confirm we were all out to get her.

In the cafe, feeling a sense of impending doom, I moved on – showing her houses we were looking at. By the second house, I realised this would also, somehow, be used against me in the future.

It was at that moment that I realised I couldn’t ever have a normal relationship with my mother. I couldn’t even have a normal conversation with her without fearing my words would be repurposed as ammunition.

It felt like anything and everything in my life, when seen through her eyes, could be twisted into the most malevolent versions of reality – all stemming from the same age-old ideas: I’m nefarious, pernicious and scheming, out to ruin or bankrupt everyone I meet.

The loudspeaker phone comments followed a few months later, and knowing that I could never have a consistently good or normal relationship with my mother was partially what motivated the decision to cut her out of my life. At the time, the overarching feeling was relief. While I’d spent so long knowing another attack was around the corner, I was suddenly able to mute the noise and live separately from it. I no longer dreaded turning my phone over in the morning to see what alerts awaited me, and felt less hypervigilant.

Occasionally I’d hear about some new vendetta via a relative – a gardener she thinks is fleecing her, some fictional mistress she’s created for my stepfather – and it was always a relief to be away from it.

Two years on, however, I began to question if cutting my mother off was the best solution.

After speaking to therapists about family estrangement, it became clear that they usually don’t advocate for it. They emphasised boundaries, and asked me to consider if there were times or places when I might feel comfortable seeing my mother – while removing situations that I knew would be tricky.

One therapist highlighted how me being around my mum would also model healthy behaviours for my children; to show them there are alternative ways to manage difficult relationships, rather than just cutting people out.

By this point my children were two and four, and my eldest had begun to enquire about grandmothers, noticing she was lacking in this department. I realised that it seemed unnecessary to cut off from someone who, for them, could be nurturing.

If I could manage the hours they saw her, and the communications between them, perhaps there could be a way to shield my children from parts of my mother, while enabling them to enjoy the more positive attributes.

As a grandmother, my mother can be involved and enthusiastic. She joyfully listens to them when they tell her about their toy cars and monster drawings, and loves them dearly. Seeing that reminds me of the happier times I had with her.

I don’t think I’ll ever unblock her from my phone, email, or social media because I don’t want to be available for random attacks that ruin my day. And I can’t see her at night if alcohol is involved. But I could take my children to see her at a museum, park or restaurant and be present without anger.

So I passed this message on through my family. Although we are yet to cross paths, my husband did take my children to see her this year, going on a museum visit arranged via my sister.

When my four-year-old daughter returned with an overpriced dinosaur ball in one hand, she excitedly proclaimed: ‘I was with my grandmother!’ I knew then that there should be a place for my mother in my family.

By creating boundaries, there’s hope that I can get the best out of my mum, while shielding myself, and my family, from the volatility. It’s not ideal, but, like most families, it’s complicated.