scars or strength?
Despite our fractured family, it’s been a particularly lovely summer in my home and I wanted to share a bit about how I have finally found myself healed and not as affected by my child’s estrangement. I hope this will help you if you are feeling hopeless and heartbroken. You can heal and be left with not scars, but strength. There are muscles within your soul that you don’t know are there until you find them and build them. It takes a bit of time and a lot of intention, but, like going to the gym, consistency is key.
As parents, it is natural for us to desire close and loving relationships with our children even as they embark on their own journey of adulthood. I couldn’t have imagined life any other way. When I raised my daughter, diving deep into her hopes and dreams, I didn't anticipate being excluded from her life. The loss of this time together is such a waste, however, understanding that this time would be fraught with conflict, I am grateful to be spared the pain. Consider the possibility of being grateful for your child’s decision and finding peace IN their absence, not despite it.
A New Perspective
One way to shift our mindset and build strength is to visualize what life would be like if our adult child continued to reside with us and interacted with us daily. Reflect for a moment: would this hypothetical scenario bring about a sense of peace, or would it be filled with perpetual anxiety, tiptoeing around hoping that your behaviour will be acceptable to your adult child? Would you find yourself investing your resources into trying to please someone who consistently shows dissatisfaction with your choices? How. much money would you spend trying to demonstrate the love that seems to be invisible to them? Build a muscle of reality. Stop fantasizing and make the leap to reality.
Gratitude from Afar
Send love and gratitude quietly. It is enough to love our adult child from afar. Be grateful for their decision to seek fulfillment elsewhere and accept that they don’t want what you have to offer. Understanding that it is what's best for both parties involved. As parents, it is normal to miss the child we thought we raised and long for the connection we once had. However, it is also important to acknowledge that sometimes people change, and the person they have become no longer aligns with what we anticipated when we raised them, helped them with their homework, volunteered at their schools, and watched with pride as they played an instrument or a game, seemingly on the way to realizing the potential that they have on this earth. They are making their own choices now and your role is complete. Recently I was reminded by a dear friend that the biggest changes I have seen in my estranged daughter occurred AFTER my daughter went off to university. My girl is now unrecognizable to me but I have to accept that this is what she chooses and be happy that she has found what she needs and respect that her choices are her own to make. See my next point.
Proud of Their Strength and Conviction
Without agreeing with their choices, we can still be proud of our adult child's strength and conviction. Their decision to establish no contact may reflect their dedication to their own personal growth and well-being. We can honour their choices, even if we disagree with them. Accept that we are not a part of their life at the moment and may never be again. Existing alongside an estranged child is very painful without this perspective, I’ve found. They don’t realize how short life is and think they have all the time in the world to break up/make up/soul search/hurt/forgive/rebuild within relationships, but I know that is categorically untrue. I lived it with my own parents. What a waste of love that was. Such a waste of love. But, as with all relationships, one sided love just feels shitty.
Choosing Peace and Love
Choose love for you. In navigating the delicate emotions surrounding no contact with our adult child, we must prioritize our own well-being. It is perfectly acceptable to choose peace and love for ourselves, even if your child has successfully drilled into you that you don’t deserve it. They are wrong. You deserve love and kindness. The irony is that your estranged adult child is likely treating you worse than their complaints about your parenting. It is also likely you were unaware of what you were doing wrong and it was unintentional. Their abuse is intentional.
Embracing a New Narrative
Ultimately, it is essential to recognize that our children are born to us, we do our best, then they are adults and make their own decisions. If that decision involves turning their back on us, then so be it.
Being cast out by someone you brought into the world, raised with love, tried your best to provide for, educate and keep safe, can initiate a transformative process that benefits everyone involved. Embracing and seeking to understand this massive paradigm shift can help us release the burden of the fantasy we held onto of our relationship with our adult child and find gratitude for the years we shared with them. Letting go also releases your estranged child from the burden of our grief. It is a final, deeply loving, gift to your child.
By focusing on our own growth and fostering an atmosphere of peace within our own four walls, we can cultivate a sense of acceptance and look forward to building a new path without hanging onto hope that our child will return and treat us with love. This is statistically very, very unlikely. And what if they did return? Most likely we would experience judgemental, contemptuous conflict, impatience, cruelty, and, yes, more heartbreak. And the last thing the world needs is more heartbreak!
My daughter returned in 2022 as she was fed up with her dad and the life he was providing. It became clear, after she went no contact again in early 2023, that I was a necessary part of her return to her home city. I felt used as she returned to her old patterns. It was a harrowing experience for everyone in my life and I got a lot of ‘I told you so’s’. I was humiliated again.
I suspect everyone reading this is at least fifty years old. We’re wise. We’ve lived. We understand how short life actually is and how we are entering what are the best years of life. Let’s do what our estranged children are doing and channel our energies toward people and things that bring us joy. Put aside the past and stop wishing for a future that is likely never coming. Stop wasting years, months, weeks, days, and hours mourning. Live. You are a being on this earth and the world needs your unique contributions. Don’t leave us hanging.
See the love, joy, and kindness all around you. Choose it.
Smile at strangers.
Make travel plans.
Get a pet.
Move to a new city.
Start a business.
Write a book.
Throw parties.
Volunteer
Free yourself from the grief you’ve held onto for so long in order to create the space to celebrate life. Joy attracts joy. Be joyful.
Your life will fill again with new meaning and new purpose. The people who want what you have to offer will fill your life. Go and live and watch for them. Build a beautiful life chapter. It’s your turn now.