Parents of estranged adult children Community Group
One or more of our adult children walked out of our lives and never looked back.
my youngest son and his wife (both 35) were killed in a car wreck on september 21, 2019 leaving 3 young orphans in my care. his older brother was quite helpful with the funeral arrangements and attended the funeral but did not speak to me through the entire proceedings. as i watched him across the stoic social distances, the question arose, "which of my sons died first?" i pushed the question aside, but it has haunted me ever since, even during the harshly worded demands for money, etc. maybe especially then. eldest son has expressed no interest, whatsoever, in the welfare of his neices and nephew, currently ages 3, 6 and almost 9. hubs and i are devoted to these children, but we are feeling our years. i will be 84 when the baby graduates from high school.
my eldest son is still breathing. reconciliation is still possible, but the relationship we had back when he was young and affectionate is ??? dead? i have been grieving the loss of both sons, though i still feel ??? inappropriate? by whatever descriptive, i can't seem to stop myself.
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I haven't written in my diary on my computer since May because I thought that my computer was dying. I got away from writing but my computer is hanging in there. I think that I will start writing in it again. It's so therapeutic.
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First, I hope everyone is doing well, and continuing to fight that good fight! Keep up the great work on yourselves; I'm rooting for all of you!So, I started doing therapy at the beginning of the year, when I was in my most depressed state, but with my therapist, I made big changes and steps in the right direction. But, over a month ago, she couldn't take my insurance anymore, and I had to stop...
We live imperfect lives but we are enough. Take care.
taking ^it^ one step at a time and letting god lead the dance.
we call ourselves a foster family these days. the grandparent/child platitudes feel like a brutal reminder of how much we have lost while failing miserably at describing our circumstances.
Please know that both of these types of grief are normal and to be expected.
You are not wrong to feel ambiguous loss with your ES. Having an ambiguous loss inflicted upon another human is a very cruel thing for someone to do. People have no understanding or no words for this ambiguous loss stuff. But it is real and sometimes therapy can be very helpful if one gets to frozen grief stage. Dr Pauline Boss has a newish book about the pandemic and ambiguous loss that is not about estrangement but has a lot of good, easy to read information. I took tools to help myself keep moving one day at a time. It is called The Myth of Closure.