I feel your pain, I really do! You are not alone. I am trying to figure out what "got to the kids." I am going through it with my only beloved daughter, whom I can't even recognize as the daughter that was so close to us. It's heartbreaking, but brainwash does exist (so do crappy husbands). We did everything to embrace him when they married, but as my husband put it, he didn't give us a chance since Day One. After 11 years of this I have, within the past few weeks, decided not to even try with him any more.

Passive Aggressive personalities are cold, calculated, vindictive and manipulating. People who don't recognize PA personalities can underestimate them. Passive Aggressiveness is a rotten injustice. They seem to feed on any tidbit they can, and watch for "reasons" to justify their actions/decisions against another. Still, I hold my daughter responsible for not recognizing it . . . until it has molded her and her decisions also.

Because they are unchecked in their own deception, I've noticed a growing arrogance, self-importance and misaligned priorities in them. She was such a wonderful girl in years gone by.

Since my daughter has no desire to be close to us, though I miss who she used to be, I try not to miss what I had with her. I would be in tears all the time. I DO HOWEVER miss my beautiful grandchildren, who are the real victims. Parents/Grandparents should not thrown away.

At this time, all I have is prayer and my growing list of diversions I have put in my life. Does it replace them? Not at all, but being around the coldness is awful and leaving a visit disheartened all the time is depressing and not missed.

Aside from God melting their hearts, I'm not sure when/how this changes. Therefore, though it pains me to lose so much time with them, I have to TRY to find happiness in other things (notice I didn't say joy).

I hope you find strength, iamdone, and I wish I had a counselor too. I was surprised to find this forum existed, so hope to be able to network with others going through it. What I am seeing is a very ugly phenomenon and like I said, am trying to get to the root of it in hopes that with awareness WILL come change.

That's how our generation does it!

Cheers my friend, feel free to exchange comments with me any time. :>)

Welcome to the forum, Iamdone. I am sorry to hear your sorrow and distress but there are many supportive estranged parents on here. With any online forum, take what fits and leave the rest. Each person on here has a variation on the theme of estrangement in their lives but its helpful to hear different perspectives. Counseling can be very helpful or sometimes not so much if the counselor thinks it is always the parent's fault. Some people are very down on counselors or think they promote just "dumping the toxic parents" but I've benefitted from my own counseling and reading appropriate self help books. So I tend to say try it but also be aware of the bias of "always the parent's fault."

I like to suggest this book, Done with the Crying by Sheri McGregor. She has a workbook that goes with it. Doing the exercises after each chapter can really help us learn to move forward, and the workbook goes into a little more depth. What I like about her approach is the focus on our own individual healing.

We can move forward and create a good, happy, content, fun life even with estranged children. We can learn to unpack what really happened in their childhood and their adulthood and regain our dignity, integrity, self esteem, self worth, happiness.

Feel free to share on here and respond to other people. It takes a village, as they say. Welcome again!

So sorry for your hurt and pain, You are not alone in it, Only our children can hurt us like no one else. People who have not gone through it just don't understand that kind of pain. You are not a horrible person because of what your children have done to you.