empathy on all scores, shelda. i sometimes wonder if i failed to notice being transported to another dimension while i was busy being the source of all evil. i inherited 3 young grandchildren in 2019 with the fatal car wreck of my youngest son and his wife. 5 years later i have developed the habit of introducing myself as their guardian. the sweet grandma stereotypes persist with distressing inaccuracy while school officials, doctors, etc., are prone to demand strip searches and police checks before they will talk to grandparents. introducing myself as their guardian cuts a whole heap of red tape.

then we get to the grief of losing my still living son to estrangement. . . during my youngest son's funeral i began to be haunted by the question, "which of my sons died first?" my eldest son didn't speak to me at the funeral and has yet to ask after the welfare of his nephew and nieces.

yes, how to be somebody i actually want to be is constantly in my thoughts. what i want doesn't seem to be on the menu. sigh. . .

it helps me to compartmentalize the issues. finding a me that i want to be is a separate issue from grieving my sons. the confusion of play dating and parenting by app is another. resisting the urge to vomit in the laps of adult children playing the poor, little victim card is another. i could go on, but that is more than enough to fuel a massive depression.

i work to be gentle with myself and patient with the process. i keep my kick boxing bag handy for anger channeling.

My ex son in law went to therapy and was told to quit having a relationship with his Mother as I guess she was abusive...she bought him houses cars etc..so her husband died ( his Father)
and he isnt speaking with her still and is now taking her to court for monies he thinks he is owned.. Greed never stops.Did your son go to therapy and was told crap too?

in my own case, i still stand by my therapy guided reasons for choosing to estrange from my own parents, but suing them would not have earned me a single blood nickel. i'm sure i wouldn't want that money in my pockets if it was there to sue for. i have to put my hands in those pockets.

it wouldn't surprise me much if my son sued me, similar wise. i have money enough to raise his brother's orphans and he has already made assertions that he deserves our money more than any young child possibly could. i don't suspect that the judge will be too quick to take money from the pockets of young children for the sake of filling his adult child crack pipe.

yup, he has had therapy, paid for by his toxic parents. he was calling those efforts crap before he finished any of the programs. i suspect he was calling them crap because they weren't telling him the crap he wanted to hear.

personally, i don't doubt that allot of this stems from the same psych theories which helped me recover from child sex trafficking. those theories we not meant for facebook or teen magazine. context counts, my entitled dear.

You were sexually abused as a child?

Shelda, I am not sure estrangement is new, my own parents estranged from their parents 60 years ago. And people have immigrated to our two countries since forever and sometimes those people never saw their families again, rarely wrote or couldn't read or write. But what I think is different is the push now days to "just dump the toxic people in your life" and many people don't understand what this fully means. Now victims of real child abuse are a different story. No one would tell them to just suck it up and appease the abuser.

Another thing that is perhaps different is how parents have changed. We parents now tend to expect a forever and "close" relationship with our grown sons and daughters. Our generations thought we'd raise our kids to always be loving and be a close knit family. But this isn't how it always goes. People have their own minds.

And people are living longer and this can be harder on the younger generations who aren't prepared mentally or psychologically to be a caregiver. My grandparents all died young except for one who died at 83, I think. And even that is young for some Americans who live to be 95 or so. But I notice my generation tend to plan that their kids will take care of them in their older age. And I also notice from working with older adults how many do not have anyone to take care of them. Whether kids or relatives, they are simply alone in this world. I don't have any answers just telling you what I have observed.

Our worlds revolved around the kids while our mom's worlds did not necessarily revolve around the kids. My mom taught us to be independent and I taught my kids to be independent and their dad taught them to demean and disregard me.

So it can be many things. Gotta go to PT this morning. Take care, hugs to you.