You think your parents are always going to be there.
My mother died in a period when I detached myself from her for a period of time. I didn’t seek to permanently close off contact, I was going through a bad period and we’d had a disagreement; I think I saw it as taking some time out. From her friends I understand she died wanting nothing more than to see her only granddaughter. Sure she wasn’t ‘perfect’ (what even is that?) but she was a saint. I didn’t allow myself to see just how frail she was.
All I can say to anyone is don’t do it. Don’t put yourself in that situation, don’t put your parents in that situation. You’ll live with regret and being unable to forgive yourself the rest of your life as I do. Now I’m going through ‘no contact’ with my only daughter at her behest and I fully see the justice here. I can never forgive myself for what happened to my mother, not in a lifetime.
I see this online and professional community as evil.
There’s been an anti-family agenda going in our societies since the sixties ‘starting with the manufactured ‘generation gap’ where there used to be respect for elders and hurtling toward what we have now – self-entitled adults who are kids in adult bodies unable to develop strength due to avoiding pain for decades. Yes of course I empathise for those who have been genuinely harmed by their families, of course. Just don't go there. Reach out before it's too late. You have no concept of what a lifetime of self-blame even feels like and cannot escape what's in your soul.
A young man I know was estranged from his parents, in large part because his wife couldn't tolerate them, and now both his parents are dead. He saw very little of them in their last years, brief visits 1-2 times a year and always without his wife, and he's deeply depressed now. I think both he and his wife have regrets now and I don't know if that come between them, unspoken or explicitly.
You think your parents are always going to be there.
My mother died in a period when I detached myself from her for a period of time. I didn’t seek to permanently close off contact, I was going through a bad period and we’d had a disagreement; I think I saw it as taking some time out. From her friends I understand she died wanting nothing more than to see her only granddaughter. Sure she wasn’t ‘perfect’ (what even is that?) but she was a saint. I didn’t allow myself to see just how frail she was.
All I can say to anyone is don’t do it. Don’t put yourself in that situation, don’t put your parents in that situation. You’ll live with regret and being unable to forgive yourself the rest of your life as I do. Now I’m going through ‘no contact’ with my only daughter at her behest and I fully see the justice here. I can never forgive myself for what happened to my mother, not in a lifetime.
I see this online and professional community as evil.
There’s been an anti-family agenda going in our societies since the sixties ‘starting with the manufactured ‘generation gap’ where there used to be respect for elders and hurtling toward what we have now – self-entitled adults who are kids in adult bodies unable to develop strength due to avoiding pain for decades. Yes of course I empathise for those who have been genuinely harmed by their families, of course. Just don't go there. Reach out before it's too late. You have no concept of what a lifetime of self-blame even feels like and cannot escape what's in your soul.
Thank you, Sue. Wise words.
A young man I know was estranged from his parents, in large part because his wife couldn't tolerate them, and now both his parents are dead. He saw very little of them in their last years, brief visits 1-2 times a year and always without his wife, and he's deeply depressed now. I think both he and his wife have regrets now and I don't know if that come between them, unspoken or explicitly.
Sometimes you only know what you've got when its gone.