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While I don't have the time or inclination to go through a tedious re-reading to tally the percentage of posts which could be considered "not supportive", I still maintain that it is quite small (in this particular thread).
You might want to let it rest. Regardless of the math (and gawd I love math), cinder's contribution is as relevant and worthy as anyone else's. Why do you feel compelled to judge it otherwise?
You might want to let it rest. Regardless of the math (and gawd I love math), cinder's contribution is as relevant and worthy as anyone else's. Why do you feel compelled to judge it otherwise?
I don't even know why he started the thread in the first place, he seems fairly disenfranchised from the subject.
"Fran told me to start this, but I've never experienced it" is how the OP began. Sort of like watching a car accident and getting the victims to describe it.
Hard to know what acceptable advice would be for someone who's never suffered what he's posting about.
Anyway I just want to give a big (((((hug))))) to all our posters here who have gone or are going through this awful pain.
I would rate it like suffering a death. Losing your child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent, but losing that child because that child has chosen to go, is just excruciating.
In my case, girl 21 boy 17 went to live with their dad both at 16 and have pretty much cut contact. My crime? I got told that my daughter "can't be bothered" with me. but she does love me.
My son says he loves me but he's "too busy".
I am still waiting for them to wake the hell up and realise they only have one mum, me, and they still need me, but their father has them convinced otherwise.
There is really nothing you can do in this sort of situation. Any attempts seem to make things worse.
All I can say is, it does get better. All grief does, eventually. It still hurts like a ***** when you think about it, you just don't think about it as much.
I think it's got something to do with entitlement. This generation seems to be the Entitled Generation. I guess I just wasn't the sort of mum they wanted. I didn't play with them, I didn't buy them a puppy, I didn't provide endless junk food in the pantry which could be swallowed whole while gaming.
I don't even know why he started the thread in the first place, he seems fairly disenfranchised from the subject.
"Fran told me to start this, but I've never experienced it" is how the OP began. Sort of like watching a car accident and getting the victims to describe it.
Hard to know what acceptable advice would be for someone who's never suffered what he's posting about.
O.K., I can enlighten you as to why I started this thread. Fran66, in a direct message to me, said she wished there were a thread on the subject but that she didn't have the courage to start one herself, as it's a subject that so often is passed over in silence because of shame. She suggested I start it. So it was done as a favor. Indeed, I'm very glad I did so, because so many people have posted that they have been helped by reading the stories of others and that they are grateful for the thread. I suppose no good turn ever goes unpunished for long, and that mean-spiritedness will creep in sooner or later, as you have proven.
O.K., I can enlighten you as to why I started this thread. Fran66, in a direct message to me, said she wished there were a thread on the subject but that she didn't have the courage to start one herself, as it's a subject that so often is passed over in silence because of shame. She suggested I start it. So it was done as a favor. Indeed, I'm very glad I did so, because so many people have posted that they have been helped by reading the stories of others and that they are grateful for the thread.
And, yes, that's exactly the way it started, and yes, we all know it's helped a lot of people, and yes, the unsupportive posts have been minute. So, great job, Escort Rider
I was really surprised at how this thread grew and am still surprised as it continues to grow. And I really don't think it had much to do with ER and me -- I think this thread was just 'meant to be'. And judging by the people who posted (and those who simply couldn't post because it was still just too painful and/or they didn't think they could be very articulate -- I don't think posting or not posting has much to do with 'courage') -- this thread has accomplished what it set out to do: for us to know that we that are not alone -- that this is not a rare situation in our society. I know that I am not alone in this, and I'm very grateful to all of you.
This thread has helped me a lot and clarified some of my thoughts on my situation. Call me crazy but I think all the media exposure has contributed to much of the dissatisfaction of my children's generation,giving them ideas of what they are entitled to that are very unrealistic. I just shook my head when my son complained that "We ate supper too early"--never mind that the meals were scrstch cooked snd eaten together. His father worked early hours and was hungry when he got home--so we ate at 4:30.Oh the humanity! Now I'm not minimizing the pain of estrangement, but at the age of 11 I h
cooked my own meals, ironed etc because my father was ill and my Mom had to work evenings. I wear myself out going over in my mind whst I might have done , but now am taking a break from it. Christmas will be here soon enough and the emotional pain will once again stab me in the heart.
This thread has helped me a lot and clarified some of my thoughts on my situation. Call me crazy but I think all the media exposure has contributed to much of the dissatisfaction of my children's generation,giving them ideas of what they are entitled to that are very unrealistic. I just shook my head when my son complained that "We ate supper too early"--never mind that the meals were scrstch cooked snd eaten together. His father worked early hours and was hungry when he got home--so we ate at 4:30.Oh the humanity! Now I'm not minimizing the pain of estrangement, but at the age of 11 I h
cooked my own meals, ironed etc because my father was ill and my Mom had to work evenings. I wear myself out going over in my mind whst I might have done , but now am taking a break from it.Christmas will be here soon enough and the emotional pain will once again stab me in the heart.
I'm not minimizing the pain of estrangement either -- truly -- however -- you don't HAVE to go through this. I'm certainly not immune -- and Christmas can be the worst time for the pain to flare up -- but there is a lot to be said about just accepting our situations the way they are. Maybe a better way to put it is this: The Buddha [supposedly] said "Pain is a given simply because we are human and alive -- suffering is optional". I think that the pain of estrangement is always going to be there, in varying degrees. Going over and over again, in our heads, about what could have caused the estrangement and what we could possibly do about the estrangement now is suffering. I don't live in the illusion that I can change things or control things. I don't choose to suffer. I have too many people and things in my life to be grateful about. Some days I don't even think about my kids and grandkids. Not anymore. And it's not the I'm just trying very hard not to think about/to repress it. The kids and grandkids just don't always come to mind everyday anymore. Yes, of course, the estrangement still hurts at times -- just not all the time. And I'm no longer suffering (well, I don't the vast majority of the time). And I know 'not suffering', at least about estrangement, is possible for all of us. It takes work and time to let it all go. (This isn't a Pollyanna Pep Talk. This all takes work and time -- but it IS VERY POSSIBLE to have a good, fulfilling, rich life without our children and grandchildren in our lives.)
[quote=lovesMountains;29485759]
My experience with parents who have been through and are currently going through estrangements from their adult children has taught me that these things don't just "happen"..
While I don't know the specifics or your situation Fran, I do know SOMETHING happened in your family to get you guys off track.END/
Just got back to this discussion and am very touched by the raw and open emotions people are expressing. I'm sure it's good for all of this.
I quoted the above so I can point out that some relationships/families were never *on* track. That was the case with mine, although there was significant mental illness in my mother/grandmother/sister growing up, there was no abuse. There was just not much of anything. I picture it like a boardinghouse with four depressed people under their own bell jars living under the same roof. I consider this better than the kind of enmeshments and abuse that I have since learned can occur in people's early lives.
When I made up my will and specified that my sister was to kept out of it (she is a greedy and stunted person to me) the lawyer asked, "So you had a falling out?" and I said, "We never had a falling in. It just never happened."
A friend of mine, aged 47, was estranged from her father for decades. Said there was no abuse but she just couldn't deal with him. Meanwhile, she was very enmeshed with her very toxic narcissistic and wealthy mother. She asked me if she should listen to her brother and try harder with the father, and I said only if she could do so without a cost to her well being, and if not, she had to be prepared for a phone call that he'd died with this estrangement. She felt she couldn't and stayed estranged until recently. She got into therapy, kicked mother to the emotional curb, and has engaged with her father and found a lot of the estrangement was the toxic injection of the mother. Father and daughter now have a pleasant/buddy-like distant relationship and I'm glad for her.
I've actually been amazed by how many people involved in physcial/sexual abuse *don't* estrange, to be honest.
I say these things as a person of 60 with no children by choice (and no husband by circumstance or something). I can't know the pain of someone who does not know what a grown child has estranged, and I don't assume that it must be *something*. Since I was the one who brought up the word "shame" early in the discussion, I really appreciate people's posts.
Let me throw-in my nickel's worth here. No matter who started the thread it's attracted a lot of attention without a lot of detractors or rancor. For me it was a good reminder of how lucky I am. It invoked memories of 12 years of severe alienation from my children at the hands of their mother but reminded me of how blessed I am to have reinstated good, supportive and loving relationships with four of the five and their husbands/wives and children as well. As for the detractors who have either spoken against the thread or against those of us who have lived with and survived estrangement....well.... I'll be a gentleman and forbear comment.
My youngest, who is the only one giving us grandchildren, is special in my heart. He has the best manners, the most loving personality, and is the hardest working. His DIL is wonderful in many ways and I admire her, but like so many young women her age she is rather self centered ('don't tell me what to do I can take care of myself' sort of person). One day when she was pregnant I suggested she rest and got quite the off-color response in return. I walk on eggshells around her, never saying the slightest thing she could possibly take wrong....because I want to be with those grandbabies. I would tape my mouth permanently shut and even ignore any slights from her as long as I have good access to the children. There is no way I could bear the pain of not seeing them often. I do have one grown son who is responsible and highly respectful but he doesn't say much (Leo) and keeps to himself; I rarely hear from him but I know he's fine.
One of my sisters (A) told another of our sisters (B) not to tell me about an important piece of family news. Neither B nor I have the slightest idea what that was all about, I mean we talked by phone for over an hour around it and B swears she couldn't figure it out but she told me the "news" anyway. The point of my saying this is that there is no way on earth we can know what is in someone else's head and why. They get a notion about us and they don't shake it, it's almost like an obsession with them, like a petty game. I don't play games and will retreat from anyone who does and affects me in so doing.
You're right. You don't know the specifics of my situation.
In your first paragraph, you write that you do KNOW that SOMETHING happened in my family to get us off track.
In the last paragraph, you say that you don't assume it must be something (altho' you don't specify my family, and I think you were talking in generalities).
Can't have it both ways. You can't both 'know' in your first paragraph and 'not assume' in your last paragraph.
And since you don't even have children -- and never have had children -- tell me again just why you're posting on this thread?
You do not come in here and insinuate/infer/accuse parents of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and/or have severe personality disorders and/or mental illness, when you have no way of knowing exactly what happened, unless a person chooses to tell his/her story. And often we parents don't know exactly what happened and how it all started.
[Curmudgeon really is usually a gentleman. I've never professed to usually being a lady, as you may already know.]
[quote=brightdoglover;31206091]
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovesMountains
My experience with parents who have been through and are currently going through estrangements from their adult children has taught me that these things don't just "happen"..
While I don't know the specifics or your situation Fran, I do know SOMETHING happened in your family to get you guys off track.END/
Just got back to this discussion and am very touched by the raw and open emotions people are expressing. I'm sure it's good for all of this.
I quoted the above so I can point out that some relationships/families were never *on* track. That was the case with mine, although there was significant mental illness in my mother/grandmother/sister growing up, there was no abuse. There was just not much of anything. I picture it like a boardinghouse with four depressed people under their own bell jars living under the same roof. I consider this better than the kind of enmeshments and abuse that I have since learned can occur in people's early lives.
When I made up my will and specified that my sister was to kept out of it (she is a greedy and stunted person to me) the lawyer asked, "So you had a falling out?" and I said, "We never had a falling in. It just never happened."
A friend of mine, aged 47, was estranged from her father for decades. Said there was no abuse but she just couldn't deal with him. Meanwhile, she was very enmeshed with her very toxic narcissistic and wealthy mother. She asked me if she should listen to her brother and try harder with the father, and I said only if she could do so without a cost to her well being, and if not, she had to be prepared for a phone call that he'd died with this estrangement. She felt she couldn't and stayed estranged until recently. She got into therapy, kicked mother to the emotional curb, and has engaged with her father and found a lot of the estrangement was the toxic injection of the mother. Father and daughter now have a pleasant/buddy-like distant relationship and I'm glad for her.
I've actually been amazed by how many people involved in physcial/sexual abuse *don't* estrange, to be honest.
I say these things as a person of 60 with no children by choice (and no husband by circumstance or something). I can't know the pain of someone who does not know what a grown child has estranged, and I don't assume that it must be *something*. Since I was the one who brought up the word "shame" early in the discussion, I really appreciate people's posts.
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but she does love me.
