Some of my blog posts are quite personal, and sometimes I hesitate to write. How open should I be?
I am estranged from my children. For many years. I was with a controlling husband who used all his anger to me to stop me having a relationship with my children. I never thought it would be like this – Estrangement from my children.
I never bad mouthed him when I was seeing the children, but it was so hard. I was slipping into a break down, walking on eggshells, always feeling like I was saying the wrong things.
Estrangement meant that I didn’t hear from my daughter for years, around 5 years ago she emailed me to tell me that she had a child, and sent some photos, we emailed she would write about my grandson, but nothing about her life.
And then the emails stopped. I still email a couple of times a year, but I’m not hopeful that there will ever be a time we meet, that this estrangement will ever end.
Sad for both of us.
I saw my son more, but then the communication stopped -so now there is estrangement from both my children.
I’m sure I did the wrong things, said the wrong things. Over and over, I’ve replayed things I’ve done and thought how things could have been different.
But I can’t change what I said or did, or perhaps didn’t do.
I’ve had counselling, I’ve journaled. I joined Match Mothers. I think I’ve come to terms with it.
And then the feelings surface.
The latest trigger back to the estrangement has been my separation from my husband and the start of my new life. I wrote about this in a previous blog post.
I’ve now joined a couple of online groups and will be meeting up, later this year. Estrangement is a growing phenomenon. And not all have been long term, there seems to be more adult children deciding to cut contact.
Back when I was young, we may have had disagreements with our parents, but we stayed in touch. We were respectful. We still spoke.
But now it’s easier to cut off contact and focus more on friends, and online friends. I wonder if people are now encouraged to go for estrangement now.
So, I’m not as happy as my usual self. I’m more in touch with feelings of sadness. I know this will pass, and I’ll probably start counselling again to help me.
For now, I’ll keep being kind to myself and take the time to work things through.
I’d love to know if this triggers anything you want to share, any comments are welcome, either on my blog, or, if more personal feel free to email me.
Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay