Have you experienced the pain of estrangement?
I was shocked at the number of people who have experienced this kind of pain in their lives. All stuck in their grief, and yes, I was one of them. I am still estranged from my son, but I have learned so many life lessons around this topic, that I am now going to share them with you in the hope that you will find comfort and strength to talk about this new phenomenon, or is it?
Mother’s falling out with their daughters is not strange for a short time, but when the time passes the gap becomes more, perhaps turning into years, and why? For what reason?
Now don’t get me wrong. I know that some people have good reasons why they are better off not with their family.
But this is only a few in comparison to those that I have met over the last two years. The majority of these children come from loving homes, and it has been a complete shock to the loving parents left behind to pick up the pieces.
I can only guess why my own son has decided to estrange himself from the family, but if I did know why, could I do anything about it? Probably not. He is seeing life from his perspective and I from mine. We are unique.
When he was younger, we could have very interesting conversations around human psychology, in fact he took his GCSE in that subject. I often though that he would be an ideal person to come and join me in my business, providing of course that it would have been something that he would like to have done.
And then things changed big time. His dad died, he became a father and life happened around him. That was a lot of losses to deal with. Death, and loss of your decisions for yourself (now there was a family to think of) at only 25 years of age. Then his business left by his dad started to fail. We can summarize why; that is not necessary for this article but to say, it was a loss and another attachment to his dad also lost. Added to this pressure, another baby and then the lock downs happened. This has not been a good time for him. Nor me.
From my previous blog:
I can tell you that the years that followed have been heart breaking for me. I never would have thought in all my days, that this would happen between my son and myself. As I mentioned in last months blog, he did something that shook me to the core, something that I thought he would never have done in a million years….but he did. What, is not important, the why is. (How I internalize that is). That was to become my gift.
If you are interested in how I internalized that, read part one.
I have always said that my family were my greatest teachers, they have been my influencers and they continue to be.
Mothers are quick to think that there is something wrong with us when we experience these types of rejection, stating:-
How everything is our fault!
How this reflects on our parenting. If I could have been, better, more loving, attentive.
How will society now ‘judge me’.
And nothing can be further from the truth. It is not our fault and its not their fault.
I can say that because of the way I was, he did not build much resilience to life and there is indeed truth in that but at some point, we must stop and remember that they are adults!
The modern family stays together much longer. Financial situations keep children at home until nearly 30 years of age, while are generation were out the door as soon as we could make a life for ourselves. I myself, married at 20, and my husband was 23 years old. That can put strain on the modern family relationships.
We can pinpoint things in our childhood that we did that helped us with building resilience, for example how old were you when you had your first job? Learning to interact with people. Have adult influences around you in those situations. Good or bad, you learned how to navigate them. I was 14 when I had my first job, and I can remember feeling so proud of myself. My son until recently, only worked in the family business. Yes, he was good with clients, extremely good as a PT and was very sociable, but it is different working for someone outside of the family.
Now of course you must be 16 plus to get a job. I would definitely encourage that going forward.
You can tell from reading so far, I have been reflecting on this situation, before I worked on myself, I had same the point of view, with statements such as: ‘everything is my fault’ as a mother you ‘should know better’ and never mind society judging you, I was doing quite the number on myself!
I then proceeded to do what I did when I was dealing with my loneliness, I looked on face book for groups to help support me and my broken heart. I found quite a few. What I did discover is that reading these posts were bringing me down. Reading everyone’s stories, living for that moment their pain it became too much. As usual I was looking for ways to help guide me to heal.
Up to this point, I had not done my process on my relationship with my son, so I did that. I said “goodbye” to what we had in order to let a new way appear when its ready. I let go of my ‘hopes, dreams and expectations’ of what I hoped our relationship would be going forward.
That was the hardest thing for me to do, but it helped me settle into where we are ‘now’. The relationship between us has gone from what it was, but that does not mean that when we do reunite, it could indeed be a lot stronger.
At the same time as doing my process on myself I was also working with Sebastien Koellner as mentioned in my earlier blog, on my saboteurs. This was indeed a winning combination.
Having grieved the relationship that was, open to what was new, I was “back on the horse” to reach out and help others. I commented on a few posts in the group I had found and came across a wonderful lady called Janet Hogan.
Janet has created a group called Estranged Mothers – Rise and Thrive. Janet had posted a comment in the group I was a part of, and I just instantly loved her energy. I reached out and we have been sharing a lot of our thoughts around this topic. I am delighted to say that in the near future, Janet and I will be doing a podcast and workshops on this very subject.
We feel strongly that this subject needs a voice, that those of you who are living stuck in your grief, constantly looking for the mere morsal of a communication from these children are not living you own life!
I know that when I stopped pushing ‘energetically’ then I had some movement from his side. We will be talking about this and helping you find your feet again. Give yourself permission to live your own life.
There are so many people ‘out there’ who are stuck in this type of grief. Some relationships do heal and reunite which brings joy to my heart. We can all carry a little hope with that knowledge, but we do not need to put ourselves on a back burner until that day arrives.
Janet shares that there are 5 steps to estrangement.
- Shock/denial
- Despair
- Acceptance
- Transformation (of ourselves)
- Maintenance
I am sure you can identify with those stages from reading my blog, that I have gone through them all!
I will keep you posted when we have the podcast done on Busting Life’s Challenges, and of course there will be a youtube video on the Busting Life’s Challenges Channel.
We hope that you will find some way forward for yourself in this article and of course there is always the face book group, Estranged Mothers – Rise and Thrive. Yes, I know that Fathers can also be struggling with those issues to. Do reach out if you need some support, more than happy to have a conversation with you, or I can pass you along to my coaching male colleagues.
Remember what Abraham Hicks says, go and do something that makes you feel good about yourself. Put that boat of yours in your stream of life where you want it to be, make things easier for yourself, stop paddling up stream (trying to make things right) and allow, (just be) with healing (if you need some), flow downstream to where the next exciting part of your life will be, but for now,
Go and float in your boat!
Love Di x