I share this parent's resistance to sending amends letters, etc. My daughter "dumped" me when I experienced a sudden health crisis. I paid for all her needs, sports, Ivy League education, etc, was a doting parent & nursed her back to health during 2 major health crises. She & hubby are artists & college professors. She told me my illness,"interfered with her creativity". I am in remission- haven't heard from her in 12 years, despite reaching out & sending birthday cards & e-mails. I can only presume she has a "heart of stone" & has abandoned the values she was raised with, in a loving, Christian, home.
I don't understand how my daughter could be baptized, attend Lutheran pre-school & elementary school, get her confirmation & abandon all the values & feel nothing for me.
It is heartbreaking. The chronic stress is real and, at this point, I do view estrangement as a public health concern. The grief is ongoing and often unseen. Caring for yourself first is not avoidance, it is necessary stabilization in the face of prolonged relational stress.
This is so well written and helpful. I’m not convinced that the premise that there was always flawed or failed parenting, as opposed to human ordinary imperfect parenting that easily is best characterized as “good enough” parenting. I understand that this is understood by others to be my defensiveness, but I feel clear that I never crossed the line from good enough to abusive. Never. Some of this is based in the blessing of having exceptionally rich and loving relationships with my other children and deep validation of my grandparenting with my other grandchildren. That isn’t to say that they (my other adult children) don’t have complaints, irritations, pushbacks, valid criticisms, and limits they set with me that I have needed to listen to carefully, internalize, and circle back to make sure I have it. Each case is different, but as a psychiatrist who remembers early in her career the cultural belief that mental health issues virtually always were due to repressed memories of childhood ritual satanic abuse, and the mindless associated professional acceptance that there was a previously unknown epidemic of multiple personality disorder, I have my doubts. People literally spent two years in inpatient psychiatry units in the 1980’s to be treated for having survived alleged repressed satanic abuse that they *never* remembered until their psychotherapist (and I include many psychiatrists here) helped them to remember. These multiple personality diagnoses dropped dramatically when the fashion changed. I suspect that this “diagnosis” of trauma caused by such terrible parenting that family estrangement is the only solution, is going to be a story that the current skeptics such as Kathy Sinsheimer, Josh Coleman, etc will tell shocked young therapists. Literally, when I tell students about the notion of ritual satanic abuse, their jaws drop. I think this will happen - we will bury this shameful collective failure in our memories of how we allowed culture to co-opt what common sense should tell us about the quarter of parents currently being shunned with the support of an echo chamber of therapists and nontherapists alike. This is happening in the absence of prospective research, data on the consequences to the involved grandchildren, and really no research on whether apologizing for being well within the range of the “good enough mother,” (see Winnicott) is harmful of helpful to the shunned parent. I’m not sure. Human beings have been creating models and explanations for human suffering, for unhappiness, anxiety, depression, psychosis, and relationship problems since the beginning of time. We have had witchcraft, human sacrifice, demonic possession, religious and moral inferiority, suppressed satanic abuse, and now we seek to attribute suffering to parenting practices and styles so toxic that family rupture is the only path to healing. This too shall pass. I probably won’t be alive to see it, but I hope my daughter knows that I would always, always have forgiven her because I never doubt that it came from her own pain. Which I would have done anything to ease, including stopping to try to ease her suffering.
I share this parent's resistance to sending amends letters, etc. My daughter "dumped" me when I experienced a sudden health crisis. I paid for all her needs, sports, Ivy League education, etc, was a doting parent & nursed her back to health during 2 major health crises. She & hubby are artists & college professors. She told me my illness,"interfered with her creativity". I am in remission- haven't heard from her in 12 years, despite reaching out & sending birthday cards & e-mails. I can only presume she has a "heart of stone" & has abandoned the values she was raised with, in a loving, Christian, home.
They are selfish and she is adding to your health. Grief is hard but get working and leave her nothing
I don't understand how my daughter could be baptized, attend Lutheran pre-school & elementary school, get her confirmation & abandon all the values & feel nothing for me.
It is heartbreaking. The chronic stress is real and, at this point, I do view estrangement as a public health concern. The grief is ongoing and often unseen. Caring for yourself first is not avoidance, it is necessary stabilization in the face of prolonged relational stress.
I think that it falls under the category of elder abuse
This is so well written and helpful. I’m not convinced that the premise that there was always flawed or failed parenting, as opposed to human ordinary imperfect parenting that easily is best characterized as “good enough” parenting. I understand that this is understood by others to be my defensiveness, but I feel clear that I never crossed the line from good enough to abusive. Never. Some of this is based in the blessing of having exceptionally rich and loving relationships with my other children and deep validation of my grandparenting with my other grandchildren. That isn’t to say that they (my other adult children) don’t have complaints, irritations, pushbacks, valid criticisms, and limits they set with me that I have needed to listen to carefully, internalize, and circle back to make sure I have it. Each case is different, but as a psychiatrist who remembers early in her career the cultural belief that mental health issues virtually always were due to repressed memories of childhood ritual satanic abuse, and the mindless associated professional acceptance that there was a previously unknown epidemic of multiple personality disorder, I have my doubts. People literally spent two years in inpatient psychiatry units in the 1980’s to be treated for having survived alleged repressed satanic abuse that they *never* remembered until their psychotherapist (and I include many psychiatrists here) helped them to remember. These multiple personality diagnoses dropped dramatically when the fashion changed. I suspect that this “diagnosis” of trauma caused by such terrible parenting that family estrangement is the only solution, is going to be a story that the current skeptics such as Kathy Sinsheimer, Josh Coleman, etc will tell shocked young therapists. Literally, when I tell students about the notion of ritual satanic abuse, their jaws drop. I think this will happen - we will bury this shameful collective failure in our memories of how we allowed culture to co-opt what common sense should tell us about the quarter of parents currently being shunned with the support of an echo chamber of therapists and nontherapists alike. This is happening in the absence of prospective research, data on the consequences to the involved grandchildren, and really no research on whether apologizing for being well within the range of the “good enough mother,” (see Winnicott) is harmful of helpful to the shunned parent. I’m not sure. Human beings have been creating models and explanations for human suffering, for unhappiness, anxiety, depression, psychosis, and relationship problems since the beginning of time. We have had witchcraft, human sacrifice, demonic possession, religious and moral inferiority, suppressed satanic abuse, and now we seek to attribute suffering to parenting practices and styles so toxic that family rupture is the only path to healing. This too shall pass. I probably won’t be alive to see it, but I hope my daughter knows that I would always, always have forgiven her because I never doubt that it came from her own pain. Which I would have done anything to ease, including stopping to try to ease her suffering.