I'd like to talk about acceptance

[BusynMember]

Forgot about judgment. I do judge. When my son acts like a selfish jerk, I judge it, but in a distant way. And I don't talk about it with him as it would be pointless. I've already been there/done that. It does no good.

If he were just a good hearted eccentric kid who didn't want to go to college and lived off the land, I would probably get used to it, embrace it even. But I can't not judge outright meanness. As I said, everyone's situation is different.

 

[recoveringenabler]

In my opinion, acceptance of our difficult child's and the lifestyles they have chosen is a part of a larger picture. Acceptance of life with all of the sorrows and the joys as it is is at the crux of it. We strive to create lives of peace and a certain "ground" to stand on which keeps us safe and in control, but as we all know, life just isn't like that, there are always changes, always opportunities to shift our perceptions, our thoughts, our ideas, our well thought out beliefs........it is an ever changing universe and the way we humans often attempt to survive it all is by control and drawing lines in the sand which are clearly right and wrong, over there or over here, up or down, black or white. It is what we do.

Our difficult child's have given us their version of a way of life we don't like, we can't condone, we want changed........and we can't make it happen the way we want, so it forces us to address the underlying control issues we all have. It's scary stuff to be out of control. It puts us out there without anything to stand on. It's fear.

I think that's why detachment and acceptance are so challenging for us to wrap our heads around........we want to define it, categorize it, fit it into a model we can understand and work on...........however, it seems beyond that to me........it's a minute to minute choice we continue to make as life hits us between the eyes each day.................we choose to accept rather then fight or rail against it, or want it to be black or white.........or we blame someone or blame ourselves.........all the ways we cope and try to find some place to stand when in the truest sense, there really is no place to stand.

I am not sure I am putting this into words that make any sense, it is somewhat esoteric in nature and difficult to place into a form. I am just beginning to grasp it in my own life.

Perhaps this paragraph from The places that scare you by Pema Chodron will make it easier to understand.

"As we tentatively step out of our cocoon, we're bound to be afraid and grab onto what is familiar.Without ongoing patience and kindness towards this inevitable process, we will never trust that it is wise and compassionate to relax into the egoless state. We have to gradually develop the confidence that it it liberating to let go. It takes time to develop enthusiasm for how remaining open really feels.
A first step is to understand that a feeling of dread or psychological discomfort might just be a sign that old habits are being liberated, that we are moving closer to a natural open state. Trungpa Rinpoche said that awakening warriors would find themselves in a constant state of anxiety. Personally, I have found this to be true. After awhile I realized that since the shakiness wasn't going away, I might as well get to know it. When our attitude towards fear becomes more welcoming and inquisitive, there's a fundamental shift that occurs. Instead of spending our lives tensing up, as if we were in the dentist's chair, we learn that we can connect with the freshness of the moment and relax."

Our difficult child's place us in that "constant state of anxiety". I think the "shift" that is taking place for me right now is "connecting with the freshness of the moment." With my difficult child, I have to show up new each time, make different choices, it isn't a blanket statement of I am always going to say no, or I am never going to see her again, that would actually be easier to do.........it is the continuing choice to stay open in each moment, to be present in each moment and make my choices with my boundaries intact but my heart opened. That is the hardest thing for me to do. And, that is what I am committed to do because I do believe that is where there is peace. And, it is a practice.............

 

[toughlovin]

Very good question that I will probably continue to think about it.

I think for me when I think about acceptance I think about accepting the person as they are which is related to unconditional love. You love them no matter what they do. It does not mean necessarily accepting or feeling that their behavior is acceptable. Certainly there are many behaviors that are unacceptable to me and I dont accept the behaviors. I can acknowledge that they are bad decisions, mistakes or just plain wrong but that doesnt change the fact that I accept the person. And yes a big part of accepting a person is not actively trying to change them.

So I think saying to your son that his living under the bridge does not feel like he is contributing to society is fine..... because it is what you think and you are being honest about your beliefs. He may believe differently than you and you can accept that you dont agree. Yet at the same time you can still let him know you love him.

It sounds like you are doing a great job of detaching and not trying to change or control him.... and to me that is the key thing.

I guess part of acceptance is also accepting that they may never change or live differently. I think that is one of the hardest pieces... I know for me I still believe that the son I raised, with his many wonderful qualities is still in there somewhere.... and that with the right treatment and support he will find that guy in himself....but honestly i really dont know anymore.

TL


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[DammitJanet]

TL, if I am understanding your answer correctly, then I think I feel much the same as you do. I can accept any of my kids with the love part but I dont have to like what they are doing. I will say my thoughts if asked but normally I dont even bother. I know Cory knows what I like and dont like...there isnt even a chance he doesnt know. For me it would be easier if he was simply stumbling along knowing no better, but he does.

I agree that we are walking/climbing or hanging on for dear life in this whirlwind most have called life for the past 15/20 or even more years now. Some of us are standing in a much more upright position than others - like me- who struggle with this. I have a visual of parents being battered in a storm as they try to push their way towards....something. I think of their being this swirling wind which batters some parents and forces them to almost buckle under but they keep taking steps forward. Other parents have managed to be on the outskirts of the wind and they can stand straight without much effort.

Now I am definitely not the writer that RE is.....or Im not anymore. I lost half my mind with the meningitis so I cant write a long post anymore. I forget what I am saying and get lost.

Have no idea if I made any sense...lol

 

[Echolette]

I reread this whole thread from beginning to end...what a lot of wisdom and kindness contained within! It has been extraordinarily helpful to me. I find sometimes when I post a question like this that I later can't even quite recall the feeling of distress I had when I posted...once the responses and discussion occurs, I often feel so much better that the original, hurting, anxious me of the original post is....gone.

Of course we raised them better. But it's "raised," past tense. They're already raised, they're already grown

I love it when something that clear and direct hits home!

clearly only something profound in their lives will make them change and it isn't going to be if we let down our standards in our minds about how we feel about their lifestyles.

Yes, I see that, thank you for that. You are very very right.

I always love my daughter and wish her well. That is all I can do.

I think that that is all I can do as well. I wish him well. I wish me well. I wish all of you and your difficult child's well.

The raising part is done. Some how because the finished product isn't what I was aiming at, I thought the job wasn't done, that I needed to keep raising until he was risen to my expectations. This thread helped me get that that is part of the problem.

My ex mother in law was an artist...she said the hardest part is knowing when the piece is done, resisting the idea that it needs to be better. I don't like her much (couldn't resist that!!) but I like that thought...it seems to fit in here.

Lot of good work done. Thank you again.

Echo

 

[in a daze]

So, acceptance...

Well, I picked him up from work yesterday and we went to dinner with easy child and husband. During the drive I noticed his nails. Despite being given nail brush and clippers, despite being made to clip and clean nails by his uncle while he was prepping him for the job interview, despite my having mentioned the importance of this before, they were still unkempt.

I guess i should have accepted this. Instead I mentioned it again, and I get, oh, all you do is criticize me.

I should add that he's been isolating himself again. Mentioned health club was having a special, sign up for free membership for a week, (he has mentioned that he would like to play basketball again). No sign up.

Friends and family members he just doesn't call back.

And he's having issues at work, though I don't know if it is his skewed perception because of his MH issues.

Sigh.

I was really down about this last night, but today I went to the gym and I feel a lot better. A lot more accepting. I was doing that breathing exercise that Cedar recommended. I'm going to cook my husband a nice dinner since today's his birthday and go to a FA meeting tonight.

 

[witzend]

I guess i should have accepted this. Instead I mentioned it again, and I get, oh, all you do is criticize me.

I suspect that he purposely didn't cut or clean his nails because he knew you'd mention it. If that hadn't gotten a rise out of you there would have been something else. Does he escalate stuff like this if you don't react?

Good for you for getting to the gym! That's exactly what you need.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My question was this: can acceptance and hope live at the same address? I
believe the answer is no.

COM, I believe they can, and do. This is the cloud and the silver lining you posted about some time back. It is radical acceptance (the cloud) and it is faith in the silver lining ~ that, whether we can ever understand it or not, there is a purpose here.

WE DON'T HAVE TO GET IT.

I struggled so hard with this after my daughter's beating. Time after time, the ongoing horror of it would just stop me.

There was nowhere to turn; there was nothing. Either she would die, or she would not. Either the mental and physical deficits would resolve, or they would not. Every day, every night for something like five months, I could not put those pieces together. I could not figure out a "why" for this one. (As so many of us do, I blamed myself for what happened to our family. As I got healthier, I blamed the kids for what they did to themselves as much as I blamed myself.)

I could put the pieces together. I could name what happened to us, could name why I suffered.

But this last time COM, there was no sense to be made of it. I could not find solid ground. It became a crisis of faith. A crisis of hope. A crisis of every belief system I held. It was at that time that you posted about the cloud and the silver lining. I have never forgotten that. I don't imagine I ever will. It kept me going, that imagery of unknown purpose.

It was very dark.

Vengeance, immorality ~ what did anything matter? Nothing made sense.

And then...forgiveness hit. And I mean it "hit". I was thinking vengeful thoughts about the male who beat difficult child. Imagining what it would be like when I went to his trial. And I realized...under the rage there was such pain, such limitless sadness for him, for difficult child, for all of us.

And I forgave him.

Without meaning to.

I have never felt anything like it in my life.

That is why I say there is nothing we can do. There is nothing we have to do. There is no one who can do it for us. There is no way to stop it, unless we choose hatred.

And we won't. We would not be here, if we were the kind of people who are comfortable with hatred in any of its myriad forms.

Cedar

 

[nlj]

The raising part is done. Some how because the finished product isn't what I was aiming at, I thought the job wasn't done, that I needed to keep raising until he was risen to my expectations. This thread helped me get that that is part of the problem.

I've lost sight of this again. I've been texting him since I got back. Why am I doing that? I was far happier with distance. I had a text back yesterday evening from him to let me know he's left the squat and is on the road again "hitch-hiking to Scotland" with no money. I'm feeling sick with worry, but I have to let go and fill my time so this feeling passes. He's not my little boy. He's a grown man.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But at least I'm not engaging in a farce.
Where is the role of acceptance?

There is a coming into balance with it, Echo. To this day, if I think too much about those things I have come to accept, I can touch a desperate rage, can touch a sense of betrayal so deep, it feels like insanity. When I write about coldly deciding to survive what has happened to my family, the decision to combat those feelings is what I am talking about.

The feelings, the depth and intensity and global nature of them...can destroy us, Echo. I am talking literal, chosen, welcomed identification with it, with the horror of it, and literal, chosen, welcomed self destruction.

What has happened to us is, as Ellie Wiesel describes the Holocaust, an experience of a devastation so overwhelming that to speak of it, to try to define it in words, profanes the sacred horror of it.

It becomes a choice to survive, Echo.

I don't understand how these terrible things have happened to all of us, and to our wonderful, cherished, beautiful children. But these things have happened. It is what it is Echo. We are not playing with words, here. Because there is no sense to be made of our children's situations, we cannot puzzle out the way to help them. Whatever we learn, try, do for them backfires in something shockingly obscene.

Into a shocking obscenity.

This does not give us the right to turn away. We do not have the capacity to set ourselves free of it, for the most part. We are their mothers.

So, we need to figure out, coldly and decisively and without looking back, how to survive it.

That day will come for you too, Echo.

You will never not love your son.

It doesn't work that way.

It would be easier if it did.

I am sorry, Echo. I am so sorry this is happening to you, and to me, and to all of our kids. WE HAVE ONE ANOTHER ECHO, AND THAT IS A GIFT BEYOND MEASURE.

We will stand for one another.

And so, we are all still here, still sane. We are able to nurture ourselves and each other through the worst of it.

I'm so sorry, Echo.

Gratitude for all that we do have ~ this site, the sunrise, the special way everything smells in the morning ~ these things will change your perception of your own value, of the value or purpose to any of this.

That is the only thing I know, for sure.

Coldly choose those good things, Echo.

That is how we survive.

Cedar

P.S. Wait! I forgot laughter. Laughter is the supreme value. I knew I was healing, was crossing some kind of barrier, when I was able to just laugh with, just hear and enjoy, my daughter's voice, again.

I always did laugh, with my son.

I miss him.

Coldly, decisively, I accept that and move on.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

For me it would be easier if he was simply stumbling along knowing no
better, but he does.

Yes. That is the crazy-making, hopelessness of it. After so many times, we no longer believe in hope, no longer believe they can change, or that they want to. We begin to get it that it is the consequences of their own choices our children want so desperately not to pay.

But they will choose the same actions, sooner or later, every time.

I have a visual of parents being battered in a storm as they try to push
their way towards....something.

This is beautiful imagery, Janet. So perfect a description of what this feels like. Who could have been prepared for this Perfect Storm. Yet, we step out into it to save them so many times that we find we have lived our lives in a storm not of our making.

Some how because the finished product isn't what I was aiming at, I
thought the job wasn't done, that I needed to keep raising until he was
risen to my expectations. This thread helped me get that that is part of theproblem.

I think it is a genetic thing. Seriously. I think it is coded into our DNA that we are mothers first until our children are safely raised, are capable of surviving without our input.

Realistically, this should occur (basically) around puberty. After that, it should be a matter of moral teaching, of helping the nearly adult child establish a home base for themselves.

Our children are still self destructing.

We cannot let go.

My ex mother in law was an artist...she said the hardest part is knowing when the
piece is done, resisting the idea that it needs to be better.

True.

I was really down about this last night, but today I went to the gym and I
feel a lot better. A lot more accepting. I was doing that breathing exercise that Cedar recommended. I'm going to cook my husband a nice dinner sincetoday's his birthday and go to a FA meeting tonight.

In my heart, I am celebrating for and with you, Daze. Defiantly, almost savagely, I am cheering you, cheering all of us, on.

I was far happier with distance. I had a text back yesterday evening from
him to let me know he's left the squat and is on the road again
"hitch-hiking to Scotland" with no money. I'm feeling sick with worry, but I have to let go and fill my time so this feeling passes. He's not my little boy. He's a
grown man.

This helped me: My daughter tells me she is "adventuring". She is having adventures. If she survives, she considers the experience to have been of a higher quality than a life spent "small". Hitchhiking, violence, desertion ~ all these things she has done for the sake of adventuring, for the sake of "living large".

That seems to be a common theme with our difficult child kids. That concept that being shackled into a normal life is "small".

Great thread.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar says to make the message clear that we expect better of them...we
raised them to be better than this

I think the kids forget their potentials. There are those who truly have no choice but to live as our children are living. Those people don't have parents like us, did not have the opportunities for education or the stable homelife our children did have.

According to difficult child daughter, there are people living on the streets who absolutely do not have a choice. They have no way out, no one to help them clean up, find work, make change of any kind.

Many of them are battling generations of a kind of prejudice most of us know nothing about. Having been taught who they were in a crueler time, there are parents and grandparents in our world who literally cannot see a better truth for their children. And yet...there are individuals who overcome even this, creating and laying claim to lives of virtue and value.

After a time, we could all forget we were better than our surroundings. We could all forget that we had the potential to believe differently and so, change the world as we find it. That is why I say it is important to put responsibility for who they will choose to be, for what they will and have and intend to create of their lives on the kids.

They need to make different choices.

One day, we will be gone. There will be no one then to remember they might have been clean, happy, well cared for.

They need to chose that now.

I don't know whether that will help the kids see and choose a better way.

But I would be remiss not to push for that.

I am working on learning to be okay with accepting that it is what it is.

But I don't like it, and I will never, ever like it.

Here's the thing. These kids have so much to offer the world. They were raised, for the most part, with enough support behind them to have become educated to the degree they were willing and able to take it. That they chose to follow this path instead is ~ I don't know. It seems almost criminal to me.

How many writers, how many scientists and inventors, how many researchers, physicians, ethical politicians are eking out an existence on the streets, instead?

Such a waste, so much pain.

Grrr....

Cedar

 

[Echolette]

But I would be remiss not to push for that.

I feel this way as well. Despite the bulk of the thread being "let it go". So I will refrain as much as I can without starting to feel like I am betraying myself and him, and then I will push again. The work is to not let the pushing (and subsequent failure to get results) undo me.

Echo

 

[Echolette]

One day, we will be gone. There will be no one then to remember they might have been clean, happy, well cared for.

This makes me very sad. It is the truth and the future for difficult child. It is a good one for me to hold close, to know, and to accept.

Echo

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Accepting it, however, does NOT NOT NOT mean I like it

Don't you wish we could just spray out difficult children with a spray bottle of water and change their behavior?

:O)

When does no expectations become no hope? And like you said, when does it all become dishonest?

They were full of passion, authenticity and gratitude and somehow
managed to find acceptance without resignation.

I love this description. This is what I am working toward.

I think it is a more difficult struggle when it is your child who is in danger. And I think it is especially difficult to accept our children's situations because they are choosing the dangerous, often pointless lifestyles.

It is crazy-making.

I stopped fretting when
it happened, I squashed the "OMG here we go again" feelings.

Of course we raised them better. But it's "raised," past tense. They're
already raised, they're already grown. This is where acceptance happened for me - accepting that my part is done, that any choices my difficult children make
now are not mine, no matter how badly I want them to do what I think is
best.

I think MWM hit the nail on the head: "accepting doesn't mean liking." I thinktoo often people think that accepting something is condoning it - not at all.It's just stopping the fight against something that you can't control, and
letting go of your expectations.

True.

Ouch.

And then we engage in the dance of madness.

a touchstone for me to remind myself that I didn't create this, didn't make him this way, in fact did everything I could to provide a stable home, early intervention for his weirdnesses, tolerance, understanding, one on one
time, support at school, everything.

But I still feel like I can raise my flag and say "what you are doing is not
right. You know better. I raised you better."

I asked him about going back to volunteer in a soup kitchen, something he used to do, and told him that I liked him better when he at least
volunteered...he told me he liked himself better too. Later both he and his girlfriend of the time told me that that had really hit home.

This is what I mean by telling them, again and again, that they are better than who they have begun to accept themselves as. Good job, Echo. Great job. Volunteering can change everything we think we know about ourselves, about everyone else, about the world as it is and about our potential, and responsibility, toward it.

has been about letting go of my judgment, my opinions about what is right and what is wrong.

They may have a fate that I cannot possibly understand or know about.

Recovering's writings of this nature have helped me to face what is, have helped me to understand and accept that there may be a purpose here I know nothing about.

All I can do is set boundaries around the behavior that harms me and make that clear.

Yes.

I don't think acceptance is an easy thing to do. I think, at least for me, that I have to continue to make that choice. And, I do. Because it eliminates my suffering over something I have no control over.

Yes.

Fear is what keeps us stuck, in my opinion. For me, it turns out to be about trust.

Yes!

:O)

I have been circling around that concept of trust just lately, too. It's a multi-faceted thing, trust. Trust of self, trust of God, trusting that all will be well.

it is a Universal tapestry of which we are all a part and for me, my daughter has her own
unique thread in that tapestry. I don't get to judge that thread,

True.

Hard to accept.

With my acceptance came any lingering longing for a big change. If it
happens, I'll be one happy mom, but I no longer think it will. Rather than
depressing me, it has made my life more peaceful.

Yes.

This is a theme in my life.

I have felt this way too, Echo. There are times though, when I can see that it is a kind of hatred for myself, come of failure. (Based on what my family looks like, I have failed ~ abysmally so.) Just lately, I am viewing myself and my choices, so similar to yours, Echo (and with the same built in combustion points!) with something like compassion and acceptance and even, approval. I fought the good fight. It sounds like you did, too.

I like that about myself.

It becomes too easy to justify self hatred, self ridicule, self deprecation, when we have lost the lives we dreamed for ourselves in the ways that we have, here on the site.

I feel so fortunate and appreciative to have developed that little grace of compassion for myself. I did make that intention my New Year's resolution. Remember? I chose to try to be kinder to myself. It was my only resolution, and I didn't (and still don't) know what that looks like. But...every so often Echo, I will find myself smiling into the mirror, or really cherishing the way a breeze or the sun feels, against my skin. When those things happen, I flash back to that choice I made to be kinder to myself.

If you have not made such a commitment Echo, please think about that so simple choice. It changes our direction, I think. Maybe, it counters the hatred and judgment we (I) feel, for having failed.

I know you guys aren't going to like that I said that. But at the heart of me?

I do feel that.

This is a theme in my life. I think if I model good behavior, if I do and do
and do and make no demands, the people around me will suddenly
recognize their shortcomings and how they are letting me down. When thatfails, after enough time of being patient...I explode under some point of
minimal provocation, and all the suppressed irritation/anger hidden under the quiet patience pours out.

Me, too. Only I would generally beat myself up about that, too. Without saying a word to anyone about it.

I would get quite
irritated to find that although I had forgiven THEM (sort of) they had not
had the same graciousness of spirit to forgive ME> hahahah. so many layers of learing.

I love this, Echo. True, true, true!!!

:O)

He is still in my circle,
in my community if you will...aren't we supposed to try to help our
community be the best they can?

This bothers me all the time, too.

Grrr.....

I guess I really haven't been able to forgive myself, or to stop grieving or
regretting.

Me either, too. That is what I mean when I say "coldly" decide to survive. Those feelings have to be let go to follow their own courses.

the gateway to the next level of intimacy is guarded by dragons,

I love this.

and I feel for his vulnerability when he loses me. so that is where the dance begins

Ouch, Echo.

but really I was feeling squeezed and oppressed, and feeling guilty about feeling that way

YES.

So I can track the story.

That is a beginning of a new way, of a different kind of perception of the same situation.

What, then, are we to do?

What works for us. Figuring out what that is, and then working toward it.

To do that, we must first declare ourselves of value.

I don't expect you to change anymore. I am realizing that you must like the life you are living and I am accepting that it's not likely to change.

True.

None of this is coincidence. This is Holy Coincidence and I am going to take all of these separate things and make something good of them.

Yes.

Let go let go let go and work on myself.

DO YOU THINK THIS
DOESN'T MAKE ME SICK???? I feel what you feel. Disgust.

Okay. I finally managed to read through the whole thread.

An excellent topic, Echo.

Thanks!

Cedar

 

[recoveringenabler]

I feel this way as well. Despite the bulk of the thread being "let it go". So I will refrain as much as I can without starting to feel like I am betraying myself and him, and then I will push again. The work is to not let the pushing (and subsequent failure to get results) undo me.

I can understand how you feel ECHO, your son is just 20, I think I would feel that way too if my child were that young.

However, for me, and I am only speaking for myself here, there was a time to let go, the parenting and guiding is essentially over. I don't know when that moment arrives for others, I don't know if it even has anything to do with age, but for me, hope left and then I began to feel better. Even though that sounds weird, one would think I would be hopeless, but quite the contrary, it released me into my own life and freed my daughter into hers. As Crazy in Virginia stated, the raising is past tense, it is over, I no longer feel the need to counsel my daughter on how she should be living, that choice was already made and expecting it to be different because of what I believe or want, only sets up expectations for me that can't be met.

I think it's a long road and "grieving and regretting and forgiving" are a part of it..................but at a point, those feelings subside as well. One of the reasons I always tell folks to get therapy, or counseling or some kind of real support is that this process cuts deep and it goes beyond our difficult child's, it goes to the core of our issues of control, guilt, expectations, self worth..........so much of our self esteem can be wrapped around our kids and when they fail or struggle, we mothers go through the agonies of the damned attempting to separate what is the truth with what our own expectations of ourselves and our kids are. There are a lot of layers to unravel as we pick apart the cords that bind us to our children.

There isn't any right or wrong way to go through any of this, we all find a way that works for us. My intention from the beginning was simple, I wanted to find peace. The quote on my desk at work reads............"Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions." That is where I aimed myself. That's taken me through quite a number of hairy rides...................however, recently I landed in a pretty good place.....................I think the 6 Pema Chodron books I read back to back REALLY helped a lot. It seems to me it is a perceptual shift out of our suffering and into acceptance, it's a matter of how we perceive it all. Those books helped me to do that................little by little. I don't feel as if I am suffering anymore............nothing has changed for my difficult child, but everything has changed for me.............

 

[pasajes4]

My son is not going to change. He does not want to. He does not say that he will try to change. He will say that he loves me and I believe him. He knows that I love him. In our last conversation he told me to save my breath. He knows what he is doing and he is aware of the consequences. I told him I won't fund his life style. He said that was fine. He let me know that he will find away to do what he wants with/without me.

This conversation set me free. I can't make him want to live the way society expects. I can love him. He will not be coming here after he is released from kiddie prison.

 

[in a daze]

I suspect that he purposely didn't cut or clean his nails because he knew you'd mention it. If that hadn't gotten a rise out of you there would have been something else. Does he escalate stuff like this if you don't react?

Interesting thought. I'll see him tomorrow. I'll check out the nails and let you know if they were clean or not.

 

[witzend]

I can understand how you feel ECHO, your son is just 20, I think I would feel that way too if my child were that young.

Yes, indeed - 20 is young. And old. When I think back on how long ago it was that M was born or L was born. All those years dedicated to them and their lives. It's time to let them dedicate themselves to their lives and dedicate ourselves back to our own. When they can be a pleasant part of it that's appropriate.

We like to think that extended family going on forever is the way it's always been but it's not. You grew up (12 - 14 years old) got a job or got married and moved on. ONE of (the 12 of) you got the inheritance if there was one, otherwise you moved on. Sometimes your parents owed a debt and you were impressed into service to pay it off. I know this happened in both my families 3-4 generations ago. Or you were a girl and you married some guy (sound familiar) and moved away to take care of his family. Maybe - and only maybe you took care of your mother or father if they left you their plot. Or you let them go to debtor's prison.

This thing of keeping track of and having a say in multiple generations is not anything that we have a great deal of history with. I remember seeing my grandparents but not all of the time. In the end of their lives they lived less than a mile from us. We saw them at holidays. Same with my parents' many siblings. Some of them lived in the same town and I never met until I was an adult. Some folks do it very well. I think every family has difficulties with it somewhere along the line. Maybe it's just more noticeable when you've only got 2?

 

[nlj]

We like to think that extended family going on forever is the way it's always been but it's not. You grew up (12 - 14 years old) got a job or got married and moved on. ONE of (the 12 of) you got the inheritance if there was one, otherwise you moved on. Sometimes your parents owed a debt and you were impressed into service to pay it off. I know this happened in both my families 3-4 generations ago. Or you were a girl and you married some guy (sound familiar) and moved away to take care of his family. Maybe - and only maybe you took care of your mother or father if they left you their plot. Or you let them go to debtor's prison.
This thing of keeping track of and having a say in multiple generations is not anything that we have a great deal of history with. I remember seeing my grandparents but not all of the time. In the end of their lives they lived less than a mile from us. We saw them at holidays. Same with my parents' many siblings. Some of them lived in the same town and I never met until I was an adult. Some folks do it very well. I think every family has difficulties with it somewhere along the line. Maybe it's just more noticeable when you've only got 2?

So true.
Great post Witzend.