Once a month, I gather with a group of us who are on track to being trained as spiritual directors. While we come from different ages and stages in life, when we dig deep enough, we find we have much in common.
Sometimes, what we address are the joyful themes. But at this weekend’s gathering, our conversation turned somber, as we began sharing about various flavors of disappointment regarding our relationships to our children.
Of course, there are children who haven’t fulfilled their potential, having difficulty establishing an adult life, doing drugs and worse. But disappointment goes both ways. Adult children as well as their parents express sadness over having lost the closeness they had as a family growing up — or never having been close in the first place. Some feel estranged from family members who live across the country. And then, there are those who do live in close proximity but who still find ways to disappoint one another.
Frankly, by the session’s end, I was disturbed. What are we supposed to do with all this disappointment? I asked the group leader if we could speak privately for a few minutes. She readily agreed. We walked together from the meeting room to her private office. I immediately noticed that there were framed photos of her adult children and grandchildren lovingly scattered about. Surely, she would have the answer.
And in fact, she did. But it wasn’t what I expected.
“You hope to find the direction you can turn in regards to your children that will not carry with it some degree of disappointment. But no matter how hard you try, it won’t be enough. For beneath the push and pull of all the I wants, I didn’ts, and if onlys, there is an existential disappointment that underlies all the others.”
In a nutshell, here’s what she told me. There are limitations to what any one can do for anybody else, including one’s beloved child. We can not stop them from having pain; create for them a safe, easy world. In fact, we can’t deliver on virtually any of the hopes and promises we made in our hearts for our children as we birthed, raised and grappled with the challenge of releasing them to their destinies. The only hope and promise that we can hold onto, through all the disappointments of life, is that we love them no matter what.
I heard her, and it was a lot to take in. But it was getting late, and my guide indicated that it was time to go. As I lingered in front of one of the framed photos, she realized that I still wasn’t sure.
We stood there quietly for a moment, and then she started to talk.
“This one…” she said pointing to the photo “is disappointed in me because I’m not as available to her to babysit as often as she’d like. This one…” she said pointing to another “needs more financial support than I’m able to give. I’d love to be able to send my grandchild to private school, and it hurts that I’ve had to say I can’t.” She sighed deeply.
“That is what we women do…our particular greatness. We endure.”
I suddenly got what she was trying to tell me. The time had come for me to stop trying to address the problem of disappointment by attempting to defy the core limitations that are built into the human condition. The only way to do this is to stop attempting to solve disappointments as if they were a problem, and to willingly provide loving space for everything — including our disappointments — in our hearts.
It wasn’t the answer I’d been hoping for, but as I noted the unshakeable look of peace on her face as she studied the photos, patted her own heart and hugged me goodbye, strangely, it did not disappoint.
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Sounds very interesting.
Spike, you are awesome! Love your perspective, thanks for sharing.
What a wise woman!!
Good take on it!!…TRACK
Boy did I sure need to read this….THANK YOU so much for sharing this. I often feel so alone with these thoughts which most often reduce me to tears.
I feel like somebody just reached right through my computer and touched me in my most painful place.
Carol,
As always for me, you didn’t disappoint. When I was reading this, I saw me a little through my children’s eyes. I’m the one feeling like I don’t always do what I should or could. They tell me over and over that I don’t disappoint them. So, it’s how I’m looking at it, not how they perceive it. I’m fortunate to have such wise children in my live who love me unconditionally. Thank you.
Thank you, all, for your kind words!
The fact that many of us needed to read this reinforces the fact that we are all alike, yet different…
This site helps us to know we are not alone on our journey. It reassures us, comforts us, give us a sense of peace amidst the turbulence. Thank you.
Carol, I didn’t realize you were training to be a spiritual director. Stillpoint intrigues me. I wonder if the same winds of change gathered in your sails as gathered in mine and led me to my MA in Pastoral Counseling program. Best to you on this path.
Truly, while our children grow into adults, it is often hard for us to diminish our roles in their lives. Each person brings her/his own experiences to light. Sometimes my memories match up with my child’s but now more than ever they don’t. Many of my friends, relatives, and neighbors have sought my counsel on child-rearing and family relationship. As an educator I have conducted seminars on developing good parent/child relationships. I have always felt fortunate to have a close family of individuals who share, love, trust, and grow together. We, as mothers, know how much our personal selves-needs and wants-are put on hold the greater good of family. Every thing I have done for the past 2-1/2 decades has been with consideration to them. I have managed a marriage, family and career while taking care of others in my humongous extended family and circle of friends. My compassionate, active, healthy, cerebral son left for college full of excitement and dreams, hoping for a continuum of success. He returned home 1 year shy of graduating. He must have been ABDUCTED and replaced by an alien, because he is NOTHING like the person we raised. He is completely miserable and seems hellbent on making sure I am, too. He can find nothing but criticism and vitriole to fling at me. He says the only connection we had stopped the minute he exited my womb. He has been diagnosed with Bi-polar disorder but won’t give up his newfound love of alcohol. Can’t treat the depression if he won’t give up the substance abuse. We have done nearly everything we can for him (therapy, psychiatry, detox, emotional and physical support). What’s amazing (thankfully) is that he has a job with a great deal of responsbility and his boss and coworkers think he is wonderful! He shows an entirely different side of himself to others, reserving the poison for mom.
Nearing the end of our rope, 3 yrs later, we have given him the choice to make an effort to sober up by attending 2 AA meetings per week or move out. I have attended a few Al-Anon meetings to see if I might get insight on taking care of ME. I am hurt in a very deep part of my soul. I am so sad for him and the hurt he must feel somewhere I can’t reach. But, I know that it is truly up to him. Any suggestions?
Thank you for the words I needed to hear…from all of you.
Just today my 20 year old son told me he was “let go” from his “internship” position with his uncle one month ago because he was making too many mistakes. His uncle has an accounting firm where attention to detail is of utmost importance. Of course hearing this news was like a fist to the gutt. The disappointment in my son, which is internalized by me, as I walk through the past 20 years wondering what I could have done better as a mother. The fear spread like wildfire, shaking me to the core, with thoughts that he will always have difficulty being a functional adult.
Raising this son was never easy. He is my first and he came with such polarity, it has always been difficult to guide him along through the normal twists and turns of childhood. He is extremely bright, possibly in the genius range. He does not connect with others very well, if at all. He is quick to boredom and is undisciplined. He is very insightful on a grand scale, but does not read social cues from individuals well. He has a keen sense of humor and is creative, yet he does not let that shine. We have taken him to countless therapists but it ended up being more about accepting him as he is. There was no firm diagnosis made, except mention of ADD and aspergers.
My husband & I both had trouble making the transition to adulthood, so we are hopeful that our son will find his way. We have limitations on what we can do for him. We love him, we know his strengths and his limitations, and can encourage him to get back up. That is about it. He is in God’s hands.
Carol,
Oh My Goodness! Just like 2melifeisgood, I REALLY, REALLY needed to read this. I, too, feel so alone with these thoughts. While the rest of the world, except for the women of VN, goes around bragging about their ‘perfect adult children’, I start to wonder how I could have screwed up so much while giving everything I had. But it’s been pointed out to me that giving everything I had was probably the problem to begin with.
“The only way to do this is to stop attempting to solve disappointments as if they were a problem”
I’m going to be thinking about what you have written here for a very long time and, hopefully, I will be putting it into practice starting NOW.
We will not be disappointed if we just let our grown children go, grow, make decisions & possibly fail. That is what parents have done for generations. We are given our children for a time or a season. There is a point when they must be on their own. All we can do initially while we had the chance is to guide them. If they do not take heed, it is still their decision.
We can not live our lives through our children. Sometimes we tend to do this because we might wish we had made decisions differently since the decisions we made had poor results or horrible consequences, and want our children to not fall into the same trap. If your children are over 18 or 21, we can only stand by, pray, and hope for the best.
We need to not be disappointed, to not be meddling because the kids pick up on that. All I did is let them know where I stand, that it will not change my love for them, & will support them the best I can & not in the way they want.
If we have prodigal children, then we give them what we can like the father did in the parable of the Prodigal Son & let them go. They live it up for awhile, yeh, but soon have nothing but the father still didn’t go looking for him. That son was living in a pigpen when he realized what he squandered. He had to find his own way back, he had to decide it first, he thought it may not be a large welcome committee waiting, but said it can’t be as bad as where he was, so he headed back. It was about timing, father took him back but told the other child that he still had his share. There were limitations. Was that father disappointed, heartbroken? Yes! But he still loved him, forgave & welcomed him back.
There is so much wisdom in what you and everybody are sharing. This has really touched a chord–and appears to be the edge of growth for many of us. Thanks!
Disappointments are really difficult to live with, aren’t they! My daughter in law has been angry with me since Christmas because she didn’t like the way I ‘allocated my time’ over the holidays–meaning that I had chosen to spend time with my daughter as well as with her children. I apologized twice, she hasn’t responded, and I realized just today that there have been so many instances that she hurt me that I chose to overlook in the interests of family peace. So I can’t apologize for HER perception of MY shortcomings, because I won’t take that on. We can’t do it all, and we have to make choices that make sense to us.
Wow. I sure needed this. I just posted something regarding my last two weeks and the chaos and stress that I have lived with. This confirms my actions and has given me the support and knowledge that I am doing the right thing.
What a timely message. AT 59 and the mother of adult children, this weekend I finally got how to break the cycle of pain with the adult children in my circle…and those two words ADULT — CHILDREN are the words that need to be focused on. Either we treat these 40 somethings as ADULTs or as CHILDREN. We put up with more tantrums from ADULT-CHILDREN than we do a 4 year old. It is time to take the training wheels off! They will fall and will either get back up or not…it is their journey. It is their adulthood. We baby-boomers have created a generation of ADULT CHILDREN. Let these ADULT CHILDREN swim in peace and love.
Love love love this point. I’ve been struggling with my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me for the past 5 years, and I could never understand exactly what I have done, even though she keeps throughing out these horrendous things that have no basis in reality. I too, seemed to be the only one she was angry with and it all boils down to she feels I was a failure as a mother. Thank you all for helping me to realize I cannot be responsible for her “perception” of the past and her “interpretation” of reality. It’s been really hard this week with all the mother’s day commercials reminding me that I apparently am a failure. I am not. I did all those things we all said we would do for our children and things only changed after she was grown and I finally had to tell her I was unable to do something for her. I am sad that she would rather be disappointed in me and cut me out because I was forced to say no. But thank you!!! I can accept that it is her problem, and she will have to solve it. Bless you all!!!!
Love love love this point. I’ve been struggling with my daughter’s disappointment and anger with me for the past 5 years, and I could never understand exactly what I have done, even though she keeps throughing out these horrendous things that have no basis in reality. I too, seemed to be the only one she was angry with and it all boils down to she feels I was a failure as a mother. Thank you all for helping me to realize I cannot be responsible for her “perception” of the past and her “interpretation” of reality. It’s been really hard this week with all the mother’s day commercials reminding me that I apparently am a failure. I am not. I did all those things we all said we would do for our children and things only changed after she was grown and I finally had to tell her I was unable to do something for her. I am sad that she would rather be disappointed in me and cut me out because I was forced to say no. But thank you!!! I can accept that it is her problem, and she will have to solve it. Bless you all!!!!
Thank you so much. I know that I have always disappointed my children. I know they feel I never did as much to help them as I could have and also hurt them in the bad decisions I made. I have felt terrible guilt and probably always will. However, this has helped in that I don’t feel alone any more.
What wonderful and timely piece as we approach Mother’s Day. Your group leader has shared great wisdom with you.
I think what you are talking about is acceptance.Acceptance is a very under rated and misunderstood word.
The grace to know that there are some things we cannot change is called acceptance.
When you really know that this is just the way you are, just the way he or she is, just the way things are, acceptance has taken root—and acceptance and judgment cannot grow in the same soil.
In this way acceptance is a release from firmly held beliefs that we imagined defined us but actually confined us. These beliefs restricted the world we experienced like a narrow-angle lens and held us back from embracing aspects of ourselves that we and others had judged as less than perfect.
When acceptance happens, we get the freedom to see a wider-angle view of life. In that view, many of the rules and expectations we had in our lives can be seen. Some simply don’t make sense anymore. We see that they hold us back from engaging in what we have really come to value in life. Others we still believe in but we can let their achievemnt go as a reality in life.
Acceptance and self-awareness breed confidence and the ability to embrace yourself just as you are, with your likes, dislikes, quirks, and talents. You start to find yourself at home in your own skin.
Carl Jung asked us to look at the reality of our lives as part of the work in ” the Seven Tasks of Aging”
I believe that finding your way begins with finally accepting first yourself and then the world around you.
Thank you for reminding us of this Carol and happy mothers day to you
What a powerful message and one I sorely needed to hear. I can say with clarity that I heard and I thank the teacher.
I have read all of the responses and loved them. I had children a bit later in life. I turned 53 this year and had never felt like I was a dissappointment to anyone until I had children. I worked hard all my life, but having children has definitely been the hardest of all. For mother’s day I think we all need to give ourselves a huge pat on the back just for surviving parenthood.
My heart goes out to you. I come from an alcoholic family ( my father & uncle) and both my brother and sister are alcoholics (he’s been sober a long time now, she’s back to drinking) and as the oldest, I stayed away from it but have issues due to my mother taking out her anger at my dad’s drinking on me. I have 3 sons and the middle one started drinking (that I knew of) about age 15. I finally gave him a month’s notice to move out of our home at age 23 as I was sick of not sleeping because I was worrying if he had been in a car accident since he left the house after supper on Fri. and might not show up till morning or even until early Mon. morning. I had begged him to call me (even if it was the middle of the night) and tell me that he was crashing at someone’s house but he didn’t want to “wake me”. Right! There were other issues as well of course – me putting his car in my name to keep his insurance rates down, and basically he just came and went as he pleased. He was never nasty to me though, I have to say that. But the point is, he refused to be responsible so I gave him notice. He was very hurt – I suspect he’s still hurt (30 some years later) and he still drinks altho’ he HAS learned to not drink and drive and has his own business. The point is though that you can’t do anything about your son’s drinking – you need to cut him loose and put him in God’s hands (which is what I did) and then get help for yourself in coping with his illnesses. I’d recommend getting into an Al Anon group but I’d also go for more intense help for yourself so that his accusations won’t damage your self esteem. It isn’t your fault and there is nothing you can do to help him except love him unconditionally while setting boundaries for acceptable behaviour. You can’t allow him to be calling you names or blaming you. Don’t go on a guilt trip. Please seak help for yourself in how to handle this situation. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Bless you and your entire family.
This has been an incredible read !!
And I thought I was the only mother, grandmother & person who has experienced difficulty with their adult children. My son & his wife use my grandchildren as the pawn to get me to do as they wish. A very difficult position to be in. But I have learned to distance myself from them…ignore their behaviour, have my time with my ‘grands’ and carry on with life. My stress level is so much less than it was. I look back at the number of times I have been crushed by my DIL and finally feel I understand her, & have changed my attitude. It was past time for me to wake up.
Thank you so much for this discussion !
It IS definitely a very difficult position to be in. I’ve been in that position, to varying degrees, since Christmas, when I fell into the “evil mother/mother-in-law category” for going out with my daughter twice over the holidays, rather than sitting in my son’s living room reading to my granddaughters all day long. Like you, I have thought back of the multitude of things I have overlooked over the years in the interest of family harmony. I have suffered their e-mailed verbal abuse now for four months concerning my shortcomings. I love my grandchildren, but I don’t think my son and DIL have the right to dictate what amount of time is the appropriate amount of time to spend with them, or that I must spend less time with other family members to be with them.
Nice not to feel so alone with this…