LETTING GO OF OUR ADULT CHILDREN
Chapter 7: The Heart Slowly Heals
Page 20
BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT
Chapter 7 of Letting Go of Our Adult Children, in which you learn how to gradually find peace even if your child doesn't change.
At this stage in our healing journey we enter a period of transformation. When we release lost dreams and forgive ourselves and others, we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, even though it may still be dark where we stand.
Perhaps you have worked on some of your Velcro issues and have recognized that your firmly held convictions have denied your child the right to his own. Even after you have done all this, however, you may discover that you are not yet ready to let go completely with love. Your unreleased expectations, unmourned dreams, old resentments and guilt may stand in your way. Therefore, grieving and forgiveness are your major tasks in this fourth stage of healing.
Since work on these issues is usually easier to address after you've at least partly untangled yourself from your child's problems, this chapter follows the one on the Velcro Syndrome. However, it is not unusual for parents to move back and forth between the third and fourth stages as they make their way along this road of healing.
The Need to Release Lost Dreams
Your child does not need to die or refuse to see you in order for you to experience a deep sense of loss. Your child does not need to live on the streets, as my son did for several years, for you to have almost constant pain. Much less serious situations are also experiences as painful, even though you may not feel "entitled" to express that pain because it seems so "trivial."
You want to support your child's decision not to enter the family business and may tell him it's okay with you. But it really isn't. You want to be accepting of your son when he tells you he is gay; you don't remind him of your hopes for grandchildren. However, you envy your friend's new grandchild and are sad that you will probably never know what a grandchild of yours will look like.
When our child has failed to meet our expectations and dreams, both large and small, where do those dreams go?
For some parents, unfulfilled expectations are not much of an issue. They would have preferred that things turned out differently, of course, but they approach life in a manner that allows them to readjust their dreams readily when circumstances change.
Other parents revel in the past. Every day they open their drawer of memories and examine all the things that have been and all the dreams they had. If some of those dreams were not fulfilled, they can't possibly let go of them. Releasing dreams means they may have to find new ones to take their place. Dreams require looking forward, and they haven't learned to look through that window.
Probably the majority of disappointed parents take a middle road between these two extremes when they realize their child is marching to a different drum beat than the one they played for him as a child. Most of the time they don't obsess over what has happened. Nevertheless, the expectations and dreams they had for their child return quietly in the night, unbidden, but reminding them that they are still around and unattended.
"Attending to" lost dreams, so that their pain is relieved and finally healed, is what grief work for disappointed parents is all about.
Many parents, unfortunately, feel it would be self-pity if they thought about their lost dreams. But it is not self-pity to grieve for what you wanted and don't have. Rather, it is self-care when you grieve the loss of what you hoped for your family — so that those dreams can rest in peace and you can move on to letting go with love for your child and peace in your heart.
Consider the stories of two parents who don't realize that releasing past expectations and dreams can lift a weight from their hearts. Could you identify with their pain?
The first example, the mother of a son sentenced to life in prison, feels locked with him in "a nightmare that never ends." If this were you, would you also avoid old friends who may not know what your son has done, so that you won't have to tell them? Would you also avoid meeting new people because, when others get to talking about their families, which they eventually will, you can't bring your- self to tell anyone about your son's situation? Please believe me when I say that such a nightmare does not need to dominate your life, even though your pain will never completely go away.
The other example is the father who is greatly disappointed because his son didn't choose the prestigious college he had long planned for him to attend (or maybe his son couldn't get in, or flunked out). If the expectation you had for your child is similar to this, you will probably discover that there is a tug in your heart every time you talk with your friends about their "successful" sons (or are otherwise reminded of an expectation that wasn't met) Ñ until you deal with the grief of having a son who did not receive the education you think he should have received.
Learning to Grieve
Grieving is intended to accomplish two major and intertwining psychological tasks. The first is to acknowledge and accept the truth that what you wanted you do not have. The second is to experience and deal with all the emotions that the loss of your expectations create for you as a parent.
To work through and complete the grief involved in releasing your dreams you will need to accept your feelings openly and honestly for however long it takes for the wound to heal. That doesn't mean you have to wear your heartache on your sleeve. But you must be willing, at least within the privacy of your heart, to admit that you are grieving. For most of us, that is a big order.
It takes courage to grieve. However, if we don't have the courage to grieve, we draw the drapes across our windows and then complain because the sun doesn't shine into our house.
Grief Requires a New Self-identity
Part of your self-identity at one time may have been as "the parent of a son who was going to make something of himself." Now, however, when your son has no job and doesn't seem inclined to want one or keep it for long, your self-identity needs readjustment. You may resist giving up your old identity if you believe you must now see yourself as "a parent who failed to teach my son to be responsible." Fortunately, there are alternatives.
In forging a new identity, the challenge is to reframe the undesired definition into one that does not connect your identity with that of your child. For example, you can decide to say, "I am the parent of a son who has chosen a lifestyle that is very different from mine. He is a separate person and I am not defined by what he does, but by who I am" This is the statement I learned when I needed to change my identity to reflect the reality in my family.
Another example: You considered yourself to be "a parent who used firm but kind discipline." Now your child claims she was emotionally abused by you and has been in therapy "to heal her wounded child." Even though you acknowledge that your high standards may have sometimes been too strict and you did not always take her needs into account, you can't quite see yourself as "a parent who abused my child." A reframing for you could be, "I am a parent who tried my best to discipline my child, and while agreeing I may have made some mistakes, I release my daughter to view her childhood in the way she chooses. I am sorry for the pain I unintentionally caused her."
Clear Boundaries Allow Us to Grieve in Our Own Way
One of the difficulties in letting go of lost dreams (and also in dealing with guilt) is the fact that we often need others to support us through the process by understanding what we are going through. Consequently, we can become distressed when our spouse or partner does not view the situation the same way we do. That was certainly my problem. It took me a very long time to accept the fact that just because Bob and I did not respond to our disappointment in the same way did not mean that he wasn't disappointed, or that he wasn't grieving in his own, more private, way.
If your spouse clearly accepts your child's choices and lifestyle while you definitely do not, you will experience the pain of broken dreams and he or she will not. Or your partner may need to talk and talk and talk, while you need silence for your grief to work itself out
These differences can interfere with the grieving process if you have allowed your boundaries to mesh with those of your spouse; that is, if you assume you both have the same needs and characteristics. Such unclear boundaries do not just create problems for the grieving process. They can also interfere with your ability to let go of your adult child. After all, how can you let go of another person if you can't tell where he ends and you begin? Letting go of him can feel like cutting off a piece of yourself.
Here is a simple exercise that can help create boundaries between you and others. It's good for you and your partner, you and your child, you and anyone else you have a hard time seeing as a clearly separate individual.
Imagine you have rolled some gingerbread dough onto a cookie sheet, taken two different cookie cutters, with different features, and pressed them into the dough to form two separate gingerbread people. If the dough is baked without any further attention, the cookies will come out of the oven all in one piece. There must be space between the cookies in order for the cookie people to be separate and distinct from one another. Therefore, before you put the cookies in the oven, you must take a knife and cut away the dough that lies between the gingerbread people so that both cookies can bake and expand separately, with distinct characteristics and boundaries.
Like cookies, we need space between us to define who we are. When you find yourself becoming upset that someone is not seeing things the way you do, notice whether you have allowed your boundaries to intermingle with another person. Imagine that you can use a magic sword to create a clear boundary around who you are and who the other person is. Imagine that now, instead of being held together like two fused cookies, you are gently and softly connected with love. This not only will reinforce your sense of self, it will help you respect the other person as having a right to be different.
Working Through the Emotions of Grief
There are many emotions involved as disappointed parents move through the grief process. The intensity of those feelings, as well as the way in which we express them, varies from parent to parent. Yet few are immune to the powerful emotions that lost dreams can generate, especially feelings of sadness and depression.
When we can't imagine an end to deep family rifts, our situation can appear as a bottomless chasm into which we've fallen. To seek relief from the torment of deep pain and depression, some parents may wish their child would simply disappear, may regret the child was born or may even wish they, or their child, would die! It has been interesting to see the reaction of people who trusted me enough, because of the grief I've been through in my own situation, to tell me they felt this way at times. They were extremely relieved to discover that I understood, for they felt terrible in thinking such thoughts. Most said they had never told anyone else that sometimes these "solutions" had seemed the only way they could ever get out of the deep hole in which they found themselves.
However, once parents accept the challenge to focus on themselves rather than on their child, their deep depression almost always begins to lift. They begin to look around and see they might escape from their hole.
There are many ways in which you can gradually lessen the hold of depression. One of my favorites is through the use of family pictures, allowing your sadness to surface so that it can then be washed away.
Look at several pictures of your child when he was young. What were your dreams for him? What dreams did he have for himself? Allow yourself to feel the pain of the loss of those dreams and to cry as much as you need to. At first you may be amazed that so many tears can come from the simple act of looking at pictures. In fact, you may fear you will always feel devastated when you see those photos. You won't. The depth of your pain will gradually diminish, and the length of time you experience pain after looking at pictures will shorten. You may never be able to look at pictures of your child without some lingering sense of loss, but once you have cleansed your grief by embracing it, your heart will feel lighter and more whole.
Three other emotions are also part of grief: anger, anxiety, and envy. Recognizing these feelings as normal can help tremendously. We need not add to our difficulties by feeling guilty for having them or by thinking we should not let others see them. In fact, sharing them with others can greatly diminish their power to prevent us from releasing our dreams.
We may be angry at our child for causing us grief; at peer pressure for dragging our child into drugs; at our ex-spouse for failing to provide support; and at myriad other factors we believe contributed to our situation.
Anxiety results from the uncertainty of not knowing what the future holds. It is, of course, hard not to be anxious, but in the absence of a crystal ball we all have to find a way to tolerate waiting for future events to unfold.
And although we don't want to admit it, we often envy those parents whose lives are perfectly content because their children turned out "okay." What did they do to deserve their good luck? Until we let go of our lost dreams, we can be caught in the envy of those whose dreams were fulfilled.
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© Copyright 1994, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT, Reprinted with permission
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