How to Divorce Your Adult Children and Restore Your Sanity
I am known for exposing the “elephant in the living room.” Those things everybody knows but nobody is talking about. Not every mother-daughter relationship reads like a Hallmark card, and our culture makes that a shameful secret to bear.
Dr. Christiane Northrup suggested that the bonding hormones that flood a mother’s blood stream at childbirth stay with women for about 28 years.
It is no accident, then, that the first round of truly adult separation (not teenage rebellion) begins to rear its head somewhere around 30 for women and the menopause years for their mothers. For the first time, the veil begins to lift and we see each other for the women we have become.
When It Comes to Your Adult Children, What is Normal?
Some estimate that 96% of American Families are dysfunctional in some way – making it the norm. But “normal” is not necessarily healthy, and it certainly falls short of the abundant life we’ve been promised.
Women are held responsible for the relational health of the world – at work, at home, family health and wellbeing, the sexuality, the promiscuity, the cause, the cure and the results. When a true perpetrator arises in a family, the mother protects ala Mama Bear. If she doesn’t die trying, she can later become a target.
Mom is apparently the one who knew (or should have known) what was happening at every moment of every day to their children – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. After all, moms have eyes in the backs of their heads and are equipped with the unusual ability to read minds, right?
See also: Letting Go And The Art Of Parenting Adult Children
What Is Healthy When It Comes to Adult Children?
M. Scott Peck wrote, “Mental health is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs.” The pinch point for grandmothers is that any loss of relationship with our adult children means strained relations – if not severed ties – with the grandchildren who now light up our lives.
I am a mother of three and grandmother to 11. I stayed with their father for more than 20 years believing that somehow I could make him feel loved enough to change.
Over time, each of my children has drawn close to me for healing, and pulled away for the same reason. I am, after all, the one they hold responsible for the shifting emotional sand in their psyche.
Ten years ago, I remarried a man whose children were also grown. We imagined that would alleviate the adjustments of step-families. In some ways, not having children in the home made it easier to forge our identity as a married couple.
Although we shared values, we didn’t share history with each others’ children. We each brought our traditions and expectations to bear. When I recently chose to divorce this man who had played “grandpa” to my children’s children, old wounds surfaced.
Had I known that to leave him meant I would lose my only local family, I probably would have stayed for the sake of the grandchildren. It’s that old programming baby boomer women still struggle with.
If something isn’t working, you try harder. Marital problems? Pray more, love more, give more, be patient, and wait it out. Suck it up, stuff it down, be quiet and don’t make waves.
What Is Real?
I have identified four distinct stages in the journey to wholeness.
Desperate
Our lives become (or continue to be) a carefully constructed illusion based on how it looks, what people will think, and what we imagine will get us the love and security we so desperately crave.
This is why grandmothers continue to “make peace at all costs” rather than saying what they see, need and want. Some have called it the disease to please.
Distant
Pretending that everything is okay when in our hearts we know that is not true can only go so far. We go along to get along. We smile in public and cry in private. We live a lie, and it eats at our souls every day.
Women think if we ignore it, maybe it will go away or time will heal all wounds. The thing is, time doesn’t heal buried pain. It has to be unearthed and acknowledged before it will pass away. Pain that gets buried alive poisons the rest of our lives.
Divorce
Divorce is a harsh word when applied to our mother-child relationships, isn’t it? But it happens whether we acknowledge it or not. Divorce occurs when all communication has broken down and attempts at reconciliation fail.
It is the most painful dark night of the soul. With divorce comes all the drama of severed relationships, he-said she-said finger pointing, and drama triangles where people talk about each other, but never directly to one another so healing could occur. We might as well lawyer up and some do. It’s called Grandparent Rights.
See also: The Detachment Wall: How To Let Go Of Your Adult Children
Done
Last is the place of acceptance. There is no anger, no angst, no more bargaining. It is where we accept what life is handing out right now and the fighting is done.
You have decided what you do and do not want, what you will and will not stand for, and are making decisions to move forward with or without the resolution you may have hoped for. You are free to stay or go because you have become dedicated to reality at all costs.
Read HOW TO DEAL WITH HAVING AN ESTRANGED ADULT CHILD.
What’s Next for You and Your Adult Children?
Do I wish I had capacity back then to do some things differently? Definitely. Do I regret what I allowed my children to endure because of the choices I made? Mm-hmm.
Is there anything I can do now to go back and change it? Not a damn thing. Does it serve anyone for me to live in remorse and regret? Nope. Not now, not ever. Never.
Nobody had a perfect childhood – at least nobody in my generational gene pool. We all did the best we could with what we had to work with at the time. That is as true today as it was generations ago.
The biggest healer for women in daughter divorces is to break the shame by breaking the silence. Let’s talk about what’s real and how to help live dreams without drama in our later years.
Read WHEN PEOPLE ASK ABOUT MY ESTRANGED CHILDREN… WHAT CAN I SAY?
Also read 60 AND ESTRANGED FROM AN ADULT CHILD? HOW NOT TO DEAL WITH IT.
This article has generated several important conversations. Many mothers/grandmothers are going through similar realities each with their unique set of situations. Talking and being vulnerable with one another is part of the healing process – as we can tell by reading your chats. Knowing that you are not alone helps in accepting the outcome of your distanced relationship with your adult children.
Many have mentioned that therapy has helped them through this difficult time in their lives. Online therapy sessions are now readily available and affordable. Websites like Better Help, Talk Space, and Online Therapy have therapists and mental health professionals available to listen and guide you.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Where do you find yourself in the process of letting your adult children go? Where are you on the journey to finding yourself in your sixties? Please share your thoughts below!
Tags Adult Children
My son has a daughter that made bad decisions in choosing a man who did drugs, but she ended up having 3 children by him 5 and under. She has left this abusive relationship, but is now back relying on her recently retired dad to step in and care for the children while she try’s to scrape money to support them. Her mother is not providing much support for her at all. My son is beside himself, but I don’t have advice to help his very sad situation. What advice can I possibly give?
My estranged daughter told me that if her dad dies she wants a funeral. We, her parents plans on no funeral but she doesn’t want to honor our wishes…so how can we avoid this problem with our estranged adult daughter when the time comes?
Have it written into the dad’s will. The executor of the will is supposed to follow the wishes of the deceased. If you want to play hard ball you can make the bequest to the daughter dependent on fulfilling/adhering to his wishes for no-funeral.
Thank you for this article. I am really struggling looking for information. When I google everything seems to be about adult kids cutting off their parents because they are toxic.
I have convinced myself that I am/was a horrible mother. My did all the stuff. I was the main parent when my daughter was growing up. My ex-husband never wanted kids but after 2 years of marriage, out of the blue, he said let’s try for that baby. I was thrilled, but knowing he really didn’t want kids, I did all the parenting. I paid for everything for her and raised her pretty much by myself.
After 20 years of marriage, I divorced him, and he immediately started turning her into someone I didn’t recognize.
She recently got married and I paid for 1/2 of the wedding, but she demoted me. She let everyone believe that I did not pay for anything. At the wedding, she didn’t even let me sit in the MOB seat at church, because “No one comes before her Dad.” I have never been so hurt. I smiled and made it through the wedding. I severed all ties with her after.
I feel like a failure. I needed to protect myself. We went from talking daily, multiple times a day to no contact in 4 months. I cut her off and I know it was the right thing to do, but I don’t think she even cares. Through all of this, my mother died and I moved 4,000 miles away from her. I guess I did run away.
I’m 72. 52 year old daughter won’t stop drinking. Goes into 3 month govt paid treatment several times. Just did 2 ER trips a month ago. Blood alcohol .29. Gets through detox. Here we are knowing she is so bad again. As a family we are tired of rescuing her. Been about 20 years of continuing to “slip up”.
we don’t want to go rescue her again tonight. Please help us with the guilt we are feeling. We cannot make her stop.
I think al-anon has proven help for people who want to stop enabling their adult kids. This is her problem. I don’t blame you for being tired of it. She eventually has to rely on herself to get herself out of her own messes, yes? Good luck.
I feel this on so many levels, former abused child all the ways imaginable but tried to give my daughter what I expected as a child. I held her accountable and made her work for it by keeping clean after herself, taking on chores at home and learning how to maintain her checkbook, vehicle and time management skills. She feels like she was abused for being taught life skills she didn’t want to learn. Always making some excuse as to why she didn’t want to cook or clean or do laundry, take care of her physical health. She’s now just under 30, morbidly obese, entitled and still screams abandonment and abuse (from both parents). We’ve had CPS called, been investigated for a whopping 35 minutes for their agent to tell her to her face she doesn’t know what abuse is. He saw her suite in our house, her personal living room 12 x 24 ft fully furnished with tv, games, WIFI. her 2 cars we bought that she refused to drive because they were used. He saw her room with double full closets full of clothes & shoes, her queen size bed, beautiful dresser set and another tv in her room. Her 20 friends invited to our house for Halloween weekend sleepover (the friends she cried abuse to) and all of them said she was a liar to her face in my kitchen. I sobbed when I heard the made up things she told these kids. There’s too many of these stories to list of her antics. I paid $8k a few months ago to fund her wedding, her budget was $5k I’m not rich and it killed my finances to do this for her and told her and future son in law how proud I was to be able to do it. To not be invited to pick out her dress, the venue, the menu, to be part of the wedding March or be announced as someone “giving her away” I wasn’t invited to the bridal shower, no thanks we’re given. At the rehearsal dinner I paid for I was told while asking how can I help? To shut up, I don’t care where you or anybody sits as long as it isn’t with me. I said nothing, made an excuse to leave early and went home in silence. The day of the wedding she calls to ask where I’m at so I responded, “I chose to sit at home where you can’t hear me.” She was angry and said “You’re really not showing up to my wedding?” I answered, “I’m giving you exactly what you asked me for to a T. Don’t complain”, be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. It’s four months later and I have no wish to talk to someone who goes out of their way to make me their bad guy. She told my brother stories, I sent screenshots to prove my truth she asked for me to pay for wedding and do all the work. If I didn’t show you can bet your honey neither did the cleaning crew. She had to figure it out herself for once.