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
I stumbled on this and so glad I did after 22 years I finally at 58 up and left my 32 year old disrespectful verbal physically and emotionally abusive son. I gave up my place moved to another state left my son no place to go no nothing so why do I feel so bad he didn’t want nothing just wanted me to be put so he had backup- all he does is complain he gonna die in the street but his mouth and actions has left people to pull away no one not even my mother want him around bchoosevto sell drugs over getting a job – he choose tog ample thousands I nsteadvof helping pay bills he choose to but designer clothes instead of paying rent my fault I allowed it caused I didn’t want to argue. I feel like if he dies in the street all my stress will go way and I can stop worrying
Where I am is, I keep thinking how I was when I was a young adult and frankly I don’t get it, what is going on now. Back in the days when phone calls were a certain amount by the minute and so calls were few and far between, we still went and saw our parents for holidays. Which today, seems outrageous to “adult children”, which really they are adults and if it was in the 60tys or 70tys, would the parents be hearing from them as much and texting them? No, it would be like it was when I was a child I ventured out in the morning and I was expected to walk into the house for dinner. I am questioning if I am in a dream world expecting a lot of closeness every few day, when in fact I didn’t do that myself. Maybe it is all the ads on tv, or maybe it is all the parents who have their kids drop by and I see them, whereas my kids had to move many miles away to afford to live someplace. Where I am at in this is, they have boundaries than I break they say, yet if they want to call me at any hour thats fine with me, I’m their mom. I am at, if they don’t want to talk fine, but maybe I won’t run to answer the phone, or maybe I will throw my phone out onto the freeway. Does any of it matter anyway, when you are treated like a thing that will have to be taken care of when you are older. I have found they have discussed this, I never discussed what would happen if my parents might have needed help, I would have helped them, who doesn’t want to help their parents? Where I am is, I don’t like the way society have gotten really cruel, and I am going to do whatever I want. Maybe I won’t be there to take anyones calls, it’s my business. If my children want to keep telling me how I didn’t work I was a mom, I swear it won’t go well. Everyone should live their life the way they want, but frankly all this shutting parents out, and on and on, it seems to me all these adult children who are old enough to be grandparents themselves, should finally grow up. 18 they are an adult, set them free, and I am positive they will figure it out and if not, that isn’t my problem. Perhaps I sound angry, I am and I am not groveling to hope I am treated normally, I thought I raised people not spoiled children who pull this boundary like it is some sort of war. If they want war, theyve got it, fine by me.It will be a new lesson for them I say. I grew up with a wall phone, a paper map, no internet and you figure it out you didn’t blame your parents for your own shortgivings.
It is 5:43 this morning and I am up looking for answers on how not to lose my 18 year old grandson who I help to raise the first 10 years of his life. I did not know at the time when he was born that he was not the son of the man my daughter married. I found out when my husband and I were picking him up from Christian day care. We received a call from his “father” saying he had a DNA test done and he was not the biological father. My daughter did not deny this and told me it was a man who she had a previous abusive relationship with. I was not to tell my grandson which I did not until Sept. 15, 2023, when he asked me in the car on our way to his graduation cruise if I knew his father had died. My daughter had told me a few weeks earlier that she had told her son his father had died and that if he asked me about it, I could talk to him. What I did not know was that she did not tell him that it was not the man he thought to be his dad. It was the former lover. I did stumble at the question, and he screamed at telling when I told him he should talk to his mother, he said I lied to him, that his grandfather had lied to him, everyone had lied. She wrote me cruel messages, wrote to my husband, posted on social media, and now shows herself as the daughter of her stepmother. My grandson has not spoken to me since I took him home. I tried to explain that I had done what his mother had told me to do. I called his mother and was told not to ever contact her again that she did not tell me I could . He did tell me that he would always love me when I left but I am sick with the fear that he will not want me in his life any longer. It will not change the love I have for him, as he is a part me, one of the best parts of me. I want him to always to remember this.
I come from a long line of “generational trauma”. I thought I hated my mother for the torture she put me and my brother thru (he died at age 38. Alcohol. He never saw my mother again after age 12). I am 57 now and have a 36 year old son and a 30 year old daughter. LONG history with them both. They have different fathers as I was married twice before my marriage of now (23 years). When I left both husbands, I left both children with their fathers – one just to get away from the abuse of my 1sty husband and 2nd because I didn’t feel i was mentally able to care for a child (she was 5 when I divorced) I keep in touch with my daughter. My 1st husband kept my son from me, going so far as to tell him I left because I didn’t want him.
After many years of abuse, anger, addiction and me feeling so bad for leaving my daughter that I allowed her to use me – I had to kick my daughter (30) out of my home for lying, constant drunkenness, slothfulness, disrespect and not paying a DIME to help support herself and her daughter – the child of both my son and daughter – yes, the HUGE punch in the gut was that my children committed incest and had a child.
My GUILT made me a slave.
DCS took my granddaughter away and placed her with the man who taught my son to beat women (he beat my daughter regularly) because where we live, the parents get to choose. Just TODAY my daughter taunted this in front of my face.
Anyhow, I felt SO BAD that I basically had to tell my daughter she was dead to me. She played me against her father and made me the bad guy and constantly berated me for turning her into the “feds” (it was my husband of 23 years who called them, then my therapist and the final report was from law enforcement for DV).
There is so much and I feel like SUCH a loser mother for all of what is going on in all our lives – from my still living mother all the way down to my poor granddaughter –
I thought I was unloading into a blocked account, but apparently not as my daughter unloaded on me – bringing back ALL that emotion I had thought I had buried.
I can’t talk anymore about it, but want to say I am glad i saw this article. I know all about divorce having gone thru it twice. I just can’t get my daughter as a young girl out of my heart. I can’t kill that emotion I still hold for her.
I feel GUILTY for actually hating my own daughter – for if she were not my daughter, i would stay FAR away from her.
I’m sorry y’all are going thru this too and am glad I came across these comments from the heart of others in a similar situation with adult children.
I honestly feel the “60 years” are the hardest I have endured in my life. It almost feels like a constant flood of hormones even tho I’m 10 years past menopause. Balancing a career, kids who are thriving on their own but still wanting validation, an aging/ill parent, and a marriage that has lasted more than 30 years and changing daily is a constant reminder that my best days are probably behind me. How at 60 can we be so worn out? Even typing that feels so sad. I hope there is more.
Boy do I sympathize with that “kids still want constant validation”! I’m so tired of “mom duty”—-good god, she is 42, why is she still throwing tantrums at me over nothing???