Estrangement of offspring– It’s hurtful and wicked. Quite frankly, it goes beyond and deeper than the two descriptions of what it really is. It’s much worse, and it seems to be an epidemic in our society among the youth towards parents who brought them into this world and made a life for them. Gratitude is a word that was skipped over, not held tightly to or even valued even though the intentions were there–so it appears and just might be the case.
This could be difficult to write about; let alone, read. If you are a parent whose ‘grown’ child has broken every tie with you, this might be something that is painful to stumble upon for it being a reminder of the absence of where your kid used to be. That same ‘kid’ you thought you raised but he or she is nowhere around, no visible or audible proof that you ever had that person as your child. They’ve erased you from their heart–after all, isn’t love expressed through action and kind words of reciprocation and appreciation? It then becomes too heart-wrenching in memory for you to reflect back on–on all the years that you spent with them, for them, loving them.
I speak for countless parents, not just for one or two, and not just for myself. I’m just another mom, a mother of offspring in ‘Heaven’ just as I am a mother of an offspring on this earth who refuses to claim me, as well as having two younger children who are my offspring who love and adore me. It’s hard for everyone–for the siblings of your estranged child, for the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… Everybody wonders what happened, and where, he or she is. Each person deals with the abandonment, the hurt and rejection in similar or different ways. It becomes a disease, a rot in the bones when it enters a family and is made “a right” to remain there. It is the permission by the estranged offspring, a clipping of branches, a death unto the family for in some cases–a lifespan.
Do our children know us, really? If they are not people-smart, then the answer is most likely going to be–no. If they can be easily led away or led astray, comfortably brainwashed, quickly and successfully lied to, and manipulatively fooled by whomever they’re hanging out with and or sleeping with; perhaps by your ex and/or ex in-laws–then you might have to wait their entire ‘adult life’–and the remainder of yours–if you have a full life ahead of you in the measure of years. Some say it’s a curse, a curse of generations that is passed down, that you’re likely to have one child who is weak-minded. That one child who is weak-minded can be turned against you with his/her own will from listening to an envious outside interference–that simply done. It comes from the pit of hell, from the ugly source and vomit of the devil himself. That might come across harsh or sound stupidly said, but it certainly isn’t anything heaven-sent. It’s an illness in our nation, in our world. The family unit has considerably deteriorated.
There are parents who have done poorly. There are parents who have graciously and lovingly raised offspring. And there are parents in-between the two phrases of people that depict both sets of parents. At any rate, no parent is a perfect parent. Offspring will if not already, make the same or just as many if not more, mistakes–whether intentional or not. There is an abnormal sense and demand of entitlement among our youth.
We’re told to “deal with it” and accept the fact that he or she does not want us anymore, that they never will again.
Have you picked up a phone to answer, only to hear, “You’re dead to me.”?
As hard as it is to hear and remember, the words that cut your insides in two like a razor, it might be the one thing that you’ve got to recall in order to go on–to go on living–to refuse your death of any kind, of any nature. Nobody wants to leave their kids or be left by them, not a “normal” parent. When you’re given no choice, you eventually come to a fork in the road where you have to make the choice of there not being a choice. You feel like someone has killed your child. Your kid has been removed from your life. Part of you dies. You’re never the same again, and you never will be.
It’s sink or die. “That ship has sailed.” So it has. Who’s stupid now? Keep smart, the one who’s had the years, who has lived through the years after stupidity fled–now the years of the scoffed. A person is “young and dumb” for a season. You’re over “fool’s hill” and now you’ve aged into a gracefulness that is not embraced or accepted. You might have been intelligent in your youth, a wise decision-maker among the young. If so, then you have been the exception. What if you weren’t? So if you weren’t, it’s not your kid’s place or true right to judge you, discredit you, and disown you over a loss, a divorce, a far travel, a transfer to make friends again in a new school–none of that really matters now. You did what you had to do at the time. Try not to beat yourself up in the process of processing it all. Bounce back. Count your joys. Find them. Know who love you, who will never forsake you. Live for those few people.
I find that staying actively busy, finding something that I’m passionate about in my work and in my personal life, I give back hope to myself. It’s not a selfish act. A person must. When your child has chosen to hate you, you have to reinvent yourself in order to survive. It might be the toughest thing you’ve had to do--ever–because birthdays will come and go, and you’re not allowed to contact your child–your baby that you held. Every Christmas is a reminder of when a school ornament was made, when the years were kind through little hands and little fingers that hung it on a tree for you. It’s expected that you forget that important life that you loved and had dreams with, and in every story book you read, in every song you hummed when rocking him or her to sleep with a fever. Now you must take care of yourself. Each new day of this kind of loss is an enormous struggle. After an accumulation of time, you find the good in such a bad, in such a wrong that was done. You go on loving and missing your child but you have to go on living, too. It is a death, and then it becomes a recovery because it has to be. You’re now given the choice of what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. God will restore what the locusts have taken. In God’s Word, Joel 2:25 says, “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army which I sent among you.” Keep hope alive in your heart, hold on to the truths inside your grief, and fill your soul with even more beauty than before. God will restore and bless you in due season, when it’s His perfect time.
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