The question I’m a divorced woman in my 50s. My younger child, 23, left home five months ago, his 25-year-old sister having left a couple of years before, and my sense of grief is intermittent but vicious. This feels quite shocking at times and I’m hurt by how little my children contact me or come to see me.
I have a busy life with a great circle of friends and an on-off boyfriend who lives elsewhere , but not a solid partner. The newly empty nest is setting off much guilt and rumination about my children’s childhoods, my marriage, even how often I visited my own parents. I fully appreciate that my children are alive, independent and forging their own lives with work, friends and partners.
I also make sure I have focus elsewhere, but I swing between feeling fine and busy, and really despairing. I sometimes wonder what the point of life is without my beloved children. I think: is this it? I know if I put pressure on them, they will go in the opposite direction.
Neediness can be repulsive. I barely gave my parents a thought at their age – I know this is normal. I question how much I’m a bad parent if they don’t want to see me a lot.
I know in my heart that they love me, but they don’t want anything like the amount of contact I’d like. I’m finding the balance between their need for independence and my longing for them almost impossible to achieve . It feels like a deep grief that I can manage with effort, but which then almost topples me .
Philippa’s answer T.