“My son is 37. He is not in a life threatening surgery and yet when I got the text this morning that he was in the operating room I wanted to cry. I didn’t. But for some reason I wanted to.”
Your note illustrates that the umbilical cord is infinitely elastic! He is your son. You have been with him from “the beginning.” You have seen him through every phase of his life. You are going to “feel it” whenever he faces trials and difficulties.
While you need no permission I’d suggest you go ahead and cry all you want and all you need.
While I do not know this to be true – how could I? – I will suggest your emotions and wanting to express them is only partially due to the immediate surgery that he is undergoing. The immediate surgery triggers your memory to hundreds of other times over the years of things you have faced together as he was going through every phase of his life thus far.
Our challenge as parents of adult sons and daughters is to function as highly and healthily as possible given that our role and work as parents is complete, despite the emotional responses we will have when our “children” – they are no longer children but fellow adults – are challenged.
The benefits of knowing and defining what you want — desire, aspire to, what you’re “cut out” for — and setting yourself in the direction of achieving it:
— You’ll be focused on your strengths and your future and not on your weaknesses and your past failures.
— You’ll be single-minded as you explore and enjoy your strengths and talents and you’ll be a whole lot nicer to be around than you are likely to be if you’re scrambling around trying to settle your confused and uncertain soul.
— You’ll get more and more comfortable with the idea that who and what you are will undergo shifts and changes in expression but the core of who you are and what you want will be as set as your finger prints.
— You will see and understand over time that no one gets everything he or she wants in exactly the way it’s wanted. Life is too kind to give anyone an enduring rose garden.
— You’ll identify what you don’t want and therefore resist seduction down wasteful and often very expensive rabbit holes. You’ll learn the skill and reap the benefits of being able to say a credible “yes” and “no” and be respected for both.
— You’ll discover others are less inclined to mess with you as they dectect you’re on a purposeful mission.
Initiates meetings and facilitates conversations where there has been an ongoing conflict or a falling out. He or she is the peacemaker (one who understands some conflict may be necessary for long-term healing) and not the peacemaker (one who avoids conflict at all costs). .
Empowers family members to take a hard and loving stand against cruel or harsh treatment at the hands of another member of the family or even someone outside of it.
Goes first. The one who is first in the family to travel or to go to university or to branch off into an area of interest or study that no one in the family has done before.
Goes back and visits childhood places and engages long-lost relatives and to hear the family stories that may have never been heard.
Demonstrates grace, generosity, and forgiveness in a family that may have traded in selfishness, resentment, and judgment for many years.
Speaks well and kindly of family members who for whatever reasons have been rejected by some members of the same family. It is the person who is willing to reach out to the marginalized in order to draw them back into the fold.
If you are living with children and living and living with an addiction (here’s an inconclusive but quick way to tell: you have lost a job, an important relationship, or status in a community, because of it – if one of the three is true you are most likely an addict) please get the treatment you need for the disease. Your addiction not only impacts and impairs you and your behaviors but it will do its damage also on your children, no matter how skilled you may think you are at hiding your disease or habit from them.
Your children are “soaking up” the atmosphere in your home. The tensions and the anxieties that come to the family with your addiction, your disease, but it is provoking severe dis-ease (lack of ease) for your children. A sad part of this ramification – and there are many – is that to the children living and growing in this environment, it is their normal. One day they are highly likely to repeat the addictive cycle with their own families.
Help is near and available to all who seek it. Being clean, finding sobriety, kicking the habit, always involves a series of tough and painful choices but the results can be transforming to say the least, for you and for all who love you, especially your children.
“Are you what you wanted to be when you grew up?” one of my sons asked me once.
I recall playfully telling him the question was both kind and cruel.
The question offered me time to reflect with deep gratitude for an incredible life of amazing contrasts and joys and explorations.
And, jaw-dropping regret.
The truth is I am nothing of what I wanted to be or planned to be as a child, yet I am also far, far more than I had the capacity to imagine. My response was tough to try and explain but I think my son understood since I have repeatedly told both boys that life is simultaneously beautiful and brutal,
You may have gathered I think a lot and write much about contrasts and paradoxes and I see them everyday.
Perhaps you feel something rather similar or perhaps life has been a bed of roses for you – but I doubt it.
Who plans to be divorced? Alone? In debt? Ill?
Adults often ask children what they want to be when they grow up and perhaps we should suggest our children respond with, “I’ll tell you if you tell me if your childhood ambitions have come to fruition.”
I’m sure that you won’t have to look too far if you want to find people with courage. I run into men and women – and children – with remarkable courage for which they are apparently seldom lauded. I have noticed that the more I listen rather than talk, the more courage and love I encounter.
This week I met a woman who has two jobs and two high school children in her care. She is keeping track of it all with calm and good humor. I met a woman of courage.
I met a man who is facing a life-threatening illness while taking care to visit his wife daily. His wife is in a long-term care facility and has not known who he is for years. I met a man of courage and who knows about love.
A week ago I met a teenager who uses a ride service three times a week to spend time with her aged grandmother. She told me the visits also give her time to perfect her school work and time to apply for bursaries and scholarships to help her pay for the university she’d like to attend when she’s finished high school. I met a teenage girl who knows about courage and love and commitment.
I will endeavor to seek your Highest Good in my actions toward you. This may result in moments that you doubt my decisions but I’ll always be ready to discuss the counter-intuitive Nature of Love.
I will speak about you and to you offering you the Highest Praise and Affirmations as I see them. I shall endeavor to be accurate when talking to and about you.
As best as I am able I will think Highest Thoughts about you and give you the benefit of any doubts. If given reason or cause to question your honesty or integrity I shall speak to you face-to-face and to none other unless it is absolutely necessary. Even then, I’ll keep you appropriately informed.
While it is your divine right and no gift from me I will endorse and support your Highest Degree of Personal Freedoms to live as fully and powerfully as possible with or without my involvement.
In the hurly-burly and busyness of daily life rest assured that I have the Highest Desire a Parent (a spouse, an in-law, a grandparent, an Uncle, an Aunt – no connection intentionally omitted) can know for your success and greatness, which, counter-intuitively may look nothing at all like what is commonly believed to be success and greatness.
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