A Week of Insight: Finish the Year with Purpose
Finish the year with purpose
[ssba-buttons]
It’s the quiet week. The one where we’re in-between. I like to spend this time preparing for what’s ahead, which always calls for a little reflection. I hope you’ll join me in doing a little of the quiet work of insight.
Come back each day–December 25 through January 1–and open the corresponding door below for a gift of reflection from Sheri McGregor.
If this week has been meaningful for you…
consider continuing this kind of reflection in the membership community for parents of estranged adult children.
Our next live gathering is January 7. It’s a place to hear yourself think, and gain insight from those who truly understand. You don’t have to go through this alone.
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14 thoughts on “A Week of Insight: Finish the Year with Purpose”
Many thanks for this past week of doors to open for estranged parents as we maneuver through this difficult journey in life.
Wishing everyone to have a more peaceful and gentler year with more kindness towards themselves.
Feeling sad & angry at the same time over the holidays.It’s been 16 years of punishment towards me from my daughter & son since I married & left their abusive/alcoholic/tyrannical father behind crying phoney crocodile tears to them. They had the audacity to ask me to care for him because they didn’t want him anymore than I did! And when I married a wonderful man & best friend 16 years ago, they cut me out of their lives & took away my precious grandchildren!! Life must go on after the Holocaust! We are more than our children! We deserve happiness despite their selfishness & arrogance! I treasure my best friend who supports me everyday. I look at my son & daughter as enemies now, despite being the center of my life for years. I don’t own them nor do they own me. I am at peace knowing I did my very best as their mother, & now they must look at their own selfishness, & ask…why are we so narcissistic & cruel to mom? They must face their own truth.
Thanks for your Web site. I’m a 74yo dad of two sons and until 2023 I believe that we could have worked out over time many issues that were affecting my relationship with them. It’s reassuring to know that I am not alone in this struggle to make sense of what the hell went wrong. I’m now a much stronger person Thanks to understanding more about mental health issues and how it affects day to day life.
Thank you all for making me feel less alone in this horrific experience of being estranged from an adult child. I have spent much time feeling bewildered and baffled and so very sad. My son is 34 and I have to believe he has bi polar because he was always a lovely child and young man and is now so very nasty and hostile to me . Something has gone very wrong! I also have to believe this his highly manipulative, educated “ professional” wife who works in mental health (yes!!) has “groomed “ him. How terrifying is this??
She has never wanted our family involved. And since they had children and once she realised I wasn’t going to drive 120 miles each week to childmind for their children, then I was no use to her. She is a user. She uses my son and has detached him from his loving family. I sometimes wonder if we pay much attention to abusive men and husbands but there are plenty of abusive and manipulative wives out there. So that’s my burden. It is a heavy and painful one. Social media posts by and large suggest I must somehow have been an insufferable mother to receive this handout from my son and his wife….. But Sherris words and this community of parents who endure this vile and wrongful treatment are amazing in helping me not absorb that negative view. Because I don’t think I am a bad or insufferable person. I’ve always done my best for my children.
Thank you Sheri! I have loved working through your Quiet Week series. Each day’s window has been helpful and thought provoking and constructively inspiring. Days 28 and 30 were particularly ‘loud’ and meaningful for me in my journey – now in my fourth year of estrangement but living an increasingly strong and joyful life alongside the background noise of loss and pain.
Thank you so much for these Doors, Sheri! Into my 11th year of estrangement from my only daughter and her sons who just turned 18. Dead silence from them. Accepting this reality has been a long road. I miss the people I used to know, but I have come to realize that those people no longer exist. So I count the people who DO matter and who love me freely and honestly. For 4 years I have also known estrangement from my husband’s siblings…. no explanation given, just pure and blatant snubbing and rejection. They boycotted our wedding. Their loss!! I don’t have to beg anyone to take time to know me. Again, it is Their loss. I lived for over 60 years without them….. no skin off my nose to continue to live without them. My husband is free to be in touch with them as he chooses…. But I learned a long time ago that if one does not step off the tracks, ya can’t blame the wreck on the train. So life goes on…. and I find joy in the positive people and events I do have in my life.
Dear estranged folks. I’ve been following Sheri for years, espec when the crises happen. Three years ago I decided, and haven’t regretted it, to cut daughter out of my life. I took her name off all legal docs. She is deep into weed addiction and has recently divorced her abusive husband,but has also lost jobs. My son and I are united that she will never abuse us again. At this same time I realized my alcoholic sister was and has been very awful to me. So no more contact at all with daughter or sis. I can breathe calmly for the first holiday in years, no blowups! I am 81 now and it’s never too late. I realize I was enabling so they would not blow up. I hold them dear but never ever will they drag me in the dirt again. I’ve been a terrific sis, mom and grand mom. My son and two grands made this years Christmas the best in decades. Peace to all. Sending you love.
This was 3rd Christmas since…I was given a choice of dates to have an aortic valve replacement- I chose 12/24! Great Christmas to myself! I painted a T- shirt” All I want for Christmas is a new aortic valve!” Decorated with sparkles. At least I wasn’t alone! I had hospital staff, docs, nurses all around. It turned out to be a bittersweet moment. My sister started a family text and I received so much support from nieces and nephews! My kids were on the text list. Even when I reported a complication- they still did not respond or express well- wishes. So I guess it’s just my new life, valve and all. It was so great connecting with next generation! My beating heart beats stronger now, feeling better already. I guess my mother’s heart is healing as well.
Great decision to do it on Christmas!!
Thanks, Sheri! For this safe place to put all the cards on the table!!
Hello Sharon,
I’m glad you found Sherri and her support. It’s been a lifesaver for me with an Estranged 39 year-old daughter of 4 years. Your story made me very sad and I hope and pray you will find strength in other good, kind people like Sherri and her books and other tools.
Peace and love to you in 2026..
Monika
Sending caring and supportive thoughts to these four who posted before me. I also have a painful situation I am coping with. Trying to look at all there is to appreciate in life. Trying to accept the unacceptable. By letting it go and shaking it off I can continue to have goals and interests in life. I need to protect myself from the fierce verbal abuse that is shocking.
I did everything I could to make my child’s life interesting, with many involvements in church, classes, field trips, school involvement, etc. But at young adulthood she suddenly became hateful and it has been that way for almost twenty years now. I kept hoping she would outgrow it but to no avail. Thankfully there is distance between us now. I feel as if she uses me as an object of hatred to relieve herself of her own negative feelings. I don’t know. I am not a professional in that area.
She is doing well in her life now with a husband and baby, but delights in this viscous hatred toward me. I am not an overbearing, pushy, bossy person at all. She apparently hates me for my weaknesses and hatres me for my strengths. I have to let it go and just accept the way things are. I was always supportive of everything in my child’s life. I am not perfect but I can not fathom where this livid hatred comes from. Anyway, I am trying to let it go and put it behind me. Beyond the heartbreak of not being a part of their life, I have to now protect myself from this psychological abuse. It is a heaviness that is crippling. So….I need to have a life and I have the right to a life.
She acts as if she is ashamed and disgusted with me. There is no reason for that. I am a creative and not unsuccessful person. She does not hesitate to embarrass me in front of others also, with verbal abuse and insults. It is so weird. It is the last thing I ever would have thought would come of things. She had an online counselor for some time that also seemed to add to her angst against me. Well, apart from this pain, I want to live a life and stop being trapped into this role. It does not define me. I am not a miserable hateful person worthy of verbal abuse and contempt. I am loved. I am kind.
I have decided to leave this unhealthy scenario behind me and I am letting it go. She will not approach me anyway, so there is nothing I really have to do. It is so ironic and shocking to have loved someone and done all I could to give her a good life, but to find I am hated and despised. I never nagged her that I had done all I could. I am just sharing this here. But this is not my problem any more. It’s my daughter’s problem now. I am leaving it behind me. Praying for her and my son-in-law and grandbaby always. God help me.
I’ve been estranged from my oldest adult son (29) for nearly 12 years. His hatred and rage towards me is sad. When your adult child constructs a grievance narrative because it gives shape to unresolved internal pain, this does not make it true, and it does not obligate me to carry it. Refusing to accept his false accusations is not cruelty—it is a boundary. It has taken me over a decade to learn this!
Last Christmas, I let him back into our life and into our home. I somehow believed things might be different. Instead, there by my invitation, I absorbed it quietly and kept going.
Then came Mother’s Day.
The card was beautiful on the outside —cute drawings and MB for Mama Bear-inside was psychological cruelty and confabulated memories. That was the moment something finally broke open. I said, for the first time with clarity: I will never allow this again.
And when this Christmas arrived, something remarkable happened. For the first time in 12 years, I felt a deep stillness. Calm. Peace. I realized how much suffering I was responsible for carrying because I could not fully accept that I’m not obligated to accept his abuse.
There is hope…
I’m new here. I’m single divorced out of abuse. Four children, one in the military overseas keeps in touch more with me. she suffered at his doings when younger. So did my son whom I think it’s a guy thing that he has to go it by himself. I’ve become disabled in ’24. Daughter’s here don’t want to be bothered with me, I got a picture postcard from each and that was all. I miss my grandbabies. I miss my kids. I have no one and nothing to keep me busy. I try to stay busy doing chores, painting benches out back.
I love this seasonal work! It’s is so in tune with nature and allows me to check in and assess where I am with my estrangement at very empowering times. This keeps me from getting too far away from my feelings and then getting blind sided in front of the greeting cards at the grocery store.
What a beautiful gift.
Pretty soon I will have all of your books as those are gifts as well.
Thank you and Happy New Year!
I’m grateful for this. I have a very difficult daughter, and didn’t start to get well until I stopped seeing her. I have been well, healthy, and full of plans recently. Then I took her out to lunch on Christmas Eve, and I have the old heaviness, bewilderment, depression and feeling of being blocked since. I am having problems clearing all the vibes that came my way. I certainly won’t take her out to lunch again (apart from the fact that she orders the most expensive thing in the menu, while I have cabinet food), But I am having problems getting rid of that blocked and toxic feeling.