Empty Nest, Full Heart, Lost Connections

Anyone who is on social media or the internet has most certainly seen the influence the so called “influencers” have had on adults cutting off their parents. The new self-centered therapy trend is sickening. It tears families apart. Families will never be perfect, just as human beings are never perfect. My own son cut us out because we are deemed to be “annoying” and he has to protect his mental health.

To which I retort, do you not think you were annoying as a child? Do you not realize that we did the best we could with what we had? We were never abusive. Our sin was that we were annoying. My son and his wife claim to be traumatized by my use of social media and do not what their children to be traumatized to the degree my son was traumatized. My husband is not a big user of social media, so this sin is completely mine.

You really cannot make this crap up. I grew up in an abusive household where my parents drank alcohol and yelled daily. There were fist fights with my brothers. The police were often at my house because my brothers broke the law. Yet, as I moved away from home and made my way in this world, I never cut my parents out of my life. At times, I did limit contact due to their abhorrent behavior. Sometimes when I would call from college, my dad would yell and cuss me out, then hang up. He would call me horrible things. Whore, stupid, bitch…. the list of names is long.

My parents were such alcoholics that they brought ice chests full of alcohol to our wedding. During the reception, they went to the parking lot of the church to drink alcohol. They were shitfaced drunk at our wedding because they could not go a few hours without alcohol.

My parents visited when the first boy was born and then did not come back again until our second born was 18 months old and the youngest was 3 months old. We had invited them and they declined. They had vacations to Las Vegas and Tahoe planned. They were also avid gamblers. When the children were older, my father cussed out my oldest child. I asked him to stop and a fight ensued. My mother told me that day, “You should be kind to your father, you don’t know how much longer he will be here.” I replied, “Maybe he should be kind to me so that he will be remembered fondly.”

They went home and we did not really speak to them for 6 months. When they finally reached out, there was no apology for cussing out a 6 year old. They acted like nothing had ever happened. This was how they were. They would cuss and scream, then go on as if nothing ever happened. I tried to have a relationship with them until the day they died. Never once cutting them off from my children completely. They were allowed to visit, to call and have that relationship. I never allowed my parents to be alone with my boys so that they could be removed if things went south and the cussing began.

So, as I look back on how we raised our boys, it shocks me that my oldest has gone no contact and kept us from our grandchildren. My husband comes from a “normal” family and was never abusive to our boys, either.

Maybe I tried until my parents died because family is very important to me. Despite the actual trauma and actual abuse I tried, because family matters. I tried hard to be different than my parents. We rarely drank alcohol, we never hit our children and the police never came to our house. We were imperfect parents, but we were not abusive. The majority of psychotherapists these days seem to make these imperfections into abusive trauma. Any small disagreement is turned into a serious mental health crisis. It’s insanity!

For century after century, families stuck together through these minor imperfections! I am not talking about sticking together through actual abuse- obviously there needs to be distance when actual abuse is happening.

We now have a generation who has redefined what “abuse” is. Abuse is now anything you want it to be. Mom disagrees with you, that’s abuse. Dad annoyed you with his hobbies, that’s abuse. It is absolutely absurd. They have redefined trauma to mean anything that you disagree with. If your mother posts something on social media that you don’t like or uses social media in a way that you disagree with, that is now defined as trauma. It is asinine!

I have met so many parents who are going through this same type of estrangement. They were not perfect parents, but they were not abusive. Some are estranged simply because they have differing political views! Long gone are the days where aunt Jenny is invited to Thanksgiving despite her crazy opinions. We now live in a world where everyone must agree one hundred percent of the time or else someone’s psyche will be irreparably harmed.

I’m writing to bring awareness to the stupidity of this new trend. It’s time to make families strong again. Strong enough to endure minor transgressions and minor imperfections.

~Evelyn