Grandparent alienation three experiences
And a glimmer of hope
Today I’m sharing three experiences around grandparent alienation. This is purely a share about experience, heartache and the occasional glimmer of hope.
A note: this post talks about domestic violence
Oldest Grandson
My Oldest Grandson is Oldest Son’s wife’s nephew who she has had custody of since he was 5 I believe. He’s 12 now. I met him when he was 8. He is a very bright, very sensitive, very funny child who has so many questions about his own life, the world, his part in it and when he spent time with me felt free to ask anything. He is safe with me. The things I knew about him when we spent time together:
He loves music
He loves to dance
He wants to make everyone happy
He has questions that are deep beyond his age
He understands when people are not completely truthful with him
He is learning to make friends, be a child and the true joy of simply being able to play as a child has the right to play.
When I met him he was so shy, today he is more confident, does his best to speak up when things don’t seem fair and will ask people he trusts those very hard questions. There is a lot of credit due for his development to Dil and later, Oldest Son.
And. As of August 2024 I am no longer allowed to see, or speak to him. I have no idea what Oldest Son or Dil have told him about me being absent from his life. Through his very short life he has had adults abruptly disappear from his life. A grandparent couple he rarely saw, killed in a car accident. His maternal grandfather died abruptly, he wasn’t told for weeks. He was removed from his parents abruptly and overnight Dil became a parent who hopefully is educating herself on child development, child trauma and parenting.
Son and Dil are parents who have high control expectations so when they get angry at someone one of their immediate reactions is to take things away. This was their decision in August. To take Oldest grandson and I away from one another. August was when I decided to take back financial and literal control of my own life after the Dark Decade. My children were not in agreement with my decision. So, shunning commenced sans communication.
First Grandson
As I explain in a few places, First grandson is the first child of Daughter and Sil so while he is my First grand, Oldest Son’s child is my Oldest grand. I hope you get that. While Daughter was pregnant she was actively low or no contact with me. She and Sil visited Oldest Son’s home over the holiday she was pregnant and it was tense made a thousand fold more tense by our shitty inability to communicate with one another so they left early and went to Sil’s parents home for what was the rest of the time they planned to spend at Oldest Son’s home. I recall my saying something about the domestic violence in their childhood home, our home after being asked about it. Daughter told me she believed me “to an extent” and after that she shut down and it was goodbye the next day. Daughter would not tell me where or when her baby shower was (it was covid, so her mil had one by zoom for her. It was her mil who invited me) and it was Sil who included me in the text chain the night Daughter went into labor.
The wild thing is how little we, or for sure, I, knew about the absolutely frightening experience Daughter had which ended with an emergency c section. I was not invited to meet First Grandson after he was born. I was included in his second birthday celebration. I assume but don’t know if he was baptized.
In a surprise turn of events in the summer of 2022 after Sil had surgery and was out of commission for a few weeks, Daughter, who worked full time as an RN asked me to come and help them for a few days. Of course I went. I am a well trained woman in this culture and giving up pieces of myself are second nature to me to help those I love. Boundaries have taken me much longer to implement in my life. It was a great visit from my perspective. I had some good conversations with Sil, not many with Daughter. I got to spend some very very good quality time with First Grandson and I will keep it as one of my most treasured memories. The visit did little to mend things with Daughter.
Last Christmas when Oldest Son and Dil hosted it was rushed to give First Grandson his gifts as they were packing up to leave. I have been allowed to FaceTime with him twice since 2023 and then when I asked Daughter if she was pregnant based on a cousin telling me she thought she was, Daughter lost it with me, cursed me, said I am a bad mom and told me all three of them are “100% done”.
It’s heartbreaking to me after 13 ish years, Daughter and I genuinely do not know one another. Her perspective of me is one that has been building for her for all of those years, as has what my perspective of her has become. And her influence over Oldest Son and Youngest Son on how to view me is immense.
Second grandson
Second grandson will be one year old in March. He is the first child of Youngest Son and Dil. I doubt I will be invited to a celebration. Youngest Son took on much more than I should have allowed during the Dark Decade in terms of playing mediator between myself, Oldest Son and Daughter. I let my kids know my choice to take them out of their conservator roles in August of 2024 during our last mandated meeting (mandated by Daughter). That decision effectively took Youngest Son out of the mediator role, as it did to remove all of my children from their chosen roles of advisor, parent, financial supporter-a bizarrely cobbled together conservatorship-ish. Youngest Son’s choice to cut contact with me happened after Daughter said in one of her mandated meetings that one day both Oldest Son and Youngest Son would see how I am. In that same meeting when I stated my decision, it prompted Oldest Son’s declaration that no help would be offered me ever again. That, of course, was my intent with my decision and an interesting way for Oldest Son to say “I’m mad at you, won’t talk to you, and will take away my love and support of you” as is his way of handling things.
Youngest Son allowed me to come to their home for 24 hours in August to meet Second Grandson for a few of his wakeful hours, some lovely photos that I will cherish. He has been radio silent since.
A case for hope
Something that is really interesting to me as someone who wants so deeply to reconcile and is a keen observer of my family’s deep dysfunction, is how when the abuser’s long dead parents had family visit them from Germany one year, they left very early after some conflict. There was another year Oldest Son’s cousin came to visit with his wife, it was the year Youngest Son was born and the cousin and his wife had conflict with Oldest Son’s grandparents (abuser’s parents noted above) and they left days earlier than expected. As I drove them to the airport, cousin asked me why I put up with it. In that moment I told him it was because I loved the abuser who I was married to at that time. It was lie but I had no tools to express to them that in my own home much worse was happening to all of us. Telling the cousin what I did about loving the abuser, had been a lie the whole time I was married to the abuser.
In my own family of origin there is a rich rich history of deeply problematic shunning. It’s excruciating to recall.
I have so much regret I did not learn earlier to speak out about it all. The narrative of both of those times of conflict is that the grandmother was the problem. The thing that is more likely true, is that both she and the grandfather were deeply problematic. And most likely their being problematic was due to some horrors they both saw and participated in during world war 2. I have grave sadness knowing this model, this shunning, this way of being is being continued without any consciousness by my children. My not speaking to my kids all the years post divorce about domestic violence has allowed Oldest Son and Daughter to settle for people in their own lives who have been abusive to them. I don’t believe any of my three children have reconciled their own trauma from their childhood home, let alone the traumas each of them have experienced in their grown lives.
Yet I hope. For reconciliation. For a new, better way of relating to one another. For a genuine knowing of one another. Yes. Even in this very very dark time of estrangement. I will write soon about the developmental aspects of estrangement, how yours and my children can be viewed as growing their own independence-even late in the game because how many of us took way longer to learn how to human that we hoped or expected? I did. It took entirely too much of my life to learn to be a grown up. And there are still days I fail at it. Many more I get it right. I hope there’s time to let that learning show up in relationships with my children.
Here’s to that, a new year, new learning, new growth and taking very very good care of ourselves in the new year.
Cindi
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