Tag: estrangement

Menopause and Grief

There is no doubt that menopause heralds a new stage of life. There are the physical and hormonal changes that are the hallmark of this stage of life, thus the euphemism that my mother and her generation used to describe it: “The Change.” The basic definition is the end of reproductive years, but that is too basic. This has always annoyed me, especially when some seem to think that is the same thing as saying, “the end of one’s useful life.” As much as I enjoyed becoming a mom and raising a family, it was not the sum total of who I am as a person.

Menopause is a very difficult time of transition for women. In addition to physical changes, there are myriad other changes that mark this time of life. Children leave home and start lives and families of their own. Parents are aging and become dependent, become sick, and pass away. Many women retire or at least contemplate retiring from careers that they worked and sacrificed to build. Face time with a spouse increases, and this is a time when fissures in a relationship can take hold and form unbridgeable cracks. This list is not exhaustive.There are many things that can happen, and all of these things involve loss.

Why am I here?

This sense of loss can lead to existential questions and also grief, the natural emotional response to loss.

Just to review the stages:

  • Denial
    • Bargaining
      • Depression
        • Anger
    • Acceptance

These stages are not linear; there is no time period assigned to each stage. This means that you can get to the acceptance stage, but that doesn’t mean you are finished—you can go backwards and experience the other stages at any time. If you have ever experienced the loss of a loved one and months or years later, you are leveled with a feeling of loss and sadness that seems to come out of left field, this is an example of that.

Loss is cumulative. Children leaving the nest, downsizing, retiring, or the death of a parent may all be normal life events, but they are all large losses and they all happen in a relatively short period of time. This rapid fire of huge changes can take its toll. In my situation, I also have the added grief of a very painful family estrangement.

Grief needs to be worked through. The emotions surrounding loss need to be acknowledged and felt. Talking things through with family, friends or a therapist, and journaling all help. The most helpful thing is the tincture of time. A loss is still a loss, and something that is lost cannot always be replaced.

For me, this weekend was an example of the way that grief which you thought you had processed can come back and knock you back down to your knees.

The news broke that Brooklyn Beckham went scorched earth on his parents to his 16 million followers. As the mom of a son from whom I am estranged, all I could think about was his poor mother. I have nothing in common with her except that we are both moms, but everyone on the internet seems to have an opinion. This situation is difficult enough to navigate in a small town. I cannot imagine the pain of a family misunderstanding being fodder for gossip on two continents. When you have spent your entire life loving your child and doing your best to support them, and the response is to be cut off, I don’t know whether it matters if 6 people know or 16 million.The pain is unbearable. 

“Recollections May Vary”  – Queen Elizabeth’s response after the Harry and Megan Oprah interview

Estrangement is currently the way to handle any type of conflict. Start by calling your parents emotionally immature, then tell victim stories about your upbringing, get a few friends and then even a therapist to tell you how brave you are, and your victimhood is alchemized into a hero’s journey. Is your story the absolute truth? Probably not. Were your parents perfect? No. Did they love you? Yes. Did they have the mental health resources that you had at your fingertips? Absolutely not. This is an example of you holding your parents to a set of standards that didn’t exist when they were raising you. 

There is no room for grace, for acknowledging your parent’s humanity, or for any nuance.  So they did their best. It wasn’t good enough? Fair enough. It’s up to you to heal. If that healing involves cutting off your family, just be aware that when the wheel or fortune turns, and standards have once again changed (and they will), you may find yourself on the other side. A side where you are no longer the hero, but the villain.

As a mom, I am left grieving a child who is still alive and lives five minutes away. If you are a parent and are also lucky, you may find the support of friends and family. There are still those who will tell you that “good” parents don’t get cut off. Where there is smoke there is fire. If you attempt to explain or defend, then you are being manipulative. You find yourself distancing yourself from people who say things like, “You have to listen to his side,” or “His perception of what happens is ‘his truth’ and you have to accept that.” I am and always have been willing to listen and have a discussion. I am not willing to set aside my reality and grovel to anyone. Especially for a history that was re-written without my input. Finally, to save yourself and your sanity, you have to find a way through. That entails building on the foundation that you have already established in life so that the grief becomes more manageable.

Building on Your Existing Foundation

This can come in so many forms. Grieving the past is necessary, but it’s also necessary not to get stuck. In order to build as you move through all of the stages and feelings that grief brings on, get help if you need it. There are no bonus points in life for unnecessary suffering. The next step is to notice the glimmers. These are the beautiful parts of life that are always present, but when we are in the thick of things, we forget to notice. A sunrise, a cloudless blue sky, a warm cup of coffee that you linger over in the morning. The tiny things that help to get you through a day. Stop and notice them. No, it won’t fix everything, but what it will do is focus your attention outside of yourself and on to something beautiful. Even if it’s only for a few moments.

The next thing is to do something different. This does not mean “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” or any other useless cliche that well meaning people throw at you. It’s trying something different. Generally speaking, you have more time on your hands. One of the best tips I can give is to have a list of things that you want to do or accomplish ready before your children leave or you retire. That may be picking up a hobby that you set aside when you were younger, or learning something new—possibly both. I always wanted to take a work travel assignment. I took the opportunity to travel to Maine as a CRNA after my children left home and after I became estranged from my son. It helped me become more confident in my self and my skills. It also helped me process my grief in my own way.

Keep in mind that there are no rules. Feel free to pivot. I will never regret taking a travel assignment, but I realized I am a homebody and once was enough. Other options are to take a class, or go to your local library and check out a book which you now have time to read. Libraries are hidden jewels in most communities that offer courses and lectures for all age groups. I joined a book club at my local library. It gives me the opportunity to spend time with other people and have meaningful discussions about the books that are assigned every month.

Which brings me to the next suggestion. Find your tribe. Community is so important to happiness. Find the people who are supportive, and who share your values. Become more deeply involved in your community. You now have the time to attend a local school board meeting or a town council meeting. Find out what is happening in your community. If you have raised your children in the same community in which you currently live, even better. You have that experience to draw on to help make decisions for the next generation. Become informed. You have the time to find out what is going on in the world and the experience to form intelligent opinions about what is happening and the time to act. As a woman past menopause, you are in a unique position to work with other women and be an agent of positive change in your community and in the world. 

Take the experience that you have acquired and use this time to take what you have learned and teach it to others. I am using my nursing background to put together a class to help other women going through menopause manage this major life transition.

The important thing to remember is that you are not finished. That two things can be true at the same time. Deep grief and sadness can be experienced at the same time as contentment and even joy. As you enter into another cycle in your life, there are still beautiful things to learn and experience. It’s up to you to find those things, act on them, and be open to the wonder and surprises that are still left for you to experience.

Careening Toward Christmas

Christmas Tree in Cupola module by NASA Johnson is licensed under CC-BY-NC 2.0

I am sitting in my family room in front of the Christmas tree that I put up and decorated as late as possible. After spending years trying to make the “perfect” Christmas for my growing family, I now wonder if I should even put a tree up. I am very ambivalent about Christmas trees. I vacillate between why is there a tree in my living room, contemplating each individual ornament, and being overcome by emotion as I remember all of the stages of my life that each ornament represents.

I always said that I hate Christmas, and unfortunately, as a mom balancing the full-time job of planning and coordinating Christmas events on top of a full time job in healthcare, I found myself stressed out and complaining about the holiday. I am sorry if this took any of the joy out of the holiday for my family, and I hope they look back and see a mom that was trying her best to make the season bright as it spun out of control. There were choral concerts, piano recitals, school parties, pot lucks, gift exchanges, and family dinners which required trying to find time to spend with both sides of the family without splitting myself in two. I will admit that most of the pressure I felt, I put on myself. I blame Martha Stewart for my nineties perfectionism. It took me years to realize she had a staff and it was just me doing the planning and delegating to my staff of one. My husband, who was extremely helpful, kept reminding me that the only person pressuring me to provide the perfect holiday experience was me. The result was that by Christmas, I was exhausted and over-stimulated.

Those days are now past, and I wish I spent more time living in the moment then stressing over all of the cookies being baked and decorated by Christmas Eve. That hectic time meant we were decorating cookies with young children before rushing out the door to one family Christmas, colored icing smeared across my house, the children, and their holiday clothes. Who cares if there was only one kind of Christmas cookie, or they came from the bakery instead of being homemade, or even that they were done by Christmas for that matter? No one but me cared whether the Christmas cards went out the week after Thanksgiving or the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

Now I no longer find myself wrapping Christmas gifts at midnight on Christmas Eve or having my husband assemble a toy or a bike while using very un-Christmas like language during the process. There are no grandparents to visit and manage, and I miss those people in my life more than anything, especially around the holidays. As stressful as it was, I am glad we made the effort to see everyone. My children will always have the memory of going to my parent’s house on Christmas Eve, where Santa came early and left them their gifts, complete with ash smears from the fireplace. Their memories are kept alive on my Christmas tree—some of the ornaments that used to grace their tree now grace mine.

The most precious ornaments to me are the ones that my children crafted in pre-school and elementary school. They are kept separately in a special box, and they are the first ornaments placed on the tree every year. I even have the construction paper decorations they made, and a few years ago, when the wear and tear started to show, I had them laminated. The next ornaments are the ghosts of Christmas past, the ornaments from the grandparents and parents that are no longer with us. Last come the ornaments that chronicle our life as a family.

Since I am estranged from my son, a part of my life and history is missing. I try to focus on the present and all of the events and people that I still hold close. I honor those that choose to be part of my life, and this brings me joy. I set aside my son’s Baby’s First Christmas ornament and all of the ornaments that he made as a child as well as the ornaments that represent his family. There is an emptiness on the tree. The space where he belongs. I will never get rid of them, but I packed them away so they didn’t weigh down my heart. This is a gift to myself as I waver between acceptance and hope. I hope someday there is a resolution. Christmas is the time of hope and miracles, after all.

This year, the first ornament that I placed on the tree was a picture of my twin grandsons, who have brought joy and healing to my life. I have accepted that both joy and sorrow can exist at the same time. One can be extraordinarily blessed (and I am)  and still grieve at the same time. This situation, as terrible as it is, has taught me resilience. It has taught me kindness. It has taught me that even though it is Christmas time, sometimes the forced festivity can be overwhelming. In fact, as the revelry increases, the things in life that aren’t as we want them to be contrast sharply with all of the problems, disappointments, losses, and challenges that everyone faces as part of life.

I look at the news every day and I am saddened by so many things. The day we put up the Christmas tree was the thirteenth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre and coincided with yet another shooting of innocents at Brown University. I look at the Christmas tree in my warm house, the lights glowing in the darkening room, the fire in the hearth, and my heart goes out to everyone who will not be present for their families this holiday season, no matter what holiday they celebrate, due to any type of loss. I hope that no matter the circumstances anyone is facing right now that they are still able to experience happiness and peace in the year to come.

And I wish everyone who has read this all of the blessings of the season and…

Merry Christmas!