Chitting and a Chatting

I am loving the whole blogging daily on angelicscalliwags. Taking a break and writing whatever I wanted on Seasons of Joy was wonderfully freeing.

Instead of worrying about SEO and whether anybody was going to find me and read what I had to write, I could just simply write…for me. Writing is such an important part of my life and I’m kicking myself that I haven’t made weekly posts such as Precious Moments and Seasons of Joy a priority over the past few years.

I guess with Charlotte’s health issues, everything took a backseat as we attempted to find out what was wrong and to look after her. Still, I am sad that after blogging for over a decade, there are a couple of years worth of memories that are sporadic to say the least.

However, it wasn’t just Charlotte’s health that affected my blogging. If I’m being honest, there was a small part of me that was mourning times gone by, when everything was so happy, innocent and playful. My children had grown up and with that came grown up problems. And it’s not so easy to blog about them.

Then there was the difficulty of knowing my place in my now adult children’s lives.

Initially, this was very hard for me.

I didn’t always know when I should step in. Would giving my opinion be appreciated now they were adults? It’s a weird time. I was still a parent…of course, that never goes away. But I was now a parent of adults. My time for inputting was surely over? I have honestly found all of parenthood completely joy filled and have embraced every stage with humour, confidence and much enthusiasm. Then my ‘children’ became adults…and yet they were still my ‘children’.

I’m certain I’m not explaining myself well, but for the first time in my parenting journey I felt unsure of myself. I didn’t want to over-step so I stopped stepping altogether…

Cue much confusion.

You see, whilst I was struggling to know my place in my children’s lives, my children had no such qualms. The truth is, they didn’t want anything to change. We were (and are) the bestest of best friends. And in the same way one would ask non family close friends for advice or to lend a listening ear, they wanted the same thing from me.

I was astonished.

In fact, Lillie was so confused by my withdrawal it led to tears. I had got it wrong. They did not want me to back off. They did not want me to stop parenting. The girls, in particular, seemed to need both Gary and I there as a sort of safety net. They ventured out…to Norway, to America…sometimes for months at a time. But they still needed us at the end of the phone…to ask for advice, or for wisdom they perceived we might have (!).

I am learning, slowly, that this transition doesn’t need to be as hard as it seemed in my head and my heart. Of course, there needs to be a change when one’s children grow into young adults, but it needn’t be as vast as I assumed it should have been. In fact, for the girls, nothing much has changed. They still ask my opinion, I still give it and they then do with it what they feel is the correct course of action. This is how it has been for years, way before they turned into adults.

I assumed they wouldn’t want to feature in my blog as they grew older and lived their own adult lives. But this is not the case. They appreciate the memorial of their childhood and now adulthood. Again, I had assumed something that simply was not accurate.

Thomas is slightly different, I think for two reasons. The first is that he is male and the second is that he has lived independently for the last two years. Our relationship feels like it has gone full circle. We are now two adults, who very much enjoy each other’s company and who chat regularly on the phone. Thomas often phones to chew the cud, so to speak. But he wants a sounding board rather than an opinion. Being a thinker, he needs to look over all the options and make sure he has thought of everything, before going ahead and making a decision. I am there primarily to add things to the arena. Our relationship is built on mutual respect, friendship and, very occasionally, a soft place (for him) to land.

It has taken time, but I feel a lot more confident now of my role as mother in the lives of my adult children. It is not a ‘one size fits all’ type situation. Each young adult is in a different stage of their development and each needs different things of me as a parent. Getting to this stage has been a turbulent time, not in our relationships but in my heart. I am unaccustomed to feeling unsure of myself as a parent and this has caused my heart to hurt at times.

It has been the incredible friendships we have all built up over the years which has stood us in good stead to navigate our way through these young adult years. Nowadays, I tend not to mourn the loss of their childhood, instead enjoying their young adulthood and the fun and laughter these years bring.

Each stage of parenthood has something to recommend it. I just needed to sift through my own thoughts and feelings so that I could appreciate the true beauty of these young adult years. Because they rock!

Also, now they’re adults, and all in long term relationships and one engaged to be married, grand babies aren’t entirely out of the question in my future…