What do adult children need anyway?

You’ve sort of finished raising your kids.

They are adults who still need you, yes, but since they’re on their own, they need you in a different way.

They still need us to model being good citizens, parenting, navigating the adult world, and certainly they need to watch us make mistakes and repair relationships so they can try it themselves.

It’s hard to remember we are not friends, although we may have friendly behaviors. We aren’t peers or colleagues, even if they’ve gone into a similar field as us. If they’re parents themselves, it’s easy to feel like they have arrived to where we are. But they haven’t.

They may have different ideas than ours about how to parent, what it means to have a good work ethic, how to become a homeowner, who to vote for. And that’s healthy. It’s a really good sign that our kids aren’t miniature versions of us.

Mother and child relationships get more and more complex the older we get.

Our kids will use what we've taught them to become independent thinkers, with unique values, needs, and paths. And that’s healthy. And they'll get input and information from other sources that we may not like. And they'll make mistakes as we did. And some of those mistakes and some of those choices will feel devastating and heart-crushing to us. And God it's hard to accept that sometimes.

For a time we might need to love from afar, love up close, love in spite of, love because of, and love beside them - but keep loving. And know they love you.

The invisible thread is never gone.

Feeling exhausted?

This time, right now, is one of the hardest in generations. It’s normal, you are normal, for feeling incredibly tired. As women during Covid, we are tasked with more and more of the heavy lifting.

In addition to homeschooling, working from home, and managing the bulk of keeping our house running, we're also coping with increased health anxiety, isolation, frustration with those who refuse to mask up when we need to go for groceries.

Ours were the jobs more likely to be lost or cut back this past year. According to the National Women’s Law Center, 100% of jobs lost (140,000) in December 2020 were women’s. This unemployment will add to the gender pay gap going forward - another worry for our future.

If we have children still at home, online schooling and/or homeschooling generally falls to us, since we tend to be the primary caregiver of our kids. This means figuring out how to teach, how to manage lessons, how to get our kids to do the work, and how to keep it all together so this new weird school we are so sick and tired of doesn’t increase the friction of quite literally never ever being apart during quarantine.

We are also, of course, the primary housekeeper, because hey, we’re at home so we should have time. And then we see our social media friends designing home improvements, baking bread from scratch, and crocheting blankets for anyone and everyone.

While we’re doing all this, we’re coping with worry about our health, our family’s health, and that of our parents and grandparents. If following protocols, we haven’t seen or touched our parents in over a year! We can’t go to the library or concert or movie house. We are stuck in a box either alone craving touch, or with our family craving space apart. If we pick up our groceries in person, no doubt we’ll encounter at least one person making a statement by not wearing a mask, potentially infecting us all.

The fear and worry are thick. As for me, I feel like every cell in my body is tired. Weepy tired. The only solution is rest. Rest without guilt.