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Hello Bonnie.  You will find help by reading and writing on this site.  I am also unwillingly estranged from my son.  A divorce was also mixed into the brew but I have over the years come to understand that his rejection of me is a combination of things:  our being 'mismatched as parent/child and my not understanding at all how to have parented such a strong willed and defiant child ( I made a ton of mistakes but it was a heck of a job description and I could not have had the info or skills then to begin to tackle it ), also he has an independent and often ruthless personality which is able to cut people off and detach (I see it in the way he has been with other friends and family members) but knowing this frankly doesn't make it hurt a lot less.   some days I do better with it than others.   some days, like today, I cry loudly into a tissue at an unexpected quiet moment on the job...it hurts really badly but knowing there are other moms going through this helps me deal with the pain.  don't despair  because I believe there is always hope.

Justus! so much in your msg for me to think about!!!....thank you.    I would have liked to have been more specific in my previous post and I often don't because I'm afraid of taking up too much space and boring people but I'm going to stick my neck out expand on it. 

...The Christmas morning thing.  My family (including ds) was all together Christmas eve.  DS left to spend Christmas eve night with his sister.  This was complex, as she was in middle of divorce and the whole thing I'm sure became a muddle in the wee hours of the morning when Santa came and my DD told me later in the day that DS had been forced to get up off the couch way early and give them their space.  However, DD said she didn't notice him being mad.   I knew none of this however at 6 a.m. when DS banged on the door, got us out of bed, and grabbed his baggage without a word of explanation just stormed out of the drive in a huff.  Trust me, this is not isolated behavior.  I jumped to the conclusion that DS had been angry about being ousted.   I thought DS actions were selfish, petty and inexcusably rude.  That's what I felt, but my letter was not insulting or rude, I only stated why and how I wished it could have been different.  I told him he should have been willing to step aside and let this troubled family try and enjoy their morning.   Is it never right to confront bad/evil/hurtful behaviour?? 

I felt real badly about writing a critical email to DS about his behavior.  I knew within seconds that it wasn't my place to correct him any more.  I later wrote back a sincere apology, that I knew I was wrong and had jumped to conclusions and asked his forgiveness.  I knew of course that it was too late, did not get any answer.  The day was very very sad.

....more reading.....the book goes into the subject of MISMATCHED parent/child.  My DS is aggressive/defiant.  He is not empathetic and never was motivated the need for approval as a child.  I am an introvert by nature.  I can see now why a lot of things went down as they did.  I have also been able to see in the recent past that I have had problem with being 'stuck' as seeing my kids as adolescents and even without meaning to, having a tone of correcting and censorship with them.  DD blows it off and loves me any way.  For God's sake, when does this end?  yes at times I want to lash out and say why can't we get over all this crap?  I didn't ever call my son petty or silly, or ever as he grew up criticize him verbally in any way I know of, although God knows I could have! and a lot of 'good' mothers would have gotten fed up with nothing but sarcasm and rudeness and grief from their child ....enough of this, I know its immature and counterproductive, but in my own defense as a Mom, I've been willing to take punches that knocked the wind out of me.  I don't minimize my failures nor trivialize their perception, but  I think its too late with my son, there is no love for me and therefore no motivation.

Recently at a family gathering in which I was absent, it got back to me that my older sister was hearing junk about me from my DS, and that she responded to him to the effect that 'we all need to forgive and so on'.   and I was frankly enraged!  She hadn't spent 5 minutes with me and my small family through all the crises we went through,  she raised one super compliant child in a super healthy marriage with a luxurious lifestyle....I think it would have meant the world to me, and also to healing my relationship with my son, is she had said, " ...ok wait a minute, beloved!  Let me tell you about my sister, and who she really is." She could have told him about my love for him and the efforts I made against impossible odds, but you know why she didn't?  because she didn't know.  she never took the time to spend five minutes with me to be a support and friend-

and finally, I want most of all for all of us, every hurting person on the site to have peace and healing.   Life is so very very short, and all that matters in this world is the love and kindness we show for each other.   all that will follow us into the next life is the loving actions we show, the times we choose to forgive and love anyway, the times we choose to build bridges instead of fences.   I welcome all of you to confront me and I can take it, because I want so much to become a healthy giving person.  I want to give the best of myself to my children.  It is tragic if all our opportunities to parent/love are encapsulated in those brief years of childhood.  There are a multitude of years and means if God wills that we might rebuild.   Some relationships/dispositions/personalities are so challenging that it just can't be mastered mastered that quickly by a lot of us. 

Today I got my J Coleman book, When Parents Hurt....first page first line:   "Dear Mom, I have decided that I don't want to have any contact with you anymore.  I can't stop thinking about all the ways that you were never there for me, whenever I see or talk to you I just end up feeling depressed, angry, and upset for weeks afterward.  It's just not worth it to me and i need to get on with my life.  Please respect my wishes and don't contact me again."

I just stared, frozen at the page, and it felt like a tidal wave of pain washed over again.  My DS only verbalized in no uncertain terms for me to 'stay out of his life' just after the Christmas holidays last year.  Prior to this, the messages were covert.  The hardest one was once when he was overseas he sent me a post that went something like this, "....you NEED a relationship with me, I don't need one with you, so you better watch it...".  After he stormed out of the house at 6a.m. on Christmas day, (no actual incident,  just put out with something he perceived as an affront), I wrote him an email later in the day stating that why could he not have let us all have a memorable family day together, rise above his petty temper, and enjoy being together as a family?'  That's when the reply came.  So this is six months later.  Here is the ironic thing.  When my son was a newborn and I brought him home, I just adored him.  I kept his bassinet in the kitchen where I could watch him and talk to him.  At night I would hold him in the rocking chair,  and I swear to you I remember just how the little nape of his neck looked there in those twilight hours, I used to kiss it with tears going down my face, with the little drawstring tied at the foot of his nightgown.  I wasn't a deep thinking person then.  But as I rocked him those nights, I could hear this message over and over in my head saying, 'you're not going to be able to keep him,"  I never told anyone about this.  I thought it meant he was going to die if it meant anything at all, and I feared somehow speaking it out might bring it to pass, or else I feared I would be interpreted as nuts.  In addition to this, I was aware that DS's father's older brother had at age 16 told his mother he never wanted to see or talk to her again.  As far as I know, this remains the case.  He would be over 60 now.   And they only lived a few miles apart.  I can't explain any of those things now.  It didn't help prepare me in any way for what happened. 

Welcome and I am new here also.  Reading the posts helps me and I am thankful for the wisdom these women are sharing.  From my tiny storehouse, I can only encourage you to not worst case scenario.  I've been through the mill also with my DS, and he spent ten years in a foreign country without even telling me goodbye, coming home only 3 times during those ten years, I cried a river and begged and wrote pages of letters, all to no avail.  It is amazing nothing happened to him, and I used to imagine the worst, sometimes I grew (out of the blue) just convinced he was going to kill himself, and i did bizarre things sending people over to him to try and 'rescue' him, etc.  I don't even think he's especially angry with me, I think he just doesn't care, and that is acutely painful.  I'm a pretty level headed person except to when it comes to my son, but I'm getting a lot better.  I would roll it over as much as you can and push away catastrophic thoughts when they come into your mind.  pray for their protection and live on doing other things and taking care of the people in your life and yourself.

Hi, this topic is also a sticky one for me.  Especially the past ten Christmas-es, I have developed a type of neuroses about it.  It grew to feel it was the most painful time of the entire year for me, and I would have almost cut off my right arm to be free of the turmoil these holidays brought into my life.  I could often numb out the sadness and sense of loss of DS and the craziness I thought my family was living, but not so at Christmas.  it has been a wicked brew.  and adding to all this is a horrible estrangement with MIL, I have hesitated to go here as it seems like no decent or sane person could be actually locked into two major estrangements, but I am.  I can't fix either one of them though God knows I've tried.  I just hunker down now and get through the day best I can, with no expectations and each year give it less and less of my life energy.  I try to live my life regarding all days the same, including Sunday.  This just works for me and I try and incorporate all these celebrating/worship elements of those special days into each day of my life in some small way.  I also work very hard in the retail store to give special treats to my customers and go out of my way to show I care for them.  sometimes this just has to be enough.

by the way can anyone tell me what these abbreviations mean in the posts, I mean I'm sure some mean (DIL) daughter in law, etc., but what is DD and so on?  I can't find any help topic on this and don't want to look like a fool.  thank!

I want to thank you sincerely, Courtney for the time I know it took you to make this thoughtful post.  I have been able, by the help of reading and receiving all these insightful and sympathetic posts, to make a small but significant step away from the pain and self reproach that has dogged me all these years, with my estranged son.  I have concluded at this time that the 'no contact' approach is right for me, I can see that my continuing to lure him in with the cords of love has been a subtle refusal to respect his wishes.  Not to mention the destruction it's wreaked in my own life.  I really so much need a few friends on the site to talk to at times, who I know can empathize with what this is all about.  I ask for patience from all of you and i hope I can in turn help and encourage someone else.  I honestly feel that I can deal with this situation now.  I don't have to like it, and I don't, but it doesn't have to be the deciding factor in whether or not my life counts.  I have also wanted to ask, has any one else reading this had a deep problem with depression resulting from estrangement?  After ten years of really unrelenting depression and unsuccessful medicating, I have seemed to turn a corner this year in fact and find I am coming out of this fog.  Maybe its menopause and the jolt of estrogen depletion! 

oh dear, I have a bad habit of writing really fast and getting on a roll - when I'm worked up about something I often make generalizations that I of course don't mean.  I think none of us who have lived long enough and hard enough to find ourselves here typing out our lives are 'box thinkers'.  I also have two children - raised together with same values, work ethic, morals - one holds me in contempt and the other is consistently loving and communicative.  But the point is even loving and communicative people can be self centered.   

I have received so much enlightenment from reading your posts.  thank you.  Pardon me for writing a lot here, I'm just needing to deal with something that's been eating my life up for two decades, and writing down my thoughts is helping me pry myself loose from the ball and chain, i.e. the emotional roller coaster of hope, disappointment, anger, guilt, remorse, hope...on and on.  I've owned a small chain of retail stores for the past 25 yrs, interacting with mature age women of all socioeconomic and academic levels, I've seen something like an undercurrent for some time now but I am the kind of person who has to be hit upside head with a 2x4 before I am able to call into question what I am seeing and hearing said.  I'm rethinking these things now, and I think there are far more mothers than I ever imagined of ruthless, pitiless, self centered adult children.  Having said that, I also believe we have done a botch up job of bringing up this generation.  We are plagued ourselves with our own insecurities and the social drives to keep ourselves measured up.  We've been too busy and too insecure to parent our children from a strong standpoint.  But nevertheless, I, and many others who've shared their stories with me, was raised in a horrible home environment originally, along with several siblings.    What is it with this 'calling into question' that our fat head children are doing to us?  I've read a little of the 'Coleman' literature and one thing that set off a light bulb for me was his comment that now more than ever children consider themselves on level playing ground with their parents.  Yes, yes!  I could never put this into a sentence but I have been perplexed over this all my kids lives.  I'm really sick of this under current of intimidation.  I have no intention of going and shooting my mouth off to my offspring.  But getting a real and accurate perspective on what happened and is happening is, I think, important.  I have always been very ashamed of my life.  I have gone through two divorces and made many mistakes.   I made many parenting mistakes and was often selfish and self preoccupied.  I am not the same person now, nor have I been for many years.  I would have been thrilled beyond words for even ONE healthy, fulfilling year with my mother or my father, at any point in my life, if they had been able or willing to put themselves on the line for me, as I have for my adult children.  thanks for letting me vent some of this.

Thank you.  I thought there was no hope for me to have a life,  to tell you the truth, in spite of the fact that I am a woman of great faith and encourage others to live in and by faith.  God apparently saw fit to give me the greatest challenge which could be put into my life.  I'm going on, with or without my son.

Finally I got something I can take to the bank.  Thank you for these insights.  I've been so in the thick of it I couldn't see straight.   Thanks for reminding me I need to respect his wishes and show that I have 'heard' him.   ouch that stings also - violating spoken wishes so I don't feel guilty and like a bad Mom.  I have to plow through this. 

wow!   a thousand times over, this is such an eye opener for me.  I NEVER knew other people were going through this also.  thank you ever so much for directing me to these resources, I am going to order one of the Coleman books. ....all these years I haven't had a single place to take this problem to.  I always thought I was some kind of a freak of nature as a mother. 

I would appreciate some input from others about whether or not to accept your child's 'get out of my life' mandate and respond accordingly, or to 'take the high road' and keep on making loving overtures to your child.  To go to college graduation (uninvited)?....send b/d cards?...buy Christmas gifts and ship them because he won't show up for them and I won't even get them acknowleged...??  keep sending supportive emails which are never answered??  My perspective has always been to keep on trying, to never give up because kindness and love will win out in the end.  I'm not convinced of this any more.  Kindness seems to exacerbate the beligerence.   If I shift over to withdrawl - guilt!  Good mothers don't quit!  Some people have told me, cut him loose and make no contact with him.  Sometimes rage boils up inside me, at the waste of all this - it is exhausting trying to read into something crazy, and come up with appropriate responses.   

This topic has been a silent killer in my emotional life for almost 30 years now.  I have felt ashamed to share it with anyone, and frankly have not personally met another 'Mom' who was sincerely hated by one of her adult children.  I have nearly died a thousand deaths from my son's lifelong 'hatred' of me.  Therapists have made diagnoses and tried to comfort me, pastors have encouraged me, family members have patted my shoulder and reassured me that it is his disposition and not my fault, but the pain persists and erupts at times like a lightning bolt through my heart, jarring me off balance in the middle of a peaceful moment or a busy time at work or a good book.   My other adult child, a daughter, is a bubbly loving person and a source of much joy.   But my second born, a son, has treated me with contempt from the time he was 18 months old.  God help me, this is a sorrow that few can really understand.  I am so thankful to find a place at last I can just get this off my chest, whether or not there are any replies, I can see that I have not been alone in this as I thought.  thanks