When we face estrangement from our grandchildren, we live in hope that at some point we will be reunited.
As I have written before, reconciliation is not easy, not easy for all parties, it takes time and patience, and even when you believe you have done everything, sometimes it is not enough.
It is bad enough when a parent causes the estrangement, but it is at another level when your own grandchild,as an adult, rejects you.
Some grandparents were totally involved with their grandchildren when they were little, taking them to school, looking after them to enable the parents to work the list of care is endless, and it such a privilege to be part of these precious peoples lives, never do we imagine that suddenly it all changes.
They could be a disagreement of some sort or a difference of opinion and that unique relationship is taken away. more often there is no obvious reason.
Devastating for grandparents and grandchildren.
In those intervening years we have no idea what is said about us to the children, and as time goes by that bond is broken.
So we all hang on hope.
Those of us who have experienced reconciliation, know how difficult it can be, those lost years of building a relationship have gone and we have to start again. A totally different relationship with someone who is frankly a stranger and we are strangers to them as well.
They also continue to hear negative things about us from a parent, often untruths.
They don’t know what the truth is anymore.
Having been brought up by a parent for many years, that parent being their role model, those parents values are also their values, very often not the same as ours. These grandchildren are still being controlled by their parent, possibly by being told that if they don’t drop their extended family financial help ect will be taken away.
Social Media can add another level of hurt.
Some of us will have found our grandchildren on one of the platforms and held our breath when we send those friend requests, we sit waiting, heart pounding, when it is accepted it is wonderful and we begin to think that this could be the breakthrough we were all waiting for. Only within minutes that euphoria comes crashing down when we are asked ,who we are.
The original estrangement was the worse thing we thought could ever happen, but to be rejected from the grandchild themselves, is just destroying.
We are not given an opportunity to ask why, we are just left bereft.
As you know this happened in a similar way to my family and I can’t explain how it feels.
Just when we all thought our granddaughter was back in our family, she decided we were not the family she wanted to have anything to do with.
Contact stopped literally overnight, none of us know the reasons why, other than my belief that she was told to,dump her Bristol family, just as she was,as she told us in person in 2007.
Does it never end?
