Reconciliation is what everyone dreams of, it is what we think of when we go to sleep and what we are still thinking of when we wake in the morning.
Everyone will have their own personal idea of how it will be.
Is it really as we expect?
Of course we are all individuals, consequently we will all have had different experiences, during our estrangement and during our reconciliation.
I hear from so many grandparents filled with joy when that first contact happens, they are euphoric as we all are.
How do you move forward together?
Whether you are a non resident parent or estranged/alienated grandparent, we need to think about how we are all going to pull together and listen to the child, we must be led by the children.
It will of course depend on the age of the child/grandchild.
If you have been apart from a child for a very long time, it is like starting over, but without the day by day learning about one another.
We don’t know their likes, their dislikes, friends, experiences or most importantly their expectations of us.
The dangers are two-fold.
We either smother them, desperately trying to prove our love or we give them so much distance they think we don’t care enough.
When we become parents/grandparents we grow up with our child/grandchildren, there is no manual to tell us how to do it, we learn every day, hopefully learning by our mistakes.
Estrangement is cruel, as it is imposed by another, someone who does not think about what their behaviour does to their children, does not respect the relationship between all family members with the child.
The cruelty continues, the manipulation continues.
We can not deny that after years of estrangement to rekindle that relationship is a minefield.
It is like walking on eggshells, just one wrong word or action can be misunderstood, children who have been estranged clearly have no trust. They expect us to let them down.
We need to accept that for those years that we have not been in their lives, they have carried on living. They have been brought up by one parent or other partners that come and go, we may well feel that they didn’t live the life we would have wished for them, but it was/is the life they have been dealt , and they have to live that life.
We have no right to come bursting into their lives, telling them they should be doing this or that, and certainly not criticise their life past, present or future.
If every there is a time to think your own thoughts but not speak them it is now.
