Adult Children

If you’re over 60 and finding yourself grieving a relationship with your adult child that technically hasn’t ended – no fight, no falling out, just… distance – you are far from alone, and there’s a reason this particular grief is so disorienting. Most griefs we’re taught to recognize have a clear beginning: a death, a diagnosis, a divorce papers signed. This one doesn’t…

Parents know (or hope) the day will come when they look at their children and realize they’ve become self-sufficient adults. Not just legally adults, but functioning adults. The kind who pay their own bills, solve their own problems, make their own appointments, and call home because they want to – not because they need something or someone to rescue them…

We have no shortage of advice telling us to let go. Let go of the past. Let go of what we can’t control. Let go of our adult children’s choices, our ex-husbands’ opinions, the roles we’ve outgrown, the expectations we’ve been carrying since before…

If there is one thing we all noticed a little more of during the Covid lockdown, it was the amount of clutter we had accumulated and the impact it can have on how we feel in our own homes. Perhaps for the first time, you clearly felt the impact…

Life is surely full of relationships. We are born the child in relationship to our parents, and we may simultaneously become someone’s brother or sister….

Recently, I took a trip to Idaho to visit my son. He’ll be 56 this July. I adopted him when he was six weeks old, and from the moment he came into my life, he brought me more joy than I could ever explain in a sentence or two. We’ve had a good life together. Not perfect. No life is. But real. As parents, I think we sometimes freeze our children in time without realizing it…

One of the strangest parts of midlife motherhood is realizing your children still matter deeply to you while also realizing they no longer need you in the same way. No one really prepares women for that emotional transition. We spend decades building lives around driving, organizing…

A woman once told me something that stopped me in my tracks. She said, “I don’t know what my children think I’m planning… and honestly, I’m afraid to ask.”
She wasn’t worried about conflict. She loved her children deeply, and they had a good relationship. But underneath it all sat a quiet uncertainty: Do they expect to inherit the house?

There is a moment in motherhood that arrives without announcement. No milestone. No celebration. No clear language for what is happening. Your children are grown. They are living their lives. Making their choices. And suddenly, you are standing in a space that feels unfamiliar… even though you earned your way here…

One of the biggest surprises of midlife motherhood is this: Parenting doesn’t end when your children grow up. It changes. And often, it becomes more emotionally complex than ever before. Because now, you are watching from the sidelines as your adult child makes decisions you may not agree with – and cannot control. This stage can feel especially…