Could I request... a drabble of Nancy's children cutting her off and not letting her meet her grandchildren? Or even just a summary of events? 👀
I have a problem with my two grown children that has been ongoing for a while, and I am at my wits' end. Years ago, I made some less-than-perfect decisions, supporting someone who was manipulative and overbearing towards a teenager in his care. I knew that some of what I witnessed was illegal, but allowed it to happen and said nothing.
The person in question was the same age as my younger daughter. I NEVER considered him in any way like her. There were extenuating circumstances! I followed my loyalty to someone who turned out not to deserve it. But when my children found out, years later, they were furious. Not just that I had allowed the mistreatment of someone to happen in my employer's household, but that I had never told them about it. Frankly, my work and home life have always been kept separate. I was an assistant to a powerful man and had little recourse myself.
I have never been charged with a crime, and provided the authorities with anything they asked for when the investigation was underway. But when my children told me I should apologize to the now-grown young man my employer mistreated, I will admit I balked. I certainly never hurt him myself, after all, and don't feel an apology would help either him or me.
He was never significantly harmed during my employment with the powerful man, and it's not like I could pay medical bills or do anything else.
My children were upset with me for refusing to apologize for my part in all this, but I don't think that, eight years after the events occurred, my apology is asked for or even wanted.
My son answers my calls only sporadically, and my daughter - the one who is the same age as the young man who was mistreated - has stopped talking to me entirely. She was six months pregnant when I last heard her voice. It's been so long she must have had the baby by now, but my calls go unanswered and she doesn't respond to letters, emails, or anything else I've tried.
I made a mistake, but it was years ago and I was working hard to provide for my children. After the hard work and love I've shown them, I am absolutely floored that they would cut me off over someone they don't know and who they've never even met. What can I do to have my children in my lives again?
Baffled, I would love to answer you, but I can sense that there is a LOT you aren't telling me between the lines of what you are. In fact, you probably tried to hide more than you revealed.
It sounds like your children drew a firm line in the sand about what they need to feel comfortable with you. You can choose not to respect that, but if you do, they also are free to choose distance or even total disconnection from you.
If you ask me, the root of their unhappiness is probably your way of remembering things perhaps a bit rosier than they truly were. For instance, you continually call an adult individual's abuse of a teenage boy 'mistreatment'.
It was more than mistreatment, Baffled, wasn't it? And despite your phrasing, you were not helpless to report it. You had plenty of recourse. You chose not to help.
Your children are asking you to take full responsibility for your actions and what those actions enabled, and even just by your letter I think it's clear that you never have.
You can take responsibility and seek reconciliation, or you can choose not to. But your children are adults, and they can and will make their own choices, too.
Right now, it seems like they have chosen to step away. You need to respect that, too.
You can start by cutting out all the euphemisms and metaphors and by calling every single part of it what it is and not what you want it to have been.
You aided and abetted abuse of a minor. That's a crime. It's understandable that your daughter would be horrified to learn that you accepted and enabled that abuse while parenting she and her brother.
