Recovering The Self (eBook)

Anatomy of an Anchor: Exploring a New Dimension to Parenting

by Leslee Tessmann

Parenting is difficult—to say the least. From the moment children emerge from their mother’s womb, the question is asked many times, “Would someone please give me the manual on how to raise my child? You know, the one with all the RIGHT answers to my questions.” The bad news is that there isn’t one—and the good news is that there isn’t one. Well, there are hundreds of books and opinions about what does and doesn’t work when it comes to parenting—from infancy to toddlerhood, to adolescence. But there isn’t necessarily a ‘right’ way to raise our children. There can’t possibly be because each child/parent relationship is unique, with its own set of circumstances, challenges, and lessons. So mostly we’re left with addressing the common issues we have ourselves—the doubt and fear we struggle with, the angst we experience when their lives don’t match our hopes or expectations, and the suffering we self-inflict by constantly berating ourselves for missing the mark in the past and not having a crystal ball that lets us peer into and solve our child’s future before it even happens.

As the parent of a 43-year-old, I am amazed that the lessons I learn from my daughter and her four children never cease to present themselves. Sometimes it’s a long time before I find my way to some resolution of a new issue, conflict, or dilemma. Sometimes the “aha” moment is mercifully quick and painless. More often than not, though, the lessons come slowly and painfully.

In the 21 or so years that our children evolve into adults, so does our parenting—as our lives and values ebb and shift, so do our thought processes, words, and actions. While honing and developing our own parenting skills, we are simultaneously letting go of our parents’ values and parenting styles and forging our way toward new patterns of communicating and interacting with our adult children. This process can be an amazing, magical, even beautiful transformational process. It can also be extremely frustrating, challenging, confusing, annoying, and painful.

Our emotional attachments to our children run as deep as the ocean—fueled by endless ebbs and flows, sometimes clear and bright with hope for the future; yet often dark and murky, muddied by today’s dramas and yesterday’s traumas. We will always be the parent and they will always be the child—not in the sense of an innocent infant or curious toddler, but as our offspring, legacy, and living expression of a desire that their lives have less pain and more joy than ours. Unfortunately, life isn’t always that accommodating. It takes unexpected twists and turns that offer both rocky and smooth paths for our grown children—paths that distract and confuse us when situations challenge us to behave and think differently, process differently, do and say less, and ‘be’ more.

Unfortunately, as much as our adult children would like it, there is no magical switch that can be flicked to the off position and have us stop parenting. We don’t have the luxury to not care or worry about our children. Parents are not wired that way. No matter how well they’re doing, or how much we live our own lives and explore our own interests and passions, our innate desire to be connected to our grown children remains steadfast—like an anchor. Not hard and impenetrable, but a living and breathing tether that passively provides the stability and security that we actively provided when they younger. Much of this phase of our parenting effort is unseen or unspoken. It happens often in the subtle ways of role modeling: communication, affection, intimacy, respect, self-esteem, confidence, spirituality, work ethics, financial values, and family values. The list is long, and all of it—both the healthy and not so healthy—gets acted out in our own lives and then frequently re-enactedin the lives of our grown children.

Observing our sons and daughters bumping up against values that may or may not work in their lives can be painful. The desire and urge to give advice, offer opinions, and step in and solve what we foresee as a problem can be overwhelming. However, the most destructive thing we can do for our grown children is not allow them the dignity, process, and time to create their own lives, based on values and standards they come to respect and claim as their own. Yet the heartache of watching the unfolding of a life that is plagued by drug or alcohol addiction, laced with struggling or failed relationships, or tormented by mental or physical handicaps can be unbearable. Our minds tell us that things should be different for them—they shouldn’t have it so hard or it shouldn’t take so long for them to figure things out, although we’re really not quite sure what it is that they should figure out! We want them to dream and have lives in which those dreams are realized. We just don’t want to watch them struggle or be disappointed when things get messy and don’t go the way they want them to. We want to protect them from the inevitable pain and heartache of life.

Even as write this, I realize what a ridiculous, albeit human, statement that is.

If I’m honest with myself, it’s very evident that it is an illusion to think that my life will ever be completely free from pain and heartache, disappointment, or grief. There is no place in life that offers an eternal respite of bliss and happiness. As I get older, the more I can accept and be comfortable with this reality. But for a long time I vehemently thought that there would be a time when everything would be easy—when the pain and suffering would stop and everything would be okay. I’m now 64 years old, and I’ve slowly and painfully learned that the key to being at peace with life—and perhaps parenting—is in the acceptance and eventual surrendering to the realization that everything comes and goes. Life is not stagnant and each of us, including our grown children, deserves the dignity to forge our own path as we navigate the turbulent and unpredictable ups and downs of life. As our grown daughters and sons become more emotionally distant, the natural process of healthy, emotional detachment begins to mold and shape us into anchors—solid, steadfast, resilient, powerful—frequently silent but yet an unyielding emblem of connection and strength.

The shift to being an anchor is one that comes when we release our early identity as an active participant in the lives of our sons and daughters and accept and embrace a more passive role—someone who is always there, always loves and forgives, and always remembers who we are and what we stand for.

For me this is where the emotional process gets complicated and difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, although as I talk to other parents, it’s clear that men and women alike struggle with this transition. There seems to be a natural order to our emotional growth and development, but when it comes to parenting, the shifts and transitions are often blurred and elusive. They can take place in a split second, with the simplest or most complicated situation or issue. If we, as parents, continue our own evolution and development, those inner shifts lead to bold new modes of behavior and communication, which in themselves can threaten and upset a family system and have everyone else scrambling to maintain the old sense of balance and familiarity. What in actuality is a shift in our inner, personal power, may be misconstrued as a parent/child power struggle.

Our natural evolution as human beings occurs at many physical and emotional levels. Physical limitations and hindrances are easier to identify and work with than the areas of emotional development that interfere with healthy brain development, and the eventual establishment of mature communication and coping skills, and clear, realistic/logical thought processes. Ideally, each human being is tasked with the responsibility for her or his own personal development. If we create environments for ourselves in which development is delayed (i.e., abusive relationships, dysfunctional family systems, and drug or alcohol addictions), we’ll eventually find ourselves hitting walls over and over, wondering why we can’t seem to push through to a place in our lives where there is balance and workability in our decisions, choices, and relationships. By balance and workability I don’t mean perfection. I mean a point where our methods of communication, problem-solving, thought processes, and emotional processing provide the experience of moving forward. This state of being is often symbolized by an ongoing sense of fulfillment and peace, and a life where calm significantly overshadows drama and chaos. When conflict does arise, there is a willingness to minimize suffering and focus on resolution rather than dwell on the problem.

I’ve been on this journey of self-discovery for a long time and there is always more to uncover, discover, and transform from a past riddled with difficult relationships, alcoholism, periods of unemployment, financial struggles, and becoming a single parent at a very young age.

I grew up with two wise and yet very human parents and five siblings (one recently deceased). I have many tender memories of family gatherings and holidays filled with cousins, aunts, great spreads of food my mother and aunts prepared, games played outside with my siblings and neighborhood kids, trips to our cottage in northern Wisconsin, and so much more. Unfortunately, it didn’t go that way with my husband and daughter. My idea or perception of what a family should look like was shattered early on when I divorced her father when she was just four years old. She was an only child and remained so after two painful and traumatic...