In the spring of 1992 in Austin, Texas, my then-girlfriend and I got into a disagreement. We’d not been together long. We’d actually had one date in late summer of 1990, back in my home county near Houston. That date was a comedy of errors that did not seem funny in the moment. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Austin to start a new life. In early 1992, she surprised me by moving to Austin as well, and we took another shot at dating.
I don’t recall what the issue that day was, but I remember that I stood up to leave. And I mean that in that moment, my intention was to leave the relationship. Looking around that apartment, I paused to take in the situation. Breaking up would take me down one fork in the road, while staying would lead to another.
I stayed, and we married in 1994. We moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area a few years later, and had two children.
We divorced in early 2010.
This trajectory in my life exists, in no small part, because of my choice to stay that day.
One of our children is here now, hitting the grad school books to also become a counselor.
The other estranged from me three years ago.
Think back to the pivotal moments in your life so far. Parents dealing with estrangement may struggle with regret over a choice made or not made. Don’t they say that hindsight’s 20/20?
Part of the ambiguity enmeshed in estrangement grief is uncertainty about, well, most everything that preceded the break. Too much love and attention? Too little? Strict parenting? Lax parenting?
And of course, the mistakes. Oh the mistakes. PLACE is not support for the perfect parents (whomever and wherever they are). It’s support for those of us who made mistakes. Were our mistakes the sins of omission, or of commission? In the case of our breakups/divorces, was the mistake that led us here the choice of other parent?
The answer:
There is no answer. No amount of scrutiny or analysis can reveal the true north on our mistake compass. Our lives are affected by infinite variables, both within and without our control. Even if the estranged parent made only perfect choices, our lives are affected by far more than the results. Please remember that this is also the case for our children.
If you pore over memories in search of some revelatory schema, don’t you owe it to yourself to let go of what you cannot change? In my heart of hearts, I feel that PLACE parents are deserving of grace and forgiveness, coming from yourself first and foremost. Your estrangement is not solely–if at all–a result of a left turn that should have been a right.
Or the door to a one-bedroom apartment that was not used as a lasting exit.
