Hello Inky,

I don’t think I would know what I would do in your situation. It’s impossible to fully understand the underlying dynamic. But I could offer thoughts based on my own life and what I’ve witnessed in other people’s lives.

I have daddy issues, mommy issues and all kinds of issues 🙂 My parents were/are emotionally immature. My father was an alcoholic and absent in his own world or angry, and my mother has been more like a friend than a mother to me. She doesn’t know how to hug or be nurturing. I realized that all this is extra painful when I think that a parent should be the mature one, nurturing the child and being there. But then sometimes I think that they’re still just flawed people like the rest of us, who also had a tough time with their own parents. Only at my father’s funeral did I find out a lot of the heartache that he had to go through as a child, and compared to his own father, he actually did a better job at being a parent than his own father did. Of course, that’s not going to change things for me, but it is easier to understand why he was the way he was. He never told me, or tried to excuse his own behavior. He was proud and tough, yet very weak and vulnerable.

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know if and how that would change a person, but somehow I am thinking that not everyone will miraculously change from being unable to grasp the concept of love into someone who would have infinite amount of love in them. We have been sold the idea of a nurturing mother and a strong father, and compared to that image, how many regular people can actually live up to the expectation?

Regarding money and fame, I have seen how it complicates lives. I have friends who have grown up rich and are clearly quite lost and emotionally crippled. It changes a person when you are trying to create authentic connections with others and what you get in return is fake ones, just because you happened to be born into a family of wealth. On top of that, people who seemingly have a lot aren’t allowed to complain or show their suffering. They have things most people want, so there’s not going to be any empathy for the regular human suffering. They have to learn how to bottle things up and not show their feelings. If they do show their feelings, there’s the danger of either being ridiculed (“you have everything and you’re still not happy, you should be ashamed of yourself”) or being taken advantage of. Also, men who have rich and powerful fathers and are wealthy not due to their own actions seem to have some of their own issues with manhood. They couldn’t create their own lives and their own wealth. They were given a path and an obligation to be something great without actually having the incentive to go forth and be great. I have one male friend who handles his father’s business, and it is clear that the father is still dominating everything and not allowing his son to do things freely, yet still expects him to do great things. He also has been given money, but it’s still tied to his father, so it’s not really his. It’s not something he earned and made for himself. His being is that of a man who’s been castrated, so I wouldn’t expect him to step up and be a man when expected.

People also seem to not understand that being present is one of the greatest gifts one could give to a child. I think many people think that providing material wealth would be enough. My mother still says to me that nobody has been as loved as I was, yet I really don’t see it that way. Our definition of love is different. So it is possible that a person could think of themselves as being a great parent, doing what they are doing, and still not meet the needs of the child.

I guess my point is that even parents are just people. Personally, I find it really liberating to see my parents as regular human beings with their own issues. If I compare them to the ideal of what we think a mother and a father represents, I immediately become bitter and resentful. Why didn’t they give me what I needed? They should’ve known. Yet clearly, they didn’t, and any discussion about it is just too much to handle. So, I guess it’s better to accept that it is what it is, and take the more compassionate route. If I’m aware of what I need, then I can do that for myself now. Spending more time waiting for mom to turn around and hug me is only going to prolong the pain for no good reason.

Sorry for blabbing on about myself and other people and not about your situation, but it was the only way I could express my thoughts on the subject. I guess it’s such a personal subject, that it’s difficult to talk about it without thinking about my own life. I can understand the pain of a parent not being present, but to harbor hope that they’ll fix it some day is just feeding the flames of the pain.