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Mending Fences

This is not something people easily confess to. For the longest time, I felt like an outcast in the desi community because no one else seems to have the issues I had communicating with my parents. Everyone I know has a good stable rhythm or so it seems. Just about every relative I have of my age is in closer contact with their parents than I am, they play an active role in the life of the parents. I find that just about everything I do for them stems from guilt. There are no happy or positive drivers. When I first started to talk about it with my American friends about a decade ago, I was surprised to learn that I was hardly in the minority. 

Just about everyone I spoke to about this had been through periods of difficulty and they had to work hard to resolve them. They had to do all the work because the parents were too old and set in their ways. It was not reasonable to expect change and most parents did not think there was anything about them that needed change. Stonewalling and denying the child a right to resolution and closure was a very common theme as well. They just acted injured, entitled to better and made the children feel guilty just like mine did. I started to understand the power dynamics of the situation much better as I talked to more people in my shoes.

As an adult child of a parent you do not get along with, you have very little power except for the illusory one of going silent on them. That does not change anything, helps very little and when you resume talking as you eventually will and must you find yourself even more powerless than before. I can't say any of this is universally true, people are different, their relationships are different so maybe there are other outcomes too. 

No one I have discussed this with has told me they were able to solve anything, get their parents to co-own the problem and work together on a resolution - generally get to a better place in their relationship. It is all the child's burden. I found this interview an honest and interesting read specially that the parent in question is a therapist. The stories are in reverse here and pretty heart-breaking anyway. 

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Feminazi said…
Maybe hoping for a resolution is not practical, that window has closed. The only way forward is to not live in the past anymore, it is useless and prolongs the agony. I made my peace with arriving at some degree of cordiality. I don't expect anymore and in return it hurts less and less with every passing year.
6:31 PM
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