It's tough to have an ailing parent/parents, I'm grateful every day for the people in my life that support me and my sister, care for us, and hold us on days that get too much.
Shoutout to others in similar situations, we're here, holding flashlights in the tunnel, until we see the light!
We the Children with an ailing parent or parents wake up each day and go to war.
Mostly with ourselves.
Some days it’s because we feel inadequate, on others, it’s because we feel like we’ve failed and most days it’s out of sheer helplessness.
We try our best you know, to be there, to help, to try and make sense as to why our parents. And we don’t have an answer and on so many occasions we don’t even have the solution.
We go through life trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Many have commented with sympathy and empathy in their hearts for us, that our parent’s illness took away our youth, or our 20s, or our careers, but that is not true.
I’ll tell you exactly what it took -it took away our chance to see our parents enjoy their retirement, it took away family meals, it took away family vacations, it literally sucked the happiness out of our lives, it made us vulnerable, it took away the simple things and that’s what makes it so so hard.
We the Children with an ailing parent or parents, get through each day compartmentalising our emotions, waking up, and deciding that we won’t let that illness take any more from us. But those are just the good days, often few and far apart.
Our days consist of a myriad of feelings ranging from defeat to anger, hurt to sometimes even being enraged. We’re exhausted from recounting how our mom or dad declined or was diagnosed, we are numb to suggestions, we are in a constant state of panic, a simple phone call sometimes can throw us off.
We the children with ailing parents have the broadest smiles, not because we are always happy, but because that’s the only thing we can control. We try hard to excel in everything we do, sometimes to prove to the world that we are not defined by that illness, but mostly for ourselves, to drown away our own thoughts that sometimes get bigger and louder than our voices of reasons.
Everyone asks us how our parent/parents are, but not many stop to ask us how we are.
We the Children with an ailing parent or parents, just want to be held some days and reassured that - it will get better, even if sometimes that is a lie.
Be kind and compassionate to everyone you meet, because not all of us will tell you how flawlessly we’ve learned to hold it together most of the time.
Borrowing powerful words from @Artwhoring here:
Psychology says parents influence their children,
Children imitate their children.
You do what your parents do, don’t you.
Kids with dying parents are also dying.
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