Nancy blogged today about the way Amy is treating her and I could hear the pain in her words. I started to comment but being as wordy as I can be, I decided to blog it instead.

I’ve been where she is right now. That place where our children want to reject us, to hurt us as much as they’ve been hurt. Kind of a, “Thanks for a great life Mom, but now I’m going to make you sorry that you were the kind of mom I wished I’d had from the start.”

A ‘someone’s gotta pay’ mentality.

They simply don’t realize that it isn’t over then. Age 18 is just a number. Lanette blogged about it today also.

One of my smartest children turned 18 and moved out without a backward glance, left her two beloved birth brothers, and the rest of us. It was in early April of that year, she had two more months of her senior year and fortunately she continued with her schooling, she’d already been accepted at the university, but she didn’t call nor did she speak to her four other sisters at the high school for the next eight weeks.

I was heartbroken and angry. Her brothers were stunned, feeling abandoned once again.

On her graduation date, the eldest of those two brothers asked if we were going to watch her march. Not only had we not been invited, but back then a ticket was required to get in as seating was limited. I believe he’d picked us up a couple, I can’t remember now, but we went…even though the human, selfish side of me wanted to just not go.

Somehow she spotted us, sitting aggrieved on the top row of the nosebleed section. She came running up after the ceremony and threw herself into my arms, crying, thinking that maybe I really did love her after all. She’d been adopted at age 11, suffered under an extremely dysfunctional birth family, and tossed around in the foster care system. Not a day has passed since that graduation, nearly ten years ago, that I haven’t seen her or talked on the phone to her.

Other of my children have put me through far worse, but all burnt bridges are eventually rebuilt and I don’t doubt that my remaining 20 plus kids have the same abandonment and rejection issues to spill out all over me, especially at that tenuous age 18 stage.