Reconnecting with adult daughter or son

[Quelto4]

Reading the various posts, I can see that many sever contact with parents for different reasons, the parent might have intentionally hurt them or not given sufficient support for various reasons and hurt their child, however old he or she is. What I ask of you is what does a parent do, who loves and misses them do to make amends. If you tried to find out unsuccessfully before the estrangement and was met with hostility and a refusal to talk, it is very difficult to know what to do without seeming intrusive or an interfering pain. When they estrange themselves and get on with their lives, is is wrong to try to put it right, to make contact, if so how, or is that going to upset the son or daughter
and make things harder for them. Know there are a lot of bad parents out there, also a lot that not intentionally useless but must have got things wrong.

Good post Offred. I can identify with that.

Quelto why have they said they have gone NC? You still haven't said.

I need to reduce contact with my mother and have considered NC. She would be genuinely baffled as to why. I think she really is able to just block things out. Yesterday she told me she really didn't remember a difficult conversation we had 6 months ago where she was in floods of tears and apologising. She doesn't
remember shouting at me over something else as a child in what was a really quite dramatic situation. Either she's lying or she's deluded but either way she is unable to accept what life has been like for me and that's the crux of why I find our relationship difficult.

I think you could share what reasons have been offered that the child feels a relationship is unsustainable and probably get some insightful responses.

People aren't bitter beyond perhaps bitter experience of parents being totally unable to see their harmful behaviours. Couple that with what a lot of them do, such as my mum, where they get angry if things are raised (suggesting she knows exactly what I'm saying actually) and people will be a bit if you won't say while your child is NC. Your silence suggests you know exactly why, you remember the situation even, but don't feel their reaction is warranted. I feel like if they had drug issues or something that made them distant, you would be happy to say.

Happy to be corrected here...

Like so many others, I'm not bitter :)

I'm free and calm to face the future, and ensure I don't repeat history.

I'm low contact not no contact so the only time I am stressed and angry and upset is when I see her, I'm a different person, and it's a stark reminder that I'd be that person permanently if I kept up proper contact.

I'm not hankering after a genuine resolution and make up, because I know she's not capable of it. She will never agree that she did anything wrong, and will say black is white if it suits her. It would be a horrible conversation, raking up old wounds, and hearing her anger and lies all over again. It's taken a couple of decades, but I've finally reached a point where I can accept that my parents were too weak to overcome their own personal demons. My mother re-enacted her own damaged family dynamics, and imposed her warped mentality onto the family she made. It's very sad that although she claimed she wanted to escape her upbringing, as soon as she had the opportunity she put all her energies and resources into recreating it again, with me in the starring role as her stooge / whipping boy / demon to beat.

My mother did some pretty unforgivable things beyond that damage as well. These things came to light in the last few years, in very upsetting ways. I want to remove myself from the whole rotten thing to protect myself from any more awful 'reveals'.

I hope that one day I reach inner calm about what they did, but until then all I can do is protect myself by being as distant as I can. Why expose myself to more?

I would like to have a better superficial type of interactions with her. So my son isn't exposed to any of it. But that's all I'd ever aim for.