On Adult Children's Feelings for Their Parents

Hi there.

First, a repeat announcement: Next Sunday, May 18, from 11 a.m to 3 p.m., I’ll be hosting my first Edible Forest Tour of the season! These three-hour guided group excursions focus on imparting ethical principles for why, how, and what to forage in season. While navigating the bountiful edible species through a public trailhead or permaculture garden, I hold space, share knowledge, and empower you to build an intimate, nourishing connection with your natural environments. I’ll show you how nature can offer a readily available antidote to doomscrolling, impulse buying, and other behavioral manifestations of nervous system dysregulation and environmental disconnection.

To secure your spot now, book on my Calendly. Tours are intentionally kept small to ensure intimacy, so reach out before I book up. If you’re interested but unavailable for this date, I also have tours scheduled every other Sunday after that. Pricing works like this:

• $60 per person if booking alone

• $50 per person for groups of 2-3

• $40 per person for children and groups of 4 or more

• Returning guests: get $5 off for referring a friend.

Three generations enjoying a past tour together.

Moving on...

Today I’m sharing a poem that feels relevant in the wake of Mother’s Day yesterday. It was inspired by digging through some of my old journals for reflection around my recent birthday. I stumbled across a quote from Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic Brave New World, which recurred to me later while discussing with a friend some enduring frustrations about relating to her parents.

This got me reflecting about the subconscious desires that drive so much of the heartache and struggles children experience in growing up to recognize and relate to their parents as full, flawed human beings. Somehow the flaws and limits of closeness always sting more coming from within the family, huh? From the people we’re conditioned to expect to fulfill such archetypal roles as mother, father, brother, and sister in our lives, whether or not they’re emotionally equipped for those expectations.

That’s why having grace for our parents and articulating our boundaries becomes so vital, although it’s a difficult transition for our inner children who may still feel unmet and fear moving on. Yet instead of continuing to seek and depend on people, like your parents, who already had their chance to provide whatever support they could, maturing young adults need encouragment to find support from the world at large, through larger, more enduring iconography than another person, including spiritual concepts such as Mother Earth and Father Time who are able to provide lifelong support.

Anyway, that’s my shpiel before the poem, which I hope some of you out there find resonant. Enjoy.

On Adult Children's Feelings for Their Parents

Huxley says, "Feeling lurks in that interval of time

between desire and its consummation."

So why so many feelings of adult children

about their parents?

After pushing away in adolescence,

what consummation are we waiting

and tearing down walls for?

Are we waiting for them

to give us what they failed to

when it most mattered,

before we had any points of comparison

to expect any different than

the love we got?

[Love is a tricky word.]

Are we guilty of waiting

for them to die?

Are we hoping for a truer reunion

when we follow them there?

Are we starved for ways to express

our patience for a salvation

beyond understanding?

The untouchable salve for frustrations

that feel neverending

between the hope of our infant feelings

and recognition of their aging realities.

On this Earth, you only get

so close once.

Remember?

Of course you don't.

Remembering is in the mind.

The knowing lies

in your bones.

Someday, Ma,

I'll be coming home

but not to the one you nor I know.

Then again we'll be one,

close as Fire to the Sun.