I’ve been traveling again – and talking to more women about what’s on our minds. The theme that has emerged recently is “The Sandwich Generation” stresses. It is a condition of our parents living longer that makes it likely that we will have, according to some estimates, as many years of parent care ahead of us as we have had of childcare behind us. Not that caring for our children is behind us. The other half of the sandwich is the trend toward grown children moving back home or simply needing parenting well into their twenties and thirties.
Beyond the physical demands of care-giving, are the drip-drip-drip anxieties of worrying and trying to problem-solve with every waking hour – including those in the middle of the night. All this is happening at just the point in our lives when we are trying to move on – or, as one woman told me, “go out of the emotional management business.” It is possible to care of loved ones and one’s self at the same time? Is there another alternative available to us besides the choice another woman summarized as “guilt or resentment”?
I know this predicament well. I am living it. And I don’t have any answers. But I am working on “doing the best I can” and letting it go at that. I choose the words “letting go” precisely because I do believe that along with all the other changes we are going through in the Second Adulthood of our lives, we are letting go of many outdated expectations of others and of ourselves, and we are trying to let go of burdens of guilt that load us down way beyond the point that we can rectify them. Every day I deal with my own flawed parenting, I get some reassurance from the fact that I really did the best I could. And when my mother apologizes for not being the mother she now thinks I needed, I can say to her with all my heart that I am sure she did the best she could.
That is all any of us can do. And even if – and when – something bad happens, I hope I will be able to accept that