I have really struggled this weekend. One of my dearest friends happens to have a daughter who is the same age as my own Annie and the young adults are also dear friends. But mother and daughter are really struggling at this time. The fight is over grades – the daughter won’t tell her Mom the grades she received this semester in college (and they were very bad) because she’s over 18 and doesn’t have to tell her. Mom is understandably angry as I certainly would be too!
I’m only hearing one side of the story – and that’s the side of the daughter because she’s ended up at my house a few times as their words blow up hugely and she walks out the door and heads to our place because it’s walking distance.
My advice to her yesterday, “Tell your Mom. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be fun. But do it and get it over with.” The young student teared up and said I just didn’t understand how angry her Mom would be. I told her she was just making the anger worse by refusing to tell.
We spent the day painting over at another friend’s flood-damaged house and finally – between the four of us painting – we came to the conclusion that perhaps if spoken words weren’t going to work, she needed to write them down for her Mom. When she finished writing the five page letter, she let me read it. It was an angry letter, so I sat with her again and explained, “It’s okay to feel this way, but you also need to acknowledge that you love your Mom. Tell her why. Don’t speak only angry words because as a Mom, it would make me even more upset. Make sure she knows that you love her because in five years or 10 years or 20 years, you don’t want this one angry letter to be what your Mom keeps as a memory of your young adult years.”
She rewrote it.
Referee really is not one of my many hats but I’m beginning to think I should look into finding a job as “life counselor.”
