Long Distance Parenting

As I attempt to work out a schooling issue for my youngest daughter from 3,000 miles away, I'm struck by how much progress we've made over the past few years and how much my tenacity has paid off. At seventeen, she's over the worst of her teenage angst and now shining both academically and socially. I am learning to exhale...

Long distance parenting - no matter how or why it's been forced upon us, has surely got to be one of the toughest challenges known to womankind - or even mankind for that matter. The truth is that at times it's hurt like hell, it's required every bit of my stubborn determination, faith, and a love that's big enough to wrap around the whole situation, including my own rage at historical unfairness and injustice. Being an absent mother has required that I take a firm hold of the part of me that would drown in a sea of guilt and instead walk into that ocean of pain and teach myself and my children to swim.

I believe I have some understanding of why so many non-custodial parents eventually fade out of their children's lives, and that's because staying with a situation in which we may have very limited control, is so incredibly painful. Every time you put down the phone, every time you wave goodbye across an airport barrier, a part of your heart gets ripped to shreds and it must be so tempting to listen to the voice which tells you to give up, that it's not worth the hurt you all experience. Yet, somehow I've hung on. I've chosen to stay with a process that's got an unknown outcome and I am so very, very glad that I did.

I think one of the things that's made the most difference is that I've been truthful with my children all the way along. Kids can smell bullshit a mile off, and I've tried very hard to give them the respect they deserve by owning my own failures, steering as clear as possible from blaming others - not easy, but most of all by being a safe and consistent source of non-judgemental, emotional support; much of it through telephone and email conversations. I love you Facebook!

Time spent together physically is unbelievably precious and often a time for allowing a little more more of our mutual pain to surface for healing. It's necessary hard work, it's not for the fainthearted or inconsistent, but it's paid off in reciprocal deep love and appreciation for one another, a shared sense of rather ridiculous humour, an ability to discuss and solve practically anything of an embarrassing or personal nature, and most of all the understanding that we are all part of a bigger story that's still unfolding.

My children are some of the most courageous people I know and I'm so very proud and honoured that they call me Mother.