Dear Bel
I feel resentment towards my mother because when it came to helping with my three children, she was nowhere to be seen.
Admittedly one child was born during Covid, so she was unable to visit, but looking back I feel like she left me to my mother-in-law for support.
And although I am very grateful, the relationship with my in-laws can be a bit tense. I feel angry about it all because I just wanted support from my own parents.
As a mother myself, I just can’t understand it. Yet I suppose she experienced the same, as she was having her eldest children while her own mother still had young children at home.
We do live quite a way from each other, which means popping round isn’t possible. And now, as my parents are nearly 80, I have to take my own brood the distance to see them, which means we only see each other a few times a year. My sister did receive some support, but I guess I live just a bit further away and it was too tricky.
We have a busy family text chain, but my parents don’t call me, and now I don’t really call them. When I have, recently they seem in a rush to get off the phone, and they’re losing their hearing, too.
I’m the little girl my mum called ‘over-sensitive’, and I may be, but I’m also kind and caring and struggling with feeling resentful. Sometimes you just want your Mum . . . and she wasn’t there.
I don’t want to discuss it with her – she is old-school working class and my feelings would all be dismissed anyway, so there’s no point.
My youngest is now three and I still feel hurt. How can I let this go and move on? Although a loving relationship, it doesn’t feel like a close one and I feel very sad about it all.
MELISSA
There’s much in your letter that I find worrying. So where to start?
Having read it several times I still don’t understand exactly why you are in quite such a state. So to help myself – and, I hope, you as well – I’ll go through point by point.
Your mother was ‘nowhere to be seen’ when you had your children because she lives a long way away and your parents were in their 70s, which can make life just a bit less easy than it might have been before. The baby was born during lockdown. Enough said. She ‘wasn’t there’ because she doesn’t live near you. Yet even with this knowledge, you complain.
You feel ‘angry’ with your mother, even though you know she was brought up to get on with life without fuss (‘old-school working class’), an attitude which began when she was young, because she couldn’t count on her mother’s help. Even with this knowledge you resent her.
You realise your parents can’t travel very easily now, but seem to think it an imposition to take your ‘brood’ to visit them. You say they don’t telephone you, and seem to want to get off the phone on the rare occasions you call them. But they are ‘losing their hearing’, which explains it. I tell you that because I’m the same. The telephone can be frustrating, so you and your sister need to check that your parents have their hearing checked and the latest aids.
What’s really going on here? It’s odd you don’t mention a partner, just your in-laws. Might your sadness and resentment perhaps be fuelled by feeling unsupported, even neglected, by the father of your children? Or guilt at being irritated by his helpful parents?
I sincerely hope you don’t think I’m dismissing your feelings, as you say your mother would do. All I want is to help you rationalise them, as I gently suggest that your current mood is not necessarily your mother’s fault.
What does ‘over-sensitive’ mean? How can such an assessment be made? Perhaps, as a child, you felt bullied by classmates and/or easily hurt by people you wanted as friends. Perhaps you longed for demonstrations of affection from parents who just couldn’t satisfy that need.
Your mother wanted you to be more resilient – and reading your letter makes me feel the same.
Describing yourself as ‘kind and caring and struggling with feeling resentful’, you seem to be allowing self-pity to dominate your life. I suggest that’s hardly being kind to yourself. You sound exhausted and very needy – which is a perfectly normal feeling for mothers with young children.
I can imagine how often you yearn for a rest, suspect you’re always on the brink of feeling you can’t cope and are rather envious of your sister’s proximity to your mother. Again, that wouldn’t be surprising at all.
In spite of everything you use the word ‘loving’ to describe your parental relationship. Hold on to that.
It’s impossible to change what may or may not have happened in your childhood, but you can try hard to shift your attitude to it.
Can you accept your parents for who they are, and accept yourself, too? Focus on the life you have, rather than the one you wish you might have had. It’s the only way to ‘let go’.
Am I just a pointless elderly person?
Dear Bel,
What to do about feeling like a pointless person? Briefly, I’m now 77 and at the age of 75 lost everything I held dear. I won’t bother you with the details but I was working and caring for my husband and home and much-loved garden. Suddenly it had all gone and I had to move quickly, which meant grieving and having to cut our possessions to a minimum.
Now I live near one of my sons and his beautiful family. Recently I had a hip replacement and that meant relying on them for hospital visits and everyday living. I feel useless, and as I recover I’m torn about what the rest of my life looks like and how that will impact on my family. I love them so much.
I get up but wonder why I bother. I see long hours ahead with no contact with anyone and the future looks grim.
I do everything in my power to leave my family alone and not be a burden, but this hip problem looks like the future.
I live in a place with no public transport and, like you, worry about parking. The move towards technology leaves me panicking about parking fees as I still use cash.
Everything seems so difficult and a response of staying in alone is becoming a real fear. Do you have any thoughts to help me?
JUDY
Judy, I read your email while in bed with the debilitating cough that had kept me awake all night and felt grateful to you for galvanising me out of a moribund state.
‘Oh no, no, no!’ I said aloud, responding to your sadness, fear, and cumulative negativity. It needs to be challenged!
Which is not to diminish it at all. I sincerely wish you had given details about the awful thing that happened two years ago. All I can do is suggest you accept the fact that, inevitably, it still reverberates most acutely, which goes a long way to explaining this malaise.
Your life was turned upside down and you’re still grieving for what you lost. Isn’t that the understandable heart of this despair?
The second thing I’ll point to is that recent hip replacement. I had my first one in February 2017 and (like you) felt miserable, old and useless afterwards. The second one, in February 2024 was worse, because it was followed closely by a really bad bout of shingles, which means awful pain and abject misery.
So I’m in a perfect position to advise allowing yourself to feel specific gloom as you hobble about – but to stop making it universal. Which is what you’re doing.
It sounds as if your family is your good fortune, and you love them. But why are you not accepting their love and care in return? Why assume they think it a ‘burden’ to run you to hospital and generally look out for you? Not accepting a gift of love is one of the most self-destructive things we can do.
Of course it’s a bad thing to become selfish and demanding as we age, but I ask you to consider that doing ‘everything in my power to leave my family alone and not be a burden’ is not necessarily a sign of virtue.
Do you fib to them and say ‘I’m fine’ – when you’re not? Doesn’t it rather insult them to call the person they love ‘pointless’.
Ask them to take you into town and explain the parking system until it’s clear in your head. It might take a couple of attempts, but your response must be to laugh at yourself and encourage them to join in – not mope.
Your hip will get better and you must now ensure you exercise as much as possible. It will also lift your mood, so it’s not an option.
Use this time at home to investigate local groups you can join and perhaps try online chats as well. Find a new hobby. Keep a gratitude notebook, starting today. Step forward into your life, rather than hiding from it in this sadly abject fashion.
Honestly, Judy, the snowdrops are coming out in my garden, there are daffodils in a jug on the kitchen table and I’m so looking forward to all the springs I have left in this one, precious, God-given life.
My morning Tai Chi exercise pushes the bad things (and there have been plenty) away. So please, won’t you join me in this determination to flood an ageing body and lively mind with forgiveness and optimism?
And finally…
A funky guy called Jack came to service our alarm system. It’s rarely used because we hardly ever go away, but it’s got to be in good order.
Jack and I chatted when I got back from my personal trainer and it turns out he’s a gym bunny, super-fit, working hard part-time at 76 – and looking about 15 years younger.
It was so interesting to talk to somebody so lively, who reads newspapers (loves the Saturday Daily Mail!) and keeps up to date with the latest movies. He was as cool as his haircut.
Jack told me something I jotted down to share. He said that he fights ageing and finds three things a sure sign of it, when he meets others.
1. Complaining about everything – from the Prime Minister through to potholes and the weather. Moan, moan, moan.
2. Telling you all about their ailments, every single one in detail.
3. Showing pictures of their grandchildren on their phones, when he doesn’t know them.
Now you might snap back that, hey, there’s plenty to complain about, and if you have (say) a bad hip you can’t help but mention it, and anyway showing pictures of grandchildren is sweet and a sign of love.
All fair points – and while the first two are negative and dreary, the third is engaged and positive.
Nevertheless, I saw what Jack meant. His cheerfulness was infectious as he reminded me that while you get older in your body you don’t have to get old in your mind.
I’ve met people in their 20s with closed minds and others in their 40s afraid of change. So remember: all ages can take his good advice on board, because the attitude – rooted in a continuing zest for life – has to start early on.
Thanks, Jack!
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY, or email [email protected]. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
