My Son Stopped Talking to Me. Then Things Got Weird.

I thought I needed to understand estrangement. Apparently, I had enrolled in an entirely different course.

As I watch the morning sun rise, it occurs to me that I’ve made quite a few trips around that great big ball of energy—well over half a century’s worth. Some trips were wonderfully ordinary. Others, not so much.

But this last trip?

Things got weird.

Weird enough that I find myself sitting here this morning, opening a Substack account and wondering how the hell I'm supposed to explain what happened.

I’m a retired teacher of thirty-three years and the author of a book I’m quite sure you haven’t read. I know this because after 50+ rejections from agents, I finally found an interested publisher but then declined the offer days later. You might be wondering why the heck someone who invested so much in writing a book wouldn’t see it through to its publication. Well, two days into my much-celebrated retirement, my youngest of two sons wrote me a scathing letter not only about his hatred of the book, but about his anger towards me as his mother. So, I put the manuscript on a shelf and paused the project as I wondered why the hell I ever wrote it in the first place.

Writing—or should I say authorship—is quite a process. The book took me years to create. I hired a professional writing coach who helped me sift through the emotional trauma caused by my other son’s issues and such coaching services are not cheap, especially for a teacher. If truth be told, I felt destined to write about the ordeal; it was an itch that lingered inside me.

After years of battling the what-ifs, the whys, and the hospitalizations with our first child, we finally learned that severe insomnia had been hiding beneath symptoms that looked psychiatric—and that cannabis had only complicated the matter. My son’s doctor told him to treat cannabis as though he had a severe allergy to it.

I was stunned. And then I started researching.

Millions of Americans struggle with chronic insomnia, and I discovered something I hadn't understood before: severe sleep deprivation can produce hallucinations and psychotic-like experiences, while cannabis use has independently been associated with an increased risk of psychosis (Waters et al., 2018) (National Academies of SEM, c.2, 2017).

Why wasn't anyone talking about this?

So, the teacher in me decided to write about it to inform the masses that this is a “thing.” And this old lady thought it’d be a good idea to not only help herself heal but perhaps help someone else recognize that a sleep disorder can sometimes produce symptoms that appear psychiatric. 

But my younger son didn’t see it that way. 

And he told me so in his scathing letter. 

And the world came crashing down…

Again.

And I cried…

A lot!

And I wanted to hide in a hole,

Again.

His letter prompted a FaceTime call and…

Let’s just say, that didn’t go well.

A new word entered my vocabulary.

Estrangement.

Shame started knocking on the door as I tried to ignore its continuous bangs—been there, done that with our older son. Shame, I've learned, is a dark portal of destruction—an endless cycle of despair. I knew I had to do something. Education is key, right?—at least that’s what my parents always told me. Fortunately, the library became my new best friend as I dove into this novel topic, all while swimming in grief.

Again. 

For months I bought the books, highlighted the pages, and became some kind of graduate student in another crowded classroom. I learned I wasn't studying some rare family anomaly. This literary course on estrangement had many experts and guest speakers who presented their findings to me. Karl Pillemer’s national research found that 27 percent of American adults were estranged from a family member—at least 67 million people (Dean, 2020). And there were more insights I discovered from other experts such as Dr. Joshua Coleman, Tina Gilbertson, and Sheri McGregor who would join me each morning for coffee and every afternoon for tea.

I thought I was researching estrangement.

But as it turns out, I was beginning another course.

Its title?

Wake-up Call 101.

And I’ve been enrolled for over a year.

There are three main units noted on this invisible course syllabus and the first line of inquiry reads Why Adult Kids Cut Off Their Parents. I learned there is a litany of reasons: individualism, social media, the spouse, therapists, etc. These explanations felt good to me, at first—it’s always nice to blame something or someone besides yourself.

Then after diving into the courseload of books, podcasts, and videos I found myself entering the next unit of study. Its title?

Stir the Soul.

Apparently, this unit required me to turn the microscope around.

Toward myself.

It didn’t feel like the first unit.  

It stung.

Guilt bubbled up.

Emotions stirred.

And despair hung in the air.

Encouraged by the experts noted on the syllabus, I decided to write an amends letter to my son and his wife—one peppered with a “King David” plea for forgiveness. And after ten methodical revisions, I emailed that carefully worded, cross-bearing piece of my soul to them. Even my husband said, “If they don’t want to reconcile after THAT letter, then it’s all on them.”

I opened my heart, wallowed in the I’ll-do-whatever-it-takes soup, and all I got were crickets—a whole swarm of them—and the chirping wouldn’t stop.

“We’ve gotta let 'em go,” my husband said.

WHAT? Let them go?

I hated that sentence.

I despised the thought.

That wasn’t why I had enrolled in this ridiculous course. I was studying to get my son back.

Apparently, I had misunderstood the assignment.

Because somewhere between the books, the apology, the crickets, and my desperate attempts to repair what had broken, the course changed again.

And the third unit didn’t seem to be about my son at all.

It seemed to be about me.

Or rather, my soul.

And as I reread the course outline today, the title of the third unit is clearly noted—a title I didn’t see before.

Although the font is large and the letters are bold.

The final unit title reads: 

Wake the Hell Up.

And I did.

And that's when things started getting weird.

Very weird.

In future blogs, I will chronicle this "weird" journey of grief, awakening, and peace. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. -Sonja