If you haven’t heard about the Brooklyn Beckham rift…. well, let’s face it, you most certainly already have! From what little we know, we tend to believe Brooklyn btw. But, the truth of the matter is that an estrangement between a child and a parent (or parents!) is always a complex, painful thing. Here, in a story told to Sarah Lang, we hear a different sort of story – albeit, another one full of pain and grief – of alienation between a mother and an adult child.
I haven’t seen my son for three years. He’s 21 now.
That’s not something you ever expect to say about your own child. When I hear it out loud, it doesn’t sound exaggerated. It just sounds wrong, like stating a fact that shouldn’t exist, but somehow does.
Before the silence, there was a long stretch of worry. A constant sense that something wasn’t right. He was struggling with drugs and alcohol, mixed up with friends who weren’t helping, carrying anxiety and PTSD after an acrimonious divorce that left marks on all of us. He also had learning issues that made school harder than it needed to be. None of it was simple, and none of it happened in isolation.
I worried all the time. It became a background state. It was something I woke up with and went to sleep with, every single day.
I tried to help. I engaged someone who worked with children, someone I genuinely believed could support him. I took him to a child psychologist. At the time, I thought I was doing the right things, the responsible things. It took longer than I care to admit to see that it wasn’t helping, and that in some ways it was making things worse. That’s a hard thing to face: the realisation that your best efforts, made in good faith, can still backfire.
Somewhere along the way, concern morphed into something else entirely. A story formed that I didn’t recognise. Decisions were made without me. Things escalated quickly, and suddenly I was no longer part of the conversation.
In response to my regular messages reminding him that I love him and am always here for him, my child was encouraged – used as a weapon against me – to seek a protection order, to stop my messaging.
Lawyers became involved. Then court. At one point, a judge looked around the room and asked why we were even there. Case dismissed.
There is something profoundly disorienting about seeing yourself reframed as a threat rather than a parent. It’s a shock that doesn’t pass. It stays with you.
At the time, I was a solo mother to five children. I was working full time and carrying the full financial responsibility for our family. There was no backup parent. No safety net. Just me, trying to keep everything moving while one child was slipping further away.
Some days, I was barely keeping my head above water.
After that point, it no longer felt like the situation was about helping at all. And then the contact stopped.
There was no final conversation. No explanation. Just silence.
There has been no contact for three years now. That’s a long time in anyone’s life, but especially in the life of a young adult still finding their way.
I miss him deeply. I think about him often, what he’s doing, how he is, whether he’s okay.
I don’t talk about it much. Missing someone who is still alive makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, and I’ve learned that silence is often easier for everyone involved. So most of the time, I keep it to myself.
I have learnt to live with the loss sitting quietly in the background. Not because it doesn’t hurt, but because it has to be placed somewhere. You can’t function if that kind of grief sits front and centre every day.
I’ve compartmentalised it. Not because it’s resolved, but because there are other children who still need me. Children who are here. Children I continue to support emotionally, practically, and financially.
Life doesn’t stop. Meals still need to be made. Bills still need to be paid. Conversations still need to happen. The grief gets set aside, not ignored, just managed.
I did my best as a parent. That doesn’t mean I got it right. I didn’t. I was raising five children while working full time and navigating a long, difficult divorce.
I made mistakes. I failed at things. Sometimes I chose wrong, not out of neglect or cruelty, but out of exhaustion.
That’s the part people struggle to sit with. Parenting rarely happens in ideal conditions.
What I understand now is how little control parents actually have once situations escalate. How quickly intention becomes irrelevant. How easily complexity gets flattened into something simpler and often more damaging. I’ve also learned that loving a child can sometimes mean knowing when to stop pushing, not because you don’t care, but because pushing can cause more harm.
It’s not a comforting insight. It’s simply one that arrived too late to be useful.
I do believe he will come back one day. Not because I expect it, or wait for it, or organise my life around it. I believe it because love doesn’t just disappear.
Maybe it will be when he’s older. Maybe when he has children of his own. Or maybe it will happen in a way I can’t imagine yet.
Until then, I live my life. I take care of myself. I show up for the children who are here.
The door remains open.
