Love Letters - Two Completely Different Perspectives on Parenting Wounded Adult Children
The letter below was written by a Brit named Nick Crew to his three grown children, after
listening to his wife’s end of her telephone conversations with them. It went viral online in November 2012, so I assume I do not need the venerable Mr. Crew’s permission to reproduce it here in its entirety. To increase the chance that you won’t give up on this letter in the second paragraph and stop reading, let me tell you up front why this letter is important to me:
I am fascinated by this man’s perspective on his role as parent, his expectations for his
children’s lives as a source of his own personal satisfaction, and his general willingness to lay all of his bitterness at their doorsteps like some literary bag of flaming dog-poop - but it’s more than that. While I have no way of knowing whether the criticism of his children’s
lives is justified, Mr. Crew’s letter represents a look at an alternate universe from my own inner life. This letter represents the different choices we all make about how we see ourselves, our kids, and our lives. Mr. Crew is quite ready to hold his kids accountable for how they have let him down, but he feigns no responsibility of his own – not for his parenting skills, and not for his choice about how to approach the struggles of his children on an
emotional level. In short, he lacks humility and compassion –humility for what his children’s lives can teach him, and compassion for the painful circumstances he and his wife no doubt
helped to create in those lives, at least to some degree.
It seems that there is an inverse corollary between the level of compassion we are willing to
extend to our loved ones and the level to which we find the failings of our loved ones a personal affront to ourselves. I can only guess that self-absorption is what creates the disappointment and bitterness we read in every line of this letter. It makes me wonder
whether Mr. Crew ever took the time actually to know his children, to share their dreams, appreciate their struggles, and discover what once must have been precious about them.
Love is a choice. I do not know any of these people and do not know the particulars of this family drama. I see in this letter only evidence that there obviously were many times
though the years when love was not chosen, and it makes me sad for everyone. It also makes me think of how a letter of my own, to my kids, would read. That one appears directly after Mr. Crew’s.
Dear All Three
With last evening's crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to
treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of
you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.
We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the
families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own chldren and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don't ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best —probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in
turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own
children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is
what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven —
none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice.
In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic
courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn't for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents.
I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being
forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children's underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about.
I don't want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes - it's not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace - far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won't do it by simply whingeing and saying you don't like it. You'll have to come up with meaty reasons to
demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn't possible, or you simply can't be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly,
bitterly disappointed.
Dad
Dear Ones,
When we hang up the phone I always want to call you right back, because your absence rings in the sudden silence of my heart like a bell even though it is still full of just
being near your voice and your presence. When you call, I always hold my breath until I can hear how it is you say “hello.” I can tell in an instant whether you are well, sad, frightened, triumphant, sick, broke, angry, joyful, lonely, busy, bored, or in love.
Whatever your mood, when you call my day instantly takes on a deeper dimension. If there is a problem, I cannot be OK again until it is solved. If there is something to celebrate, nothing else that happens in that day can ruin it for me. And if it’s just a minute to chat about nothing in particular, I spend the rest of the day in a warm glow of love and satisfaction.
Your dad thinks we are crazy for being on the phone with each other all the time – why don’t men seem to understand the endless fascination mothers have for their kids? I love being part of your lives, and am giddily happy when you still need and want my advice – and even happier when you think it through and report back that you made a different decision than the one I suggested, because it was more right for you.
When people ask me about my kids and grandkids I cannot wait to tell them all about your
successes, but far more than any recognition or accolades you receive I love to tell stories to my friends about how your good sense, compassion, and integrity shone through a challenging situation. Of all your many accomplishments, I have always been most proud of the quality of your characters.
I know it is hard to make your way in this world even with a privileged upbringing (which you most certainly did not have), and I admire how you both are breadwinners, hard workers, and contributors to your communities. You both make creativity and authenticity a top priority in all your decisions, and have had the courage to choose what moves you over a paycheck far more than I was able. I think you are far richer for it.
And yes, it is so much fun to talk about the loves in your lives with you! Having officially hung up my own dancing shoes, I love watching the two of you fall in love, in like, in whatever. There have been some wrong numbers along the line, but you always have had the capacity to tell yourselves the truth about your own lives and take corrective action.
This capacity for self-analysis and the ability to learn life’s lessons make me sure I will never need to worry for your souls. Besides, I think I was the one with the talent for picking the bad partners, as I recall. I am especially proud of your ability to strive for true intimacy in a relationship without sacrificing your sense of self. My fears that I set a bad example for
you in my relationship with your bio-father were unfounded, and I want to be just like you when I grow up.
Whatever happens, please never stop calling me. I always want to be part of your lives
and to feel that wherever we are going, we are going there together. You are tremendous blessings to me.
I am deeply, deeply grateful.
Love always,
Mom
listening to his wife’s end of her telephone conversations with them. It went viral online in November 2012, so I assume I do not need the venerable Mr. Crew’s permission to reproduce it here in its entirety. To increase the chance that you won’t give up on this letter in the second paragraph and stop reading, let me tell you up front why this letter is important to me:
I am fascinated by this man’s perspective on his role as parent, his expectations for his
children’s lives as a source of his own personal satisfaction, and his general willingness to lay all of his bitterness at their doorsteps like some literary bag of flaming dog-poop - but it’s more than that. While I have no way of knowing whether the criticism of his children’s
lives is justified, Mr. Crew’s letter represents a look at an alternate universe from my own inner life. This letter represents the different choices we all make about how we see ourselves, our kids, and our lives. Mr. Crew is quite ready to hold his kids accountable for how they have let him down, but he feigns no responsibility of his own – not for his parenting skills, and not for his choice about how to approach the struggles of his children on an
emotional level. In short, he lacks humility and compassion –humility for what his children’s lives can teach him, and compassion for the painful circumstances he and his wife no doubt
helped to create in those lives, at least to some degree.
It seems that there is an inverse corollary between the level of compassion we are willing to
extend to our loved ones and the level to which we find the failings of our loved ones a personal affront to ourselves. I can only guess that self-absorption is what creates the disappointment and bitterness we read in every line of this letter. It makes me wonder
whether Mr. Crew ever took the time actually to know his children, to share their dreams, appreciate their struggles, and discover what once must have been precious about them.
Love is a choice. I do not know any of these people and do not know the particulars of this family drama. I see in this letter only evidence that there obviously were many times
though the years when love was not chosen, and it makes me sad for everyone. It also makes me think of how a letter of my own, to my kids, would read. That one appears directly after Mr. Crew’s.
Dear All Three
With last evening's crop of whinges and tidings of more rotten news for which you seem to
treat your mother like a cess-pit, I feel it is time to come off my perch.
It is obvious that none of you has the faintest notion of the bitter disappointment each of
you has in your own way dished out to us. We are seeing the miserable death throes of the fourth of your collective marriages at the same time we see the advent of a fifth.
We are constantly regaled with chapter and verse of the happy, successful lives of the
families of our friends and relatives and being asked of news of our own chldren and grandchildren. I wonder if you realise how we feel — we have nothing to say which reflects any credit on you or us. We don't ask for your sympathy or understanding — Mum and I have been used to taking our own misfortunes on the chin, and making our own effort to bash our little paths through life without being a burden to others. Having done our best —probably misguidedly — to provide for our children, we naturally hoped to see them in
turn take up their own banners and provide happy and stable homes for their own
children.
Fulfilling careers based on your educations would have helped — but as yet none of you is
what I would confidently term properly self-supporting. Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.
So we witness the introduction to this life of six beautiful children — soon to be seven —
none of whose parents have had the maturity and sound judgment to make a reasonable fist at making essential threshold decisions. None of these decisions were made with any pretence to ask for our advice.
In each case we have been expected to acquiesce with mostly hasty, but always in our view, badly judged decisions. None of you has done yourself, or given to us, the basic
courtesy to ask us what we think while there was still time finally to think things through. The predictable result has been a decade of deep unhappiness over the fates of our grandchildren. If it wasn't for them, Mum and I would not be too concerned, as each of you consciously, and with eyes wide open, crashes from one cock-up to the next. It makes us weak that so many of these events are copulation-driven, and then helplessly to see these lovely little people being so woefully let down by you, their parents.
I can now tell you that I for one, and I sense Mum feels the same, have had enough of being
forced to live through the never-ending bad dream of our children's underachievement and domestic ineptitudes. I want to hear no more from any of you until, if you feel inclined, you have a success or an achievement or a REALISTIC plan for the support and happiness of your children to tell me about.
I don't want to see your mother burdened any more with your miserable woes - it's not as if any of the advice she strives to give you has ever been listened to with good grace - far less acted upon. So I ask you to spare her further unhappiness. If you think I have been unfair in what I have said, by all means try to persuade me to change my mind. But you won't do it by simply whingeing and saying you don't like it. You'll have to come up with meaty reasons to
demolish my points and build a case for yourself. If that isn't possible, or you simply can't be bothered, then I rest my case.
I am bitterly,
bitterly disappointed.
Dad
Dear Ones,
When we hang up the phone I always want to call you right back, because your absence rings in the sudden silence of my heart like a bell even though it is still full of just
being near your voice and your presence. When you call, I always hold my breath until I can hear how it is you say “hello.” I can tell in an instant whether you are well, sad, frightened, triumphant, sick, broke, angry, joyful, lonely, busy, bored, or in love.
Whatever your mood, when you call my day instantly takes on a deeper dimension. If there is a problem, I cannot be OK again until it is solved. If there is something to celebrate, nothing else that happens in that day can ruin it for me. And if it’s just a minute to chat about nothing in particular, I spend the rest of the day in a warm glow of love and satisfaction.
Your dad thinks we are crazy for being on the phone with each other all the time – why don’t men seem to understand the endless fascination mothers have for their kids? I love being part of your lives, and am giddily happy when you still need and want my advice – and even happier when you think it through and report back that you made a different decision than the one I suggested, because it was more right for you.
When people ask me about my kids and grandkids I cannot wait to tell them all about your
successes, but far more than any recognition or accolades you receive I love to tell stories to my friends about how your good sense, compassion, and integrity shone through a challenging situation. Of all your many accomplishments, I have always been most proud of the quality of your characters.
I know it is hard to make your way in this world even with a privileged upbringing (which you most certainly did not have), and I admire how you both are breadwinners, hard workers, and contributors to your communities. You both make creativity and authenticity a top priority in all your decisions, and have had the courage to choose what moves you over a paycheck far more than I was able. I think you are far richer for it.
And yes, it is so much fun to talk about the loves in your lives with you! Having officially hung up my own dancing shoes, I love watching the two of you fall in love, in like, in whatever. There have been some wrong numbers along the line, but you always have had the capacity to tell yourselves the truth about your own lives and take corrective action.
This capacity for self-analysis and the ability to learn life’s lessons make me sure I will never need to worry for your souls. Besides, I think I was the one with the talent for picking the bad partners, as I recall. I am especially proud of your ability to strive for true intimacy in a relationship without sacrificing your sense of self. My fears that I set a bad example for
you in my relationship with your bio-father were unfounded, and I want to be just like you when I grow up.
Whatever happens, please never stop calling me. I always want to be part of your lives
and to feel that wherever we are going, we are going there together. You are tremendous blessings to me.
I am deeply, deeply grateful.
Love always,
Mom
