Since a couple people asked, I linked the meme meaning in a reblog 😅

*wheeze* Thank you. :D

As a parent of an 18 year old still at home for the foreseeable future, I will try to explain what it is like to be the parent whose child moves back home, is not ready to launch yet or who may never be ready to launch. You think your coworkers, friends, family, neighbors are all judging you as failures. You don't volunteer information at the neighborhood cookout because you don't want to explain. You are glad your child is safe but you are constantly worried about the future and how to help them take that next step without hindering or hurting them. You know it's humiliating and traumatic and depressing for them. Their choices and freedoms are limited and so are yours. You have extended the role of parent/caregiver/24/7 on call helper indefinitely and it feels so exhausting to try to imagine the future. You are also grieving the life you imagined for yourself when your child was born, that some day they would go off to college or a job and find a partner settle down and maybe even have kids so that you could be a grandparent while you are still young enough to chase a toddler around the playground.

Until you remember there is no reason for much of this. This weird shame and humiliation. It's all self-imposed. There is only a very small window of time (the last fifty years or so) where it was considered normal for children to move out at 18. I am doing genealogy right now and taking great comfort from census forms. Not only did my parents live with their grandparents, at one point they had uncles and cousins living with them as well. It was common for newley weds to live one family until they were established. This was how they survived the Great Depression and the migrations to America. Look at census forms and you will see whole extended families living in a few rooms together. This was normal for most of human history.

Growing up is not a race. People develop at different rates and paths that seem like the way forward wind up being dead ends. All of this perfectly normal and should be not only socially acceptable, but actually praised because I think it makes people far more aware of who the people are that raised them, got them to this point.

In my neighborhood, we are not the only family with adult children at home. Neighbors on one side have both their boys back after bad breakups/job losses/medical emergencies popped up. At our most recent parent/teacher conference I found out two of my son's teachers/counselors have adult kids living at home.

The thing that parents need help with is remembering that our adult children are adults. They need the freedom and the space for creativity, to have friends or romantic partners over without judgement from their parents. They need to be part of the household as helpers, as responsible stake-holders, not dependents. They need to be allowed to cook meals and have the freedom to not attend dinner if they don't want to or skip out on family outings. Even if they are financially dependent they are capable of contributing. You need to create an atmosphere where it is possible for them to contribute without being bullied into it.

I don't have the answers for how to do this, by the way. I'm not saying we are anywhere near achieving the goal of creating a comfortable environment for all of us. There are plans in the works to create an apartment with a separate entrance perhaps, but that is a long way off and in the present day, it honestly is difficult for all of us.

Thank you for posting this OP, it will help me remember what my son is going through in this situation and how I need to change my behavior from the patterns we fell into when he was still a child.

the underwhelming dense pang of sadness mixed with the loss of personal identity and opportunity that goes hand-in-hand when you're forced to live with your parents as someone well into their adult years lol

#just mash things

part 35

need me a freak like this

Hopscotch (1980)

R.I.P., G.J.

Hopscotch (1980) dir. Ronald Neame

thomas cromwell mood-board.

Wow, I never really thought about Henry being in a wordy profession. Good point.

I always love that Northanger Abbey is a parody of a gothic novel, a meta discussion on the gothic novel as well as a fully functioning gothic novel. That's a hat trick baby.

I do find it fascinating that Northanger Abbey is Austen’s book that is most about other books (which is probably why I love it, honestly), and her hero is someone who LOVES words and loves interpreting them.

Henry Tilney goes on pendantic rants on the meaning of words, he manages to clear up a misunderstanding about words (and books) between Eleanor and Catherine, he makes a lot of observations on the different genres of writing that appear in the book (gothic novels and letters come to mind). He’s also a hero who by profession puts words together every week that everyone in his immediate surroundings has to hear— and someone professionally trained in the art of interpretation of very specific words in specific books.

I love the cleverness of having a hero trained in the interpretation of books then read as metaphor with heroine who has to learn how exactly to interpret gothic novels (as exaggerations and metaphors for commonplace problems) in order to mature.

Jane Eyre (1983). dir. Julian Amyes

thomas cromwell and sir thomas more, wolf hall episode four