Re-Adulting: Becoming the Adult You Can Own

 

There is something about adulthood that we don't talk about enough. We assume that once someone turns eighteen, gets a job, earns money, gets married, has children, or lives independently, they have automatically become an adult.

But adulthood isn't a milestone. It is a capacity. The capacity to take responsibility for yourself, your choices, your relationships, your work, your home, your emotions, your finances, and eventually, your impact on the people around you.

And this is where I think we need a different lens for looking at adults. Because I have observed two very different kinds of adults who can both look "functional" from the outside.

The first are the old souls. They grew up too early. They learned to manage themselves, manage others, anticipate problems, suppress their needs, become responsible, and sometimes even become the emotional adult in the family long before they were ready.

They may enter adulthood carrying an extraordinary amount of competence. They know how to survive. They know how to work. They know how to take care of people. They know how to hold everything together. And yet, somewhere underneath all that competence is often a person who never really got to be young.

Their challenge in adulthood is not necessarily learning responsibility. It is learning that they don't have to carry everyone's responsibility anymore. They may need to re-learn rest, play, receiving, asking for help, setting boundaries, and allowing someone else to take care of something without feeling guilty.

Sometimes, the old soul needs to retire from the role they were groomed to perform. Because being exceptionally responsible is not the same as being free.

And then there is another kind of adult I increasingly notice.

The person who grew older without necessarily growing up. They may be twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, or even older and still have significant gaps in basic self-sufficiency. They may be exceptionally good at one thing.

They may be brilliant at their job. They may earn very well. They may be successful, respected, highly educated, or professionally accomplished. And yet they cannot manage basic things at home. They don't know how to feed themselves. They cannot maintain a routine. They don't manage their belongings. They don't know how to handle basic household responsibilities. 

They rely on a partner, parent, sibling, domestic worker, or someone else to keep everyday life functioning. And sometimes this gets excused with, "But I'm very good at my work."

That is precisely the point. Being able to do one thing exceptionally well does not cancel out an inability or unwillingness to participate in the rest of the adult life.

The reverse is equally true. Someone may be exceptionally good at managing a home. They may cook beautifully, maintain the household, raise children, organize everything, and keep everyone's life running.

But if they repeatedly cannot hold a job, manage professional commitments, deal with accountability, earn or contribute financially when they are capable of doing so, or build the skills necessary for economic independence, that is also a serious gap in adult functioning.

I feel strongly about this because we have normalized both extremes. We excuse the person who says, "I earn the money. That's enough." And we excuse the person who says, "I take care of the home. That's enough."

Neither is automatically enough. A household is a shared ecosystem. So is adulthood. You don't get to use competence in one domain as a permanent exemption from responsibility in another. This is where the idea of weaponized incompetence becomes important.

Genuine incompetence is simply not knowing how to do something. You can learn. Weaponized incompetence is when "I don't know how" becomes a convenient reason for someone else to keep doing it. Over time, the pattern becomes, "I don't know how." "You do it better." "You handle this." "I'm too busy." "That's your thing."

And eventually, someone else is carrying an adult who has stopped developing the capacity to carry themselves.

Sometimes that dependence is created by childhood conditioning. Sometimes it is reinforced by a partner who keeps rescuing. Sometimes it is simply convenient. But whatever the origin, there comes a point where explanation cannot substitute for responsibility.

Because the people who currently compensate for your gaps may not always be there. A parent ages. A partner gets tired. A sibling moves away. A friend stops rescuing. Someone dies. And suddenly, the person who appeared perfectly functional can discover that much of their life was being held together by someone else.

That can be devastating. But there is another danger. When dependency is repeatedly protected, the person carrying it can eventually become resentful. And the person being carried can become entitled. Then dependence can turn into manipulation. Helplessness can become control. Incompetence can become a strategy.

And relationships that once provided support can slowly become relationships built around exploitation, guilt, resentment, or emotional coercion. This is how dysfunction gets carried forward. One generation learns it. The next generation accommodates it. And eventually someone else is expected to absorb it.

That is why adulthood deserves a more honest definition. You don't have to be perfect at everything. You don't have to earn the same amount as your partner. You don't have to love housework. You don't have to build a career. You don't have to be naturally organized. You don't even have to know how to do everything today.

But you do need to be willing to learn what adulthood requires of you. You need enough self-sufficiency to survive without making another person responsible for your basic functioning. You need enough flexibility to contribute beyond the things you happen to be good at. You need enough humility to recognize your gaps. And enough integrity to work on them.

Because adulthood is not about proving that you can do everything. It is about becoming someone who can own their share of life. And perhaps this is where we need to rethink what it means to "grow up."

Some of us need to re-parent ourselves because we never received the safety, guidance, or permission to develop naturally. Some of us need to re-adult ourselves because we learned responsibility too early in some areas and avoided it in others. Some need to learn how to stop carrying everyone. Others need to learn how to stop making everyone carry them. And some of us need to do both.

This is why I believe adulthood can be revisited. You can return to the skills you missed. You can question the roles you inherited. You can learn what you were never taught. You can become more capable without becoming harder. You can become more independent without becoming emotionally isolated. You can learn to receive without becoming dependent. You can learn to contribute without becoming self-sacrificing.

And most importantly, you can stop defining yourself by the one thing you happen to do well. Because a successful career does not compensate for an inability to participate in life. And a well-managed home does not compensate for an inability to sustain yourself outside it.

Both are forms of imbalance. The goal is not to become useful to everyone. The goal is to become capable enough that you are not constantly being used by everyone. And it is not to become so independent that you need nobody. It is to become interdependent enough to contribute, receive, ask, support, and stand on your own feet without making someone else responsible for your existence.

That is the adulthood I believe we should be aiming for. Not the adulthood we were told to perform. The adulthood we can actually own. 

I build The Re-Adulting Framework™to explore exactly this. 

Re-Adulting™ is a process of looking honestly at the adult you became, the roles you were given, the capacities you developed, and the capacities you never had the opportunity or willingness to develop.

It helps you identify where you became responsible too early. Where you still expect others to carry you. Where competence has become an identity or an excuse. Where your dependence has become unfair to the people around you. Where your independence has become isolation. What basic adult capacities need to be developed. What inherited roles need to be released. And what kind of adult you actually want to become.

The goal isn't to turn you into someone who can do everything. It is to transform you into someone you can own up to. Someone you can look at honestly and say, "I may still have things to learn. I may not have got everything right. But I carry my share. I don't need to exploit someone else's love to remain incapable. And I don't need to exploit myself to remain useful."

That, to me, is growing up.The most important question you should be able to answer without a single doubt is, "Am I becoming the kind of adult I would be proud to be?"

When Parenting Shows You Parts of Yourself You Forgot

 

Raising a child is not just about teaching them values or correcting their behavior. It is also about understanding yourself through the way you respond to them.

Children can bring out emotions in parents that feel unexpected such as irritation, sadness, fear, defensiveness, or even helplessness. These feelings don't necessarily appear because the child is doing something wrong. Sometimes, their behavior activates something familiar within us. It could be an experience, belief, or emotional pattern from our own childhood that was never fully understood or resolved.

A child talking back may activate memories of never being allowed to question an adult. A child's withdrawal may trigger a fear of rejection. Their emotional outburst may bring up feelings we were once taught to suppress. This is not a parenting failure. It is an opportunity to become more aware.

Many parents apologize when they lose patience. An apology is important, but repair goes further. Children learn emotional safety when parents return after conflict, acknowledge what happened, listen, take responsibility for their part, and reconnect.

Repair teaches children that conflict does not have to mean disconnection. It teaches accountability, trust, and the possibility of finding your way back to each other. Part 2 of the book helps parents understand why certain behaviors affect them more deeply than others. It offers particular clarity for parents raising pre-teens and teenagers, when arguments, boundary-testing, and the child's growing need for independence can change the relationship.

It explains how to pause, how to listen, and how to reconnect after difficult moments. Tuning in to your child's need does not need perfection. All it needs is awareness and the ability to notice what your child may be feeling. Once that happens, it is possible to respond with presence rather than immediately reacting from your own emotional history.

Your child is growing every day. And sometimes, through raising them, you discover parts of yourself you had forgotten.

If you want to build a home where communication feels safe and where your child can express themselves without fear, this part of the book will guide you towards understanding both your child and yourself a little better.

To grab a copy click here.

My Son Came Out as Gay Three Years Ago. Now He Wants to Marry His Partner, and I'm Struggling to Accept It. What Do I Do?

FnAQ - My son came out to me as gay three years ago. Initially I was in shock. I felt like how could this happen to me. What did I do wrong and what can I do to correct it. I did not say this to him, but inside it kept paining. He lives in another country so the distances helped. Now he says he wants to get married to his boyfriend of two years. I don't know what to do. Had he been normal, I would have had big fat wedding like it happens in our community. But now I am planning to visit along with my wife and not mention anything to anyone here. But all of this is hurting me a lot! What do I do?

Short answer: Your son hasn't done anything wrong. What you're struggling with is the gap between the expectations you had for his life and the reality he has shared with you. That gap deserves compassion, not guilt. But your son's authenticity also deserves your love and acceptance.

Long answer: First, I'd like to acknowledge how honest your question is. Many parents have thoughts like these when their child first comes out, but very few are willing to say them out loud. The fact that you're asking what to do tells me that, beneath your confusion, you want to find a way forward.

Let me begin with something important. There is nothing abnormal about being gay. Sexual orientation is not something a parent causes, nor is it something that needs to be corrected. Your son did not become a different person the day he came out to you. He simply trusted you enough to share a part of himself that had always been there.

What you're grieving is not your son. You're grieving the future you had imagined for him. That is a real experience, and many parents go through it. The key is to recognize that your grief belongs to your expectations, not to your child's identity.

You mentioned that the distance between you has helped. I wonder if what the distance has really done is postpone a conversation your heart has been trying to have with itself for the last three years.

Now your son is asking you to witness one of the happiest moments of his life. The question before you is no longer whether he is gay. The question is whether he will experience his parents standing beside him as he begins this new chapter.

You also mentioned worrying about what people in your community might think. That is understandable. Social expectations can be incredibly powerful. But it's worth asking yourself this, "Years from now, which regret would be harder to live with? That some people judged you or that your son felt he had to celebrate one of the most important days of his life without feeling fully accepted by his parents?"

Parents often spend years teaching their children to be honest, kind, and authentic. Sometimes life asks parents to practice those same values themselves. If you're finding acceptance difficult, you don't have to navigate it alone.

Connecting with other parents who have walked this journey can be incredibly reassuring. Hearing their stories often helps replace fear with understanding. If you're in India, you may find support through Sweekar – The Rainbow Parents, a parent support group that helps families understand, accept, and support their LGBTQIA+ children. Many parents have found comfort in speaking with others who once had similar questions and concerns.

Your son has already shown great courage by choosing authenticity. Perhaps this is your opportunity to show him that your love is bigger than your fear.

I hope this helps.

And I wish you and your family healing, understanding, and many joyful years together.

The Loneliness of Being Believed

Have you ever noticed something that feels quietly heartbreaking? I have. Far more often than not, the people sitting in therapy are the ones trying to understand what happened to them, while those who caused the harm may never question their own behavior.
 

Many survivors know the feeling of carrying the weight of healing while also carrying the weight of what was done to them. It's a particular kind of loneliness. The loneliness of trying to make sense of experiences that the people closest to you either deny, minimize, or simply cannot understand.

Survivors of complex trauma know what it feels like to feel profoundly alone in a house full of people who share your name, your history, and even your DNA. Sometimes the deepest wound isn't the traumatic experience itself.

It's being told it wasn't that bad. It's being asked to "move on." It's being told to forgive before you've even been allowed to grieve. It's living in a world that often understands the symptoms of trauma far better than it understands the conditions that created them.

One of the conversations I believe we need to have more openly is about family. Family can be our greatest source of love and belonging. It can also be the place where our deepest wounds are formed.

When someone chooses to distance themselves from a relationship that has consistently harmed them, reminding them that "they're still family" rarely helps. What they often need isn't another reminder of shared DNA. They need safety and respect. They need relationships where love doesn't come at the cost of their well-being.

I believe therapy is one of the greatest investments we can make in our mental and emotional health. But healing cannot stop at learning to tolerate pain. Whenever possible, it also means understanding where that pain came from.

It means recognizing unhealthy patterns. Naming dysfunction. Refusing to confuse loyalty with self abandonment. Understanding that victim blaming is itself another form of harm. The more willing we are, as individuals and as a society, to acknowledge these realities, the less space dysfunction has to quietly pass from one generation to the next.

This is why I write. For the people who have spent years wondering whether anyone else understands. For the people who have been told they were "too sensitive," "too difficult," or "the problem." For the people who became cycle breakers, even when it meant standing alone.

I see you. I know the loneliness that often comes with choosing a healthier path than the one you inherited. My hope is to build a space where you are not only seen, but also understood. A space where healing is met with compassion, where difficult conversations are welcomed, and where rebuilding your life becomes possible, one choice at a time.

If this resonated, books mentioned below might help in your healing journey! 

Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After

What Happened to You? 

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Before You Raise a Child, Meet the One You Once Were

 

Most people believe parenting begins the day a baby is born. I believe it begins much earlier. To be precise, it begins the moment you become curious about the child you once were. Because every parent carries a childhood into adulthood.

The way you respond to conflict, express love, set boundaries, manage disappointment, or comfort someone in pain didn't appear overnight. These patterns were shaped long before your child arrived. Many of us carry them without ever questioning where they came from.

For some, looking back at childhood feels uncomfortable. Others believe there is nothing to revisit because they had a "good" childhood. Both responses are understandable and justified. But self reflection isn't about judging your parents or assigning blame.

On the contrary, it is simply about understanding yourself. It is about recognizing the experiences that quietly shaped the way you think, react, and relate to the people you love. Sometimes the deepest influences aren't dramatic moments. They're the everyday messages we absorbed over time.

The emotions we learned weren't safe to express. The questions we stopped asking. The parts of ourselves we slowly learned to hide. When you begin looking at your childhood with compassion instead of judgment, something remarkable happens.

You begin to recognize your triggers before they become reactions. You notice patterns before they become habits. You see the places where your past has been quietly making decisions for your present. And that awareness gives you something every parent hopes for.

Choice. The choice to pause, to listen, and to respond to your child instead of reacting from your own unresolved childhood.

This is where the journey in this book begins. Neither with parenting techniques, nor with discipline strategies. But with you.

Together, we'll gently revisit your early years, not to dwell on the past, but to understand the beliefs, wounds, and strengths you carried into adulthood. Some memories may surprise you. Some may bring clarity. Others may simply help you understand why certain moments in parenting feel harder than they seem.

Because your child isn't growing up in the world your parents prepared you for. They are growing up in a different world, one that asks for emotional awareness as much as practical guidance. If you're ready to understand yourself a little more deeply, this journey will walk beside you.

If you're not ready yet, that's okay too. Self reflection cannot be rushed. You can always return when the time feels right.

For those of you who are ready to dive in, get your copy here.

I Just Lost My Mom Suddenly. I Haven't Been Able to Cry. What Is Happening to Me?

FnAQ - I just lost my mom and I have no idea where my life is headed. She was fine and one night she felt extremely uneasy and passed out. There and then, she was gone. I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. It's been four days and I am trying to cry and haven't been able to shed a tear. What is happening to me?

Short answer: I am so deeply sorry for your unimaginable loss. My heartfelt condolences to you and your family. May your mother's soul rest in peace. What you're describing is something many people experience after a sudden loss. Shock can temporarily numb our emotions, and not being able to cry does not mean you aren't grieving.

Long answer: I can only imagine the vacuum you must be feeling right now. The sudden loss of a parent changes something profound within us. When someone is here one moment and gone the next, our mind often struggles to make sense of what has happened. In those first few days, it's common to feel numb, disconnected, confused, or as though everything around you is happening in slow motion.

Please know that there is no "right" way to grieve. Some people cry immediately. Some cry weeks or even months later. Some find themselves moving through practical responsibilities before the emotions begin to surface. All of these responses can be a part of grief.

One of the kindest things you can do for yourself right now is to allow yourself support.

If you already have a mental health professional, consider reaching out to them. If you don't, and you feel comfortable doing so, connecting with a therapist or grief counselor can provide a safe space to process everything you're carrying. Not because there is something wrong with you, but because no one should have to carry such a loss alone.

If there are funeral rituals or memorial gatherings that feel meaningful to you, participate in them in whatever way feels right. Rituals often help us begin accepting a reality that our minds are still struggling to comprehend. 

You may also find it helpful to write. Write to your mother. Write about your memories. Write about your anger, confusion, gratitude, or even the silence. There is no correct way to do it. The goal isn't to write well. It's simply to give your thoughts somewhere to rest.

Above all, be patient with yourself. Grief is not something that time heals on its own. Healing often comes from allowing yourself to feel, to remember, to seek support when you need it, and to move through the loss at your own pace. You don't have to know what your life will look like today. Right now, your only job is to take the next gentle step, one day at a time.
 

Hope this helps!

Lots of love! 

When the Distance Feels Too Far

 

 

 

There comes a point in some parents' lives when the silence feels heavier than words. The calls become less frequent, the visits grow rare and the conversations that once flowed easily begin to feel strained or stop altogether.

In that quiet space, many parents carry a question they seldom ask aloud. "Where did I go wrong?"

The answers are rarely simple.

Sometimes distance is not a sign of a lack of love. It is simply a natural consequence of adulthood. Sometimes it reflects a need for independence, different priorities, unresolved hurts, or a life that is growing in directions we never anticipated. If you find yourself in this season of life, I hope you will offer yourself the same compassion you once offered your child.

Healing does not always restore a relationship to what it was. It can, however, help us see ourselves more clearly. It can certainly soften the echos of old hurts and invite deeper understanding. Not every story unfolds the way we hoped it would. Yet there is peace to be found in looking honestly at our part in the story and allowing that awareness to shape who we become next.

Perhaps the way forward is not found in trying to recreate the past. Perhaps it is found in learning how to love what is here now, while finding your way back to yourself.

If these reflections resonate with you, you may find companionship in the pages of Safety Nesters to Empty Nesters, a book for parents navigating the changing relationship with their adult children and the unexpected journey that follows.

To get your copy click here.