195|When Adult Children Go No Contact: Susan Metzger's Story and Support for Estranged Parents

And that's Kind of what happened to you, right?

Oh, my gosh.

In a big way, Lori.

That's exactly it.

For 23 years, I haven't talked about having an estranged child who walked away.

I haven't.

And through a series of circumstances, it was brought to my heart and my mind in a big way.

Well, it was interesting, and I'll just share this short little story.

I got a phone call from a friend of mine.

It was actually about five weeks ago.

And she was asking for a phone number of our pastor.

And I said, sure, I can give you that.

But they're out of the country right now.

And I said, can I help you with something? And her story came out of how she has an adult daughter.

She lives right up the street from her grandchildren.

And her daughter won't let her see the grandchildren.

And she's heartbroken.

And Lori, what happened is I said, you know what? Did you know that I'm dealing with the same thing? And she was shocked.

She was just shocked.

And that was an eye opener for me because I realized even some of my closest friends had no idea.

And the next day I talked to another friend and she shared a similar stories.

So I thought, you know what? I invited those two ladies over to my house.

I said, do you want to have coffee? Let's just talk, you know, because we all talked about how alone we felt in that.

And for whatever reason, we didn't discuss it with anyone.

So they said, sure.