My adult kid, my mom, and me
Where do I fit into multigenerational care?
In May, my daughter will graduate college and return home. She’s moving back in with us to save money and figure out her next steps, not it’ll be like it was in high school.
This will be a whole new household. The three of us have changed dramatically since we dropped her off at her freshman dorm. Mirabai is such a different person it’s hard to recall the high school senior who moved out in 2021. And Rael and I are beyond the fork in the road where our adult futures begin going in different directions.
Our extended family structure has changed as well. My Mom moved to Portland while Mirabai was in college. Supporting Mom has become a big part of my life.
My place in the sandwich generation has never been more apparent. I won’t have the same pressures as the mother of young kids; Mirabai’s maturity and independence should give me more room to maneuver. But this season of parenting will come with its own challenges.
There’s no way to predict what I’ll find in the shifting space between my kid’s expanding orbit and my mom’s shrinking world.
Are you caring for (or soon to care for) an adult kid + an elder? Thoughts? Advice? Resources?
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NOTES OF NOTE
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Christine interviewed me for Edit Your Life in January 2024 about my place in the sandwich generation. Things sure have changed since then.
Sandwich by
: This hilarious, heartrending, light-as-good-egg-salad novel is a beachy yet profound story about the messiness of living while loving your grown kids, your elders and, hopefully, yourself. YOU WILL ADORE IT. (At Amazon and Bookshop.org)
Thanks for reading Parent of Adults. I’m Asha Dornfest, a Portland, Oregon-based author & parent of two young adults, and this newsletter is my invitation to compare notes on life beyond the empty nest.
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My adult-ish son is living with us - he’s 21 and stopped out of college, not sure what or when his next step will be. He’s volunteering (so he has a schedule) but not working. He moved home last May and it wasn’t until the fall that I felt like we found our rhythm again as a family, where he understood the expectations we had of him as a grown-up living at home (especially one with no income). I’m trying to find the best of it - we genuinely have some really nice times together, he’s figured out how to be actually helpful, and he’s been around to care for our elderly dog during the day. We’re partway through a room-move that has helped - we flipped his childhood bedroom and our home office/guest room/misc room. I think it made a difference for him to have his own space and have it be different from “when he was a kid”. The way our house is laid out means he lives in the front and our bedroom is in the back, and that tiny bit of separation has helped also (it’s not a big house). I still feel like we’re living in limbo, but I’m trying to really intentionally note the good parts.
I bet you would enjoy Kelly Corrigan's book "The Middle Place".