Ungrateful Adult Children Quotes

this sounds familiar to you, let me reassure you that it’s normal to feel conflicted. You are likely compelled to maintain the relationship to avoid the feelings of guilt you experience if you don’t. Your mother has probably accused you over the years of not being good enough, which enslaves you into seeking her approval. You may have heard her call you ungrateful, a bad child, or any number of other things when you’ve tried to set a boundary with her. Does this dialogue sound familiar?

I am learning that displaced children change in different ways than adults. They fixate on anything concrete, and their responses are almost entirely physical.

In an essay, “Against Epiphanies,” Charles Baxter says that epiphanies are by nature deceptive. Foundational shocks happen to children. For adults, they are, at least in part, posturing. Melodrama. In fiction workshop, we asked, have I written this truthfully? We didn’t mean, “Are my facts correct?” We meant, “Is the story believable?” Often the facts are the least believable, and it is fiction’s job to fix them in service of the truth. A fact, given disproportionate context and attention, can lie about a life, or a day, or a marriage, a war, a childhood. A fiction can be true, when it throws a light on the unseen, those unclaimed spectacles that occur again and again but that shame and trauma keep hidden from view.