Good Morning, End
If your daughter has not applied for Social Services assistance, that should be your first step.
Putting her into one of your apartments would not be rewarding her. It would be the first concrete step to saving your own life. If money is a problem for her, let her have the first month's rent free. She should be able to have welfare assistance or a job within a month, two at most. Emergency food, medical, housing, and employment help should be available almost immediately.
There is nothing you need to do, End.
The only small step you are going to take is to move your daughter out of your house.
One of the most important lessons I have learned is to say whatever form of "no" I can manage to spit out and then, to wait. Let options present themselves to your daughter. Try not to even think about it. She will pick up once she knows you won't. Her behavior will escalate. Expect that. You did not get where you are in your life without having met bigger challenges than that your daughter is angry because you will not do what she wants.
You can do this, End.
Post about it, if it helps. We are anonymous. No one else will know, and the support you will receive will get you through the worst of it.
Unless a miracle happens and your daughter actually pays her rent, you will need to evict her at some point. This is okay, End. Knowing what is coming, you can plan for it. Once your daughter is out of your house, you will be able to think clearly. If your daughter cannot raise her children for whatever reason, then it is their father's responsibility to raise them, not yours.
We grandparents need to see ourselves as at the game, but not in it. Love your grandchildren End, enjoy your grandchildren. Buy them things, take them on vacation, take them to dinner.
Just don't raise them. When that time comes? This will be very hard decision for you. So, let's not think about that, now. Small, small steps. That's how you get from where you are to somewhere else. For now, let's concentrate on getting daughter out of your home. As others of us have suggested, begin checking into eviction law in your state, and into your other rights, both as a parent and as a grandparent, now. Information is a wonderful tool. You will feel that you have a choice, instead of that you are in a trap. Call Social Services. They will be in the blue, County Government section of your phone book.
That is a good place to start.
The only action you are going to take now, the only small step you are preparing for, is to get your daughter out of your home. Then, one small thing at a time, you can have a look at the rest of it. Or, you can decide to learn how to leave it alone. That is a skillset, too. It takes time and commitment to learn it. We can help with the feelings that will come up as you make these changes in how you see yourself and your responsibility to your daughter.
I have been on this site, in one capacity or another, for more than ten years. I am still learning, still trying to figure out how to do this so difficult thing.
Where would you like to be ten years from now, End?
Like me, still here on the site wobbling from detachment to enabling and back?
It is difficult to imagine freedom, trapped in every way by your need to be responsible parents. Once you have a little taste? Once you can breathe again, once you can see what life can be? You will want more. All at once? Travel becomes an option. And once you do that? You find out that everyone our age is out here, celebrating and wondering again about the big philosophical questions and taking classes and just generally enjoying who and how we are, now that we're here.
It was my husband who insisted that we take the early retirement, that we do all the things we have done, since.
And you know what?
He was right.
Gird your loins and give difficult child daughter a heads up, End. Something like: Since what we've been doing hasn't helped you, your mother and I are going to try a different kind of parenting. We have decided we are not going to take the hard struggles every adult faces to earn self respect away from you, ever again. It would mean the world to your mother and I if you were stable and doing well, but however you decide to live your life, your mother and I are choosing to go on with ours. If, despite everything we have done and are still willing to do for you, you or their father are not able to raise your children, your mother and I will do what we have to to protect our grandchildren. But let's not talk about that now, because you are going to do wonderfully on your own. Here's the plan: You and the kids will be moving into one of the apartments. The first month you don't pay your rent, we will begin the eviction process. We think you will pick up beautifully, and that your new life with the kids will be a good one. It's up to you now, honey. You might even say something like, "If we had let you handle your own life from the beginning, you might not be in this dependent position, now."
There has to be a way you can break the hold your daughter has on you. If something like what I've written above doesn't hit you just right End, sit down and write what you ARE willing to say. Your daughter has everything she wants, right now. She is not going to change anything. You will have to be the one to do it.
If you post what you want to say to your daughter here, we will give feedback.
We have all been right where you are now, End. It doesn't get better on its own, but it can get better. That is what you are after, here. You are not trying to hurt your daughter. You are making a way to have your own life, to have the right to make choices, again.
You are right, End. You are not wrong in wanting your freedom, in cherishing your own life.
Another important piece is something Scott G posted about. He said we need to accept that our kids are who they are and that we need to stop judging them for that. It clarifies the air. Knowing who they are, really, tells us what they will do. We can stop hoping, stop believing for the best, and start making concrete plans to get free of their outrageous demands.
I know how hard all this is, End. I know how confused and angry and responsible you feel. But I also know there is a way to see so clearly how to do what needs to be done.
You will be fine, End. You will get through this. It's going to feel like a whole new day just to have your daughter out on her own.
We'll be right here to listen, to advise when we can, to tell you what did or did not work for us.
Wishing you and your family well and strong again, End. It can happen.
Cedar