Raking up the past
The last thing Ronnie expected to have to deal with when she retired was a backlash from her children that brought up long-forgotten memories -- of her childhood, marriage and divorce.
"I don't think I'm the only mom who is cursed by this current trend by adult children to rake up the past and blame parents for their problems – parents who are retired from work and just want to live in peace," sighs Ronnie. "I think that it’s nothing more than an excuse designed by blood-sucking therapists to provide their profession with lucrative employment for the rest of their lives.
"Compared to my life, my parent's life and their parent's life," says Ronnie, "my children have no idea how lucky they are."
"In my grandparent's time, little children as young as 5 were put to work in coal mines or worked as chimney sweeps or mill workers - and they were often flogged to death," relates Ronnie "My parents were luckier in that they received a primary education and then left home at 13, as kids were required to do in those days. My father became a cabin boy in the navy, and my mother became a housemaid in a private home where they were both treated abominably by today's standards - but neither complained, or blamed their parents for their circumstances."
"I've been responsible for my own life from the age of 16 and, like my parents, I certainly wasn't going to dwell on the hell of my childhood - or the massive inconvenience their divorce caused me," says Ronnie. "Why would I want to? It's over - it's in the past and life is for living in the present, not the past."
"Kids in my days, and the days before my time, just got on with life and got over whatever misery they'd suffered," says Ronnie. "These days, kids are expected to stay on at school until they are 18 and seem to resent the fact that they then have to operate as free agents, responsible for their own lives. If the prospect of work and the responsibility of freedom is too much to bear, then resorting to the 'victim mentality' to get a free ride through life is a cowardly cop-out."
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