Lilian Power Counselling Psychology

Let's Talk

Archant Newspapers, which publishes the East Anglian Daily Times as well as the Ipswich Evening Star, also publishes a monthly magazine called Let's Talk. For six years I wrote a page for it each month which answers reader's letters about any issues to do with their emotional health.

I thought it would be useful to reproduce a few pieces to give some idea of what influences shape the way I might respond to similar circumstances.
This could be a bit misleading.Obviously what happens in the consulting room is less directive and more complex than anything that can be written in response to each of the letters.
Additionally, the magazine is aimed at the over 50s but my practice is much more wide-ranging than that and I regularly see people in late adolescence, those who have retired and any age in between.
So what follows should not be taken too literally as indicative of what happens in therapeutic sessions, more a glimpse of an approach.


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Is there life after work?

I couldn’t wait to leave work. The last few years I’ve felt completely stuck and to be honest I don’t think I’ve earned my keep. It was all change, change, change and I got sick of it. When they offered me early retirement a few years before my time, I jumped at it. It was such a relief to be in charge of my own life again, to get up when I wanted, stay up late, go on holiday, the first few weeks were great. But I’ve been off now for four months and to tell you the truth I’m bored. My wife keeps telling me to get out from under her feet and never seems to have enough time for us to do things together – she’s still working. There are lots of things I could do, fix up the house, do a course, get a job, but somehow I can’t be bothered to do anything. I sleep all the time or slump in front of the telly. I don’t even fancy going out with my mates any more … I haven’t got anything to say to them anyway. I’m turning into an old man before my time..



I don’t think we give nearly enough attention to this last phase of our active life, a phase which is getting longer and longer. Time was when most men would retire at 65, having worked all their lives and all they really wanted was to potter about for as long as they could before, in five or ten years, old age or illness overtook them. Now we often retire much earlier and live fit and active lives for 20 or 30 years, almost as long as our working careers.
But we’re often still stuck in the mindset that thinks the important part, the bit that needs planning and working towards is the early and middle stage. That’s particularly the case when, as in your situation, you’re only too glad to get out of the job you’re in and the need to relieve the stress and misery of working is all you’ve been dreaming about. It’s like the kid who leaves school without thinking out what he wants to do because he hates school so much that anything’s got to be better than that. Early retirement that is carefully thought through with the building blocks put in place long before can be the beginning of a whole new energy, the most creative phase of your life. Without that planning process, it can feel like a major and frightening dislocation.

And it is frightening. Work defines our lives very often. We have given roles, we know what’s expected of us and we know we are needed. We have a range of human contacts to help us through the day and things in common we can talk about. Relationships outside work are, to some degree influenced by what we do for a living: people sometimes know us and respect us for what we do. Our day is shaped by the demands of work, when we get up or go to bed, eat, take holidays. Without all that, we must redefine ourselves, find a rhythm and a purpose to our day and our existence, find a new sense of ourselves and what we want out of life.

Not easy tasks and not helped if you’ve been feeling quite low before you even took retirement. There is a hint of that in your letter and your lack of energy and motivation made me wonder whether you might be depressed which would account for your inability to rouse yourself to start planning your future. Although a lot of people tend to think of a diagnosis of depression as something people use as a good excuse for not getting off their backsides, in fact quite often people who’ve been through stressful situations get to a stage where it is almost impossible for them to motivate themselves without help. I think it might be worthwhile for you to go and talk things through with your GP. They might suggest antidepressants to give you your bounce back or the doctor could refer you to the practice counsellor who will give you space to start planning your new life more systematically and energetically. You’ve got the space now to do the things you’ve always wanted to do and couldn’t because of work. When your energy comes back, I’m sure you’ll seize the time and enjoy it like so many of us.
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I'm ashamed of my son.


I’d never imagined something like this would happen to us. My son has just told me he’s leaving his wife and children to live with a man he’s had a relationship with for years. I was so shocked I could hardly speak: I thought he was joking at first but he wasn’t. How on earth are the children going to cope with it when their friends at school find out? He says my daughter in law has known about it for a long time and they’re still close but I can’t help feeling it’s going to be terrible for them all especially the children. And I’ve no idea how I’m going to tell my husband or my mother. They’re both very traditional people and we’ve all of us been brought up to believe marriage is sacred and homosexuality is a sin: I can’t believe this has happened to my own son: where did we go wrong?.



Gosh, our children do make life difficult for us: just when we think they’re safely living their lives in a way that we can understand, they throw a great big rock into the middle of the pond and leave us to cope with the flood ….
First things first, how do children cope when their parents split up. There is a lot of very conflicting research on this, some suggesting that children of divorced parents are disadvantaged in all sorts of ways compared to those whose parents stay together and others indicating a much more mixed response to what is clearly a very stressful event in a child’s life.
The fact that there are no clear conclusions to all this research suggests to me that it is not the fact of splitting up, troubling though it is, which does the damage to children but the way that separation is handled, how supported the children feel and the relationship they continue to have with both parents. Crucially, a continued and close relationship with your son after he has left the family home will allow your grandchildren to believe what I’m sure both parents are telling them, that they are still loved and important, and no changes in their lives will stop that being true. That to me is the central message they need to hear whatever else is going on above their heads.

Your son and daughter-in-law will no doubt make their own decisions about how much to tell their children about why the marriage is breaking up. This is always problematic, with or without the complications your son is facing: the truth is often too complex for children, with their limited experience of the world, to take in all at once. But one thing I’m reasonably confident about is that people –even children - are, in general, much more familiar with and much less frightened by homosexuality than they were even ten years ago. That’s not to say that those who are sexually insecure cannot still be intolerant and bigoted but it’s much more of a minority sport than it used to be. Depending on the age your grandchildren are, I’m sure their parents will carefully explore the issues with them at an appropriate time, find out how they feel and support them with any difficulties they have.

The issue for you is different. You have to cope not only with the sadness of your son’s marriage going wrong but also with something which challenges your values and your understanding of the basis of relationships. I think it’s important to recognise that this is in my view not about ‘something you’ve done wrong’. Gay people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and from a vast range of different backgrounds and no-one has yet identified anything which could be said to ‘cause’ homosexuality or, indeed, heterosexuality: it just is, and is part of the human condition for many people, problematic to them only when others make it so by their intolerance or lack of understanding.

Not everybody, of course, shares the position I’ve described. Some continue to think of homosexuality as a sin as you have suggested. Your family now has to get to grips with one of the most important issues that families face. Can we allow the people we love to be themselves and continue to support them even when what they are doing flies in the face of our own beliefs? It’s a hard one that. My own view on this issue is that your son needs your support and understanding even if you cannot in your heart believe in what he is doing. On a different issue, I might not be so tolerant: we all of us have to have a point where we have to make a stand. I hope for all your sakes that this is not such a time.

Most importantly, I would caution against taking up a position too rapidly. It may be as well to take slow and careful thought about what is most important for you, to give yourself time to get over your surprise at what your son has told you, to talk to people you can trust not to be judgemental but to help you find a way through, to weigh up whether your feelings about your son’s way of life are so strong that you need to risk jeopardising your relationship with him and your grandchildren at just the time when they are all feeling insecure and afraid. I hope in the end, you can find a way through which feels right and bearable for you all.
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What's a grandmother?.



My daughter and son-in-law live quite near me with their delightful baby son. I love him very much and do all the usual cooing and fussing that grandmothers do but I’m not sure that that’s going to be enough for my daughter. He’s eighteen months old now and my daughter’s starting to drop hints about us having him for a few days while they go off on holiday. She’s gone back to work part-time and she said the other day that she thought Joshua would be happier being looked after by his family than in nursery all the time.
I didn’t say anything but I knew what she was getting at. Most of my friends seem to take great delight in their grandchildren and spend a lot of time with them. A couple of them have them for some days in the week while their mothers are at work and for weekends sometimes too. To be honest, there’s nothing I want to do less – and I feel awful about it. My life is busy and full of things that I really want and it’s taken me ages to get to the stage when I could say that. Small children are very hard work; my husband isn’t all that well and, in any case, he’s never taken much interest in children. I just don’t want to take on the responsibility: I’ve done my child-caring bit.
But I don’t want to hurt my daughter or be unhelpful. I would hate her to think I didn’t love Joshua. I just don’t feel like a traditional grandmother.

There was a time when a woman’s life revolved entirely around child rearing and the care of the home. When she had finished raising her own children, the natural next step was the care of the grandchildren until old age or sickness put an end to her usefulness.
We’re a long way from that now. Most women have active and demanding lives outside the home in addition to their very active involvement with their children and they can’t always count on willing and involved partners. I think also we are expected to be much more concerned about our children’s happiness and future success than we were: we spend a lot more time worrying and thinking about them, running them around, encouraging them to do things, supporting them when they are down, running up to the school when we’re concerned about their progress, constantly feeling guilty that we’re not doing enough; this is immensely draining on mothers who are trying to work and run a home with limited help.

It’s not surprising if in those circumstances, even though we love them, bringing up children is often seen as sheer hard work and the release from that when children are grown can be a liberation, a chance to be ourselves for the first time in a long time. In that context, it is understandable that grand parenting is sometimes seen as a chore, at least when it involves taking active responsibility for grandchildren.

Lots of grandmothers do that willingly and with great enthusiasm but that is surely the key: unless the willingness is there, the children are not going to have a happy experience and resentment will grow on all sides. This is not to say that you should withdraw from your grandmotherly role because you don’t want to take responsibility for your grandchild. I’m a great believer in grandparents. They can provide a wonderful source of warmth and security for a child as well as all sorts of treats and surprises and the joy of being accepted and loved by another generation. But there are as many ways of grand parenting as there are of parenting and you need to find the right way for you and your family.

I think it’s important now to acknowledge your own needs without guilt and to talk to your daughter frankly about the sort of grandmother you want to and feel able to be. There isn’t a rulebook that says how a grandmother should be and what they must do in order to show their grandchild how much they are loved. You must do it the way that feels right and comfortable to you. I hope your daughter understands that.