I remember a phone call from a most distraught woman telling how guilty her mother made her feel. After she had talked through a litany of harsh things her mother has said, times when she had been hurt, and a long list of things her mother expected or demanded from her, I said "What else is new?" At first she could not understand what I was trying to say, but I explained that if her mother could make her feel this guilty it was not the first time something like this had happened. She said that it had been a lifelong pattern. Her mother had been able to control her with guilt all of her life. This was just the latest thing. 

I think some folks have felt guilty almost from birth. They seem to be guilt prone. If they wake up in the morning and don't feel guilty they feel guilty about that. It can become the pattern of a life. Some people seem to need to feel guilty, they look for things to feel guilty about. I don't know all of the answers to this issue, but I have discovered one that we need to explore. I call it The Unblessed Child Syndrome. 

Almost every family will have at least one child that does not feel blessed. Somehow they don't think they are as smart, talented, or loved as the other children. They feel like they are unable to live up to what was expected of them or to the level of the other children so they feel like they have never been approved of or blessed by the parents. They live with a sense of failure and disapproval which can lead to a lifelong desperate search for the blessing. A lot of only children feel unblessed as well. Often they cannot meet the expectations placed on them by well meaning but pressuring parents.

It is not unusual for someone to think their parents love some sibling the most, and many times that can become embedded in their minds even when it is not really true. However, there are times when it is not just something dreamed up. There are actually people who are unblessed children. Most of the time the parents do not recognize it and feel like they loved all of the children the same. Even if they did do so, it is still possible for a child to end up feeling and perhaps being unblessed. 

I have worked with fifty-five year old women who go see their parents every day and every time they go they are told how great the other kids are, never how great they are. Most of the time they are met with criticism and complaints about how they conduct their lives or how they are failing in some way. 

I remember one woman who said she had never given her mother a gift that she had acknowledged or been proud of. She was excited because she thought she had found the perfect one for the coming Christmas. The gift was so expensive she had to pay it out on lay-a-way for several months. When Christmas came, her mother never said a word about her gift but bragged to high heaven about a much lesser gift from a daughter who lived in another city and who paid very little attention to her mother. 

The problem is that, far too often, the unblessed child will end up being the primary caregiver to the aging parents. There are many reasons why this is so, reasons we will discuss in the coming sessions on this subject. The point of this opening blog is to simply say that some of the grief we feel comes from the relationship and role we have within the family. If the unblessed child becomes the primary caregiver, what kind of guilt must they feel if the parent lives beyond their ability to give care and they are the ones who must tell the parent that a care facility must now be their home?

Almost every time I speak about this subject someone either tells me they are the unblessed child or they have a sibling who certainly is. Often parents ask for more information in order to help a child whom they think fits this pattern.  This leads me to believe that the subject is far too important for us not to give as much coverage as possible to discover the impact and hopefully some ideas for changing the condition. Watch for future blogs on the Unblessed Child.