Surprise, this week Suzy Sunshine over here is starting with her hate of the week. You know I think life is beautiful, but sometimes it is also hard.
And by hard at this moment, I mean…parents are sad. Do you feel me on this? Have you seen it too? Not all of them, of course, but too many of them.
Millions and millions of them.
They’re sad their adult kids in their 20s and 30s, all paid and accounted for, cannot find lives of meaning. They can’t even find work they like. The economy seems to have no place for them. Not their skills. Not their values. Not their humanity. Not their dreams.
They’re sad that their kids have been unemployed or under-employed for so long they seem to have given up on some visceral level.
On trying to find “it.”
On believing in the future.
On hope entirely.
And this makes them feel…well, it makes them feel a lot of things:
Frustrated. Embarrassed. Confused. Angry.
But most of all, sad. Because parents are parents. And even when we suspect, rightly or wrongly, that our kids are part of their own career stasis, we cannot stand to see them on the edge of despair. It hurts too much. That is how love works.
The truth is, I’ve been sensing the “sad parent” dynamic – this cultural phenomenon, if you will — for a few years now. I’ve felt it myself, on and off. I’ve heard about it from too many friends to count, heads bowed, voices low.
But I didn’t have a name for it until the other day when I was walking in my neighborhood and I saw a woman around my age hugging a young man who was clearly her son. He was wearing a business suit, but he was crying, and his head was on her shoulder. She was rubbing his back, her face awash in grief. Then he held up his briefcase in a gesture that said, “Not that I’ll need this anymore,” and I knew in an instant, “Oh wow, he just lost his job. He must have called his mom.”
So I pulled out my phone and made a reel, and finished by saying, “Go ahead, tell me if I’m crazy.”
Apparently, I am not.
“It’s like you are in my head and heart right now, I’m feeling all these things,” one mother wrote. “Truly I thought it was just me.”
The “amens” went on and on, but perhaps the comment that was the most heart-breaking came from not a parent, but a kid.
“I’ve been unemployed for about a year now, and just lost out on a job opportunity,” she wrote, “My mom cried on the phone with me. I don’t feel pressure from them, I’m just so sad I can’t make my parents proud or ease their worry on my behalf.”
I wish I could say I have a solution for this, and maybe I do to some degree, with Becoming You, which is literally designed to help you find your way in an upside down world. But honestly, the whole world would have to take a Becoming You Intensive for this problem to go away.
Wait a minute, maybe that’s not a bad idea. (Sadly, only somewhat joking.)
If you have others – and I mean that seriously – drop me a line at hello@suzywelch.com. I will report back to you, hopefully with news that makes us all happy. 
