The dilemma Last year my brother died of alcoholism. My husband, our two primary school-age children and I are living with my parents. I am the main breadwinner. I have tried to support my parents through their grief, as well as financially supporting them. I feel the more I do, the more they expect of me; they are never satisfied with my efforts. It has made old childhood wounds of being unheard, unseen, unvalued and the pressure to be a good girl return to the surface. They also blame me for a lot of what happened to my brother and say things like: “We helped you more than him and you are ungrateful.” My husband has gone from being a kind, caring man to an angry one. He tells me that he never loved me. I am about to move to the other side of the world, with my children for my job, and my husband pulled out at the last minute. I am dealing with bereavement, divorce, a new country, a new job and a new language all at the same time. I fear the impact all this is having on my children. They are my priority, yet I find myself losing patience and shouting at them. My relationship with my parents has descended into toxicity, and my marriage is over. Yet I still try to rebuild both daily. What would you do? Philippa’s answer I would find your whole situation so overwhelming that I would attempt to get some distance from it. Try this: Imagine you can fly like a bird and you are looking down on you and your family. Observe yourself down there. You work hard and give your money to your family, you look after your parents, your husband and your children. Are you appreciated? Or are you treated like a faulty cog in that family machine? To me you seem like the cog that keeps everything going. What is that cog doing at the moment? She seems to be trying even harder to get it right for people who will never be satisfied. The whole family are hurting. The brother-son-uncle is dead, and this is shocking, sad, tragic and a heavy weight for everyone to carry. It is normal when we feel bad to look around for someone to blame. Everyone seems to be blaming the main cog – you. Sometimes the children forget their uncle and play, and their shrieks and cries and childish concerns may feel discordant to you and bring you to breaking point. Maybe this is when you snap and shout. You don’t want to, you don’t justify it to yourself, which is good; you want to prioritise your children, but this isn’t happening. Something must change. Your solution seems to be to take a promotion at work that will send you across the world to a strange land with a different language. You will uproot the children from their school, their friends, grandparents and – because he has to justify his decision to divorce somehow by saying he never loved you – their father. You will get away from the abusive comments about blame and ingratitude, but how will you stop the ghosts of those comments rattling around your head when you are a world away? Will you try to quieten them by still being that good girl, still taking financial responsibility for them? Will you still be that cog in their machine? Then, after looking down on the situation, if I were you – which I am not – I would decide not to bend over backwards to please, but to stand up straight and own that I am an adult, I can choose my own path and I can observe that urge to try to please, but not be ruled by it. When a parent called me ungrateful, I would bat that comment back not by arguing with it or doing even more for them, but by repeating back to them what they said: “I see, you find me ungrateful, thank you for letting me know.” As I said this I would imagine myself as a warrior, holding a shield, so their comment gets deflected. But with my children I would put down my armour, I would go at their pace, and listen to each of them. I’d remember myself at their age and remember how vulnerable I was and how I was at the mercy of my parents’ moods. This would help me not to shout but to listen and be kind because I’d resolve not to pass down to yet another generation the blame and the anger I experienced. If you decide to go abroad, the children’s lives will be turned inside out and upside down and they will miss their friends, father (because a live video link is not the same as having a hug) and possibly they’ll miss their grandparents and their home, too. It will mean more loss in their lives. They may be sad, and you will hate them being unhappy and be tempted to point out the advantages of their new home, but resist this urge and hug them through their tears and tantrums and remember what it was like to be a child and what you might have wanted when you were their age. If I were you, I would feel overwhelmed by the amount of practical and emotional things you have going on and I would reach out to my friends for support.