Slipping through my fingers all the time
Do I really see what’s in her mind?
Each time I think I’m close to knowing.
She keeps on growing.
— ABBA, Slipping Through My Fingers
Many parents and adult children find that their once-close relationships can become distant or even severed—sometimes gradually, and sometimes after a crisis. As the rock band ABBA poignantly sang, as our children grow, our bonds with them can sometimes feel as if they are “slipping through our fingers.” As a therapist, I’ve witnessed the profound healing that can occur when adult children and their parents come together through family therapy to begin a process of repair and recapture what is slipping away.
Legacy Work: Old Wounds Still Speaking
In a study by Kate Cordukes and colleagues (2024), therapists shared what they’ve learned from years of working with adult families. One phrase came up again and again: legacy work. These are the unacknowledged wounds and unresolved ruptures that continue to shape the relationship.
The road to acknowledging wounds in therapy usually begins with addressing present issues. One therapist in the study described an adult child feeling overwhelmed by getting 30 texts a day from her father, who had a history of chaotic behavior. In therapy, they started with those texts. With support, the daughter discussed openly what felt connected or intrusive. As the intensity of the father’s communication lessened, space opened for the daughter to describe times she had felt overwhelmed as a child.
Legacy work can give voice to grief for what didn’t happen or for what people endured. As one therapist put it:
“Adult children often present with challenges they had to manage as children. When parents see and hear them now, although they may not have then, it can be profoundly healing.”
Redefining Care: Who Takes Care of Whom?
One of the most painful dynamics in many families is parentification, when children assume caregiving before they are ready. Their roles may have helped the family to function, but left the child with unmet needs. Adult children often enter therapy wanting to renegotiate these roles: to stop feeling responsible for managing a parent’s emotions.
At the same time, aging parents face their own losses—of identity, health, or control. They may feel guilt over their past parenting or feel uncertain about how to maintain their connection. Parents may welcome their child’s independence even as they grieve the loss of their former role.
New definitions of care can emerge. Not the hierarchy of parent and child, but a mutual connection—where each person recognizes the other’s needs and limits. Therapists may ask: “If your relationships were repaired, what level of closeness would you want—and what might that look like?”
Space for Exoneration
The therapists in the Cordukes study note that understanding the context of the past can soften judgment and support healing, without excusing harm.
One mother had been violent during her children’s upbringing. In adulthood, one of her daughters refused to see her. In therapy, the children learned about their mother’s history: an authoritarian father, years of solo parenting, and trauma. The mutual understanding fostered in therapy created space for exoneration —a recognition that their mother had been acting out of pain, not malice.
When this kind of understanding emerges, families can begin to level what therapists call the relational ledger: to share responsibility, name harm, and move towards feelings of fairness.
Shifts That Signify Repair
Through therapy, families may be able to laugh again, use softer tones, or simply sit in the same room and feel comfortable. It’s often less about complete reconciliation than “rueful regret“—an ability to say, “I wish things had been different. I understand why they weren’t.”
Repair means embracing small shifts:
- Less walking on eggshells.
- More eye contact.
- A shared joke where silence once was.                                                                    Â
As the researchers in the study described:
“The repairs work in the service of preventing further damage, or even a fatal blow to family connection. They redefine the purpose of being a family.”
Holding On and Letting Go
That ABBA song echoes in so many parents’ hearts:
What happened to the extraordinary adventures
The places I had planned for us to go?
Slipping through my fingers all the time…
For adult children, the lyrics may cut differently:
“Do they see me? Have they ever really known me?”
In that moment of seeing and being seen, the love that once felt as though it was slipping through their fingers becomes something they can finally hold onto.
-Posted by Jonah Green
Jonah Green, a therapist at Jonah Green and Associates, LLC, offers individual and family therapy, including parent-adult child counseling, in North Bethesda, Maryland, serving clients in Montgomery County, DC, and surrounding areas.