Jackie McGregor: Untangling the past: What a broken necklace taught me about parenting

One eye was closed, he looked a bit like Popeye - all he needed was the pipe, I remember thinking. He opened his mouth and let out an ear-shattering yell. This was my son’s entrance into the world.

Yesterday, as he prepared to go on holiday with friends. I smiled and said all the right things as he packed, reminded him to take his charger, then crumbled onto a chair and sobbed my heart out as soon as his car was out of sight.

Why? Because this is the first time, we are spending his birthday apart.

He went out the door a teenager, but he’ll come back a man in his twenties. Where did the time go? It feels like yesterday we were stood outside the school gates, his little hand in mine, both of us filled with trepidation on his first day at primary.

In the early days, bonding didn’t happen magically. I felt numb for months after his birth. I was still grieving the loss of my mother the year before.

Then one day, I was mid-nappy change, feeling the usual heavy blanket of nothingness, when suddenly he reached out and clasped my little finger in his hand.

He stared up with a quiet intensity that I felt deep within. I searched his wide innocent eyes, and something thawed inside me. It felt like an invisible thread had instantly tied our hearts together.

We have a close relationship, but I’ve been careful to respect his boundaries and not make him a victim of enmeshment, the way my parents unwittingly did with me.

Enmeshment can look like a loving, perfect family from the outside, but inside, parents lean heavily on their child to meet their emotional needs, treating them as a friend and comforter.

That creates a heavy, unhealthy bond where the child doesn’t get the space to become their own person. I knew that weight too well, and I was determined not to pass it on to my son.

Aged nineteen, I became a full-time carer to my mother, then my father. Anything outside family was discouraged, not harshly, but with love. When your surrounded by subtle fear that it’s a dangerous world out there, and aren’t encouraged to fly the nest, you build the cage yourself.

I wanted my son to have roots and wings, so seeing him head off at nineteen with his pals brought a mix of joy and sadness.

In the quiet, I decided to untangle a pile of necklaces from my jewellery box. I picked up a pendant my son bought me that said, “Special Mum.” I tried to unpick it from the other chains with a pin. Giving a sharp tug the delicate metal of the necklace gave way, it broke. I found the broken chain deeply symbolic. It marked the shattering of an old cycle - breaking the chains of enmeshment from previous generations.

I thought of my son off having fun, free to be a holiday maker, not a parental emotional baggage handler.

The best way to hold on to love is with an open hand. The physical chain may be broken, but the invisible thread remains forever secure.