I feel bereft since my daughters moved abroad. How can we be close again? | Ask Annalisa

It must be hard having both children live so far away. Try to find a place you can explore your grief and loss – and avoid comparing your life to that of your friends

My husband and I have two daughters who emigrated some years ago to two different countries on the other side of the world. Since then, they have married local people and have each started a family. My husband and I are in our 70s, having retired from busy professional careers. I had always assumed that we and our daughters, whom we adore, would continue to be close, and that we would play a role eventually in helping them to rear their children. I was wrong. My friends talk endlessly about their grandchildren and having fun with them on an almost daily basis. Their joy is palpable but I am bereft. I don’t like contacting my daughters and their families on Zoom as I don’t want them to see me crying. My husband is sympathetic but sanguine and resigned to a future in which our real contact with our girls will be, at most, one or two visits a year while our health holds out. Do you have any advice for my broken heart?

I really feel for you. It’s hard to be away from family in this way, but it sounds like your daughters emigrated some years ago and so I wonder what’s triggered you writing in now? Has something recently happened to make this particularly hard? Maybe there’s also something happening – or not happening – in your wider life that you could fix or change to help buffer you against this obvious sadness.

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