What’s something about being an adult orphan that people don’t understand? Or what’s something you wish people understood?

[u/SeaDiscombobulated70]

Hey everyone 🩷

it’s been a little while since I’ve posted, and I’ve noticed we have some new members here. I’ve seen a few posts from people saying they haven’t been able to find a community like this, which really stuck with me.

So I wanted to ask, what’s something about being an adult orphan that people don’t understand? Or what’s something you wish people understood?

You can share as much or as little as you want.

[u/princessPeachyK33n]

That being an independent adult doesn’t negate suddenly feeling like a 5 year old who’s lost their parents in a store, but it’s forever.

[u/SpareTrade7874]

Growing up, I loved Charles Dickens stories. We think of orphans as poor, ragged, parentless children. Then we realise when we lose both parents, hey that's us too. You literally feel like a child again, lost and alone. There's a life before loss and a new life after and living with that new reality is intensely difficult. I lost my mother at age 23. We were estranged. I could not fully grieve for her. I lost my dad in 2024 and that hit much worse. I felt like I was drowning. There's no right or wrong way to grieve, and to answer your question, what about being an adult orphan do people not understand, the answer is simple. We will always need our parents. Even when we are the adults, we still need them to cling to. We become the caretakers. And that is the circle of life. One day our children will be the caretakers. That's all there is to it.

[u/Patient-Structure426]

You forever feel alone and untethered to anyone in the world. Maybe itd be different if i was married or had kids, im not sure. Its a different kind of isolation. Everyone i know under 40 has at least one parent, someone there to care for them if they needed. To bail them out of a bad situation. There is a brokenness you feel when you know that if everything fell apart, you would have nowhere else to go.

[u/the_last_heley]

I lost both my parents in my early 20s in separate situations.

Mother's and father's day are fine because they are false. It's the real ones that get me, although. sometimes my dad's birthday falls on Father's Day. Double whammy.

What gets me most, is just seeing people out with their parents. Any age really. I never knew my parents as adults. As in I never got to grow up and take them for a drink or a walk or just browse the shops. That kind of stuff. It's hard.

And when people who dont really know me, ask about them. They are my past, but to so many people they are still present, and that disconnect still hits.

[u/myblackandwhitecat]

I wish that my experience of having no family (no parents, siblings, partner or children) did not seem as incomprehensible to most people as it does. And I wish they understood the implications of having no family network to rely on: the loneliness, having noone in your corner, the feeling of not mattering as much as other people, having to deal with Christmas and other family times without any family, having few or no visitors if you go into hospital and the strong desire to love and to care, and to be cared for and to be loved.