WOW, it is as if you are acting out a scenario that so many have already done. He will keep doing as he does and play out his role to the enth degree as so many others have before him and you can only do your part as a mother. Keep telling him you love him!!! Keep sending him encouraging and loving notes!!!! NEVER throw them out!!!! Keep all of those that he returns. If he read them, he filed it away in his mind and his heart. When the time is right you can take them all out and return them to him. You will be able to show him that you were there with him through his journey and that he was never alone. But, you can’t stop a racing train. You can stand aside and watch it pass or you can stand in front and be run down. When you put your heart out there for him to trample on that is exactly what you are doing.
It is HIS journey!! You can’t pull on the reigns and guide him back onto your own path for him. HE has to walk the path in his own shoes. He has to learn his own lessons. He doesn’t want to hear them from your voice, but he will feel them in your written words. He will take from them what he wants in his own private space and pocket them for when he needs them. Your words are NOT falling on deaf ears or on a stone cold heart, he only wants you to believe that it is. But they are penetrating and will continue to penetrate as long as they are words of love and support.
“i know that you feel you must try on this new lifestyle for size, but don’t be afraid to discard it if it doesn’t fit! I know that you are on your own journey right now, one that I might not understand, one that frightens me a lot, I fear for your heath, I fear for your safety, I fear for your well being and I fear for your future. I realize that you are only thinking about the moment and living for the moment, I guess that is your job, you are still a kid. But I am the grown up here, the Parent, and I have to be mature and use the common sense that Hashem gave me. You are NOT the first to go down this path and I understand the dangers out there. I understand that you can’t see them. I understand that you don’t believe they exist. I understand that you don’t understand why I am so on edge and afraid for you. It has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the fact that you are my son, my child, born to me, precious and special to me, a gift from Hashem to me and to Tatty, and I can’t stop loving you nor worrying about you.”