I, too, am distressed that you are having so many problems, not only with your family, but with your health.  But do not succumb to despair.  My situation was different, but left me desolate.  I married the man I loved and went to live in another state.  He had been married before and had four grown up children.  It was not until he began to decline in his dotage, that I realised how much his children had disliked me, or how they had manipulated him during that decline, so that  our very lives together were being threatened.  They really wanted me to return to my home state and let them look after him.  As I had always felt secure with him, this came as such a shock that I reacted as if to a devastating trauma.  I spent two years on the sofa, gazing at the ceiling listening to classical music!   But I had no intention of leaving him.  Fortunately, I had a brilliant psychiatrist, who understood my breakdown, explaining that my depression was of biological origin, which made be vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life. For the next few years I was dependent on anti-depressants.  When my husband died I returned to my home state, and found (by accident) a very avante garde psychiatrist, with whom I was able to reduce medication considerably.  He also gave me an up-to-date therapy involving bio-feedback.  For almost a year now I have had no feelings of depression.   When I returned to my home state nine years ago, I brought my two dogs, both of whom died of old age.  Last year I bought another, an elderly naughty dachshund.  She has brought me great joy.  But as with humans so with dogs.  Life does not always stay the way we want it to.     So I can only tell you how I recovered and offer ways of dealing with your grief - because grief is what you are experiencing.  Your son, who is now growing into a man himself, now needs his father to show him a man's world.  He will soon sort out what is honest and loving behaviour, but he does need his father to help him into the adult male world.  So encourage him with love. He will be back - not as your child, but as your grown-up protector.    Lastly, have you any spiritual support?  Visiting an empty church calmed my mind and when I sought it out, the spiritual direction I was given was a blessing.  Grief, I was told, is the price we pay for love.   I do hope the above gives you not only solace, but strength and love and courage to live life in the fullest sense, even if it is unavoidably changing.   Angela (I know my name to some suggests "goodness", but it doesn't.  It means "messenger from God".               But I have no idea why I was given it.  I have never been particularly good.) ... View more