Don’t Get Stuck Here if You’re a Long-Distance Grandparent

Long-distance grandparenting is emotionally complex.

You can feel joy and pride in your grandchildren — and at the same time, a gnawing sadness that you’re not part of their everyday lives. You might feel love and longing, gratitude and grief, contentment and disappointment – all in the same five minutes.

This emotional mix is normal. But if you stay stuck too long in the sadness, resentment, or frustration, it becomes hard to see what’s still possible because you begin to miss the real opportunities for connection.

You risk investing more energy in what’s missing than in building something meaningful across the distance.

And that relationship you want? It is possible. But you need to be willing to see that it looks different than you imagined. It takes emotional work – to see that reality clearly and nurture the connection at the same time.

I’m not suggesting this is easy. Or that it should come naturally. I am suggesting it’s worth considering – and being honest with yourself about any emotional barriers that might be getting in the way of connection.

The Danger of Getting Stuck

We all get stuck sometimes – especially in relationships. For long-distance grandparents, it often looks like this:

Stuck in sadness about what you’re missing
Stuck in disappointment when you don’t feel included
Stuck in resentment about choices your adult children have made

After spending hundreds of hours with long-distance grandparents, what I often see is this:

They get stuck in the gap between what they envisioned grandparenting would be – and what it actually is right now.

This isn’t about fixing how you feel. You get to feel what you feel. But if you don’t actively cope with those feelings, they can start to shape your relationships in ways you never intended.

The reality is that unacknowledged emotion has a way of leaking out. Maybe you say something small in frustration, but it lands heavily on your adult children. Maybe you subtly guilt them. Or make a passive-aggressive comment that jumps out before you can stop it – hoping, underneath it all, that they’ll realize how much you’re hurting and reach out more.

Maybe you stop sending mail or gifts because you never hear back. You’re hurt. You’re exhausted from not being acknowledged. (Watch for an upcoming blog where I ask, “Are you sending too much mail?” Not because I think you are – but because it’s worth pausing to think about how and when you connect.)

When you carry unresolved anger or grief, it seeps into conversations. Through guilt-tripping. Subtle jabs. Passive comments. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’re doing it. Sometimes you do – but feel powerless to stop.

Why? Because those emotions must go somewhere.

But here’s what I’m pretty sure you already know deep down:

Those things don’t bring you closer.

They build walls.

They make the connection you want feel even further away.

Even when your adult children and grandchildren do want that connection – these emotional undercurrents can quietly stall it.

Two Paths You Must Walk

Being a long-distance grandparent means walking two paths at once:

The path of grief – what you thought this chapter would look like.
The path of commitment to the relationship as it is – not as you hoped it would be.

Both are real. Both are necessary.

And both require emotional work.

This isn’t me blaming or shaming.

It’s about naming what’s happening – in the most compassionate way, so you can choose something different.

Gut-Check Questions

Ask yourself, gently and honestly:

Am I spending more time thinking about what I’m missing than what I can create?
Am I placing expectations on the parents that they can’t realistically meet right now?
Do I feel unresolved resentment toward my adult children for the life they’ve chosen?
Am I silently blaming them for my distance from the grandchildren?
Do I wait for them to reach out, instead of actively coming to the connection table with ideas?
Do I focus more on what I didn’t get back than the love I tried to send?

These questions aren’t about shame. They’re about awareness.

Because energy locked in disappointment can’t be redirected toward connection – until it’s acknowledged and gently released.

A Reframe That Might Help

They didn’t send a thank-you text?

Yes – it’s inconsiderate.

But maybe the parents are overwhelmed. Maybe they’re leaning on you to have bigger shoulders right now. Maybe they’re stressed about something they aren’t ready to share with you yet. It could be an extra busy season of life right now and they are taking you for granted because they know you will still be there – you always have been and they are depending on you to still be there, despite their lack of engagement in the relationshp.

These are reasons, not excuses and understanding it can help soften the sting.

Because these are real things felt by real parents out there, including me, as they navigate all that parenting and staying connected to long distance family entails. The guilt of forgetting to acknowledge the gift or card or not calling back does weigh heavily on parents.

And none of this means your efforts to connect didn’t matter to your grandchild.

When they hold a card in their hand, hear your voice in a video message, or see your handwriting, something still happens for them that feels like this:

I am loved. I am remembered. Nana loves me. Grandpa cares.

And that is not nothing.

Your love and encouragement got there. It connected you to them and it counted.

Even if it wasn’t acknowledged by the parents.

How to Get Unstuck

Feeling sad, disappointed, or left out doesn’t make you a “less than” grandparent.

You’re human. And this role asks a lot of your heart – more than most people realize.

There’s no magic fix. But here are a few steps that can help you begin:

Name what you’re feeling. To yourself. To a journal. To a friend. Avoiding feelings won’t make them disappear. Naming them gives you clarity and strength.

Use reflective practices. Journaling. Quiet walks. Simple affirmations: I am allowed to grieve. I am also allowed to grow and connect.

Talk to someone who gets it. Another grandparent. A trusted friend. Consider joining a community like The Long Distance Grandparent Society, where your experience is understood and supported. It was created to help long distance grandparents connect with grandchildren – and also to one another because I don’t think you were meant to do this alone.

Seek out grief resources. Because what you’re feeling likely has roots in grief. It can feel like anger or resentment towards your adult child for not prioritizing the relationship, but ultimately, what I’ve seen is that these feelings are often rooted in grief. Grief about what you really wish the relationship could look like, and grief about the possibilities if they would just show up as a partner in the connection.

If you haven’t worked through your own emotions, they can unintentionally shape your conversations with the parents – and become obstacles if expressed in a reactive way.

I created The Long Distance Grandparent Grief Guide because I don’t want your grief to stand in the way of building strong, meaningful connections – especially when distance already makes it harder. It’s written specifically for long-distance grandparents, shaped by what I’ve learned from working with hundreds – and now hearing from thousands of you.

When You’re Ready: Dig into the Work of Connecting

Once you’ve started to tend to your emotional world, you’ll begin to find space – to begin, or re-begin, the work of connecting.

This doesn’t mean pretending the hard parts don’t exist.

It means walking two paths at once:

One where you care for your own emotions – and one where you keep showing up.

Consistently. Lovingly. Intentionally.

It’s not a straight line. The emotional experience of long-distance grandparenting – like connection itself – ebbs and flows.

You might feel okay, even joyful, and then leave an in-person visit only to feel the grief surge. This is so normal – and something tens of thousands of grandparents around the world quietly experience.

When you do find that space to connect with intention, it doesn’t have to be grand gestures. Start with what you have the emotional energy for right now: