It is really tough to be a parent and watch your adult child make a huge mistake with his life, let alone his health.  And yet, so many of us unvaccinated parents have had to do just that.  Where we chose not to succumb to the jab, our grown-up children chose differently.

Now here we sit, each of us praying that our child won't somehow become the next tragic statistic, let alone ourselves in a secondary manner.  We live pushing the worst to the back of our minds, hoping we never get that news.  Too many of us will, however, because even one is one too many in my opinion. 

I appreciate the work Governor Ron DeSantis, Congressman Jim Jordan, Senator Ron Johnson, and others are doing to shed clarity and bring justice to the matter.  But most of this is coming after the fact and does little to soothe our anxiety or quell our worries.

"I pray for them every day," says an unvaccinated father of three vaccinated adult children.  It is a common phrase and practice among unvaxxed parents living in the same position. What other recourse do we have?

With so little known about the implications and far-reaching effects over time, unvaccinated parents are destined to spend the rest of their days on high alert.  Thoughts of the unthinkable will loom every time the phone rings.  We will endeavor to survive in haunted states, which include how our adult child's decision will impact our own lives in the case that the short straw was drawn after all.

Will we have to raise our grandchildren?  Could we have done more to convince our adult child not to take the vaccine?  Where do we put the blame and bitterness we will undeniably endure?  These are all valid questions inordinately real to plenty of unvaccinated parents.  

The media have covered many facets of this horror story, but I have yet to see even one news outlet broach current events from this angle.  And yet, many of us unvaccinated parents are living our lives leaning on one another, sharing our nightmares, bowing our heads together in hopes that our adult kids will be spared.  What a horrible quandary to exist in — wise enough to know better, yet still thrust in harm's way at the hands of our naïve adult children.

Then you have those parents who ultimately chose to get vaccinated simply because their adult kids decided to first.  Their logic?  "If my kids die, I don't want to be around anymore."

I wholly understand this point of view, albeit with my different choice.  All I know is, we unvaccinated parents of vaccinated adult children are living in perpetual hell, simply because we love, and regardless of whether we have done everything correctly in keeping our kids safe up until age eighteen.  Just as there is no righting the physiological wrong our adult children impose upon themselves in taking this vaccine, there is no cure for the mental anguish it imposes upon us, their unvaccinated parents, when they do.

Laura J. Wellington is the founder of THREAD MB, author, award-winning children's television creator, TEDx speaker, and the founder of the ZNEEX app.

Image: Pixnio.