Can a woman with an eighteen year old son enter a Trappist monastery?

Would a Trappistine abbey accept a woman with a grown, 18 year old son? Or would this be considered a serious impediment to monastic life? Would a Trappistine abbey accept a divorced woman whose marriage has been annulled by the Church?

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While your eighteen year old son would probably be considered by most Vocation Directors as an “adult” child, you might need to discern whether or not it is advisable to take up cloistered life in the context of your actual personal relationship with your son. The monastic enclosure will limit you and your son’s access to each other to a great extent.

Might this do harm to your relationship with one still relatively young? Might he still have particular legitimate needs for access to his mother that it would be wrong for you to deny him?

These are questions you could only answer after prayerful discernment with a Vocation Director.

Your marriage, having been annulled by a formal church process, should not be an impediment to your entering a Trappist monastery.

May God bless you and accompany you at each stage of this important discernment!