How to Forgive Your Parents: A Practical Guide for Adult Children Who Are Also Parents
The socks were still warm from the dryer when my mom leaned over the couch and said, “You let Mia stay up that late scrolling TikTok? That’s how I messed up your sleep habits, remember.” I was folding mid-cotton pairs, the kind that pill at the heel after three washes, and my chest went tight all of a sudden. The lemon polish she uses on her furniture was still clinging to her sweater, and the lemon bars she’d brought sat on the coffee table, crumbs dusting the paper towel. I didn’t snap, not this time. I just set down the sock I was holding and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Three years ago, I would’ve snapped. I would’ve brought up the time I was 12, when I couldn’t sleep because my stomach twisted into knots every night over middle school tests, and she sent me to my room alone because I was “being dramatic looking for attention.” I would’ve listed all the other small hurts I’d cataloged over years of late-night rants with my sister: the time she missed my piano recital because she picked up an extra shift, the way she still criticizes how I load the dishwasher, the way she never once asked if I was okay after my first breakup. I used to think that forgiveness meant letting all that go, pretending it never happened, or saying it wasn’t that bad after all. I tried that once, and it just gave me a stomach ache for a week.
I started working on this after my daughter Mia turned 7, and she had her first panic attack before a school play. I sat on her bathroom floor holding her while she cried, and I realized I was repeating the same line my mom said to me: “It’s okay, there’s nothing to be scared of.” That’s when I knew I had to figure this out, not for my mom, but for Mia, and for me.
The first thing that worked for me was writing two simple lists whenever a specific hurt popped up. I do it in the notes app on my phone, it takes five minutes, no fancy journal required. The first list is only the facts of what hurt, no softening, no excusing. When I wrote it for the 12-year-old anxiety thing, it was three lines: 1. When I told her I was scared and couldn’t sleep, she called me dramatic. 2. She banned me from the living room after 8pm because I was “ruining the night” for everyone. 3. She told my grandma I was just lazy, and I’d grow out of it. That’s it, no extra drama, just what happened. The second list is only what they knew and what they were dealing with at the time. For that same situation, that list was: 1. She grew up with four younger siblings, and no one ever asked her how she felt when she was scared. She thought ignoring bad feelings made them go away, because that’s what worked for her. 2. The year I was 12, Dad was out of work for eight months, she worked double shifts at the diner six days a week, she got home at 10pm every night and she was too tired to talk about anything that wasn’t the bills. 3. No one talked about childhood anxiety back then. Her doctor told her I was just a moody pre-teen, there were no parenting blogs or social media posts telling her otherwise. This isn’t excusing what happened, it’s just putting it in context. I don’t have to carry it like it’s a weight that means my mom never loved me. It just means she was a person doing the best she could with what she had.
Next, I stopped waiting for a perfect apology. I used to think I couldn’t forgive until she sat me down and said she was sorry, that she got it wrong. But she’s 72 now. She’s not going to suddenly learn all the language around mental health and childhood hurt that we have access to now. She’s still going to comment on my cooking and my parenting choices, because that’s just who she is. Forgiveness doesn’t have to include a big, tearful confrontation, or a perfect apology. I told her how I felt that Sunday afternoon, after I got my water, and she just stirred her tea and said “I was so tired back then. I didn’t know what else to do.” That’s all she gave me, and that’s enough. I don’t need more than that.
The last small thing I do, when I feel that old anger creeping up, is ask myself one concrete question: Is this hurt doing anything for me right now? Most of the time, the answer is no. It’s just making me snap at my kid for no reason, or ruin a nice Sunday afternoon with my mom, or waste 20 minutes scrolling through videos when I should be folding laundry. It doesn’t change what happened. It just makes right now worse.
It’s not all fixed. There are still days I’ll be driving and something will pop into my head, and I’ll get that tight chest again. Last month, I caught myself telling Mia she was being over dramatic when she cried about a scraped knee, and I had to walk away for a minute to breathe, because I could hear my mom’s voice in my head. But then I go back, and I sit down with Mia, and I put a band-aid on her knee, and I tell her it’s okay to hurt, even if it’s not a big hurt to me. That’s what forgiveness got me, I think. It’s not the big healing moment I thought it would be. It’s just small, daily choices to not carry the hurt forward. I still mess up, and I still get angry sometimes, and my mom still says things that sting. But it’s lighter now, most days. That’s enough for me.
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