How to Forgive Your Parents: Practical Steps for Adult Children Working Through Old Hurt
Folding laundry on the couch last Sunday, my 12-year-old propped against the arm scrolling TikTok, I pulled my winter puffer out to stow it in the attic closet. A crumpled receipt slipped out of the inner pocket, dated 1998, from my childhood dentist’s office. I turned it over between my fingers, and that old familiar tightness clamped down in my chest, just like it did when I was 16, sitting in that same waiting room with a throbbing molar, waiting for an appointment my mom had delayed three months because I’d “gotten the cavity from eating too much candy and needed to learn my lesson.”
My kid looked up from his phone. “You okay?” he said. I nodded, crumpled the receipt back up and tossed it in the trash. “Fine,” I said. “Just an old memory.” That’s the thing about forgiving your parents: old memories don’t just disappear. But the tightness doesn’t last like it used to.
I’m 41 now, a parent myself, and I spent most of my 20s and 30s avoiding the question of forgiveness. Whenever I’d read a parenting article or sit in a therapy session, someone would bring it up: you have to forgive your parents to heal. I didn’t know how. I thought forgiveness meant saying what they did didn’t matter, or that it was okay, or that I had to wrap everything up in a big hug and pretend it never hurt. I had a dozen small, ordinary hurts, not the big, unforgivable ones people talk about. They forgot my 10th grade soccer tournament because they were too busy fighting with each other to check the calendar. My dad laughed at my college application essay for journalism school and said I’d never make money writing, that I should aim for nursing instead. My mom would compare my weight to my cousin’s every Thanksgiving, even after I told her it made me uncomfortable. None of it was unforgivable, but none of it was nothing, either.
The first shift happened about three years ago, after I snapped at my kid for spilling juice all over the kitchen table an hour before we had to leave for his own soccer tournament. I sent him to his room crying, then stood there leaning against the counter breathing hard, and I thought: I just did that. I took my stress about being late and running out of milk and fighting with my husband about the mortgage and took it out on him. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And one day, he’ll probably be standing in his kitchen folding laundry, remembering this moment. That’s when I stopped forcing myself to say “they did the best they could” and started doing something smaller: I just named the hurt, out loud, when it popped up. Instead of pushing it down and telling myself I was being ungrateful, I’d say, sitting in my car in the grocery store parking lot, “That comment dad made about my writing really hurt. It still hurts.” No fanfare, no judgment. Just naming it. That took the edge off the anger, because I’d spent so long being mad at myself for still being upset, on top of being mad at them.
After that, I started doing another small thing. Whenever I caught myself thinking a hurt was proof I wasn’t worth loving or paying attention to, I’d pull out my notes app and type one other explanation for what happened that didn’t involve me. When the “they forgot my tournament because I didn’t matter” thought popped up, I typed “they were three months away from a divorce and couldn’t remember their own doctor’s appointment that month, let alone a kid’s soccer game.” When the “dad hated my writing so he must have known I wasn’t good” thought came, I typed “dad grew up poor, he thought the only point of a job was to pay the bills, he couldn’t imagine anyone making a living doing something they loved.” This wasn’t me making excuses for them. It was me pulling the hurt off my shoulders and putting it back where it belonged: in their lives, their stress, their own wounds, not a reflection of who I was. That’s something anyone can do, any time an old memory pops up. It takes 30 seconds.
Last spring, I had coffee with my mom at the diner near her house, that’s when she brought up the cavity out of nowhere. She stirred her coffee three times, added too much creamer like she always does, and said she’s thought about that appointment a hundred times. She was working two minimum wage jobs that year, the copay was $60 she didn’t have, and she was too embarrassed to tell a 16-year-old that we couldn’t afford it. So she blamed me instead. I sat there, eating my toast, and I just said “Yeah, that hurt a lot. I get it now.” We didn’t cry, we didn’t have a big dramatic moment. We talked about my kid’s travel soccer team after that, and she got blueberry pie with whipped cream even though her doctor told her not to. That was it.
I think a lot of people make forgiveness out to be something bigger than it is. You don’t have to have a big reconciliation. You don’t have to become best friends if that doesn’t feel safe or good. For me, it just means I don’t carry that tightness around for days after I see my dad. It means when he makes a comment about my kid drawing too much instead of playing sports, I just say “I love that he draws” and change the subject, instead of replaying the comment in my head for a week. It means I don’t blame every mistake I make as a parent on what my parents did wrong.
Some days, the old hurt still pops up. Last month, I was going through old yearbooks and found the photo of my 10th grade soccer team, and I felt that little twinge again. But it passes now, faster than it used to. I’m still working on it. Some things don’t ever wrap up neat. That’s okay.
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