How to Forgive Your Parents When You’re Still Carrying Old Hurt
Last December, I was folding hand-me-downs at my mom’s kitchen table after our annual Christmas cookie bake. I pulled a faded cream cotton sweater out of a stack of old winter things, the collar stretched out from being folded and unfolded a dozen times. I knew it immediately: it was the one she bought me for my 8th grade graduation. I’d begged for three months for the navy blue Gap hoodie with the white logo across the chest, the one every popular girl at school was wearing that year. This wasn’t it.
I held it up, and mom wiped flour off her hands on her apron and leaned over. “You never wore it,” she said. “I kept it anyway, thought you might want it for a quilt or something someday.” I laughed, and for the first time in 22 years, I didn’t feel that familiar tight twist in my chest when I thought about that day.
I spent 10 years after that graduation holding that tightness, along with a dozen other small hurts. She missed my first high school soccer playoff game because she couldn’t get her shift covered at the hospital, and I sat on the bench staring at the empty bleachers the whole game. She forgot my 16th birthday dinner because she was helping my uncle move out after his divorce, and I ate cold pizza alone watching TV that night. She always compared my math grades to my cousin’s, and left my college care package until a week after I moved in, so all the cookies were moldy when they showed up.
When I got married and had my own son, everyone told me I’d “get it” eventually, that I’d forgive her automatically once I was a parent too. But that didn’t happen for me. I still snapped when she offered unsolicited advice about how to dress my kid, still felt that old ache when we went to family events and she talked about my cousin’s promotions like I wasn’t even sitting there. I went to therapy, and everyone from my therapist to my best friend told me I needed to forgive her, that holding a grudge was only hurting me. But I had no idea how to actually do it, not the big dramatic hug-and-cry version they all talked about.
The first thing that shifted was I stopped forcing myself to do the big “healing conversation” everyone said I needed. I tried that once, five years ago, and I ended up crying and yelling and mom got defensive and we didn’t talk for a month. Now I know: forgiveness doesn’t have to be for them. It’s for you. You don’t have to rehash every old hurt if that just opens up more wounds. If you don’t want to say “I forgive you” out loud, you don’t have to. That one small choice took all the pressure off doing it “right.”
The second concrete thing I started doing was stopping myself from adding to that mental list of all her mistakes. I used to keep a running tally in my head, every time she let me down, every time she didn’t show up. Now, when I catch myself adding a new thing to the list, I just cross it off right away. Last month, she forgot I don’t eat dairy anymore and made a whole cheese board for my visit. I caught myself thinking “she never listens to anything I say” and I just said out loud to myself, “She’s 67. She remembers a hundred things a day. One slip doesn’t erase all the times she did remember.” I don’t act like the old hurts never happened, I just don’t carry them around like a weapon to pull out when I’m already feeling raw.
The third thing I did was stop forcing myself to choose between “my hurt is real” and “she did the best she could.” I used to bounce between those two extremes: either I was angry that she was a bad mom, or I felt guilty for being angry because I knew she worked two jobs to feed us. What I do now is just say both things are true, out loud, when the hurt comes up. When I thought about that 8th grade hoodie, I said “I was really hurt she didn’t get me the one I wanted. I felt invisible that day. And she couldn’t afford it that month, because my dad’s child support was late and the car needed brakes. Both of those things are true.” I don’t have to minimize my pain to forgive her, and I don’t have to demonize her to honor my pain.
A couple months ago, I missed my 13 year old’s first school play because I had a last minute work deadline I couldn’t reschedule. I ran in the door after the final curtain, and he was sitting in the auditorium hallway crying, holding his crumpled program. I hugged him and apologized a hundred times, and all I could think was “This is going to be his sweater, isn’t it? Someday he’ll be sitting at my kitchen table holding something I bought him, and he’ll feel that same hurt.” That’s when I realized forgiveness isn’t about letting your parents off the hook. It’s about accepting that all parents mess up, even the ones who love you more than anything, and that you’ll probably mess up too, if you’re a parent. It’s about choosing to see them as people, not just your mom or dad, and letting them be imperfect.
I still get that little twist sometimes. Last week I went to a baby shower for my cousin, and her mom pulled out a box of all her old baby clothes and graduation cards, and I stood there and felt that old ache, because my mom never kept that stuff. It still hurts. I don’t pretend it doesn’t. But I didn’t leave the party and sit in my car and replay all the old hurts like I used to. I just got in my car and stopped for coffee on the way home, and called my mom to ask her for her chocolate chip cookie recipe. That’s what forgiveness looks like for me, anyway. It’s not a big moment. It’s just a thousand small choices, every day, to carry a little less weight.
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