Is It Okay To Not Forgive Your Parents? What Parents and Caregivers Need To Know
Rainy Saturday at the coffee shop off the main street in town, the one with chipped blue mugs and homemade banana bread that’s always a little too dry. Lila sat across from me, stirring her oat latte so long the foam melted into the coffee, and told me what her 22-year-old daughter had said at brunch the previous weekend. “I don’t forgive you for missing all my games,” that’s what she said. Lila blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek, falling into the lap of her faded utility jacket. All our mutual friends had been telling her it’s just a phase, that holding a grudge is unhealthy, that her daughter will come around once she’s a parent herself and understands how hard things were. Lila worked two jobs back then, after her husband left, she couldn’t afford to take off afternoons for away games. She thought she was doing everything right.
I thought of my cousin Mia, who’s 32 now, who hasn’t said she forgives our aunt for the years she drank through Mia’s childhood. I remembered the family Thanksgiving five years ago, when my grandma cornered Mia after dinner and told her “hate is a heavy burden to carry, you need to let it go.” Mia just grabbed her coat and left, didn’t come around for family gatherings for almost two years. Back then I parroted the same thing everyone else said, that she was being unreasonable. Now, as a parent educator who talks to people about family pain every week, I know better.
The thing no one talks about is that most of the pressure to forgive parents isn’t for the person who was hurt. It’s for the person who did the hurting, and for everyone else who wants the family to be neat and happy again. Forcing forgiveness doesn’t heal the hurt—it just tells the hurt person their feelings don’t matter, that they have to shrink to make everyone else comfortable. Mia told me once that when everyone pushed her to forgive, she started having panic attacks before family events, because she was already practicing what she’d say when someone asked if she’d let it go yet. Once she stopped pretending she was going to forgive anytime soon, the panic attacks stopped.
Last month I did a workshop for parents of young adult children, and a dad named Tom came up to me afterward, twisting his workshop name tag between his fingers. His 19-year-old son hadn’t spoken to him for almost two years, after Tom left the family for a new job and a new partner when the boy was 12. Tom had gone to therapy, sent birthday cards, apologized a dozen times. Everyone he talked to said he just had to wait for his son to forgive him. I asked him what he ended most of his messages with, and he said “I hope you can forgive me someday.” I told him to stop saying that. Instead, next time he reached out, just talk about the thing his son likes, no apology, no ask for forgiveness.
He sent a text a week later that just said “Found your old copy of Ocarina of Time at my mom’s house. If you want it back, I can ship it to you, no strings attached.” Three weeks later, his son texted back. They met for burgers a month after that. Tom told me last week they meet for coffee once a month now. His son still hasn’t said he forgives him. It’s still awkward sometimes, there are silences no one knows how to fill. But it’s more than they had before.
If your child has told you they don’t forgive you, you don’t have to fix it today. You don’t have to beg, you don’t have to argue that you did the best you could—that line almost always makes it worse, because it tells them their pain isn’t valid. One concrete thing you can say is, “I know I hurt you, and I don’t need you to forgive me to know I was wrong. I’m still here if you want me.” That’s it. No extra explanation, no demand for closure. If you’re a friend or family member watching from the outside, stop asking when the person who was hurt is going to “get over it.” Just listen when they want to talk, don’t push them to reconcile for the sake of keeping the peace.
Lila left the coffee shop that day, and texted her daughter that exact line that night. A week later they had tacos at the daughter’s favorite place near her apartment. Lila said no one cried, no one had a big heart-to-heart. They talked about the terrible heat that summer and the daughter’s new roommate who steals her oat milk. No one said the word forgiveness. Lila told me last week they’ve had dinner twice more since then. It’s still not the close, easy relationship she always imagined having with her daughter. There’s a distance there that might never go away, and she still cries sometimes when she thinks about all the games she missed. But it’s better than it was, when she was just waiting around for forgiveness to fix everything.
I talked to Mia last week, we got ice cream after she finished a work meeting. I asked her if she ever thinks about forgiving our aunt, who’s been sober for 10 years now. She licked her vanilla cone and said, “Sometimes. Maybe someday. But I don’t have to, right? I like my life now. I don’t need to forgive her to be happy.” That’s the quiet truth no one shares much: forgiveness isn’t a required step for healing. It’s just one possible outcome. And it’s okay if it never comes.
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